Cui Anhe attended Yan Tangyu's funeral.
At the funeral, everything felt unfamiliar and unsettling to Cui Anhe: the solemn black veils, the mournful music, the adults' swollen, reddened eyes and stifled sobs.
Held tightly in her father's arms, she looked at Aunt Yan's still-gentle smile in the photograph. For the first time, a vague fear rose within her, one that neither pleading nor tears could resolve.
So she instinctively searched for that familiar figure-Ji Yunhuai.
But the Ji Yunhuai she found was a stranger.
With his mother's passing, it was as though Ji Yunhuai's soul had been drained away too.
Dressed in a black suit, he stood as straight as ever at the head of the receiving line, but the carefully maintained, gentle smile had vanished from his face. In its place was a profound sorrow and indifference that felt almost tangible.
His eyes were empty. He merely nodded mechanically at the condolences offered by those who came to pay their respects, and kept everything around him at a distance-including Cui Anhe, who kept trying to approach him.
This was not the polite reserve he had shown before, but a bone-deep weariness with the entire world, a complete withdrawal from it.
At first, Cui Anhe was confused, and even felt a little wronged in a way she could not quite explain.
The truth was, Cui Anhe's ability to understand such things really could not compare with other people's. She thought it was normal for Brother Yun Huai to be sad now that Aunt Yan was gone, but he ought to be fine after a day or two-three or four at most.
She could understand that sort of brief sadness. In her mind, the pain of losing a loved one was probably much like losing a favorite toy. It would make