It was as if Tong Xilin had been struck hard on the head with a club. His heart plummeted. Almost subconsciously, he locked the screen. His breathing intensified uncontrollably.
He clutched his phone, staring at the car window. The night was growing darker, reflecting his blurry silhouette, those eyes overly similar to Tong Yuzhi’s.
Only when the edges of his phone bit into his palm did he realize his entire body was clenched tight with tension. The music in his headphones had skipped several songs, and he hadn’t noticed any of it just now.
After sending those two messages, the classmate hadn’t said anything else. Qi Yuan and Pang Xiaoda were still sleeping soundly. The car was quiet, as if the image he had just seen was a hallucination.
With stiff fingers, he unlocked his phone again. “Looking-for-My-Son-Tong-Xilin” rammed straight into his eyes.
Not a hallucination. The IP location even showed Inner Mongolia.
If not for this jarring nickname and IP location, the profile before him looked utterly unremarkable.
A default background, a few crudely made videos with no cover images at all. The profile picture was a brightly colored selfie.
Beside him, Pang Xiaoda slept with his mouth wide open. He sat up straight and shifted direction slightly. Tong Xilin lowered his phone’s brightness and turned slightly to block him, tapping open this account’s profile picture.
A selfie with the phone held high. The filter was too extreme; the false eyelashes and lipstick were overly rich, showing a garish color, almost fluorescent.
Tong Xilin zoomed in on the image, trying to discern this person’s features beneath the filter. Not only did his heart drag further down the longer he looked, he couldn’t make out any specific facial features at all.
He took a screenshot of this profile picture, then tapped on the first video on the main page.
Amidst Douyin’s noisy song and special effects, the subject of the video was a little girl who looked about five or six years old. She sat at a table, picking up noodles with her chopsticks. She ate very messily; her cuffs were smeared with grease. The braids on her head were crooked and messy, swaying with her noodle-eating motions.
As Tong Xilin was still looking at this little girl, the camera angle in the video switched to a selfie perspective, showing the middle-aged woman from the profile picture.
A narrow, thin face. Thick black eyeliner and eyebrow tattoos that already looked outdated. The woman leaned on the sofa, twisted her neck, and tugged at her collar, pulling her already low V-neck even looser. Then, facing the camera, she fluffed her permed hair and pursed her lips in a smile.
The contour of her face was too similar to what Tong Xilin saw in the mirror every day. Flustered, he averted his eyes and looked at the caption below.
The caption was also a long sentence: Worried oh, argued with husband again, threw us mother and daughter at home, don’t know where he’s gone off to fool around.
There was even a tag in the caption: A woman’s destiny is in her own hands.
This post was made yesterday evening. It had twenty or thirty likes and about a dozen comments.
Tong Xilin opened the comment section. Most of them were rose emojis from middle-aged men with ulterior motives, boring come-ons, vulgar jokes about the husband not being home, telling her to pull her collar even lower for sexiness.
She wasn’t angry either; she replied to every single one, joking with these people.
He scrolled to the very bottom of the comments in one breath and finally saw a relatively normal one, asking her what was up with this username, if her son had been taken away by her husband.
She replied to them, very casually: Different husband. Son from my ex.
The person who asked immediately changed their tone and sent back a string of suggestive symbols. Saying: Pretty women always have lots of husbands oh!
She even replied to them with a shy emoji.
Looking at these exchanges, from his brain connected to his eye sockets, a wave of dizziness struck him.
As if stung by a venomous bee, he abruptly blocked the woman and leaned back against the headrest, breathing deeply, repeatedly.
He wanted to vomit.
In his childhood, still harboring a longing for familial affection, Tong Xilin sang the kindergarten teacher’s song “Only Mama is Good.” He had held very specific imaginings about the role of “Mother.”
The memories he could recall from kindergarten were very fragmented. He had once been deeply impressed by a scent of citrus.
Every day after school, as he clutched the school gate railing, waiting for Tong Yuzhi to pick him up, he would always see a very gentle young mother. She dressed very nicely, very stylishly. She was always the first to arrive at the kindergarten. When she picked up her daughter, she would bloom into a warm smile, taking exquisite snacks out of her beautiful satchel for her daughter. The snacks were different every day.
Tong Xilin didn’t crave the snacks, but he couldn’t help gazing at that mother.
Children don’t hide their stares well. Once, he probably was noticed. This mother suddenly met Tong Xilin’s gaze. Holding her daughter’s hand, she crouched down in front of Tong Xilin, smiled, touched his face, and gave Tong Xilin a snack too.
It was a small, individually wrapped marshmallow with filling.
On her hands and clothes, there was the fresh, clean scent of citrus. He didn’t know if it was laundry detergent, perfume, or hand cream.
That night, Tong Yuzhi was the last parent to pick him up from kindergarten. The class teacher, unsurprised, mechanically reminded Tong Yuzhi to come earlier next time.
On the way home, walking behind Tong Yuzhi, Tong Xilin clutched the marshmallow and asked Tong Yuzhi, “Where’s my mom?”
Tong Yuzhi looked back at him once, his footsteps not pausing.
“Why don’t I have a mom?” Tong Xilin chased after him, asking.
Just like every time before, he received no answer. He stood by the roadside and cried.
