Today is Children's Day, and the amusement park is packed with parents and their kids. Among them, a couple arrives with their two little ones, joining the lively crowd. These tiny tots look especially small—smaller than most two- or three-year-olds. Normally, kids that size can't run or jump yet, but these two are moving around with no problem at all. They're adorable, with chubby cheeks and bright smiles, and impossible not to love.
The boy's hair is jet black, shiny like the night sky. The girl's hair is white with a hint of gold, sparkling like the stars. From their faces, you can tell—the boy takes after Dad, quiet and calm, never running off. The girl’s got Mom’s energy, lively and passionate. In the bustling amusement park, the couple and their kids are having a blast.
On the plaza, the boy quietly feeds the pigeons. The pigeons flock to him, letting him pet and touch them without flying away. He seems to be whispering to them, and the pigeons coo back, nodding their heads as if they understand. Dad watches from the side, smiling warmly.
Meanwhile, the girl is running wild with a balloon, chased by a gang of Brats who want her pretty balloon. But soon enough, she’s punching and kicking, sending them off crying and running. Mom laughs out loud, showing her daughter how to throw a proper left hook and right jab, patting her on the head and telling her she did great.
In the flower beds, on the grass, by the lake—the whole family is having a great time. The Brats keep trying to get revenge, sneaking over again and again, but the girl chases them all away. Eventually, a whole crowd of Brats comes over, making a racket and finally bothering the boy who’s quietly fishing. He puts down his little fishing rod, and together with the girl, they beat up the Brats and leave them sprawled on the ground.
Dusting off his hands, the boy calmly walks away. The girl, play-acting with her tiny fists, cackles as she corners the Brats lying on the ground.
When the family heads to the lake to go boating, the Brats see them off like little attendants, sending the two tiny tots onto the boat with royal ceremony.
After boating, it’s time for the swings. The parents put the kids on the pirate ship swing, each pushing from one side. The swings soar high, and their laughter echoes just as high. Blue sky, white clouds, green grass, and fragrant breezes—it really is a perfect day.
As the sun sets, people start heading home. Big hands holding little hands, the four shadows stretch long in the sunset. But suddenly, the crowd swells like a rushing tide. Mom feels her hand empty, quickly looks down, and sees the two little ones squeezed into the crowd, hand in hand, drifting farther and farther away.
The couple gets anxious, calling out their kids’ names and rushing to chase after them—only to be blocked by the crowd.
Looking up, they saw a ragged, crazy Taoist. With a villain’s twisted grin, he cackled and shouted four words: “Dispersal Doom! Dispersal Doom…”
The couple knocked the mad Taoist to the ground with angry fists, stomping his filthy face as they fought through the crowd. But now, under the orange sunset, the people around them suddenly twisted into monsters, their limbs stretching like ancient locust trees, shrieking and closing in with terrifying screams.
Susan Morrow and John Yang pressed forward, cutting through the tide of people. At last, they reached out and grabbed a tiny hand through the crowd.
It was the boy’s right hand—and his left hand was holding the girl’s.
The couple finally breathed a sigh of relief.
But just then, the little girl flashed her parents a dazzling smile, her platinum-blonde hair swirling in the air. “Mom, Dad, I’m off now! Bye-bye!” she said. The two little ones let go of each other’s hands at the same time. The monster-like crowd turned back into wood and stone, pale and silent. Only the couple held their son, reaching out toward the girl as she vanished into the distance…
“Ah—! No—!” Susan Morrow suddenly screamed and shot up in bed, drenched in cold sweat, her heart pounding out of her chest. She held her belly, dazed, sensing something was wrong. John Yang woke up too, and Susan grabbed him in a panic: “Quick, quick, I need to go to work, I need to check!”
John Yang didn’t hesitate. He nodded hard and rushed his wife to the hospital in the middle of the night. The old folks were startled awake and followed, confused. At the OB-GYN, Susan Morrow couldn’t wait—she barged straight into the ultrasound room, grabbed the probe herself, and scanned her belly. Her eyes went wide at the screen. She bit her lip, tears welling up, scanning left and right, checking every angle. But in the end, her arms went limp and she collapsed as if her soul had left her body.
