Paths. Chapter Twelve

Back then, on that hot day in the parking lot, Xia Desheng watched Tan Xiangliu lean against the door of her van for a moment and drive away, dissolving into the shimmering haze, and thought that their search had, after all, led to a result.

Not the one they expected, but the only one possible. Xiangliu remained alone in her small restaurant smelling of anise and the past, locked in it as if in a fortress she had built herself to defend against the shadow of her own grandmother. And Wu Wenbo dissolved into the digital space of the United States, into his darknet, stopped sending postcards for the New Year and short birthday greetings, as if he had amputated his past  before it could poison his future. And Mei Lin never appeared. She remained a shadow in an old photograph, a gaze directed through the lens into another life.

But the truth appeared instead.

The very truth that is heavier than any stone. The truth that does not set you free, but forever chains you to a single moment. And he thought: if he had known back then, on that day when the three of them stood at the door of the late teacher’s apartment, what he would find on the flash drive Wenbo left him… Would he have gone? Would he have opened that door? Or would he have turned back, chosen the wrong path, the wrong turn?

There were documents on the flash drive. Not just lists, not just protocols. There were orders, signatures, lists of names. And among them — a photograph where his grandfather, young, in military uniform, stands in formation. On the back — a neat inscription: “Member of the execution squad. 1968.” In other folders — reports where everything was dry, official: “Sentence executed. Signed: Xia Zhun.” Names, surnames. And even Mei Lin. Perhaps just a coincidence. But this thought burned like icy fire: what if it was her, that very Mei Lin? What if it was his grandfather who pulled the trigger? What if it was his hand that crossed out someone’s life, someone’s love, someone’s memory?

This thought was not a thought, but a physical pain, a blow that makes everything go dark.

He was still standing in the parking lot. Xiangliu’s van had long since disappeared. The sun beat down mercilessly. Desheng closed his eyes, and the bench, the acacia, the flash drive in his hand appeared before him again. He realized he’d never turned from that road — the one that led to the ocean of death. He had reached the end. And this ocean turned out not to be somewhere out there, in someone else’s history. It turned out to be inside himself.

Yes, their paths parted not because they were looking for the wrong truth, but because the truth always leads to loneliness. Because at the end of any road — there is only you yourself, your memory, your guilt, your love which no one can share. And all that remains is to walk on. In a circle. Along a path that always brings you back to the beginning. But perhaps within the circle itself lies hope — that someday someone will finally turn off of it, to begin everything anew.

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