“Big brother…”
Zhou Suisui cried out.
Her tears fell in torrents, like a flood bursting through a broken dam.
Her vision blurred, already obscured by tears.
Her chest felt painfully constricted, as though a wad of water-soaked cotton were lodged inside, pressing the breath from her lungs.
Her brother was curled up in the corner of the attic, huddled in a posture that spoke of utter insecurity.
Like a wronged child, he clutched a yellowing stuffed toy—a mangy dog.
His face was buried deep between his arms.
His broad shoulders trembled.
“…”
At the sound of Zhou Suisui’s sobbing cry, Zhou Sui’an abruptly lifted his head.
“Suisui? You—you weren’t supposed to be back yet. Didn’t you go out to play?”
He blinked his reddened eyes, a ring of damp crimson hazing the corners, still unable to believe what he was seeing.
He clearly hadn’t expected his sister to appear in the attic at that moment.
He had climbed in from the balcony next door, thinking she wouldn’t be back so soon…
The instant he saw her tear-streaked face, he panicked.
He hurriedly scrambled to his feet and stood in front of her, clumsily wiping away her tears.
“Suisui, what’s wrong?”
“Why are you crying?”
“Tell me. Who bullied you?”
“Weren’t you out playing with Jiang Ruitian? Did something happen? Were you mistreated?”
“…”
Zhou Suisui noticed the bloodshot veins in her brother’s eyes, as well as the unconscious stiffness in his back from his injuries.
Her tender heart felt as though an invisible hand had seized it and squeezed until it bled.
She could hold back no longer. She threw herself into his arms and wrapped both arms around his waist.
Her tears fell silently.
“Big brother… You’re such an idiot… How could you be so stupid…”
At that moment, she didn’t know what else to call him except “stupid.”
Zhou Sui’an froze when she hugged him.
She held him so tightly that he could feel a faint ache in his ribs.
Her tears were hot, soaking through the thin white shirt over his chest.
Their scorching warmth spread all the way into his heart.
He raised a hand and patted her back, his voice hoarse with concern. “You silly girl, why are you crying? Tell me, what happened?”
“Mom and Dad’s photograph…”
Zhou Suisui lifted her head and looked at him through tear-filled eyes. “I didn’t go out to play just now. I lied to you… I went to… I went to see… Sob…”
She wanted to tell him that she had gone to see a psychologist.
The doctor had said that he was carrying a deep emotional knot, that he was incapable of normal emotional attachment. That was why he acted like a lovesick fool, giving everything to someone else without asking for anything in return. Even when that person despised him, framed him, and toyed with him, he accepted it willingly.
Her brother was such a wonderful person—so wonderful…
What right did that person have to treat him that way?
When she remembered the way her brother had died in her previous life, Zhou Suisui’s heart twisted into a painful knot.
There were so many things she wanted to say to him.
But she was sobbing too hard, her body jerking with every breath. All those words were jammed in her throat, and not a single one could get out.
Zhou Sui’an’s body stiffened.
The panic on his face gradually faded, replaced by deep exhaustion and pain.
He turned his head away, not daring to meet her eyes. His voice was as soft as a mosquito’s hum.
“You know…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Zhou Suisui clutched the hem of his shirt and said through her sobs, “Why have you never said anything…? Su Wan looks so much like Mom… What really happened in that car accident seventeen years ago?”
What kind of emotional wound could make him throw away his dignity and sense of self, exhausting every means to please someone else?
She didn’t understand.
She truly didn’t understand.
“…”
Zhou Sui’an’s pupils contracted violently. His thin lips pressed into a taut, cold line.
He remained silent for a long time.
So long that Zhou Suisui thought he would avoid the question and hide everything once again.
Then, slowly, he began to speak.
“That day was the anniversary celebration of the Zhou Group…”
He lifted his head and stared at the lush parasol trees in the distance, his eyes vacant, as though he had returned to that nightmarish night.
“You had played until you were exhausted and were sleeping very deeply. Mom couldn’t bear to wake you, so she left the nanny at home to look after you. She and Dad took me to the company.”
