12th October 2024
Taonan County, Baicheng District, Jilin province, Republic of China.
In the small park tucked inside the worn-out gated compound, an old woman in her late seventies slowly made her way along the cracked stone path. Her steps were unsteady, as though each movement had to be negotiated with her aging bones.
The early morning sun of late autumn was thin and pale, spilling weakly over the faded exercise equipment and peeling red slogans on the walls. She lowered herself onto a wooden bench beneath a locust tree and sat there quietly, basking in the sunlight.
Her face was weathered and darkened by time, the skin loose and sunken. Her body was little more than a frame of bones wrapped in thin cotton clothes that had long lost their color. Her eyes, clouded and hollow, stared ahead without focus, as if the world before her had nothing to do with her.
Not far away, a group of middle-aged women were doing their morning stretches. Seeing her, they immediately gathered closer, lowering their voices but making no effort to hide their disdain.
"Look, that old woman is here again."
"Aiyo, what bad luck. To see her face first thing in the morning. What a sin."
One of the women, who had only recently moved into the compound, glanced over curiously. "Why? What's wrong? She's just a frail old woman. Why speak of her like that?"
The others exchanged meaningful looks.
"You don't know because you just arrived," one of them said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "She was in prison for thirty years."
"Thirty years?" The newcomer's eyes widened.
"Yes. Before she was released, she had already served three decades. They say she killed her own husband and his entire family."
"Tsk, tsk," another woman clicked her tongue. "Not only that. I heard her father was labeled a traitor back in the early years of the Republic. They say he had contacts with Japanese spies. Who knows what kind of blood runs in her veins."
"What? Something that serious?" The newcomer instinctively took a small step back. "Then why is she still living here? Why don't we petition the property office to drive her out?"
"It's not that simple," the first woman replied, folding her arms. "She was already sixty when she was released. With no skills, no family, nowhere to go. I heard one of her distant relatives found her after she got out. That relative is quite wealthy. They wanted to take her in, but she refused."
"Refused?"
"Yes. She insisted on staying here. Later, that relative arranged a small apartment for her in this compound. She's been living alone ever since."
The newcomer exhaled slowly. "Oh… so that's how it is. Still, keeping someone like that around us feels unsettling. Who knows what kind of person she really is."
Another woman leaned closer, lowering her voice further. "A few days ago, I saw another old lady arrive in a very expensive car. Beijing license plate."
"Beijing?" someone repeated softly.
"Yes. The car was the kind only people with real power drive. That old lady stepped out wearing a tailored coat, her bearing dignified—definitely from a wealthy and influential family in the capital."
"And?"
"She was asking around for this old woman." The speaker glanced toward the bench. "Curiosity got the better of me, so I followed her."
"You followed her?" The women leaned in.
"I did. She went straight to that old woman's apartment. Not long after, I heard shouting—loud, heart-wrenching shouting. I couldn't hear the exact words, but it sounded like accusations… and sobbing."
The woman shivered slightly despite the sunlight.
"Even after the rich lady left, the crying continued. All night long. It was so eerie I couldn't sleep. The sound echoed through the building… like someone mourning the dead."
Silence fell over the group.
On the bench beneath the locust tree, the old woman remained motionless, as though none of it concerned her.
She did not even spare the gossiping women a glance. Her gaze remained fixed on the distance, on a patch of sunlight trembling against the old brick wall, as though she could see through time itself.
Her name was Li Shuying. Seventy-eight years old.
Every word the women spoke reached her ears clearly. Age had weakened her body, but not her hearing. It would be a lie to say their words did not wound her. She had endured a lifetime of whispers, yet the sting had never dulled.
But when they called her father a traitor—
Her fingers curled tightly against her palm, the thin veins on the back of her hand rising like withered branches.
Traitor.
Even after six or seven decades, the memory remained as vivid as yesterday.
She still remembered the day her father had been paraded through the county streets. A wooden placard hung around his neck. Inked characters announcing his "crime." The crowd surged like a tide, their faces twisted with righteousness and contempt. Some spat. Some threw rotten vegetables. Others pointed as though looking at a plague.
She and her brothers had stood frozen at the edge of the street, shame burning their young faces.
When the gunshot rang out, it echoed not only across the square but across her entire life.
For many years, even she had believed he was guilty.
Until a few days ago.
Until the knock on her door.
Zhao Hongmei.
Her so-called step-sister.
When Li Shuying first opened the door and saw the elegantly dressed elderly woman standing there, with an attendant quietly holding a handbag behind her, she thought the visitor must have mistaken the address.
