When the woman evaded Leyao’s questions by claiming the incident happened long ago, it already proved that she wasn’t the one who had left the 100,000 yuan back then. In fact, the money left originally was exactly 100,000 yuan, neatly tied with a rubber band, with no additional change. This part about the change was merely a fabrication by Leyao to test her.
Leyao looked at me, and I nodded at her. Then I asked the woman, “Tell me, who exactly left the money in the empty city back then, and who are you actually representing?”
“Why do you have the right to question me? Can’t I just be someone who wants to do something good?”
Leyao continued, “It’s not that we want to doubt you, but the truth is very important to us. We hope you can help us, and also help a poor woman who has been waiting for the truth all these years. She has been waiting for so long, and she deserves to know the truth. Otherwise, she won’t have peace for the rest of her life.”
The woman remained silent, but this silence itself was already an admission. There was indeed someone behind her, someone who didn’t want to be exposed to us.
Finally, she spoke, asking, “The woman you mentioned is the former owner of the empty city, right?”
Leyao answered before me, “Yes… Actually, even if you don’t say anything, I can guess who asked you to do this. I’m just curious about your relationship with him. After all, I’ve been in the same social circle with him for years, yet I’ve never seen you before!”
At that moment, my mind finally opened up, and I realized who Leyao suspected. I also sensed who had the strongest motive to do such a thing. I had been misled by his lies before—I thought he had lost that money gambling in Macau, but in reality, he had given it to CC in the empty city.
The woman asked Leyao, “You lied when you mentioned the extra change along with the 100,000 yuan, right? Actually, he did leave exactly 100,000 yuan in the empty city back then.”
“Even without testing you this way, I already know you’re not the one who truly left the 100,000 yuan. From your manner of speaking and your demeanor, you clearly don’t fit this idealistic restaurant. If you don’t fit in here, naturally you wouldn’t have done something like leaving 100,000 yuan behind.”
The woman finally took off her sunglasses. Under her eyes was a faint scar from a knife wound. Without the sunglasses to hide her face, she was actually very beautiful. She gave a self-mocking smile and said, “Yes, my demeanor indeed doesn’t fit this place. Because I used to be nothing more than a prostitute living in the red-light district.”
When the woman said this, both I and Leyao were visibly shocked, and even more puzzled about how he could have met a woman like her. Although I knew his private life had once been chaotic, I also knew he had never had any emotional or physical relationship with women from the red-light district.
Leyao recovered first and, with an apologetic tone, said to the woman, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to belittle you…”
“It doesn’t matter. Whether you meant to or not, I am indeed a very lowly woman.”
Leyao was silent for a while, then softened her tone and said, “Tell us about your story with him. He wouldn’t have met you without reason, and he wouldn’t have entrusted such an important task to someone with whom he only had a superficial relationship.”
The woman’s face showed a nostalgic expression. After a long pause, she lit a cigarette, took a deep puff, and said to us, “I met him a few winters ago. He had a guitar on his back and was standing on the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, smoking. I was standing not far from him. That day the wind was strong, and all I could see were boats swaying back and forth on the river…”
I knew well that no one would go to the Yangtze River Bridge with a cheerful mood to watch the distant sails. That bridge was known for frequent suicide attempts, and they had met there because of their shared emotional despair.
Sure enough, the woman said to me, “That day, I was standing on the Yangtze River Bridge with a fruit knife. I was hesitating between jumping into the river to end everything or slashing my wrist to take one last look at this indifferent world before dying… Then I thought, my body had already been soiled while I was alive, and if I died and let it rot in the water beyond recognition, I would be doing a great disservice to the body my parents gave me. So I decided to take the knife and slash my wrist. He, who was standing not far away, noticed something was wrong and ran over to take the knife from me. This scar under my eye was cut during our struggle. But he saved my life…”
Both I and Leyao remained silent for a long time. Finally, Leyao asked, “There must have been a heartbreaking reason behind your suicide attempt. Why did you want to die?”
The woman’s eyes dimmed, and tears filled them as she said, “I’m from Guizhou, and I had a younger brother. Our parents died early… My brother came to Nanjing for college. The year he got accepted, I came with him to Nanjing to work and support his education. Although my salary was low, the two of us relied on each other, and with careful budgeting, we managed to get by. But then he fell seriously ill. To pay for his expensive medical treatments, I became a prostitute through someone’s introduction…” Her voice choked with emotion as she wiped away her tears and continued, “In this world, my brother and I had no support at all, and no one was willing to lend us money. I had no choice but to sell my body, but I still wanted to remain a clean woman… because I also wanted to get married!”
I lit a cigarette and listened as she continued, “Later, my brother recovered from his illness. To reduce the burden on me, he took a summer job at a construction site, but had an accident. He fell from the scaffolding without safety nets and died… But the responsible parties kept shifting blame and refused to pay compensation. Actually, whether they paid or not didn’t matter anymore—my brother was dead, my body was already soiled. What was the point of living? I might as well end it all… But until the day my brother died, I never knew if he had found out what I had become. So I’m actually grateful to him for stopping me from dying that day. Otherwise, how could I face my brother in the afterlife? He always said I was the purest and greatest sister in the world…”
Leyao had already broken down in tears and cried out to the woman, “No matter what you’ve done, in your brother’s heart… you were still the purest. Because the love you gave him was the purest and greatest!”
The woman lowered her head in silence, saying nothing for a long time. Only after a light in a corner of the restaurant went out did she speak again, “That night, he sang many songs he had written for me. Later, he stayed with me every day, singing for me on the Yangtze River Bridge every night until I no longer wanted to die. He even accompanied me to Dali once to see Erhai Lake… When we came back, I stopped being a prostitute because my face had been scarred by him… However, we became inseparable friends, so I would do anything he asked me to do—even if it meant dying for him!”
The woman’s sincerity finally overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t hold back the ache in my nose. Tears streamed down, mingling with the smoke I exhaled. My heart rose and fell, then felt suffocated to the point of wanting to die… Not because I had missed out on a sad story, but because of the impact of human nature on my soul!
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