Chapter 34: The Road to Escape

Life, she mused, was nothing but an elaborate lie, each desperate attempt to patch its gaping holes only tearing it further, until it lay irrevocably shredded.

As Jì Lánxīn sat in the car Liu Tianze had rented, watching the familiar streets behind her recede into the distance, she keenly felt the conflict raging within her: she had abandoned her mother at home, yet she could not abandon the lingering reluctance and guilt.

She yearned to be more resolute and decisive, and it was precisely this yearning that fueled her self-loathing for her own weakness.

Even having come this far, she found no sense of relief; she had merely fled, nothing more.

“The journey is still long. You should try to get some sleep.”

“…Okay.”

At Liu Tianze’s suggestion, she slowly turned her body, casting her past life behind her as only the deepening night lay ahead.

Flickering amber lights repeatedly flashed before her eyes, appearing like a series of warnings, reminding her and them how far they had strayed from their intended path.

Gazing at Liu Tianze, who was intently driving, through the rearview mirror, she mused, ‘Boys truly are incredible creatures.’

Most boys, like Wen Qiusheng currently snoring obliviously in the passenger seat, seemed utterly carefree and childish.

Yet Liu Tianze, only two or three years their senior, exuded an undeniable maturity, making it impossible not to regard him as a dependable adult when in his presence.

In stark contrast, some adults were…

“Are you alright? Does your face still hurt?”

It was only when Liu Tianze spoke that Jì Lánxīn realized her hand had unconsciously risen to the right side of her face.

A distinct palm print throbbed there, a constant reminder of burning pain and swelling, a testament to a failed attempt at communication, to someone’s fury, and to the bitter disappointment following yet another hysterical outburst.

“No, I don’t care anymore.”

She lowered her hand, shaking her head to indicate she was fine.

She had intended to gaze at the passing nightscape, hoping to distract herself from the pain, but through the window, she could only vaguely discern her own swollen, tear-streaked eyes and her disheveled, numb face.

This sight merely intensified her irritation, forcing her to lie back and compel herself to sleep amidst the gentle swaying of the car.

Falling asleep in such a state proved difficult.

The moment her eyes closed, unwanted memories surged towards her like a relentless tide, knocking her down, engulfing her, making her question herself repeatedly: ‘How did things ever come to this?’

She vividly recalled the initial anchor point, or perhaps, looking back now, it was likely the final moment of what they called happiness.

Everything had stemmed from a simple, beautiful wish—her mother’s wish.

She hadn’t given much thought to her family before, for it was an exceptionally ordinary and typical household; “mundane” was its most fitting descriptor.

Her father was an office worker, constantly burdened with overtime and social obligations, her mother a full-time homemaker, and she herself an average middle school student with neither outstanding nor failing grades.

They weren’t wealthy by any means, but certainly not impoverished or destitute; they simply existed.

It was the kind of life where nothing felt particularly wrong, though fleeting regrets occasionally surfaced, moments of contentment interspersed with slight disdain, all eventually subsiding into a quiet, peaceful harmony.

Such was the ordinary happiness her family possessed.

To her younger self, everyone in the household had accepted everything their home represented, embracing their roles and positions without question.

A life that remained unchanged seemed perfectly acceptable.

Thus, when her mother cryptically announced that their lives would improve from that day forward, Jì Lánxīn’s only thoughts were of whether she could acquire limited edition merchandise for the next idol concert, and how unusually invigorated her mother seemed.

She paid little attention to anything else.

Her younger self had failed to recognize that what burned in her mother’s eyes and permeated her words was not a longing or hope for a brighter future, but rather the fuse of fanaticism, the very genesis of a terrible affliction.

About a month later, her father received a new tie, and Jì Lánxīn herself received a digital drawing tablet from her mother—a gift she had long pestered her mother for, yet had always been denied.

Everyone felt a heightened sense of happiness then, but her mother appeared the most joyful, having fulfilled her promise and truly nudged their lives a step closer to something better.

For a while after that, her mother seemed to grow even more cheerful.

Sometimes, Jì Lánxīn would overhear her mother on the phone, murmuring phrases like “my own career” or “my worth as a wife and mother” to someone on the other end.

She never knew who it was, but after each call, her mother invariably wore a radiant smile, and if Jì Lánxīn happened to make a request at that moment, it would always be met with a cheerful “yes.”

Her mother also made new friends, occasionally inviting them over when her father was out.

Though Jì Lánxīn had no idea where her mother had met them, it didn’t seem to matter, for she saw the same joyful smiles on her mother’s face and theirs as they spoke.

‘They must be very close friends,’ she had thought.

Not long after, however, the most monumental argument in their family’s history erupted.

Jì Lánxīn witnessed her usually docile father roaring at her mother, his contorted face filling her with terror.

Unsure of what was happening, she could only retreat to her room and lock the door, listening to the shouts, the sobs, the shattering of objects…

The quarrel raged on for an agonizingly long time, finally concluding with her father storming out, her mother slumped on the floor, and a scene of utter devastation.

