What was in the darkness?
What was hidden in the darkness in the photograph?
Gao Ming took down the last photograph in the fourth row and held it in his hands, studying it carefully as he silently gazed into the darkness.
The wheelchair tracks on the ground seemed to suggest that his stepfather had taken his wife into the darkness, but Gao Ming could not see them there. Li Sansi did not seem to have found them that night, either.
Photographs were frozen moments, not continuous memories, like a song sung haltingly to its end, with lyrics whose meaning was often hard to understand.
Counting from the bottom of the darkroom wall, the photographs in the first four rows were connected in some way. They had their own logic, which he could attempt to decipher.
Starting with the fifth row, the photographs became rather different.
The disappearance of his adoptive parents had left Li Sansi without a guardian, so the Lower City police had temporarily sent him back to his original home.
The first group photograph in the fifth row was artfully composed. In the warm, brightly lit living room, steaming food sat on the dining table, yet everyone seated around it radiated coldness.
His father wore an awkward smile and an evasive look. Aunt Xia hung her head, suppressing something. His younger brother, now older, grabbed food from a plate. The little boy was no longer as cute as before. Perhaps because he had received too much love, he had grown fat, like a white ball of flesh.
Li Sansi was not in the photograph. He was a silent chronicler, someone hiding inside a dark box.
No one in this family liked Li Sansi, just as Li Sansi disliked the stifling heat of midsummer. Blinding sunlight scorched every pair