65: Chapter 68 Suffocating Maternal Love, Hysterical Parents

2:20 PM. In a private room at the newly opened teahouse behind Qiaonan Old Street, the air conditioning was blowing a bit too hard, so Fang Jiming turned the temperature up by two degrees when he arrived.

Auntie Zhao had arrived fifteen minutes earlier than the scheduled time.

When she pushed open the door to the private room, the first thing Fang Jiming noticed was the exhaustion on her face, making her look at least a decade older than her actual age.

A woman in her early forties, with deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and obvious gray hair at her temples. She was dressed neatly and decently, but the skin around her nails was all ragged and peeling—not a single one of her ten fingers was intact.

Fang Jiming stood up and handed her a cup of tea.

"Ms. Zhao, please sit. You were in a rush on your way here, weren't you?"

Auntie Zhao's hands were trembling as she took the teacup. For the first thirty seconds after sitting down, she didn't say a word, just kept rubbing her palms together.

Then, she began to speak.

Fang Jiming: ( ˉ ⌓ ˉ " )

For twenty whole minutes, Auntie Zhao hardly stopped.

"Teacher Fang, you don't know how disobedient this child is now. I went through her schoolbag and found a box of lipstick—a ten-yuan street stall item. When I asked her where she got it, she just turned around and walked away without saying a single word to me."

Fang Jiming held his teacup without responding, tapping his fingers lightly against the side of the cup.

"I've transferred her to three different schools, but no school can control her. She's doing it on purpose just to anger me."

"I watch her do her homework every day. I check every single problem as soon as she finishes it, and she actually has the nerve to say that she can't write when I'm staring at her."

Auntie Zhao's voice grew louder and louder.

"So what if I watch her? I'm her mother. If I don't watch her, who will?"

Fang Jiming took a sip of tea, still not interjecting.

"Later, I found a man chatting with her on her phone—some guy named A-Fei. You can tell just by the name that he's not a decent person, so I smashed her phone on the spot."

"She just yelled at me, saying I was invading her privacy."

Auntie Zhao slapped the table, causing the water in the teacup to ripple.

"Invading what privacy? I gave birth to her and raised her; what privacy does she have that I can't see?"

"I changed her bedroom door to a keypad lock; she needs my permission to come and go. She actually climbed out of the window—it's two stories high, Teacher Fang!"

When Auntie Zhao reached this point, her voice suddenly broke, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"I'm just afraid she'll go down the wrong path. I've arranged everything for her since she was little, so why won't she listen?"

Fang Jiming set down his teacup, his finger slowly tracing the rim.

"Ms. Zhao, was Han Bingbing close to you when she was a child?"

Auntie Zhao froze, completely unprepared for this question.

"When she was a child?"

"Yes, back before she started elementary school."

A complex change came over Auntie Zhao's expression. She lowered her head and pulled a photo from the transparent slot in her phone case; the corners were curled, and the lamination had yellowed.

The photo showed a little girl with two pigtails riding on the shoulders of a young woman, both of them laughing so hard their teeth were fully visible. The little girl was holding a cotton candy that was bigger than her own head.

Auntie Zhao's fingertips caressed the photo.

"She was so well-behaved when she was little."

Her voice was very soft, as if she were afraid of breaking something.

"She listened to me for everything. She wore what I told her to wear, ate what I told her to eat. The first thing she would do when she came home from school was hug my neck and say, 'Mom, I missed you.'"

Fang Jiming looked at the faces of the mother and daughter in the photo, both laughing without a hint of guardedness, and felt a tightness in his chest. He knew the next question might cause this woman to break down on the spot, but he had to ask.

"Where is Han Bingbing's father?"

Auntie Zhao's face fell, completely and utterly.

"That man is away on business all year round and doesn't care about the family."

As she said this, she shoved the photo back into her phone case, her movements so forceful that her fingers turned white.

"Don't mention him. My blood pressure goes up whenever I do."

Fang Jiming didn't press further.

He took a sip of tea and replayed every word Auntie Zhao had just said in his mind. Going through the schoolbag, checking the phone, changing the keypad lock. Changing the bedroom door to a keypad lock—the kind that locks from the outside. Climbing out of the window, second floor. This wasn't raising a daughter; this was guarding a prisoner.

Fang Jiming had a pretty good idea of the situation.

The problem wasn't with Han Bingbing; the problem lay with this mother who treated her daughter as her entire emotional sustenance, and that father who had disappeared for years into his so-called business trips.

Han Bingbing's rebellion had nothing to do with delinquency; she was simply calling for help. The loudest distress signal in the entire building was being dismissed by everyone as noise.

Fang Jiming set his teacup down and looked at Auntie Zhao.

"Ms. Zhao, I will handle Han Bingbing's matter. I will go find her, talk to her, and bring her back to school."

Auntie Zhao's eyes lit up. She leaned forward, her fingers gripping the edge of the table.

"Teacher Fang, can you bring her back? I'll wait at home."

"There is one condition."

"What condition?"

Fang Jiming's tone was calm, each word spoken slowly and clearly.

"For the next few days, don't call to pressure her, and don't go to the school to cause a scene again."

Auntie Zhao opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but swallowed it back.

"Give her some space, and give yourself some time to think about when exactly things between you and your daughter started to become like this."

Auntie Zhao lowered her head, twisting the strap of her bag without saying a word. After a long while, she nodded, her voice muffled and very low.

"Alright, I'll listen to you, Teacher."

Fang Jiming stood up and pushed his chair back under the table.

As he walked out of the private room, he looked back. Auntie Zhao was still sitting there; she had pulled out the old photo from her phone case again and was staring blankly at it on the table. The mother and daughter in the photo were smiling so happily. How did that little girl, riding on her mother's shoulders and holding a cotton candy, eventually turn into a teenage girl who had to climb out of a second-story window just to breathe?

Fang Jiming: ( ˘ ̩ ̩ ̩ ε ˘ ̩ ̩ ̩ )

He turned and walked out of the teahouse; the afternoon sun on Qiaonan Old Street made the concrete ground scorching hot.

After walking about thirty steps, his phone vibrated. Fang Jiming took it out and saw a WeChat friend request from an unknown number. The verification message was empty. The profile picture was a curled-up gray kitten, its face completely buried in its front paws.

Fang Jiming checked the number's origin; it wasn't Auntie Zhao's, nor was it any contact listed in the school records. He thought for a moment and tapped accept.

The message arrived almost instantly.

"Teacher Fang, don't come looking for me. I'm not going back."

Fang Jiming stood still, staring at the line of text. He didn't reply; instead, he exited the chat interface, found Zhao Dazhuang's number, and called him.

"Where does Han Bingbing go often these days?"

Zhao Dazhuang hesitated for a few seconds.

"Brother Fang, why are you asking?"

"Looking for someone."

"She often goes to the Qiaonan Night Market. She doesn't have a fixed stall; she just finds any random barbecue stand and sits there."

"Alone?"

"Most of the time, yes."

Fang Jiming didn't hang up; he asked one more question.

"Who gave you her WeChat ID?"

"It's in the class group. I created the group on the first day of school; you're in the group too, Brother Fang."

Fang Jiming remembered. He was indeed in that group, but he had never checked the group member list. He put his phone in his pocket and started walking in the direction of the Qiaonan Night Market.