C37 Memories of the Hamburger

"I don't care! I'm going upstairs! " I shouted, not caring about my image.

"Oh." Big Brother Security took a step forward and swiped my card.

The elevator slowly opened.

It took years for me to learn that the big brother had a terminal cancer called straight male cancer.

The metal door of the opposite corridor slowly opened, and the OL's voice slowly grew louder.

"… …." "Sorry, your information doesn't match our record and we were unable to enter the vault …"

Was there an error in the information? Was my mother not the one my father had appointed to open the safe with me?

I hesitated for half a second, but then I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to close the door.

The moment the elevator closes, I see my mother's face behind the metal door.

His face was expressionless.

One second, two seconds, three seconds … It was like ten years in the elevator.

The moment the elevator opened, I dashed into the lobby. The second after I exited the glass doors, I slammed my elbow into the fire alarm clock on the wall.

"Ring, ring, ring, ring …" The spacious hall was immediately filled with the ear-piercing sound of fire alarm.

I didn't stop for a second. I ran down the street and down the alley into the market, through the commercial street and the community park.

Fear can indeed trigger the limits of my body. Normally, I, who isn't even qualified to run 800 meters, can run a five kilometer marathon in one breath.

He did not dare to turn his head back, afraid that he would see another emotionless face.

It will be a nightmare for me all my life.

After being unable to run any longer, I changed into one who was walking. After staggering for nearly two hours, I was struck by a young man in a school uniform who was walking towards me. Only then did I come back to my senses.

In front of me was an ordinary high school. With the familiar sound of the bell ringing, groups of high school students in green school uniforms clattered out of the school gates, passing me like a tide.

Just the day before, I had been one of them — looking forward to lunch in the morning, to school in the afternoon, the comic books always under the textbooks, the neat and popular lyrics behind the notebooks, the failed exams and the unspeakable girlish thoughts in the drawers.

After just one day, this life had suddenly become very, very far away from me.

I walked into the school's reception room. Perhaps it was because I was wearing the school uniform of another school, but the old man inside looked at me suspiciously.

"Buddy, which school are you from? Is there something you need?"

"Grandfather, can I make a call?"

The moment I heard Shuyue's voice, my tears couldn't help but roll down my face, and I couldn't even utter a single word.

Half an hour later, Shuyue found me crying on the street outside the school.

"Hungry?" she asked me softly.

I didn't say anything. She gave me a hand and I shook it off.

"Don't touch me." I stood up and walked forward.

KFC second floor.

We sat by the window, which was filled with lush banyan trees and cars. The family bucket and hamburger were getting cold, and no one had moved them.

Shuyue picked up a hamburger, opened up the wrapping paper and handed it to me. I slapped her hand and the hamburger fell to the ground.

"Who's that girl in the photo in my room?"

"I don't..."

"Do you think that I'm still a child and easy to deceive?"

"..." Shuyue did not speak.

"My mother couldn't get into the vault at all. The person my father appointed was you, wasn't it? " I almost shouted, and everyone around me looked over at our table.

"You lied to me from the beginning, because you were afraid to know that you were the one who could get in. You were afraid he'd take control of you, so you used my mother as a shield to make it seem like my mother and I could get into the vault, so he took my mother with him when he was in the hospital, not you! It was all in vain for me to think of you as a family member. My mom is probably going to die soon! Why did you want to harm her? Is it because you didn't marry my father? My dad doesn't love you at all! Give my mother back to me! I hate you! "

My cries echoed above the KFC, and everyone around looked at Shuyue, whispering to each other.

"Tsk tsk, what did I say? A fox spirit is really harmful …"

"Look at her fox-like appearance, she even broke up a family …"

Shuyue's body trembled slightly, and she did not say a word. After a while, she bent down and picked up the hamburger, dusted it off, and took a bite.

Your father wrote me a letter after he went to America. He said that America had a cheap, well-fed, and very fragrant food called hamburgers. At the time, I thought that was a funny name. Two pieces of bread and a piece of meat. Isn't that just a meat bun? What's so special about that?

