01.
The day I was born, my mother tried to strangle me.
I heard that my mother was still very weak then, but suddenly went mad.
The thought of strangling me had barely crossed her mind for five minutes.
It was already too late.
Because when she gave birth to me, my mother still had a chain around her neck.
My paternal grandmother was the one who saved me.
She thought it would be a waste to kill a little girl just like that.
Raise her for a few years, spend a few scraps of food, and the family would have a free servant.
Once I got a little older, she might even be worth a good price.
After giving birth to me, my mother kept going mad and tried every way she could to escape.
But she never succeeded.
A few years later, after she gave birth to my younger brother, my mother went mad less often.
Everyone thought she was about to recover.
But on New Year's Eve, when I was eleven, something terrible happened.
I will remember that night forever.
Outside, fireworks boomed, and firecrackers crackled throughout the neighborhood.
My mother clutched a sharp knife and stalked into the kitchen, her expression dark.
The first person she saw was my younger brother, hiding in the kitchen.
My younger brother was sick and very frail. My mother slashed his wrist.
Then my paternal grandmother came in.
She was old and couldn't struggle for long.
Hearing the commotion, my father rushed in too and beat my mother nearly to death.
During the struggle, the wood-burning stove toppled over, and the fire grew bigger and bigger.
My mother was pinned to the floor beneath my father's large frame, on the verge of suffocating.
I didn't want my mother to be killed, so I rushed over and tried to pull her free.
In the end, a falling roof beam struck my father.
My mother still tried to kill me, but she was too weak. At last, she collapsed into a pool of blood.
At that moment, all I remember is being absolutely terrified.
Covered in blood, I ran barefoot out of the village, screaming for help.
By the time the firefighters arrived, my family of four had been burned to ashes.
After that, I couldn't eat roasted meat for a very long time.
Just smelling it made me feel like throwing up.
The above is the full statement I gave to the police.
02.
My name is Phan Lạc Lạc. I became an orphan on that New Year's Eve.
Afterward, I wondered what would happen if the police uncovered something.
But after the investigation, they ultimately handed down a verdict.
Perhaps forensic techniques were still primitive back then.
Or perhaps no one could have imagined that—
the real cause of the massacre was an eleven-year-old girl who simply longed to live.
I thought so many years had passed that people must have long forgotten about it.
That was until today, when an unexpected visitor showed up.
He was a very young reporter named Dương Phong.
He looked a little frail, but his eyes were remarkably sharp.
If my younger brother were still alive, he would probably be about this age.
“There was another truth behind that case, wasn't there?”
Dương Phong smiled faintly and looked at me intently.
“Your younger brother was in the hospital then. Why did he suddenly turn up in the kitchen?”
A few years ago, I opened a milk tea shop next to a high school.
Just as I was about to close up, that young man suddenly appeared.
At this hour, the streets were already quiet, with hardly anyone passing by.
When the young man asked this, my arm trembled slightly as I made the tea, though it was hard to notice.
“The case was closed years ago. Why are you asking about it?”
The young man held his milk tea and slowly took off his shirt.
His sudden move made my eyes widen.
There was a large scar over the spot where the young man's heart lay.
“Heart transplant.”
“That year, if your younger brother hadn't died suddenly, someone like me—next in line—wouldn't have gotten this heart in time.”
“In a way, the culprit in that case could be considered… my lifesaver.”
As I watched the young man button his shirt carefully, covering the scar on his chest, those horrifying memories came flooding back.
“I gave the police a very clear statement back then.”
“My mother had a history of mental illness. That night, she suddenly had an episode…”
Dương Phong cut me off, smiling:
“It wasn't easy to find an orphan like you, who'd disappeared without a trace for years.”
“So… did you think I came all this way to hear that stale old story?”
“What if I told you that, besides you, there was another witness to that case?”
Another witness?
This important revelation frightened me a little.
Was there still someone who had witnessed that blood-soaked night, which should have been forgotten?
“If I don't get the answer I want today,”
“I'll contact that other witness, reopen the case, and make it public.”
“You should believe me. I'm a successful reporter. I have the means to do it.”
“Under public pressure, do you think the police would reopen the case?”
I was silent for a long while. At last, I let out a sigh and asked, “What do you want to know?”
“The truth—the truth buried beneath the flames.”
The young man pointed to his chest again.
