My name is Chen Feng.
On the day of my discharge, as the plane passed through the clouds, I touched the yellowed family photo in my breast pocket. In the photo, the younger sister Chen Yue wears a ponytail and smiles so much that two small tiger teeth are exposed. Her parents stand behind her, and her temples are not stained with too much frost. For five years, I have been crawling in the smoke of the "Sharp Sword" Special Forces Brigade. The hail of bullets has never frightened me, but when I think about opening the door of my house, my Adam's apple still can't help but roll up.
I thought that what was waiting for me was a table of hot rice, that it was my sister who was chirping to me about things on the battlefield, and that it was my father who patted me on the shoulder after finishing his cigarette and said, "It'll be nice to come back."
But when I pushed open the familiar wooden door, there was only a choking dead silence in the air.
On the wall, the family portrait was moved to the corner, and in the center hung a black and white photo of Chen Yue. She was wearing school uniform and her eyes were timid, like a frightened deer.
My mother was sitting on the sofa, her back as hunched as a reed wilted by frost. When she saw me, she opened her mouth without making a sound, and tears were already flowing down her face. The father squatted on the ground, the smoke between his fingers burned to the end, and he didn't react when his hands were burned. He just said repeatedly: "Yueyue is gone... By those beasts..."
Longxing Gang.
These three words pierced my ears like a poisoned ice pick. They said that seventeen-year-old Chen Yue was dragged into an alley by the gang on the way home from school. They said she "didn't know how to behave" and that "no one cared about her even if she screamed until her throat was broken." Later, she jumped down from the rooftop of the teaching building, like a broken leaf.
The police came, and the file said "accidental fall." Someone saw Zhao Tianhu - the fat man from the Longxing Gang