"I remember it was 1985, and I was flying for the first time. I was supposed to be flying to school in New York, but I secretly switched to a ticket to Philadelphia. I took a suitcase and a letter from your father and walked across the city to where he lived. "

"There's a fast food restaurant across the street from your dad's apartment. That's the first time I've seen a fast food restaurant in the United States. I bought two and sat downstairs waiting for your father to come back. It was so cold that I sat for hours with my hands and feet numb. I put the hamburger under my stomach and cover my stomach. I'm afraid it'll be bad if it gets cold. "

Shuyue swallowed her hamburger and laughed at herself:

"Then I saw your dad, and he got off the bus and kept breathing. But he didn't see me. He ran across the street — your mother was waiting for him in front of the snack bar. "

Shuyue took another bite, tears flowing into her mouth.

"Sometimes I wonder if I would rush up that day and shout out your father's name. Tu Xinlei! Just like when I was a kid. Will he turn back? "

"Does he smile and say, 'Little sister, why is it you?'"

"Maybe I can finish what I wanted to say. Maybe there will be another ending."

"But life, like the Maze, is a one-way street with no return. He looked at your mother's face. I've never seen anything like it. He's not the little brother who broke my plane with me. It's no longer the bird in the cage. Instead, it's spreading its wings and finding the person who made it fly. "

"I finished two hamburgers on the way to the airport."

Shuyue had already finished the hamburger in her hands, and she carefully folded the wrapping paper. Then, she slowly stood up and opened a corner of her clothes. There was a very small scar under her navel.

"That year, after your parents' wedding, I had an oophorectomy."

I looked at her in disbelief.

"Our family, especially your father's family, has been engaged in intermarriage for hundreds of years. They'll do anything to reproduce the next generation — your grandmother is an example. Even if your father were to marry someone else, as long as I could have children, he might be controlled by his family again — because I am the last woman of my generation. "

"If I wanted to hurt your mother, I wouldn't do it. I don't want your father to hate me one day, just like your grandmother hated your grandfather. "

"But I never ate hamburgers again. I was afraid that the taste would make me go back to the way I was standing on the streets of Philadelphia all those years ago, clutching his letter under the university tree, the way I chased him."

Shuyue spoke softly, as if she was talking to herself. Everyone around was still staring at her, whether intentionally or unintentionally. She wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes and self-deprecatingly smacked her lips.

"Tsk, I'm already used to it anyway, so let's just watch and see. Sis is so good-looking, why would I be afraid of others staring at me?" Shuyue turned around and said to me:

"Believe it or not, I will tell you that I am not a person who fears death. I did it precisely to protect your mother. At least she can still be saved. If I don't say so, she will most likely be dead by now."

"Do you remember your father's letter to me? When he had read the history of Asia in Philadelphia, he had discovered that Turgu did not come from Tibet or from any known place on earth. Even the most powerful Library of Congress in the United States, the Asian Department, has no record of the life of the Turgu in Tibet. Your father even looked into the history of Gansu province, Nepal, and India, but it was as if they had appeared out of thin air in the late Jin Dynasty. "

"In the course of searching through these documents, my father accidentally discovered that the Wansan clan appeared to be a native-born grassland race, but its earliest appearance in history was not in the Northern Desert Grassland, but in Tibet during the seventh century of AD, the time of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Moreover, their ties in Tibet were deeper than they had thought.

My father had written to Shuyue and concluded that Turgu's choice of the Warranty Clan as an ally and a betrothed was not by chance, but because they had come from the same place thousands of years ago. If Tulgu was the descendant of a God, then would the Warranty Family have similar bloodlines?

1994. The next time Shuyue saw my father, it was in the hospital.

That year, my father hid it for the first time and after he returned, he wrote to Shuyue, hoping that she would be able to do a whole-body scan.

"Why?" Shuyue believed that there was nothing wrong with her body, so she didn't know what her father wanted.

"I found something in Tibet that I want to prove to you." At that time, my father did not explain in detail to Shuyue.

In the 1990s, the domestic medical system was relatively backward. Although they had been to four or five hospitals, they were basically no different from normal people in terms of blood tests and physical functions.

"The current technology isn't enough to detect the slightest differences." My father sighed.

But in the last hospital, there was a turning point.

It was a private hospital. In order to earn more money, they added various items to the physical examination — skin test, brain CT, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, gastroscopy, … In any case, the money that fell from the sky would be wasted if he didn't earn it.

When he was performing electroencephalogram on Shuyue, his brain wave scanner had malfunctioned.