Zhang Rong and I walked the boy home again.
This time, we took him to the village entrance and saw a light on in one of the houses.
The house was tiny and dilapidated, possibly less than ten square meters.
"Goudan, whose house is that?"
We pointed at the house as we asked the boy.
He glanced at it and said it was his older sister's home, and his too.
That house is so small, it could barely fit two people. What about this boy's parents?
"Goudan, where are your parents?"
"Dead..."
"Dead?"
I was startled. "When... did they pass away?"
Goudan said casually, "They were killed when I was very little."
At the words "were killed," Zhang Rong and I exchanged a look, both startled.
I quickly crouched down and asked him, "Who killed them?"
Goudan pointed at the village without saying anything.
But his meaning was clear. His parents had been killed by people in the village.
Zhang Rong hurriedly asked, "Did the police take anyone from the village away back then?"
Goudan scratched his head and looked at us blankly. "What are police?"
"You don't know what police are?"
He shook his head and said he had never heard of them.
Zhang Rong and I found it strange, but on further thought, it didn't seem so strange after all.
It took several hours to walk down the mountain from this village, and a round trip would take even longer. There were no schools nearby either, so Goudan certainly hadn't been to school.
If he had, he wouldn't have been ignorant of even his own name.
He had lived here since he was little, so it was normal enough that he had never heard of the police.
"When your parents died, was anyone in the village taken away?"