The woman wore a tailored wool coat, the fabric fine even to an untrained eye. Her shoes were polished leather. Her posture upright and assured. The bearing of someone accustomed to power.
Li Shuying had been about to politely explain the misunderstanding.
Then the woman laughed.
It was not the gentle laughter of reunion.
It was sharp. Cutting.
She looked Li Shuying up and down with naked scorn.
"Sister," she said slowly, her lips curving. "Long time no see. Did you miss me? I am Zhao Hongmei."
For a moment, Li Shuying could not breathe.
The frail, bony little girl from her childhood—the granddaughter of her step-grandmother—had once been timid, almost invisible within the household.
The woman before her now was radiant with authority.
Time had sculpted them differently.
After a long silence, Li Shuying stepped aside and let her in.
What she didn't know was that decision would shatter the foundation of everything she had believed for seventy years.
What she spoke next was earth shattering for Li Shuying.
Like a butcher calmly listing cuts of meat, Zhao Hongmei had recounted everything she had done every scheme, every calculated push, every silent manipulation hidden behind the curtain of fate.
By the time she finished, Li Shuying was no longer standing.
She had collapsed against the cold cement floor, her frail body shaking uncontrollably. Her fingers clawed at her own sleeves as if trying to wake from a nightmare. Tears streamed down the creases of her aged face, her cries hoarse and broken, almost animal-like in their despair.
"No… no… this can't be true…" she muttered, over and over.
Her father had not been a traitor?
Her eldest brother who died before he could even step beyond the Great Wall for finding a work was that not fate, but design?
Her second brother's so-called accident…
Her third brother's political downfall…
Her pregnant mother was actually...
Sold?
Each revelation was like a blade twisting slowly in her chest.
Seventy years.
Seventy years of misunderstanding.
Seventy years of shame.
Seventy years of filial guilt toward a crime that had never existed.
Her breathing grew uneven, her vision blurring as grief and shock intertwined. The small apartment seemed to shrink around her, its peeling walls closing in like a coffin.
Zhao Hongmei watched her quietly.
There was no anger on her face now. No agitation.
Only satisfaction.
She adjusted the sleeve of her tailored coat, as if brushing off invisible dust, then slowly walked around the cramped room. Her gaze skimmed over the faded wooden table, the patched quilt, the chipped enamel basin in the corner.
At last, she stopped before Li Shuying, who lay trembling on the floor.
She leaned down slightly, her shadow falling over the broken old woman like winter frost descending upon withered grass.
"Li Shuying," she said softly.
Her voice was no longer sharp, it was calm. Almost gentle.
"Seeing you like this… finally makes me feel at peace."
Li Shuying's sobs hitched.
Zhao Hongmei's lips curved faintly. "This is the price for stealing my destiny." She paused, letting the words sink in.
"You ask why I spared you?" she continued, her tone almost indulgent. "Because killing you would have been too easy."
A faint, cruel smile touched her eyes. "I wanted you to live. To watch me rise step by step. To see everything that should have been yours become mine. I wanted you to understand clearly that your entire family existed only to clear the road for me."
Her gaze turned cold.
The words pierced deeper than any knife.
Li Shuying forced air into her lungs. Through the ringing in her ears, she managed to whisper, her voice barely audible "Why… us?"
Why her father?
Why her brothers?
Why her Mother?
What sin had they committed?
Zhao Hongmei straightened slowly. For the first time, something sharp flashed in her eyes, something almost fanatical.
She bent slightly again, her lips close to Li Shuying's ear, as though sharing a sacred secret.
"Because," she whispered, each word deliberate and heavy, "I am the heroine of this world."
The air seemed to freeze.
Then she stepped back, her expression returning to serene indifference.
She cast one final glance around the narrow apartment. The life of a defeated extra in a forgotten corner of history.
Without another word, she turned and left.
The sound of the door closing echoed through the room.
And Li Shuying remained on the cold floor.
Heroine?
What did that even mean?
For an entire week afterward, Li Shuying did not step outside.
The neighbors heard nothing but silence from her apartment.
Inside, she mourned.
Not for herself.
But for her innocent family and specially for her father.
For the man she had misunderstood.
Only after learning the truth did she finally remember the look in his eyes on that execution ground. The redness around them. The restrained tremor in his lips. The unwillingness. The helplessness.
He had wanted to speak.
She knew it now.
But she and her brothers, consumed by shame and fear of implication, had already accepted the verdict of the crowd.
They had lowered their heads.
They had turned away.
They had not listened.
That final glance—
It had not been the look of a traitor.
It had been the look of a father betrayed by his own children.
Outside, the early morning sun continued to shine gently over the compound.