What My Father Buried

I can still remember the bloodstains at the village entrance that never washed away.

Back then, my dad Ryan brought people to beat the human trafficker who tried to kidnap me to death right there.

Years later, I left that isolated mountain village behind. I succeeded in my studies, and both my career and love life were thriving.

My boyfriend was a cop, currently chasing down a trafficking case.

One day, while chatting with him, I casually mentioned this old story. After hearing it, he stood frozen for a long moment.

"Sophia, what kind of human trafficker goes deep into the mountains to kidnap children?"

"Have you ever considered that the people your dad beat to death might have been your biological parents who traveled thousands of miles to find you?"

Zachary's words exploded in my mind like thunder.

"Impossible!"

I instinctively wanted to argue back.

"My dad loves me so much. For me, he'd do anything!"

My dad Ryan was known throughout the village as a genuinely good man.

Growing up, even when our family was too poor to afford food, if I wanted meat, there'd be steak on the table the next day.

The year I went to college, he sold our family's only cow and cried at the village entrance like a child.

What kind of human trafficker would treat a bought child this well?

Zachary looked at me and smiled bitterly as he apologized. "Sorry, Sophia. My occupational hazard is acting up."

"This case has been so oppressive lately, I'm starting to see everyone as a suspect."

He was apologizing verbally, but I could see it clearly.

That trace of doubt in his eyes hadn't faded at all.

That night, I struggled to fall asleep for the longest time.

Every time I closed my eyes, those dark red bloodstains that had long since seeped into the soil at the village entrance appeared vividly before me.

My father's honest, weathered face from my memories now seemed blurry in my mind.

The motion of him raising his hoe to strike that couple played over and over in slow motion, like a slideshow.

"Bastards! How dare you traffic my daughter!"

My father's roar back then had been the warmest source of security in my heart.

Now, it had become the nightmare that kept me from sleeping.

I suddenly sat up in bed, drenched in cold sweat.

At three in the morning, as if possessed, I got up and searched through boxes and cabinets, looking for old family photo albums.

One, two, three...

I flipped through them page by page.

There was one of me at five with pigtails, sitting on my father's shoulders and laughing happily.

There was one of me at ten receiving an excellent student certificate, with my father proudly posting it on the most prominent wall in our home.

There was one of me at eighteen getting into college, with my father secretly wiping tears as he saw me off at the village entrance.

But I searched through all the albums and couldn't find a single photo of me before age three.

Not a single one.

Doubt grew like wild grass in my heart, suffocating me until I couldn't breathe.

I had to go back.

I had to personally verify that terrifying, suffocating suspicion.

My hands shaking, I booked the earliest train ticket home.

Because my hands were trembling, I entered the wrong payment password three times.

After booking the ticket, I sent Zachary a text message.

"Company suddenly arranged a team-building trip to a neighboring city. I'll be back in three days, don't worry."

I didn't dare tell him the truth.

I was afraid.

Afraid of the what-ifs.

Afraid of implicating him.

Even more afraid that if my suspicion turned out to be true, since he was a cop, how could I face him?

I set out alone on the journey home.

Train to bus, bus to small truck heading up the mountain.

The road conditions got worse and worse. The vehicle jolted violently. Outside the window, the scenery gradually changed from a modern city of high-rises to endless barren mountain ranges.

A sense of displacement emerged, as if I were falling from the civilized world back into the wilderness.

I felt like I wasn't going home.

It was more like voluntarily walking into the gaping bloody maw of a giant beast.

The bus stopped at the village entrance in a cloud of dust.

A few old folks sitting under the big tree at the village entrance chatting saw me and immediately waved enthusiastically.

"Sophia, you're back! Haven't seen you in so long, you've gotten even more beautiful!"

"Your dad is so lucky to have raised such an outstanding daughter like you!"

I snapped back to reality and smiled as I responded to each of them.

Walking along the familiar dirt road, I saw our dilapidated courtyard in the distance.