Her mother, it seemed, had been deceived, and their family had lost a significant sum of money because of it.

Jì Lánxīn could only vaguely grasp these facts, and what would transpire next remained a terrifying unknown.

Consequently, arguments and recriminations became the norm, eventually devolving into cold wars and suffocating silence.

Once a member of the household abandoned communication, some things became irrevocably lost.

Ultimately, her father left her mother, left her, and left their home.

He had, at the time, asked if she wished to go with him, but she had ultimately stayed behind, still clinging to a sliver of hope—that damnable hope, an impractical fantasy masquerading as optimism.

She had believed that everything could still be salvaged.

‘To have harbored such a thought, I truly was a complete and utter fool.’

‘My mother, I realized, had died long ago.’

‘What now festered at home was merely a hideous monster, trapped in its own self-spun web, repeatedly plunging into different scams, repeatedly using my mother’s face to betray my trust, repeatedly worsening our family’s plight, and repeatedly crushing my hopes.’

‘I gradually came to understand that perhaps by treating it with the same harshness as my father, I might find some measure of peace.’

‘I simply could not accept that my mother had become such an ignorant, emotionally unstable, and sickeningly foolish creature.’

‘Precisely because she had once been such an ordinary yet deeply loved mother, its current existence was so profoundly irritating and unsettling.’

‘Every tentative attempt at interaction left me utterly drained, and everything I did for it only earned me its verbal and physical rejection and violence.’

‘I no longer wished to remain in that house; it was a nest of depravity, a tomb masquerading as a home.’

‘Often, I found myself thinking, ‘If only she weren’t here.”

During my parents’ final argument, my father had shattered the family portrait hanging in the living room, leaving a void that had remained ever since, a symbol of irreparable loss.

I hadn’t given much thought to the portrait’s whereabouts until one night, after a furious argument with my mother where I uttered many vicious, hurtful words I hadn’t even known I possessed.

Late that evening, when I, still stewing from skipping dinner, went to the fridge for a snack, I unexpectedly saw my mother kneeling in the living room, lost in a daze.

The family portrait was clutched in her hands, and beside her, a pair of scissors lay silently.

…In that moment, a truly chilling thought had indeed crossed my mind: ‘If only she could truly disappear like this.’

And she, just as I had morbidly wished, picked up the scissors and committed an irreversible act—she cut the family portrait, meticulously removing her own image and discarding it into the trash.

Only then did I realize: ‘I could not truly hate her.’

Admittedly, she had ruined everything; she was a foolish woman who had squandered their family savings to deceit, losing the trust of everyone around her, yet still plunging headfirst into the abyss.

I scorned such a prisoner, blinded by greed, and I reviled her ignorance and shortsightedness.

Yet, I understood that what obscured her vision might have been greed, but it could also have been the most genuine hope.

I remembered how she looked when she described her ideal, beautiful future, and I would never forget that it was a lovely vision where everyone in their family would be happier.

As my faith in her waned, I began to recall more.

I had heard my parents tell stories of their youth, when they had both just graduated from university, each harboring their own dreams.

My mother had always wanted to open a flower shop, claiming that growing and arranging flowers was her lifelong passion, but she had ultimately used the money meant for the shop to buy their current home with my father.

Neither my father nor I had ever felt strongly about her becoming a homemaker, nor had we ever inquired about her feelings on the matter.

However, I also remembered an occasion when a friend from her school days visited, and as they discussed their current careers, my mother’s face had clouded with envy.

Like my father, she had sacrificed many choices she could have had for the sake of this family, for her own growth.

‘What I had considered ordinary, perhaps was not ordinary at all.’

Could it be that my college-educated mother fell into the scam because she had been home for too long, and desperately wanted to prove she could still contribute to the family in her own way?

Now, however, contemplating this question held no value whatsoever.

Yet, as these thoughts came to me, I found myself unable to hate her anymore.

My father had once claimed that all their current misfortunes stemmed from my mother, but this was the one point on which I disagreed.

While my mother’s entanglement in the scam might have been driven by her greed, it was ultimately the architects of these deceptions who were the true root cause of their misery.

The so-called “better life” had never stood a chance of materializing from the very beginning.

The moment my mother began to fantasize, this family was destined for the wretched end now before them, surely because it was inherently a wrongful, unjust endeavor.

The ones I truly ought to hate were those who, while enticing people like my mother—helpless yet eager to contribute—lurked in the shadows, self-importantly mocking others.

Yet, they remained intangible; I knew neither their faces nor their voices.

Such intense and twisted emotions within me struggled to be projected onto these vague, formless entities, leaving me only with my imprisoned mother right before my eyes.

Unconsciously, I might have become like my mother, growing more emotional and losing control of myself.

Even when I tried to admonish myself to remain calm and rational after the fact, as the conflicts grew increasingly evident, I still failed.

Now, I was no different from my father; I could neither accept nor reject my mother.

And so, I fled.

As I left, I did not push open the slightly ajar door to her room.