“More than that, what I care about most is why I'm still alive today.”
Seeing the earnest look on the young man's face, I helplessly nodded.
“It's a long story.”
“That's all right. I'll take my time drinking this milk tea.”
03.
—Painful Memories—
1.
My name is Phan Lạc Lạc. I've been smart since I was little.
The more scars I got, the more they taught me what it meant to be “obedient.”
Unlike my mother, who was chained up, and remained just as foolish year after year.
Not only was she often beaten, she also had to eat pig feed.
I hated pig feed most of all. It smelled sour and foul, nothing like the leftovers, which at least smelled good.
That day, my foolish mother broke free of her chain again and ran toward the mountain behind the house.
In exchange for a piece of candy, I told the people at home where she had gone.
My mother was beaten within an inch of her life, stuffed into a sack, and carried back.
Seeing my mother covered in blood, my heart ached. I wondered if I had done something wrong.
But my paternal grandmother was beaming. She even patted my head—the first time in my life.
She praised me for being a good girl.
I saw pity in my mother's eyes.
I was the one who got praised. Why was my mother pitying me?
That night, I heard my mother talking to herself.
“I'll kill every last one of you… with my own hands.”
I only caught a few words my mother mumbled under her breath.
I think that was when the seed of revenge was planted.
2.
As my younger brother grew, my mother changed more and more.
A smile had begun to appear on her face.
She had fewer episodes, too, and every so often the chain around her neck was taken off.
But my mother didn't run away. She just held my younger brother and sang him lullabies every day.
Perhaps she loved my younger brother very much.
I knew, too, that the way she looked at me was completely different from the way she looked at him.
I had to admit, my younger brother was very well-behaved.
Whenever I was slow doing chores and got beaten and made to go hungry, he would give me food.
It was always food he couldn't finish, or food he didn't like.
I was clearly hungry all the time, yet my younger brother's delicious food seemed never to run out.
Thanks to him, I rarely went hungry enough to feel faint during those years.
My happy days hadn't lasted long before my younger brother was old enough to start school.
My father, who held his son as if he might drop him, and my grandmother, who cherished her grandson as if he might melt away, took him to the school in the town center.
With my younger brother gone, everything seemed to return to square one.
My mother lost control of her emotions again, and they chained her by the neck once more.
Those years were miserable for me. I was often so hungry I fainted.
I had more and more wounds, too—either bite marks from my paternal grandmother or lash marks from my father when he was drunk.
All I could do was endure it in silence.
What upset my mother the most was the news from my younger brother's school.
3.
When I saw my younger brother again, he was in the hospital.
His face no longer wore the sweet smile it once had. In its place was the pallor of illness.
The doctor said my younger brother's heart was failing.
If it was broken, it had to be fixed.
If it couldn't be fixed, then they'd have to replace it with a new one.
The hospital put my younger brother at the top of the list.
Meanwhile, my father and paternal grandmother had to go earn money.
At the time, I still didn't understand how heavy the words “earn money” were.
So heavy that my father and paternal grandmother abused my mother and me more and more harshly.
They even came up with a plan.
They would sell me.
A girl like me, just eleven years old.
No one would pay much for me.
Because I wasn't worth much.
I couldn't do heavy labor, and anyone who wanted me to bear children would have to raise me for several more years first.
So I became their punching bag.
My paternal grandmother pricked me with needles, and my father burned me with cigarette butts, calling me useless, a good-for-nothing.
At first, I slept on the floor in my younger brother's room. Later, I was driven out to the cold kitchen.
I kept company with the firewood, the stove, the cockroaches, and the rats.
My mother was still the most pitiful of all. She was beaten much worse than I was.
Every night, I heard my mother crying and screaming.
And I heard the awful insults and curses, too.
My grandmother and father shared the same belief.
They thought that, apart from giving birth to a good-for-nothing like me who was just a waste of food, she had no other purpose.
My mother had another sin to answer for: because there was something wrong with her body, my younger brother had been born so gravely ill.
As the saying went where I came from:
No matter how good the breeding boar, a sick sow can't produce a good litter.
I think those days were what finally broke my mother's spirit.
So, on that New Year's Eve, when every family was gathered together,
my mother raised a knife and began a bloody massacre, one blow at a time.
If I hadn't been clever enough, I'm afraid I wouldn't have survived either.