[My Older Brother was strange.
He looked nothing like me, or Mom and Dad.
Mom died giving birth to me. Afterward, Dad never remarried.
My impression of Mom came from photographs. She was a very gentle woman, always smiling around the eyes.
My dad, Qin Linghan, was a man of few words. According to the villagers, he went to try his luck in the city when he was young, and when he returned, he brought a city girl back with him. That girl was Mom.
Before Dad went to the city, he was a notorious troublemaker in and around the village. What he did best was eat, drink, and fool around with his lousy friends, idling his days away.
But after that trip to the city, he seemed like a different person.
He spoke less and became steadier. After Mom died, he spoke even less.
That was all what the villagers said.
Lower River Village was just a little fishing village by the river. The school was in town, a fairly long walk away.
When I was still in elementary school, plenty of other kids from the village walked to school with me. But as we kept walking, there were fewer and fewer people left in the village.
Once the adults working in the city found a place to settle down, they brought their children there.
I still remembered the first day of school six years ago. Counting me and the teacher, there were only five people in the classroom.
There were no students left in the villages and towns. That rural elementary school stopped operating after that class, too.
I could only go to school in a bigger town farther away.
There were no other kids on the road anymore, but... I wasn't entirely alone.
Beside me was my