In the future, come to your grandfather’s house less often. Your grandmother and I Indeed look forward to seeing you every Saturday, but we also know that the less contact you have with us, the better. Luckily, your father’s new wife… I heard she treats you well. When you come to see us, it must always remind him of your mother. I’m afraid that if he gets upset, he’ll blame it all on you. No matter what, he’s your father. Listen to him, he only wants what’s best for you…”

The more Alan Carter’s grandfather spoke, the more jumbled his words became. Alan Carter could only keep blinking, over and over. The snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes fluttered up and down, like butterflies that refuse to die in winter.

“Xiao Li said you spent the whole afternoon at the Children’s Palace today?”

At the dinner table, Alan Carter’s father asked casually as he picked up some food.

“Yeah, I was practicing piano in the room next to Mr. King. When he had time, he’d come over and give me some guidance.”

As Alan Carter spoke, he stood up and pushed his chair toward the table.

“I’m finished.”

“Are you okay?”

“Just remembered some things from before.” Alan Carter knew Zoe Young would be understanding and wouldn’t press further. He smiled at her, wanting to say something else, when he suddenly noticed a small red cloth on the right sleeve of her black shirt. Looking closer, he realized she was actually wearing mourning.

Noticing his gaze, Zoe Young smiled, “My grandmother passed away. She went peacefully, at 78. That’s a long life, so none of us are too sad.”

“If I remember right, your grandmother had Alzheimer’s, didn’t she?”

Zoe Young nodded.

“Actually, I think people with Alzheimer’s are like they’ve completely broken free from the constraints of time, living entirely in beautiful memories. Maybe that’s the only way humans can truly defeat time.” Alan Carter chuckled softly and patted Zoe’s shoulder. “It’s actually a blessing, so don’t be sad.”

Compared to some people, it’s much more happiness.

The day Alan Carter’s half-brother was born, his grandfather had a stroke while taking out the chamber pot and fell down the stairs. By the time he was taken to the hospital, there was no hope of saving him.

Alan Carter rushed from one hospital to another, and no one even noticed he was gone. A new life arrived, an old one departed; life maintains its delicate balance through this endless cycle of arrivals and farewells.

They welcomed, Alan Carter alone said goodbye.

A fifth grader’s developing strength was still too little to fight the stiffness of death. In a corner of the busy hospital corridor, Alan Carter struggled to dress his grandfather in burial clothes, sweat and tears mixing together, both equally salty.

Even in the end, the corpse’s face, changed by postmortem stiffness, looked so unfamiliar.

All of Alan Carter’s efforts were nothing more than mechanically completing a difficult task with a blank mind.

The doctor’s gaze was complicated, a mix of sympathy, pity, and confusion. Just before the nurse pushed his grandfather toward the Alan Carter: Extra Stories morgue, Alan Carter suddenly remembered something very important.

He searched his bag inside and out for a long time, finally gathering 50 yuan.

Then he gently slipped it into the pocket of his grandfather’s cheap jacket.

Grandpa, who dares call you useless.

Alan Carter quietly said goodbye in his heart, blinking hard.

The day of his grandfather’s first seven-day memorial happened to be a Saturday. Alan Carter used the excuse of greeting a visiting massage therapist to run downstairs, and with a cheap lighter from the corner store, he burned a few pieces of white paper marked “one hundred million yuan” from his pocket, symbolically sending them to his grandfather.

While doing this, he didn’t feel a trace of sadness, but rather a kind of absurd joy.

Everything on his mother’s side had to be kept silent, as if it had never happened. Alan Carter’s stepmother still didn’t know why Alan Carter’s mother died, or at least pretended not to know. Alan Carter was only able to visit his grandparents every Saturday by taking advantage of his father’s pride—since everything was as he told his new wife, why shouldn’t the child visit his own grandparents?

The short year he spent with his mother and Domin (Dominic) seemed to burn away all the innocence and freedom of his childhood. Just as life was burning bright and hot, a bucket of cold water was dumped over his head, and under the fierce steam, Alan Carter cooled down as quickly as possible, only to realize he’d become as hard as steel.

“Grandpa, no matter what, this is fake money. Be careful when you spend it.”

He softly spoke to the blackened scraps with faint embers in the snow, his breath instantly blurring his vision. Alan Carter suddenly felt a powerless lack of freedom, a kind of frustration a twelve-year-old boy couldn’t describe or find a way to escape.

Looking up, two figures—one tall, one short—finally approached in the distance.

The little girl, who had been talking to the air as if sleepwalking, was woken by her mother’s pat on the head. Embarrassed, she looked at him, her clear eyes curving into two crescent moons.

“What’s your name?” he asked kindly, squatting down.

“Zoe Young.”

“Oh right, do you remember, you once asked me about Bluewater?”

Zoe Young was a little surprised, then smiled, her eyes curving, just like the little girl she used to be.

Back then.

The fair little girl looked at him seriously, her big black-and-white eyes unblinking: “If it were you, would you use Bluewater to save someone, giving up the chance to see God?”

Alan Carter’s perfunctory “Of course” suddenly stuck in his throat.

For the first time, he put aside his usual indifference and thought seriously about the question. If he really had such a sapphire, who would he save? His mother? Domin? His grandfather? Or his father?

Another snowy day like this. He sighed softly.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

He didn’t know why he was taking a little kid so seriously.

Maybe it was because, before the little girl and her massage-therapist mother arrived, Alan Carter had already pieced together rumors about the smiling little girl’s father from his grandmother and the nanny’s endless gossip.

Of course, it took effort to filter out all the harsh gloating and sharp-tongued remarks.

Zoe Young, a combination of two surnames, the most ordinary way to name a child. Just like Alan Carter, the place where love began, that tree stretching out freely.

They acted on impulse, they had their own motives, and the mistakes they made back then now hang openly on these children whose lives have barely begun, never to fade.

“I would.”

Unexpectedly, the little girl stated her position firmly.

“If I love him, I would. If I don’t, I wouldn’t.”

Alan Carter: Extra Stories Alan Carter was a bit surprised. For such a little kid to talk about love or not love, she must have watched too much TV.

But he understood, understood that a child’s sense of right and wrong is the simplest—just because you can get love from the side you think is just. Because you’re good to me, so you’re a good person.

Just like when his mother and Domin died, he cried like a little madman, almost exposing things that were supposed to stay hidden. Even now, he knows that even if it was out of filial piety and the pursuit of true love, his mother married for his grandfather’s medical bills and his father’s money, then ran away with Alan Carter and Domin… From an outsider’s perspective, all of it could only be condemned, even the final car accident was “heaven’s justice”—the adulterous couple died tragically, the innocent child unharmed.

The people you love most, none of them are “good people”—some die tragically, some live out their days in lonely squalor, all fulfilling “evil begets evil.” No matter how hard you try, you can’t align yourself with the direction the moral scales tip.

No one could help; Alan Carter got through it all alone. He had to hold back tears when he wanted to cry, and force a smile when he didn’t want to. The people he should love, he couldn’t get close to; the ones he shouldn’t love, he missed desperately before sleep. Looking back, he didn’t even know how he finally made peace with fate, neither side forcing the other anymore.

So he developed a calm, unruffled heart, far too early in life.

Should he be grateful that at least he was still the treasured grandson of the The Carter Family, smart, outstanding, talented, and well-liked?

At least it was better than that little girl who had to cross half the city with her mother in the snow just to make a living.

But would it really be better? Alan Carter looked around at this luxurious home so many classmates envied, and suddenly felt deeply sad because of his own “no, I wouldn’t.”