A letter damp with moss

September rain pattered against the camphor leaves, breaking into fine droplets with a soft rustle.

Pu Yu stood at the entrance to a narrow, moss-covered alley beneath an old umbrella.

Its ribs had loosened, and rain dripped from its edges, splashing into fleeting rings around her feet.

The depths of the alley lay shrouded in mist, as though they led to some unknown world.

Pu Yu reached into her pocket and touched the letter softened by damp.

-Her mother had pressed it into her hands before she died, saying that if she ever had nowhere left to turn, perhaps the address on that letter could offer her a place to catch her breath.

She had staked her seventeen-year-old self, along with her entire uncertain future.

All on this unfamiliar little town.

On the hope that someone she had never met would take her in.

Three days earlier.

That suffocating evening.

A cup filled with scalding tea came hurtling at her.

"All we did was ask you to meet Mr. Chen's son, and you actually dared call the police and accuse him of luring a minor?!"

Pu Yu dodged sideways. The cup struck the wall behind her and shattered with a piercing crash, leaving water stains trailing messily down it.

"Come on, dear, talk it out. Don't frighten the child."

Her stepmother He Shuowan cut in with a soft voice. "Yu, you need to be considerate of your father. We'll soon have three children to support..."

"Those are your children." Pu Yu interrupted her and turned her gaze back to her father. "Dad, the children you have with her aren't my responsibility."

Pu Zhiming's face turned livid. His chest heaved as though her words had lodged in his throat.

"I'm your father! We're only doing this for your own good! You think studying will get you anywhere? How many university graduates can't find jobs? What's wrong with marrying early and settling down?!"

Pu Yu lowered her eyes to the toes of her shoes, washed so often they had faded pale.

"I'm only seventeen. I can't get married. I want to stay in school."

"School, my ass! I don't have the money!"

"I'll go back to Grandma's and study there." At last, she raised her head and looked at her father. "The high school in town has cheaper tuition."

"Grandma?" Pu Zhiming paused.

He knitted his brows tightly, as though struggling to search his memory.

Only after a long moment did he sneer, his callousness undisguised:

"You mean Li Suhua? That old woman who isn't even related to us? We stopped seeing her ages ago, but you certainly remember her!"

At that moment, Pu Yu felt the air around her grow colder.

She remembered how her mother had occasionally spoken of Grandma scrimping and saving to raise her father. Now, all that remained was a dismissive "old woman who isn't even related to us."

She drew a deep breath, forced back the tears gathering in her eyes, and used every ounce of strength to keep her voice from trembling. "I don't care about any of that. Give me tuition and living expenses for my final year of high school, or I'll go to your workplace and ask your supervisors to settle this."

"Can a father who forces his seventeen-year-old daughter to drop out and marry for bride money still keep his job at that old state-owned factory?"

"And you, Auntie He." She turned to her stepmother, her tone frighteningly calm. "Isn't your son at the government-run kindergarten your pride and joy? What do you think the teachers and other parents would say if I went to the school gates every day with a sign, telling him how his mother forced his older sister to marry for money? Would he ever be able to hold his head up in class again?"

Pu Zhiming's eyes widened at once.

He stared in disbelief at his normally obedient daughter.

He Shuowan's carefully maintained face abruptly changed color too. "You... you wouldn't dare!" she shrieked.

"What wouldn't I dare do?" Pu Yu lifted her face. The light reflected in her clear eyes revealed a determination to burn every bridge. "You're already trying to sell me. What else do I have to lose?"

With things having reached this point, He Shuowan had no choice but to weigh the costs.

It would only take a little money to sever their ties. Whether Pu Yu lived or died afterward would have nothing to do with the Pu family.

She tugged at Pu Zhiming's sleeve, deliberately pressing him. "Go get the money from the wardrobe. Get her out of here!"

A complicated look flickered through Pu Zhiming's eyes at the mention of the wardrobe.

His lips moved, but in the end he said nothing. With heavy steps, he went into the inner room and retrieved the red bag left carelessly inside the wardrobe.

Before long, a neat stack of crisp banknotes was flung roughly onto the floor.

Pu Yu bent down and silently picked them up, carefully gathering and putting away each note.

Two thousand yuan exactly.

It was enough.

Without another glance at the livid pair, she went to the cramped corner partitioned off by a cloth curtain and packed her few belongings.

Old clothes, old books, and a tin box holding her mother's photograph and the envelope.

The transfer paperwork was completed quickly.

Pu Yu stood alone at the bus station like a worn-out piece of luggage.

Severing a tail hurt.

But if she did not cut it off, she would be dragged into an endless swamp until she rotted.

Clutching her precious two thousand yuan for living expenses, she took three connecting buses from the city.

Around her were noisy voices, calls for passengers blaring through cheap loudspeakers, and all kinds of indistinguishable smells.

All she could do was hug her schoolbag tightly and stay wary of everything around her.

The final leg was on a battered minibus with seat springs almost poking through.

It drove along uneven roads for two hours before finally delivering her to the remote town behind a curtain of rain.

This was it.

The address on the letter.

[At the end of the little lane called "Wind Chime Alley," on the south side of Whitebank Town...]

She had only heard her mother mention it vaguely a few times when she was too young to understand. Her father's relationship with his adoptive mother was terrible. Whenever her mother sent a few modest daily necessities, she did it in secret, and her letters contained only ordinary greetings such as "take care of yourself."

Now, this elderly woman who was almost a stranger...

Would she accept this burden that had appeared out of nowhere?

Pu Yu's heart pounded so fiercely it felt as though it might burst from her chest.

She set down her suitcase and raised a slightly trembling hand.

"Knock, knock-"

A harsh reprimand sounded from inside, followed by the grating scrape of tables and chairs!

Pu Yu's heart tightened, and she instinctively took half a step back.

With a creak.

The door was yanked open from inside.

A strong smell of smoke mingled with damp mildew hit her in the face.

The man glared at her with fierce eyes, utterly impatient. "Who are you?!"

Intimidated by the scene, Pu Yu's heart raced, and her voice caught in her throat.

Her gaze darted past the burly man's shoulder into the courtyard-the words "Pay back what you owe" stood starkly on the wall. Several battered chairs sat askew on the ground beside shattered teacups, and at the center of the mess stood a teenage boy.

He wore a nearly soaked black T-shirt that clung to his back, the outlines of his shoulder blades so sharply defined they seemed ready to break through every restraint.

His short black hair was wet with rain, plastered messily against his forehead.

His head was slightly lowered, and the shadow cast by the eaves swallowed almost his entire face, leaving only a taut, sharply defined jaw visible.

The men surrounding him were clearly not decent people.

The boy suddenly raised his eyes, and his gaze briefly met Pu Yu's through the murky air.

His eyes were hidden beneath the shadow of his hair, their emotions unreadable.

There was only a fathomless darkness, like the sea on a rainy night.

"I asked you a question! Are you mute?" The man at the door grew even more hostile.

Pu Yu snapped back to her senses, realizing she might have stumbled into serious trouble.

Her instinct was to flee, but when her gaze fell on the boy standing there alone and helpless, something seemed to nail her feet to the ground.

It was not any particularly noble sympathy.

It was an almost instinctive pang of recognition at another's suffering.

"Um... Officer Li at the police station asked him to come over as soon as possible."