She rushed up the from the cellar after she was sure they had gone.
Dropping the cabbage that her mother had requested for her favorite dish, each step felt heavier than the last. She braced herself for the scene that she knew would await.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see. She desperately tried to believe that nothing had happened.
But she looked anyways.
She burst into tears as she saw her family lying on the ground, their bodies still and pale. Her brother, who always complained about everything. Her father, intimidating but also gentle. Her mother, who had cared for them since they were born.
“Mom! Mom!” she cried.
But there was no reply. Her mother’s soul had already passed.
She collapsed onto the floor, drifting into a dreamless sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night, she awoke to a faint rustling in the nearby reeds, hard to detect against the chorus of frogs and chirping of crickets. It didn’t sound like an animal.
Her heartbeat thumped as she rushed through the chilly night air towards the haystack to hide. Keeping a close eye on the spot in the reeds, she didn’t dare make a sound, even as the hay prickling her skin made her want to cry out. She hoped they wouldn’t come back.
Suddenly, a figure emerged from the reeds, carrying a lantern. Her heartbeat subsided when she realized that it was a lone civilian, shouting in Chinese for her father. She recognized him as her uncle from Nanjing.
She ran out of the haystack to meet him. Startled at first, her uncle soon regained his composure and asked where the rest of her family was. He explained that he was taking us to Nanjing, from where we would leave for a place further from the frontlines.
“They’re all gone,” she said through tears.
She couldn’t bear to watch as he lay her family down in the dirt. As she took one final look at them, her uncle covered them and crudely etched their names on stones above their final resting places.
Traveling through the reed fields by night and resting by day, they soon encountered many other villages with all their inhabitants murdered, the grass stained red with blood. By the end of the day, she had no tears left in her eyes and a bitter taste on her tongue. With nothing else left, she just wanted to lie down and never wake up again, but her father’s childhood stories gave her the strength to keep walking. He promised to tell her all of them when they got to Nanjing.
At last, they reached Nanjing’s eastern gate. Seeing a city so vibrant in the face of this horror filled her with hope. After the war was over, she promised to go back to her family and do the proper rituals for them. And in the end, she planned on joining them.
Dropping the cabbage that her mother had requested for her favorite dish, each step felt heavier than the last. She braced herself for the scene that she knew would await.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see. She desperately tried to believe that nothing had happened.
But she looked anyways.
She burst into tears as she saw her family lying on the ground, their bodies still and pale. Her brother, who always complained about everything. Her father, intimidating but also gentle. Her mother, who had cared for them since they were born.
“Mom! Mom!” she cried.
But there was no reply. Her mother’s soul had already passed.
She collapsed onto the floor, drifting into a dreamless sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night, she awoke to a faint rustling in the nearby reeds, hard to detect against the chorus of frogs and chirping of crickets. It didn’t sound like an animal.
Her heartbeat thumped as she rushed through the chilly night air towards the haystack to hide. Keeping a close eye on the spot in the reeds, she didn’t dare make a sound, even as the hay prickling her skin made her want to cry out. She hoped they wouldn’t come back.
Suddenly, a figure emerged from the reeds, carrying a lantern. Her heartbeat subsided when she realized that it was a lone civilian, shouting in Chinese for her father. She recognized him as her uncle from Nanjing.
She ran out of the haystack to meet him. Startled at first, her uncle soon regained his composure and asked where the rest of her family was. He explained that he was taking us to Nanjing, from where we would leave for a place further from the frontlines.
“They’re all gone,” she said through tears.
She couldn’t bear to watch as he lay her family down in the dirt. As she took one final look at them, her uncle covered them and crudely etched their names on stones above their final resting places.
Traveling through the reed fields by night and resting by day, they soon encountered many other villages with all their inhabitants murdered, the grass stained red with blood. By the end of the day, she had no tears left in her eyes and a bitter taste on her tongue. With nothing else left, she just wanted to lie down and never wake up again, but her father’s childhood stories gave her the strength to keep walking. He promised to tell her all of them when they got to Nanjing.
At last, they reached Nanjing’s eastern gate. Seeing a city so vibrant in the face of this horror filled her with hope. After the war was over, she promised to go back to her family and do the proper rituals for them. And in the end, she planned on joining them.
