"Yes."
Xu Zizhen nodded without hesitation.
"Uncle has always remembered her."
"For a very, very long time..."
"He just wanted an answer for why she left without saying goodbye."
An answer...
The woman hesitated before speaking. "Your uncle..."
"He never believed that the her he saw..."
"Was an illusion?"
Only if he didn't believe it could he keep hoping.
"...Somewhere between believing and not believing."
After a few seconds of silence, Xu Zizhen smiled.
"After all, for Uncle, all those years of spending time together and keeping each other company... it was hard to let one illusion erase all of it..."
"Everyone around him told him that what he'd seen was an illusion."
"His reason told him the same thing."
"But it was hard for his feelings to accept it completely."
"...For a long time after that..."
"Uncle was caught in a real struggle."
"As time went by, he pretended everything was fine."
"But deep down, he still cared."
"It was just that no one believed him, and no one would listen to him."
"So he kept it all bottled up."
It became a thorn in his heart.
As time passed, he would sometimes even forget it was there.
But the moment he touched it, he felt pain.
Then he would suddenly realize the thorn was still there, and had never gone away.
Fortunately.
That thorn hadn't stayed with Uncle for his entire life.
At last, Uncle had gotten an answer.
An answer that was completely beyond his expectations.
An answer...
That was heartbreaking, bewildering, and hard to come to terms with.
Xu Zizhen didn't know...
Whether getting that answer had pulled one thorn from Uncle's heart, only to drive another one into it.
Sometimes...
The truth really was unexpectedly... cruel.
It made people wonder...
Would