Tong Yuzhi stood in front of him, watching him cry. Only when Tong Xilin was tired of crying did he take him home.
Entering elementary school, Tong Xilin learned not to ask this question anymore. But for a long time, his image of “Mom” remained that warm smile, those warm hands carrying the scent of citrus.
People, love—many things, not received when most desperately wanted, are slowly no longer desired.
Tong Xilin had long ceased needing the love of parents. He didn’t even need people in those roles. He had almost forgotten the scent of citrus, too.
Now, with his eyes closed, he shrank into the car seat, swaying with the vehicle’s motion. That scent, inexplicably, diffused from the depths of his memory, filling his entire nasal cavity. Entangled with the Douyin profile he had just seen, his throat spasmed, and he made a retching sound.
“Is he carsick?” The driver in front quickly rolled down the window. “Don’t throw up in my car now.”
“Hm?” Qi Yuan was woken up. He looked towards the back, bleary-eyed. “Who threw up?”
“Wha?” Pang Xiaoda also woke up.
Tong Xilin didn’t open his eyes. The cold night wind poured into the car, spreading over his forehead and eyelids. His hands were still tightly clenched, unmoving.
Qi Yuan and Pang Xiaoda had slept like logs in the car. When the car stopped at the school gate, the two were energetic again.
They hadn’t eaten dinner yet. The two discussed what to eat, asking for Tong Xilin’s opinion. Tong Xilin shook his head, squeezing out from his throat that he wasn’t hungry and wanted to go back and sleep.
“Did you catch a chill?” Qi Yuan raised his hand to test his forehead. “Why does your voice sound so hoarse?”
“Got wind in your throat?” Pang Xiaoda heard it too and urged him, “Then hurry back.”
“Want me to bring you something? Porridge?” Qi Yuan followed up.
Tong Xilin didn’t feel cold or sick, but he had absolutely no appetite.
Declining their kind offers, he returned to the dorm in a daze. Qin Ji had gone to the coffee shop and wasn’t back yet. The room was dark and empty.
He didn’t even turn on the light, nor did he go wash up. He tossed his outer clothes into the wardrobe and lay on the bed, wrapping himself completely from head to toe in the blanket. Escaping reality, he closed his eyes and slept.
This sleep was both dead and restless. In a half-dream state, he sensed the main light being turned on, heard the sporadic noise of people entering the dorm, then slowly turning quiet again.
Tong Xilin didn’t wake up the entire time. He was trapped in a mire-like dream where that woman’s Douyin profile mixed with Tong Yuzhi’s face, coiling around him like a nightmare, recurring.
At four in the morning, he opened his eyes without any warning. The others were already fast asleep.
He picked up his phone from beside his pillow. That classmate’s message was still hanging in his message list. He went into the woman’s profile, released her from the block list, and swiped through every single video, one by one.
Out of fourteen videos, three were related to her daughter. The remaining nine were all selfie angles of her flirting and posing. Two of those videos didn’t show her face but instead looked down to reveal flimsy lace lingerie and black stockings.
Every video’s caption contained innuendo. Every interaction in the comment sections was suggestive and risqué.
Under a selfie video from last month, a comment asked her: Sister, why did you change your name to this? Looking for a real son or a fake son?
She replied: My biological one of course. Husband doesn’t give money. When I find him, he can take care of me.
Tong Xilin stared at this line of text, his fingers hovering over the screen trembling slightly. He blocked the person again.
The screenshot of the profile picture taken in the car was also deleted by him. After deleting, it still wasn’t enough. He went into the “Recently Deleted” album to permanently clear it.
The last month before winter break, Tong Xilin spent in this mental state, bordering on neurosis.
He spoke even less. Outside of part-time work and review time, he would stare blankly alone for long periods, like a bowstring stretched to its absolute limit. Every time a new message came in on his phone, it made him tense, afraid another person had come to ask him, brandishing that woman’s profile: Is this you?
And in the dead of night, he couldn’t control himself from going to the block list to look at her. Seeing the woman update a new video, with disgust and anxiety, he would click in, terrified she might actually post a missing person notice.
During exam month, everyone’s nerves were taut. No one at school noticed anything off about him.
The first to discover something was wrong with his state was still Kong Ji.
“Why is your voice so hoarse?”
He called Tong Xilin. Tong Xilin responded with just a few simple words before his voice gave him away.
“Is it?” Tong Xilin touched his Adam’s apple and cleared his throat. “Maybe I ate something too salty at lunch.”
That reasoning was plausible. Kong Ji reminded him to keep warm and not catch a cold, smoothly ordering more hand warmers and cold medicine for him.
Listening to Kong Ji’s voice, which always seemed so effortlessly composed, the stone pressing on his chest sank heavier, inch by inch.
He wanted to tell Kong Ji. It seemed like he’d feel a bit better if he said it. Yet even bringing up this matter made him feel nauseous from his stomach up.
“Tong Xilin?” Receiving no response from him, Kong Ji called his name again. “Are you feeling unwell?”
Tong Xilin snapped back to attention dazedly. Forcing himself to smile, he said, “A little. Stayed up too late reviewing last night.”
“Go get some sleep,” Kong Ji’s concern eased, and he said gently, “Rest well.”
