I rarely trust my intuition, but this time I did. My intuition told me that Emma had to leave, and the sooner the better. I told her to go back and rest first, and I would help her move to a hotel after school in the evening, then make further plans.

When the bell rang for the last class in the afternoon, I was already running on the road. To avoid the evening rush hour traffic, I specifically didn't take the bus and rode a shared bike as fast as I could. The sun was slowly setting at the end of the road, dyeing the entire sky blood red. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

After parking the bike, I immediately called Emma. “Sorry, the number you dialed is powered off…” I hung up and called again, “Sorry, the number…” Hung up and called again, “Sorry…”

I ran upstairs and opened the door. No one was home. I tried calling Emma's WeChat voice call, but there was no answer. Probably something urgent came up! She’ll be back soon, just wait a bit more. I told myself.

When the clock struck nine, and the 10th message I sent to Emma still had no reply, I called Bai Jun. My right eye kept twitching, and my hand holding the phone was shaking.

“She’s not at the hospital! She left just after your mom this afternoon.”

“Where did mom go?” My heart sank.

“Your mom said there was an emergency back home, she had to go back…”

Bai Jun didn't know where mom’s hometown was, he had never been there, nor did he care. I called mom, but no one answered.

I rummaged through the house looking for the household register, trying to find mom’s registered residence address, but couldn’t find it. Yet, I found something else. In mom's dressing table drawer, there was a metal box with a stack of letters inside.

They were clearly from some years ago. Neatly written on the lower right corner of the envelope: No. 8, Fengshuzui, Baimen Village, Hetang Town, Xilong County.

Xilong, I had never heard of this place. My birthplace.

I found this county on my phone's map; it belonged to Chunling, to the north. The nearest city to it—I gasped—was Qinghe.

I frantically zoomed in on the map, Sanxi Town, Xianshi Town, Jiabu Village Zhoujia Group, Qingshun Expressway, Baimen Village, Fengshuzui... Countless unfamiliar place names came flooding in. I nervously tossed aside the phone and focused back on those letters.

The neatly folded letter papers gave off a faint moldy smell, and the ballpoint pen handwriting had somewhat blurred. The signature on each letter was “Father (Baitian writing on behalf).” The most recent date was from a year ago.

The letters mostly spoke of village trivialities and asked for some liquor money, nothing special. Except for one. My grandfather, whom I had never met, wrote: “This year the rhododendrons on the north slope are blooming beautifully, come back and take a look!”

It sent chills down my spine. It’s just a coincidence! I told myself.

But there was also a piece of paper in the metal box, already damaged and yellowed, seemingly torn from somewhere. It was scribbled with my birth date, sex, weight, height... a series of birth information. One entry stood out—

Blood type: B.