My father Ryan was shirtless in the yard, chopping wood.

His back was turned to me, his spine slightly hunched from years of labor. Each swing of the axe came with heavy breathing.

Hearing footsteps, he turned around. When he saw it was me, the shock on his face lasted only an instant.

Then that wrinkled face burst into enormous joy.

"Sophia? Why did you suddenly come back? You didn't even say anything in advance!"

He dropped the axe, wiped his hands on his patched pants, and quickly walked over, wanting to take the bag from my hand.

That familiar scent of tobacco and sweat instantly enveloped me.

My nose tingled and tears almost fell.

All the fear and suspicion from the journey seemed to become somewhat ridiculous the moment I saw his delighted smile.

"Company gave us time off, so I thought I'd come back and see you." I made up a random excuse.

"It's good you're back! It's good you're back!"

My father was as happy as a child on Christmas, immediately bustling about excitedly.

He ran to the chicken coop in the backyard and grabbed our fattest chicken, processing it with clean, efficient movements.

Then he took out a bass he'd just caught that morning from the refrigeratorfresh and plump.

The dinner table was soon filled with all my favorite dishes:

Fried chicken, grilled bass, and a big plate of golden-baked mac and cheese.

"Eat more. You definitely don't eat well out there. Look, you've gotten thinner."

My father kept urging me to eat more while he himself was reluctant to eat.

The warm, fragrant aroma of the food dispelled the gloom in my heart.

I ate big mouthfuls of rice, pushing down all those terrible thoughts.

I must have gone crazy, scared out of my wits by Zachary's jinxing words.

In this barren mountain village with nothing but rocks, it was my father who bent his back to help me walk out of these mountains.

How could I doubt him?

Even if this leave cost me my perfect attendance bonus, being able to come back and spend time with my father was worth it.

At night, the mountain village was so quiet you could hear insects chirping.

I got up to use the bathroom and passed by the main hall.

By the faint moonlight streaming through the window, I noticed something new on the small table in the center of the main hall.

Before, only a blurry old wooden cross had been enshrined there.

Now, in front of the cross, on a piece of red cloth, a string of beads was solemnly placed.

The bead string gave off a peculiar, oily luster in the moonlight, as if it had been worn by someone for a long time.

I found it somewhat amusing in my heart. When did my father become so superstitious?

Out of curiosity, I walked over and took out my phone to snap a photo of the beads.

Then I sent it to Zachary.

With a teasing caption: "Look, my dad's new find. Says it's made from animal bones, can ward off evil and protect the home. Pretty cool, right?"

Zachary video-called back almost instantly.

When the call connected, his face on the screen was deathly pale, with the police station dormitory in the background.

"Sophia, listen to me. Come back quickly. Don't make a scene."

I was startled by his appearance, my heart jumping to my throat again.

"What's wrong? Don't scare me."

"Those aren't animal bones!" Zachary's voice was urgent, so urgent it frightened me. "I got a perfect score in my forensic medicine elective! I couldn't possibly be wrong!"

"Look carefully at the bone structure and density! And that patina color from long-term handling!"

"Those are human bones!"

"And judging by the size, they're finger bones from a minor!"

A boom echoed in my brain, everything went blank.

The phone nearly slipped from my hand.

Human bones...

Finger bones from a minor...

I froze, cold spreading from the soles of my feet straight to the top of my head.

Behind me, heavy footsteps suddenly sounded.

The wooden floor made creaking sounds, especially jarring in the silent night.

My father's ghostly voice came from right behind my ear:

"Sophia, who are you talking to so late at night?"

In that instant, every hair on my body stood on end.

I stiffly pressed the disconnect button and turned around.

My father stood in the shadows, half his face hidden in darkness, his eyes dark and inscrutable.

He was still holding that mug printed with a cross.

"Dad..."

I forced out a smile.

"No... nobody."

"Just venting to a coworker about the company making us work overtime."

