A Little Change

"What did you think?"

Christopher asked Mo Bai beside him like a critic who had just finished watching a film.

"So this is what it feels like when a beautiful memory is stripped away to reveal what really happened? It's a little strange."

Still puzzled, Mo Bai looked back at the screen.

On it, his past self woke up and dialed the police as though nothing had happened.

He calmly told the police everything that had happened the night before—except that he had left his parents to die.

"My parents told me to stay in my room to protect me. They fought the robber to the death and took him down with them.

When I came out and saw the bodies everywhere, the shock made me faint until the next day."

That was the statement Mo Bai had given the police.

He became the perfect victim, while his parents became heroes who had willingly given their lives for their child.

After that, his past self rode away from the village strewn with corpses in a police car.

His family had not been the only victims. The crazed robber had killed all the other elderly villagers too.

After all, the villagers were nothing but frail old people.

If Elder Li had not let the robber in for a little petty gain, and had instead gathered the villagers to stop him, perhaps everything would have turned out differently.

But then he would surely have gone back to being tormented by his parents day after day...

Come to think of it, it was a good thing that robber came to the village.

Before getting into the car, Mo Bai took one last look at his parents' bodies.

This time, what he understood was different from what he had learned after his grandfather's death.