Childhood Records

Nan Changgeng stopped reading here.

She raised a hand to press her temple, struggling to hold back her shock, and carefully searched her memories from more than ten years ago.

She had gone with her orchestra to quite a few welfare institutions for charity performances, and being asked her name by children was nothing unusual. No matter how hard she thought about it, she still couldn’t find the slightest trace of Yu Mao in her memory.

It must never have really reached her heart... because she hadn’t especially liked children to begin with, and those performances had only been part of the job. Back then, all she could think about was how many more things were still waiting for her after the concert; naturally, nothing like being softened by a child and leaving a deep impression on them had ever happened.

A faint sense of collapse rose in her chest.

She had spent so long wondering why Yu Mao was so attached to her, and it turned out... it turned out...

From her perspective, she had done nothing at all, just dropped a few crumbs while eating bread and walked past; by sheer coincidence, those crumbs had saved a starving cat. Years later, that cat came looking for her and treated her like a lifesaver.

Absurd.

Whether it was the fact that the tiniest crumbs she dropped could actually save a cat, or the fact that she had been completely unaware of it and remembered none of it, everything was absurd to the extreme.

She didn’t know whether to feel pleased or sad; her emotions were tied up in a knot.

So why did Yu Mao react so strongly to her music, of all things? Even now, she still kept the habit of never being able to part with her headphones...

Nan Changgeng took several deep breaths, barely suppressing the surging emotions, and continued reading.

【The last visit to the welfare institution resolved some of my doubts, but it still couldn’t solve the child’s eating problem. Also, I don’t know if it was just my imagination, but I always felt the director seemed to be keeping something from me; during our conversations, there were many times she seemed about to speak but stopped herself.】

【Today was the weekend, so I went to see her at the welfare institution again and observed that Yu Mao’s self-care ability is also excellent. She basically handles all of her daily affairs herself. The director said she had been abused since she was little and had no adult to look after her; she did everything on her own, except she never learned to comb her hair, because her hair was always cut very short before and didn’t need combing. It only started growing after she came to the welfare institution, and now it has already reached her chin. Previously, one of the aunts wanted to help trim it neatly, but she was very resistant to having her hair cut. Only after asking did I learn that her mother would always force her to cut her hair, and whenever she showed any sign of resistance, her mother would scare her by saying she’d stab her eyes out, so she fears scissors.

The more I investigate her, the more heartbreaking it becomes. Why, even now that society has developed to this point, are there still children who are treated like this?】

【Yu Mao was weak and couldn’t go downstairs for morning exercises during the long break between classes, so I took her to the office and quietly asked whether she hated her mother and father. She looked at me blankly, as if she couldn’t understand what I was saying.

I asked again whether she could tell me about her past, about how her mother and father treated her. I was uneasy and very worried I might provoke her, but her expression remained calm, as if she were telling someone else’s story, and she told me that both her mother and father didn’t like her because she cried easily and got upset very easily. The two of them always argued because of her, so her father didn’t come home often, and her mother had to work too. From the time she was two, she was left alone at home. Only at night would her mother come back, and early in the morning she would leave again.

Her mother liked the big orange cat they kept at home the most and cherished it dearly. Yu Mao liked it too, and even envied it; she spent the whole day with it and thought she lived like a cat herself. She learned from it to roll around on the floor, lick her own skin with her tongue, and wash her face.

She felt that she was becoming more and more like a cat, but her mother seemed to dislike her even more. She changed her name from Yu Chang’an to Yu Mao, saying she was the extra cat in the family, a cat with nine lives, a monster.

The more I listened, the more alarmed I became, and hurriedly asked her why her mother would call her a cat with nine lives. She didn’t know either; she said that from the time she could remember, her mother had been saying she had nine lives, bringing it up every few days, and telling her she had already died once and only had eight lives left.

From her description, I felt this whole family was bizarre to an extreme degree, and even suspected her parents might have had mental illness themselves and passed it on to their daughter. But what shocked me even more was the calmness with which she recounted all of it. Those experiences could no longer stir even the slightest emotional fluctuation in her. Could this be a form of emotional isolation?】

【I really couldn’t stand the thought of her living on milk powder alone, so I hardened my heart and force-fed her. Unexpectedly, she didn’t struggle or resist... but she couldn’t swallow; even her instinctive swallowing reflex seemed to have disappeared, as if there were no food in her mouth at all.

I felt hopeless.】

【I asked Yu Mao very seriously why she couldn’t accept anything other than milk powder. She thought for a while and answered that her mother would hold Orange Ball and say she liked the pickiest little cat best; Yu Mao copied her and tried to be a picky eater too, and then her mother told her she would only be allowed to drink milk from then on.

I completely broke down and, without thinking, blurted out that her mother was already dead. Before I could even regret it, I was stunned by the indifference in her eyes.

She said she knew, but it had nothing to do with her.

...All the educational psychology I’ve studied was completely useless. I can’t see through her at all. This is the most hopeless month of my teaching career】

【I don’t want to give up. I want to save her.】

【During the National Day holiday, I took her to the best psychiatric hospital in the country. The examination process lasted three days and involved all kinds of tests, but the diagnosis couldn’t be classified under any existing mental illness. Yet she was indeed unlike ordinary people, to the extent that it alarmed the hospital’s most authoritative director, who personally took over this little patient.