John Yang caught his wife just in time. This skinny scholar didn’t know where he got the strength, but he lifted her up and laid her on the bed. He didn’t say a word—just hugged her tight, holding her hand, giving her warmth. Feeling John beside her, Susan finally reacted. She looked at him and, trembling, squeezed out a sentence: “Our child, our daughter… is gone…”
Tears flooded like a broken dam. For the second time in her life, Susan Morrow sobbed with gut-wrenching pain: “Our daughter is gone! She—she was right here, right in my belly, but now she’s just… gone! Gone!”
When the old folks and the panicked Director Xu rushed in, Susan Morrow was already on the verge of collapse from crying. John Yang wasn’t crying—he tried his best to comfort his wife, but his eyes were red as fire.
Director Xu hurriedly picked up the ultrasound probe and checked, then slumped into a chair, stunned. “How… how is this possible?” he muttered.
Yang Ying broke down in tears, hugging her daughter as she sobbed, “My poor child, is this our family’s fate? Do we always have to lose one of our own?” Clearly, she was thinking of her eldest daughter, Susan Morrow’s sister, Susan Qiong. Samuel Soo sighed deeply, saying nothing, just rubbing his forehead in agony.
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Suddenly, Susan Morrow let out a muffled cry. Everyone looked over in alarm—her water had just broken from all the excitement.
“She’s going into labor!” Director Xu jumped up, barking orders: “Get everyone on night shift here, prep the delivery room!”
Late at night, Susan Morrow was wheeled into the delivery room, while her distraught family waited outside on the benches. “Son-in-law,” Samuel Soo said, patting John Yang’s stone-silent shoulder, offering him a cigarette, “Have one.”
John Yang stirred, lifting his head, his eyes red as a rabbit’s. He’d never smoked before, but looking at his father-in-law, he nodded silently, took the cigarette, lit it, and took a long, hard drag.
Cough cough! The spicy, choking sensation hit his lungs, and John Yang coughed uncontrollably. Something sparkling fell—maybe his first tears from smoking… But after coughing, John Yang took another hard drag, coughed again, and then a third, still coughing…
In the early hours of June 2, 1988, a loud, clear cry rang out from the delivery room, bringing a breath of life to the heavy, suffocating atmosphere.
Before the three could react, chaos erupted in the delivery room. “Muhua, calm down!” someone called out.
Then came Susan Morrow’s shout: “Give me! Give me my baby’s umbilical cord!”
Hearing the commotion inside, John Yang, who had been silent, suddenly frowned, stood up, and strode into the delivery room. He pushed open the door to see Susan Morrow on the bed, hair wild, clutching an umbilical cord. The cord split into two at the middle. “Look, Director Xu, it’s split!” Susan screamed like she’d lost her mind. “See? It’s split! I should have had two children! Two!”
Then she collapsed again, overwhelmed with grief: “It’s all my fault… It must be my fault… Why, why did my daughter disappear…”
Seeing his wife on the verge of breaking down, John Yang strode over and grabbed the umbilical cord, his voice low: “Give it to me.”
Susan instantly tensed up: “What are you trying to do?”
“Throw it away.”
“No, don’t throw it away!” Susan clung to it like a mother hen protecting her chicks, sobbing, “Jin, this is the only proof our daughter ever existed!”
Hearing Susan’s words, John Yang trembled all over, closing his eyes in pain but refusing to let go. After a moment, he took a deep breath and suddenly slapped Susan across the face, shouting, “Enough already!”
Susan was stunned. The nurses in the delivery room were stunned. Only Director Xu sighed and quietly urged the younger nurses to leave.
“Muhua, snap out of it!” John Yang gripped Susan’s shoulders, almost digging into her flesh. “We don’t need this thing—I know our daughter was real! She wasn’t just in our imagination, she really existed! But no matter what, we can’t let this break us—we still have a son!”
