In the 1970s, everyone in the military compound knew that I, Xiao Yufen, was a miserable widow, raising my five-year-old son, Shitou, on my own.
My husband had died in service in the People's Liberation Army. I was just a woman trying to bring up a child, and everyone in the compound thought I would never get back on my feet.
No one knew that my Shitou was no ordinary child.
Other people crouched by the wall to watch ants. He crouched there to keep an eye on people.
He could hear every whispered conversation that others missed.
Missing fabric from the storeroom, secret meetings in the hills, warnings of a landslide…
No scheme could escape those little eyes.
I panicked. “Shitou, how do you know everything?”
He looked at me quietly.
“Mom, don’t be afraid. I’ll protect you.”
I held him close, almost bursting into tears.
Only then did I understand that my five-year-old son had already brought back memories of his past life,
and, where I couldn’t see, had laid the safest plan to protect me.
Did the stone come to repay a debt of gratitude?