A Jingjing lived alone from childhood in a dark, damp room with no windows. Since they lived in the south and the room had no windows, it never got any sunlight, and the floor was often wet and sticky.
Her mother strongly favored boys. Right next door was a bright, spacious, airy room, but no one lived there. Her mother still wouldn't let her have it, saying it was being kept for her younger brother.
Her younger brother was only a year younger than her, yet he shared a room with their father, mother, and younger sister. She had been kicked out early and made to live by herself in that perpetually dark, damp room, piled high with junk.
Every night before bed, she was so scared that she checked under the bed several times because she was afraid of ghosts. Then she would hurry back to bed, pull the covers over her head, and try to sleep.
Even when she desperately needed to pee in the middle of the night, she would hold it until dawn, too scared to get up…
She was afraid of ghosts and always felt there was one in the room. She often woke up unable to move, as if a ghost were pressing down on her. She didn't know what it was called when she was little. She only learned the term after she got older and started reading.
Then one day, she happened to hear an elderly neighbor in the village tell her that her little aunt had lived in that room before her, and later hanged herself in there…
It began when her little aunt was in high school and secretly dating a boy. She was said to have gotten pregnant, causing a huge scandal. Unable to bear the judgment and blame of others and her family, she hanged herself.
Her family buried her without ceremony. No wonder she had never known she even had a little aunt. Afterward, no one ever mentioned her again, as if she had never been born…
No one ever visited her grave.
