Plunge!

I grew up in a small city blanketed in coal dust. By chance, I was reunited with the girl who had lived next door years ago.

There were many versions of the rumors about her, and it was hard to tell which were true. This time, she slowly told her own story.

I had just finished reading The Fall. Her life had some similarities to Mo Huai's in the book, yet was fundamentally different.

I wrote down this story from the past not to compare whose fate was more tragic, but to remember one thing:

Not everyone who falls into darkness is crushed beyond repair. Somewhere in the endless, frigid night, there is always someone desperately trying to find the light.

From the moment she was born, no one wanted her. She was an unwanted presence, wedged into the cracks of her family.

Her mother treated her as a shameful past, while her father offered little more than material support.

The sprawling home was filled with possessions, but not a trace of warmth. For years, she was trapped alone in that cold cage.

Then a man entered her life, bringing a tenderness she had never known. In the gray of her youth, he was the only light that ever shone on her.

Her mother's sudden death shattered the shackles that had weighed her down.

The pain she had kept buried for so long erupted. Alone and with nowhere to turn, she clung desperately to the only warmth she had.

Social conventions, other people's gossip, and the chains of morality meant nothing to someone who had already lost everything.

To hold on to that ray of light, she was willing to bet it all and enter a game with no way out.

But she didn't know that after fighting so hard to escape the abyss behind her, the road ahead might not lead to salvation.