Chapter 5 Rebuilding Our Home
Of course I didn't refuse.
At this moment I held the key to our new apartment, the metal surface cold.
"Sister."
Gu Cheng held my small hand, also ice-cold.
He looked up at me and asked softly, "Will we live together from now on?"
"Mm."
"Is this new home... just the two of us?"
"There's a nanny."
Gu Cheng fell silent. After a while he asked again, "Sister, yesterday... did you not want me anymore?"
I stopped walking and looked down at him.
"Why ask that?"
"You left me alone at Aunt's house... you ran away so fast."
His voice carried grievance. "I called you, but you didn't turn back."
"Aunt said... even Sister doesn't want me. I must be a bad child, so she wouldn't let me touch anything in her house and made me stand at the door waiting."
I looked into his clear yet uneasy eyes. Past and present scenes overlapped in my mind.
The dim yellow streetlights stretched our shadows long and twisted on the ground.
The cold-hearted boy who had said "we're even" and the child in front of me who feared abandonment slowly merged.
I squatted down to his level.
"Gu Cheng." I said, my voice calmer than I imagined. "No one can not want anyone in this world. You are not a thing. Between people there are only choices and being chosen, approaching and leaving."
"But you can remember the feeling from yesterday, the feeling of being left behind and heartbroken."
Gu Cheng nodded as if he understood but didn't.
He extended his small hand and gently wiped away the tear that had rolled down my eye corner.
"Sister, you've been crying."
He said.
"Sister, don't cry... I will definitely not hurt your heart in the future."
I pursed my lips into a smile. "I know. I know you're very smart, smarter than anyone."
Seeing me finally smile, Gu Cheng's eyes lit up and he wanted to smile too.
And I held his now-warm small hand, continuing:
"So, Gu Cheng, help Sister with tutoring."