I endured three days of humiliation from the one-eyed cripple to get three thousand yuan as a dowry for my brother's bride.

Back home, my mother smiled and held my hand, asking if I liked that man.

If not, she had another one in mind for me to meet.

I sneered in my heart, what liking, what marriage.

I had simply been transferred from one hell to another.

At this moment, I suddenly thought of Fu Di, the third daughter of Aunt Pan's family.

The one who was as dark and thin as me, with drooping eyelids working hard.

She ran away when she was fifteen.

That night, Aunt Pan and her husband held kerosene lamps, searching frantically like headless flies.

Aunt Pan came to my house, asking if I had seen Fu Di.

"You two cut grass together every day, you must have seen her, Danni, tell Aunt honestly, where did that deadbeat Fu Di run off to?"

My mother twisted my arm a couple of times, making me confess honestly.

At that moment, as if possessed by a ghost, I didn't know where the courage came from, I looked Aunt Pan in the eyes and said, "Auntie, I really didn't see her."

Aunt Pan didn't doubt my words much.

After all, I had always been obedient.

In fact, not only did I see her, I saw her escape.

Fu Di had already run off from the back of the mountain with the same basket on her back and a sickle in her hand.

As she went down that small path, I followed behind.

She knew I was following her all the way, and she knew I saw she was trying to escape.

But she never looked back, not once.

Not once.

That dirt path wasn't even a proper road, in some places it was so steep that it was impossible to walk down.

But I thought, if a person is determined to escape from this place, on this mountain, everywhere is a road.