Susan’s eyes moved, as if a bit of spirit returned. She murmured, “A son? That’s right, I still have a son…”
“Muhua, listen to me.” John Yang cradled his wife’s head, his voice steady as a mountain. “None of this is your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Mom and Dad are waiting for you, I’m waiting for you, and our son is waiting for you. Now, rest and recover, and go see our son. And this umbilical cord—let me take it, okay?”
Susan bit her lip and finally let go of the cord. In that instant, she seemed to lose all her strength, collapsing onto the bed. Director Xu sighed, then put on a warm smile, brought the boy over, and placed him beside Susan, speaking softly: “Healthy little guy, six pounds nine ounces. Look, isn’t he handsome?”
Susan gazed at the fragile baby in the swaddling clothes, and the baby looked right back at her. He reached out, and as if to comfort her, gently touched Susan’s face. In that moment, Susan wept again, but not as bitterly as before. Through the baby’s tiny hand, she found new strength, and her eyes shone with hope once more.
John Yang looked at the split umbilical cord, paused a moment, then put it away and left the delivery room. Outside, Samuel Soo and Yang Ying were waiting. John looked at them and said, “Dad, Mom, let’s name the boy Jack Young.”
From that day on, there was a new boy in the house. As she raised her son, Susan seemed to forget her old pain, becoming beautiful, strong, and cheerful again. Her bright smile was warmer than ever. And everyone who knew the truth, while blessing her, never spoke of the girl again. That mysteriously vanished girl was buried in the past, never mentioned again.
John Yang, however, developed a bad habit. The once-perfect modern man who never touched cigarettes or alcohol finally picked up smoking. Battling her husband’s cigarette pack, Susan honed a sharp nose and keen eyes.
Later, John Yang went to Mount Tai dozens of times. Sometimes for three or five days, sometimes for a week. He braved the elements, searching every peak and inch of land. No matter how hard he looked, the mad Taoist never appeared again. He asked all the so-called masters doing business atop Mount Tai, but none of them knew the guy.
He sought out many masters, those supposedly powerful and magical ones. John often tested and exposed many frauds. But he felt no satisfaction—what he really wanted was to meet a true expert, someone who could read his fortune and tell him about his daughter’s fate.
On Jack Young’s eighteenth birthday, John Yang—now gray at the temples—celebrated with his son, drinking until they were both happily smashed. The newly adult Jack was the first to pass out, and even John, who rarely drank, ended up bleary-eyed and tipsy. Watching his son snoring on the table, John lit a cigarette and started chuckling. After a while, he sighed, then laughed softly again.
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That day, Susan Morrow didn’t snuff out his cigarette.
From that day on, John Yang stopped going to Mount Tai, and stopped exposing fortune-telling frauds. Life settled into a peaceful routine: keeping a close eye on his son to stop him from skipping class for internet cafés or puppy love, or bickering with his wife over daily chores.
Time flew by. Neither husband nor wife ever spoke of it, but neither forgot. The mad Taoist at Moonwatch Peak had said that when the world changed, their daughter would return. They didn’t know what counted as the ‘world changing,’ but neither let go of that hope.
Until April 2014, when the White Night descended and the world was thrown into chaos. In that moment, Susan Morrow suddenly felt: if this wasn’t the ‘world changing,’ what was? Not long after, while talking to her son, he suddenly asked about his sister, and the feeling grew even stronger. One day in July, Susan felt restless, as if something important was about to happen.
“Forget it, stop overthinking. My son’s coming home soon, I’ll go make something to eat.” Grabbing her shopping basket, Susan headed out. As she opened the building’s front door, she was met with dazzling sunlight. In the light, a girl stood facing her, right in front of her.
So sudden, so unexpected—yet the girl’s face was so familiar. That shimmering platinum hair was so familiar. The look in her eyes, the blood connection—they were all so familiar.
Thud—the shopping basket fell to the ground. In that instant, twenty-six years of tangled emotions surged up, choking her throat but breaking open her tears. All the words she wanted to say boiled down to just four: “You’re back?”
The girl across from her smiled, just as dazzling and bright as in the dream. “Yeah, I’m back—Mom.”