Instead, I placed the digital tablet she had given me on the table; this overly extravagant gift was one I simply could not accept.

“…”

‘It seemed, after all, that falling asleep quickly on a seat so utterly devoid of softness was proving somewhat difficult.’

Jì Lánxīn tossed and turned on the seat, her thoughts a tangled mess, her mood rising and falling with the occasional jolts of the car.

Left with no other option, she shifted her attention to the two figures in front of her.

Wen Qiusheng remained fast asleep, his uninhibited snoring the most prominent sound in the car.

Sometimes, she truly envied him.

Despite his recklessness, impulsiveness, childishness, terrible fashion sense, conventional aesthetics, and his penchant for deadly boring puns, and despite his tendency to argue over trivialities, his ability to fall asleep so soundly even in their current predicament forced her to admire his utter lack of concern.

However, this did not mean he was entirely free of worries.

After all, their current group escape had initially been his idea.

The relentless pressure from home and the constant ridicule at school had ultimately transformed him from a once cheerful boy into a volatile powder keg, ready to explode at the slightest provocation.

His continuous binge eating to cope with stress had also contributed to his portly physique.

“…”

“…I apologize. Still can’t sleep?”

“I’m still not very tired. I’ll just sit up for a bit.”

Jì Lánxīn propped herself up against the seat, knowing that as long as she was close enough to the window, she wouldn’t catch her own reflection.

“The car is driving very steadily; it’s not your fault.”

“Hmm, I just regret letting him have his way and order beer.”

Liu Tianze cast a sidelong glance at Wen Qiusheng beside him, then reached over to pull the blanket covering him higher.

“His sleeping posture is as terrible as ever.”

Jì Lánxīn peeked at Wen Qiusheng through the rearview mirror, then let out a few soft laughs.

“Alright, don’t mind him. It’s his own fault for forgetting you needed to drive and wanting to show off. He brought this upon himself.”

“I just hope he doesn’t wake up soon clamoring for a restroom. The next service area is still quite a distance away.”

“And what about the distance to Jingping City?”

“Let me see… It’ll probably be until tomorrow… or rather, it’s almost noon today.”

“I see. In that case, after I wake up, I’ll look up some good places to eat there. It’s rare to go on such a long trip; it would be a shame not to treat ourselves to something nice.”

“Yes, I’m counting on you.”

The two continued their casual chat, both implicitly avoiding heavy topics and opting for lighter ones, as if they were simply a group of young people eager to enjoy their vacation.

This was not due to any rift in their relationship; on the contrary, it was precisely because they considered themselves bound by a shared destiny that some matters needed to be kept from one another.

Just as Jì Lánxīn remained silent about the details of her argument with her mother, she also refrained from pressing Liu Tianze about why he had suggested such a distant city as Jingping.

She merely sensed, vaguely, that the place held a special significance for him, and that there was something he absolutely had to do there.

She would wait for the day he revealed everything to her and Wen Qiusheng.

She believed that day would come, and when it did, she would spare no effort to help him, just as he had spared no effort to help them.

No one deliberately speculated when this journey would end.

They had already embarked, and even if an unprecedented, unimaginably tragic end lay before them, there was no turning back.

Weariness gradually crept up her fingertips, gnawing at Jì Lánxīn’s last vestiges of consciousness, until her slender eyelashes wrote intermittent periods in the void, and her awareness sank into the abyss of slumber.

The night continued, amber lights occasionally sweeping across Liu Tianze’s cheeks, casting flickering buoys in his eyes.

As the car grew quiet, only the navigation system’s female voice softly recited the mileage, the gently swaying vehicle transformed into a wandering fish, swiftly moving through the dark currents of the night.

****

“…”

“…*&￥#@￥%…*”

“…&&#**! Lan! #…”

‘…What was that sound…’

“Lanxin, Lanxin…!”

‘Such a familiar voice… ugh…’

“Lanxin, wake up, Lanxin!”

“So noisy… I heard you…”

Rubbing her eyes, Jì Lánxīn grumbled angrily, a familiar figure shouting in her still-blurry vision.

The urgent, clamorous sound irritated her, so she instinctively reached out and twisted hard.

Almost simultaneously, she heard a shriek, as if from a cartoon about a cat and mouse perpetually outwitting each other.

Shaking herself upright, she saw a familiar figure clutching their waist and rolling on the floor, wearing a mask of agony.

“Wen, Wen Qiusheng?!”

“My dear auntie, your grip is far too strong.”

Before she could even fathom why Wen Qiusheng was there, a second person suddenly entered her field of vision, freezing her on the spot.

“Are you awake? How was your sleep?”

The girl who appeared beside Wen Qiusheng possessed her own face and physique, wore her clothes, and spoke in a voice both familiar and strange—it was, presumably, her true voice as heard by others.

“What, still half-asleep? It’s morning, you know. Good morning~”

The other girl struck a pose Jì Lánxīn would never make, greeting her with an overly familiar air that plunged her newly awakened consciousness back into chaos.