My mom has always been a very timid woman.

After school and cooking dinner, I still had to go to the fields to pick her up.

Because she was afraid to walk alone at night.

Coincidentally, our few acres of land were all in the remote back mountain.

The back mountain is where the mother and daughter who died tragically were buried.

When the land was divided, my dad was still alive. He was an honest man, so we got the most barren and remote fields. He didn't say anything despite that.

"It's okay, no one will dare to steal our things if it's haunted." He even comforted my mom.

Later he died, leaving the three of us.

My mom worked as a laborer and farmed the land alone. I occasionally helped in the fields and took care of my little brother's meals.

Even with all this effort, we could barely pay for my and my brother's tuition fees and had almost no money left for living expenses.

More than once, I heard people suggesting to my mom that I should drop out of school and get married. They said if I went to my husband's family, it wouldn't be so hard, and they could support my brother.

"When a man dies, you can only rely on your son. As long as you have a son, there is hope. Daughters should leave early anyway since they'll eventually belong to someone else."

I don't know if my mom was convinced, but soon matchmakers started coming to our house.

I didn't want to get married.

To make my mom see that even though I'm a girl, I can be useful, I studied harder and also helped her do farm work in the back mountain.

My mom seemed a bit unhappy about me going to the back mountain, but she didn't say anything.

After my dad's death, she became even more afraid of the back mountain's fields, always trying to get home before sunset.

One day, I was delayed on the way by meeting a classmate, so I arrived late.

It was already dark.

I went to the field with a lamp.

It was summer break, and even though it was hot, that day there was an eerie wind. My mom's hat was on the field ridge, but she was nowhere to be seen.

As I walked further to the riverbank, there was a black figure standing there. When I shone my lamp, I seemed to see something blood-red, like a piece of clothing.

I wanted to see clearly, so I took two steps closer.

As I got close, I started to feel something was wrong.

It wasn't clothing; it looked like a person.

It seemed to be a woman, her shoulders trembling as she cried facing the reeds.

My whole body stiffened, and the lamp made a buzzing sound, like it was short-circuiting, flickering on and off.

The woman slowly turned her face.

Reason told me to run, but my feet felt glued to the ground, unable to move.

I could see the woman's half face, a bloody mess.

"Feng Tong!"

There was a thunderous sound, and my mom slapped me on the back. Finally, I could move!

She didn't know where she had come from, her face pale, sweating as if she had run over.

When I looked at the reeds again, there was nothing there.

That bloody, mangled face... If I remembered correctly, the mother and daughter buried on the back mountain had been run over by a truck. When I passed them after school that day, I saw their shattered bodies; their facial bones were crushed beyond recognition.

I thought that the haunted legend of the back mountain was true.

The mother and daughter who died had become ghosts, one coming out to look for the other.

I didn't understand why they were buried separately.

If a mother couldn't see her daughter, or a daughter couldn't see her mother, they would surely come out to look for each other.

They were really pitiful, bullied even while alive, and couldn't even decide where to be buried after death.

I told my mom about seeing the woman by the reeds. Her face turned even whiter, and she forbade me from saying another word, dragging me all the way home.

At the door, she didn't let me in. She told me to wait and loudly called my already lying-down brother to get up. She took a shovel of grass and wood ash from under the stove and spread a thin line at the door.

Mumbling something while she worked, she commanded me to step over the line.

This was also a local custom: spreading ash at the door to block spirits at nightfall.

People coming home late might encounter unclean things, so stepping over a line of ash was said to ward off evil.

Only humans could pass that line; attached spirits would be blocked outside.

But that night, I still came down with a high fever.

My mom invited a shaman to our house. I was delirious from the fever and didn't see exactly how she performed the exorcism, but I heard her cussing.

My mom asked, "Is it something from the back mountain?"

The shaman spat, "It's her deadbeat dad."

I didn't like her cursing my dad.

And I hadn't seen him.

But the next day, my fever did go down. My mom didn't let me work that day, telling me to rest. It was a rare day off, and I went to find a classmate to play with.

Oh, it was the classmate who brought me my textbooks after I died—Zhang Xin.

She was my best friend. At school, she was the only one willing to talk to me.

A few days ago, we had a little fight, and she kept trying to explain to me.

I thought she might think I was still mad for not going to school and would still come to my house to find me.

The next day, she did come again, this time, she even brought a male classmate.

Our class monitor, Xu Shuo.