I didn't dare look at him. As I spoke, I quickly put the bead string back in its original place.

When my fingertips touched those cold beads, it felt like touching a dead person's hand.

My father didn't speak, just stood there quietly watching me.

I held my breath, palms full of cold sweat.

Time seemed to freeze. Each second felt as long as a century.

Just when I was about to suffocate, he suddenly grinned.

"City bosses are all heartless. If you don't want to work, then quit. I'll take care of you."

Those yellowed teeth, stained from years of smoking, looked particularly sinister in the dim light.

"Go to bed early. Stop playing with your phone."

I don't remember how I walked back to my room.

The moment I locked the door, I leaned back against it, gasping for breath, cold sweat instantly soaking through my clothes.

That night, I was trapped in nightmares.

I dreamed those human bone beads turned into tiny skulls, crying and screaming around me, demanding my life.

I dreamed that the couple beaten to death at the village entrancethe "human traffickers"crawled up from the ground covered in blood, their withered hands grabbing my ankles, calling me "daughter" over and over.

I also dreamed Zachary was locked in a rusty iron cage, his tongue cut out, only able to make muffled sounds as he looked at me in despair.

When I woke with a start, my pillow was soaked through.

Outside the window, dawn was just breaking, everything a gray-white.

As my consciousness gradually returned, I realized I couldn't just sit here waiting for doom.

All my fear and suspicion stemmed from one question with an uncertain answer.

Who was I, really?

To find the answer, I just needed to get my father's DNA sample for a paternity test, and all the mysteries would be solved.

Scientific evidence was the only weapon that could end all this suspicion.

I didn't want to believe that the father who had raised me for over twenty years, who loved me with his entire life, could be a monster.

As long as I could prove my father and I were biologically related, then everything would just be coincidence, just Zachary's occupational hazard acting up.

I had to get my father's DNA sample.

Hairhair with follicles attached would be best.

Or his nails, blood, even a toothbrush he hadn't cleaned properly.

I took a deep breath and made an incredibly firm decision.

Whatever the truth was, I would uncover it with my own hands.

Even if the result would completely destroy me, I needed to know what kind of world I was living in.

I quietly opened the door and listened carefully to the sounds outside.

Soft snoring came from my father's room.

A plan quickly formed in my mind.

As soon as dawn broke, my father went to work at the farm.

I snuck into his bedroom like a thief.

My heartbeat thundered like drums, making my eardrums buzz.

My father's room was still as I rememberedsimple but unusually tidy.

I rushed to the bed, lifted the pillow, turned over the sheets, searching carefully.

Nothing.

Not a single hair.

Clean to an unreasonable degree.

Unwilling to give up, I went under the bed and checked every corner, but still found nothing.

How could a man in his fifties, whose bodily functions were starting to decline, not shed any hair?

That ominous premonition in my heart grew stronger and stronger.

I ran into the bathroom.

The bathroom was equally, eerily clean.

The sink was spotless, towels hung neatly.

I picked up my father's toothbrushthere wasn't even a trace of toothpaste foam on it.

I got down on the floor again and carefully checked the cracks in the drain.

My father had clearly showered last night, but the drain was completely empty. Forget hairthere wasn't even a single strand of anything.

A widowed, over-fifty old man living alone, yet his home was as clean as a sterile room.

That itself was the biggest horror story.

Despair slowly gripped my heart.

I was about to give up.

Just then, my gaze swept to the table in the living room.

There was a nail clipper sitting there.

In the trash can next to the nail clipper, there were several crumpled tissues.

I rushed over and unfolded the tissues.

Inside were several crescent-shaped nail clippings with yellowed edges.

These were nails my father had clipped after showering yesterday.

"Dad, I'm going to town to buy some feminine products!"

I sent my father a voice message. Without waiting for his reply, I fled from the house.

Running all the way, I caught the bus to town.

My heart was pounding. The truth would soon be revealed!