Paperplane

  Caron_

  “After Hanhan came home from the hospital, Muqing hired a midwife to take care of Hanhan.”


  “At the time, I was still sick. There was one really serious time when I swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills.”


  “After I woke up, I was really unwell and in the hospital because I was throwing up my stomach.”


  “Muqing’s eyes were red as she called me ‘foolish’ from the sidelines. She yelled at me for not thinking things through and asked what was going to happen to Hanhan if I left.”


  “Actually, Muqing said a lot at the time, but I didn’t listen. It was the sound of Hanhan’s endless crying that let me know that I had given birth to a child. The baby who I fought tooth and nail to protect was born……”


  “And it was from then on that I started to slowly come out of it and slowly shifted all my focus on Hanhan. I gradually got better little by little as Hanhan grew up.”


  “When I used to work as a screenwriter, I might not have earned a lot, but I spent a lot of my savings on an apartment. The more time I spent with Hanhan in my belly, the less savings I had. I knew I should work and make money, so when I was eight months pregnant with Hanhan, I raised my pen and started writing stories again.”


  “I didn’t dare use the pen name of Cheng Weiwan in fear that people would find out I had Hanhan. Although I put Hanhan under Muqing’s name, all I could do was start writing with a new pen name. Writing books was really tiring and I didn’t earn a lot. My days were a little tough, but I never let Hanhan suffer because I knew that without him, I’d be nothing. It was Hanhan who kept me alive……”


  Han Zhifan’s hand couldn’t help but ball into fists.

  His back started to gently tremble.

  “Later, the nanny found a better working environment, so she quit. All I could do was find a new nanny to take care of Hanhan.”


  “Sometimes, I didn’t notice many things when I was fully concentrated on writing scripts. Later, I realized that the new nanny would often lecture Hanhan, and she would secretly feed Hanhan sleeping pills just to let me work in peace.”


  “When I found out, I couldn’t trust anyone anymore. I took over taking care of Hanhan completely. During the day, there simply wasn’t time to write, so I would have to wait till Hanhan slept to write in the evening. I pulled all-nighters every day. Huge chunks of hair fell out and my state of mind was also awful. My memory started to get worse and for some time, I got headaches every day.”


  “How should I put it…… Although those days were hard, I was really happy.”


  “Hanhan slowly learned to crawl then swayed as he walked then called me ‘mummy’ and learned simple words.”


  “I felt a special sense of accomplishment. It gave me a stronger sense of accomplishment than my first script that was made into a television series.”

  “But as Hanhan got older, he learned more and more about some things. For example, when he was over a year old, he suddenly asked, ‘Mummy, what is a dad? How come everyone has a dad? Why don’t I have a dad?’”


  “He asked me several questions in succession. I didn’t know how to reply to him.”


  “I couldn’t tell Hanhan that ‘your father doesn’t want you.’ In the end, I chose to lie to him. I picked up your photo and told him that: ‘This is daddy. When you grow up, daddy will come back to see you.’”


  “He was really happy and cried ‘Daddy’ endlessly. Eventually, he would even start recording all the happy things that happened to him in the day. He told me that when daddy came back, he was going to give these for daddy to watch.”