In 1963, the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, Little New Year's Eve. My second aunt Wang Guilan gave me a bowl of broth mixed with sweat medicine. When I woke up, I was stuffed in the secret compartment of an oxcart and sold like goods to a mountain village in the south that I can't even remember the name of.
The man who bought me was in his forties, lame in one leg, mentally twisted, and tortured me in different ways every day.
I escaped three times.
Every time he was caught, he was beaten to death.
The last time, I jumped into the river at the entrance of the village.
The moment the river water poured into my lungs, I didn't feel any pain, only injustice.
It's so unfair.
I, Shen Zhiyi, have never done anything wrong in my life, why did I end up like this?
Then I woke up.
---
I opened my eyes and saw a beam.
The roof is made of yellow adobe, with a bunch of dried chili peppers hanging on the wooden beams, and the spider webs next to it are swaying in the wind.
This is... The woodshed of my second uncle's house?
I sat up suddenly, and my head hit the low door frame with a "thud", which made me grimace in pain.
But the pain made me completely awake.
I looked down at my hands - small, dark and thin, with frostbite scars on the back of my hands. These hands are clearly not those of twenty years old.
I stepped on the cold ground with my bare feet, staggered to the kitchen, and looked into the basin of dishwashing water that had not been poured out——
A girl's face was reflected in the water.
Not eight years old.
It's sixteen years old.
He has dry, yellow hair, a pointed chin, high cheekbones, and is so thin that his cheeks are sunken. Only one pair of eyes