“It was raining heavily that day, with thunder booming overhead… Our car was halfway there when a large truck suddenly came barreling out in front of us. Its brakes had failed.”
“To avoid it, Dad yanked the steering wheel. The car slammed into the guardrail and went over the edge.”
“Beside the road was a slope twenty or thirty meters deep…”
Zhou Sui’an’s hoarse voice trembled beneath seventeen years of repression, and tears began to fall silently, beyond his control.
“Suisui… Do you know?”
“Dad was driving that day… I was sitting in the back seat, and Mom was beside me. She was directly behind the driver’s seat…”
“That truck was coming straight toward my side… Dad swerved hard to the right to protect me. That was why he couldn’t avoid it in time… The driver’s compartment was instantly pierced by a steel rod that had been thrown from the truck. Dad… died on the spot…”
“The car spun out of control and rolled again and again. Mom held me tightly in her arms… She used her entire body to shield me. To leave me even the smallest safe space, every bone in her body was broken, and her whole body was twisted into a grotesque shape…”
“The blood on her body… fell onto my face and body just like that… Drop by drop… Drop by drop… It was scalding hot.”
“But even then, she was still smiling… Her voice was as gentle as ever, yet so weak. She told me, ‘An’an, don’t be afraid. Mommy is here…’”
“She told me to live well, and to carry out her and Dad’s wishes—to take good care of my little sister.”
“She looked at Dad one last time. She wanted to reach out and touch his face, but she didn’t dare loosen her arms around me. Until the very moment she closed her eyes, she kept looking toward Dad with a smile, unable to let him go…”
Zhou Sui’an could not continue.
He crouched down in agony, covering his face with both hands.
For seventeen years, he had never told anyone about what happened.
He had buried all his pain and guilt deep in his heart.
In the dead of night, in countless dreams, he had asked himself again and again: Why hadn’t he been the one to die?
If only, that day… If Dad had turned the steering wheel to the left instead, would everything have ended differently?
His parents had given him their only chance to survive.
But being alive was so exhausting.
And yet he didn’t even have the right to die.
He still had a little sister who wasn’t yet three years old…
He had to live well. He had to take good care of his sister. He had to make it up to her.
It was all his fault. He was the reason his sister had lost their parents.
Zhou Suisui listened in silence, already sobbing uncontrollably.
She crouched down beside him and wrapped both arms tightly around his shoulders, her ragged breathing clearly audible.
“So… Big brother, you just missed Mom, didn’t you?”
“Big brother… I’m sorry… I didn’t know… I didn’t know anything. I don’t even remember what our parents looked like…”
At that moment, Zhou Suisui finally understood everything.
Why had her brother locked away everything that belonged to their parents?
Why had he kept the attic locked?
Why had he refused to let her satisfy even the slightest curiosity?
In the Zhou household, anything related to their parents was an absolute taboo. No one was allowed to bring them up.
Even shortly after the car accident, her brother replaced every servant in the household.
He knew all too well what it felt like to lose one’s parents.
She would grow up sooner or later. Sooner or later, she would understand that she had lost her parents.
By then, she would suffer just as he had, consumed by longing and overwhelmed by pain.
For all these years, the only thing her brother had done was lessen the influence their parents had on her life.
And as it turned out, he had succeeded.
At only three years old, a child’s memories were already hazy.
At first, she would cry and throw tantrums, insisting on finding her father and mother.
But as she grew older, her memories gradually faded.
Because she could no longer remember what her parents looked like, her longing had no tangible form.
That vague feeling—impossible to grasp or touch—was simply too distant.
Her entire life had been filled by “Zhou Sui'an.”
He tied her hair into little braids, read her bedtime stories, stayed awake all night whenever she was sick, and never allowed anyone to bully her. When she got her first period, he had even personally bought her first sanitary pad…
Zhou Sui'an was her brother, but he was also her father and her mother.
Two in the morning, writing this while crying~~