The director said that the biggest problem seemed to lie in Yu Mao’s cognition and perception; she appeared to be in a prolonged dissociative state, with symptoms of depersonalization and derealization, but her rational thinking remained normal at all times, and she also showed no emotional response, which made her somewhat different from that condition.

In the fear-stimulus test, the doctors found that Yu Mao’s emotional responses were entirely physiological, like a cognitive stereotype: she thought she ought to feel fear, so her body responded accordingly; however, in reality, her emotions didn’t fluctuate at all.

The joy-stimulus test basically failed; no object capable of triggering happiness in her could be found.

The doctors said we should first find something that could cause her emotions to fluctuate. I immediately thought of her obsession with that cellist’s music, and told the doctors at once, then ran a new round of tests based on music.

The effect was enormous. Trying to remove her headphones provoked intense resistance from Yu Mao; she became highly aggressive, scratched two doctors on site, and entered a state like a cat puffing up its fur—hair bristling, emitting a low catlike growl, body hunched and taut.

I had been a little puzzled before when she said she was like a cat; now I’d truly seen it...】

【There’s been progress in the examination. We finally tested out something that can truly stir her emotions, but the bad news is that Yu Mao is no longer willing to cooperate with the tests. She’s highly wary of the doctors and, taking advantage of a moment when no one was paying attention, ran out of the hospital and hid in the bushes of a greenbelt.

Pretty well hidden too; if she hadn’t flattened a large patch of branches, she really might have gotten away.

There was nothing to do but suspend treatment for now. The director suggested that since it was a cognition issue, we could try mixing a small amount of food into her milk and see whether she could accept it. I’m planning to try it as soon as I get back.】

【It worked! Wonderful! The most important problem has been solved, and from here on we can take things slowly】

【I went to the welfare institution and told them the good news; everyone was very happy. The director’s eyes turned red, and it seemed like she had something she wanted to say to me, but in the end she only expressed her gratitude.

I keep feeling that Yu Mao’s matter isn’t that simple.】

【The director sent me several videos and asked me, if I was able, to please take good care of Yu Mao. She’s a pitiful child...

I don’t dare watch the videos a second time.

In the first one, Yu Mao looked only two or three years old. She was playing with a toy placed on the floor when she smiled a little; her mother suddenly rushed over like a madwoman and beat her savagely, shouting, “Smile? What right do you have to smile? You’re already driving us crazy, so why are you happy again!”

Such a small child was punched and kicked until she immediately burst into tears. Then another man came out and shoved the woman, cursing her to stop making noise. Her mother looked even more hysterical, and what she said was completely incomprehensible to me. She said: It’s all your fault, it’s because of you that you made my daughter like this, why don’t you just die!

The two of them went from shoving to beating each other. Her father also shouted back in anger: How is it all my fault? Didn’t you agree to it yourself back then?!

Curses mixed with the child’s screams; it was enough to make my heart shudder. In the end, the woman was beaten to the ground, and the man fled as if escaping. Only the mother’s desperate cries and the child’s tireless, hysterical sobbing remained, heartbreaking to hear.

In the second video, Yu Mao was older, maybe five years old. Her behavior had already become completely catlike; she crawled on the floor, jumped when climbing onto the sofa, lay sprawled to rest, licked her palms to wash her face, and crouched on a chair with her face buried straight down into her meal. Lacking the rich expressions of a human child, she looked so much like a cat that it gave me a strange feeling, as if a cat’s soul had taken up residence in a human body.

In the third, her mother came home and, seeing Yu Mao lying on the sofa, threw her bag at her, showing obvious disgust and an attitude of expulsion. Startled, Yu Mao leapt away and crawled back into the bedroom. The woman stood there, clutching her head as she let out a broken scream, then crouched down and wept bitterly.

After watching it, I couldn’t help but go straight to the director and ask her what exactly was wrong with this family. I could sense that those two adults were suffering from being driven nearly insane; that was very different from what I had originally assumed, namely that they enjoyed abusing their child. But the director didn’t seem willing to answer me and changed the subject. Maybe she still doesn’t trust me enough.】

【Yu Mao is really too smart... smart to the point of being unbelievable. The computer teacher told me that during the computer class this morning, Yu Mao spent ten minutes cracking the network password and getting online; she even cut off the real-time monitoring from the teacher’s computer to hers, then went online to search for information on that cellist, and actually even broke through the firewall and found her way to foreign sites...

Before this, I of course investigated her too, but there wasn’t much information about her on the domestic internet. I only knew her name was Nan Changgeng, that her background was excellent, that she had won quite a few awards, and that she was currently studying abroad.

Honestly, if she weren’t abroad, I would really want to invite her over and see just how miraculous she is—how on earth she could produce such a strong effect on Yu Mao. Maybe the chance to help Yu Mao lies with her?】

Seeing this, Nan Changgeng stopped. She grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the table and took two big gulps, the cold water running from her throat all the way down to her stomach, only barely helping her clear her head.

She was also deeply confused: why had she ended up having such an impact on Yu Mao?

No matter how well she played the cello, she was still just a person; she couldn’t attach divine power to music.