I was flipping through the bills in the shop. The business was bleak, and I even said that my shop could not even provide me with a basic livelihood. My eldest brother built this shop for me, firstly, to entertain me when I was bored, and secondly, probably to deceive others.
Someone came in from outside. I thought it was a visitor. It turned out to be a postman from the post office and said he had a registered letter from me. I was surprised at that time. There are still people writing to me these days? I only remember those from junior high school and high school.
Sometimes I would write a love letter or something to the female classmate I had a crush on. I haven’t had any contact with letters for many years. After I signed for it, I sat at the counter and started to look at the letter.
The content on the envelope was very concise: Delivered to Zhao Sanliang, Zhaojia Antique Shop, Shibalipu, Luoyang City, Henan Province. The sender's name was not written on the envelope, but the mailing address turned out to be Taiwan Province! I thought to myself, I don't have a name in Taiwan.
Relatives, clients, etc. Could it be that some generation of my family's ancestors fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek and are now back to look for relatives? This is a good thing. Didn't all the newspapers report it? Several impoverished paupers suddenly came back from Taiwan.
Grandpa and grandma got rich overnight?
When I opened the envelope, there was a yellowed old photo inside, and nothing else. I am in the antique business, which is true, but old photos are not considered antiques? I was still thinking about it.
Some friend was playing a prank on me, so I threw the photo aside.
The photo was very light. I lost it and it was flipped over and stuck on the table. Only then did I see that on the white bottom of the photo, three words were written. It was shocking red, and the red was a little black, as if
Someone bit his finger and wrote it in blood:
help me!
Now I'm interested in feeling. Is this a distress letter from someone in danger?
But just write "Save me". Even if I have the ability, I don't know who you are, right? I don't even know who you are, so why bother? But I still turned the photo over and studied the front.
The photo is a black-and-white photo unique to the 1980s. At that time, there were no digital cameras with tens of millions of pixels like today. The facial features of the characters were very blurry, but they could still be barely recognized. There were eight people standing in a row.
She was as neat as her graduation photo from elementary school, and she was wearing a denim coat that was unique to that era. It was the revolutionary attire of the time. It seemed like nothing special at first glance, and I couldn’t figure it out. But I didn’t have anything to do at the moment, so I took it out of the drawer.
with a magnifying glass, put the photo on the table and study it like an antique.
The magnifying glass was moved one by one. When I saw the third person in the row, I saw that face through the magnifying glass. My hands shook with fright. This person looked familiar, looked familiar, and was familiar in every way. He couldn't be more familiar.
Ripe.
Because, his grandma, this person is my father who has been missing for twenty years!
I suddenly became at a loss. It is a common problem for second-generation ancestors to panic when encountering big things, and I was no exception. I immediately picked up the phone and called my eldest and second brothers, saying: Come to my shop quickly, it’s important.
thing!
Shaking my head, I felt that a letter had made me feel dizzy. I ran to the toilet and washed my face to wake myself up. The eldest brother and the second brother are in the west and the other in the east. I also know the traffic conditions in Luoyang.
, it will be some time before I get here. Taking advantage of this time, I started to sort out what happened to me.
A photo, a photo of my father with someone, and three words written in blood on the back: "Save me."
I ran back to the back room, flipped through it for a long time, and found the test papers from my elementary school. At that time, the test papers had to be taken back and signed by the parents. One of them was signed by my father. The content on it made people laugh: Study hard.
Everyday. But these words can be regarded as embarrassing for a semi-literate person who only has a third-grade elementary school education. I put the test papers and photos together.
In fact, there is no need to compare at all. Finding the test paper is just to confirm my guess. My father's handwriting is crooked and very personal. Even if others want to imitate, they can't imitate it. What's more, because of the industry, I am very familiar with it.
Fonts and the like are particularly sensitive.
The words "Save me" on the photo and "Study hard and make progress every day" on the test paper were clearly written by him alone.
Now I can be sure that this is a letter for help written to me by him who has been missing for twenty years!
After the eldest brother and the second brother arrived, I took out the letter and showed it to them. Their expressions were quite wonderful, but they were both quite heavy. Even the eldest brother, who had always been very reckless, was smoking with his head down and his brows furrowed.
My second brother picked up the envelope and looked at it. After a while, he put the envelope on the table, pointed at the postmark and said, "Look at this."
I looked along and saw that the address was a place name in Taiwan, but the question was about the date below.
1986.05.13
This year is 2006, but the time of origin on the postmark is 1986. This is a letter sent to me 20 years ago! A letter has been on the road for 20 years?!
And this date is even more familiar to us.
May 13, 1986, was the third day after my father left home!
I forced myself to calm down, rubbed my brow, and reorganized what I had encountered today:
I received a letter from Taiwan. Not to mention the strange address, the letter contained a photo of my father with other people. On the back of the photo, my father wrote three words in blood, "Help me."
It seems that he is asking me for help. Up to this point, it seems to be normal. He has been missing for twenty years and asking for help from his own son is so normal.
However, the date the letter was sent was 20 years ago!
And it happened to be the three days when my father disappeared!
It doesn’t make sense, I received a letter from twenty years ago? This is ridiculous!
To say the least, this is a letter my father sent me 20 years ago. And he did run away to Taiwan on the third day after he disappeared again. I assume that the three of us looked at each other here.
It is indeed a bit big, Taiwan is far away from Luoyang, and the efficiency of the Chinese post office is slow, but it is absolutely impossible for a letter to travel on the road for twenty years!
I lit a cigarette and said to them: Even if I have been on the road for twenty years and established it, my shop has only been open for three years. Twenty years ago, he calculated that I would open this shop and name it Zhaojia Antique Shop?
!
There are too many places where normal thinking doesn't work, and each "assumption is established" makes me feel ridiculous.
"Help me." This should be what my father wanted to convey.
But, how to save?
My father has been missing for twenty years.
But in the past twenty years, we have never given up the pursuit of him. What's more, our old Zhao family, let alone the glory of our business, at least we are not short of money.
Even in the past few years, we posted missing persons notices in many cities and aired advertisements on many local TV stations. There is no need to worry about how much energy, material and financial resources were spent on this.
However, there are no clues at all. It's as if my father was spotted by a female alien and captured to continue the family line.
Of course, despite our own efforts, we also went through other normal channels and reported the case. If an ordinary citizen disappeared, the police comrades who are busy every day might just post a photo online to solve the problem. However,
As I said, our old Zhao family is equivalent to a distinguished family in Luoyang according to the ancient definition.
Even so, there is no news.
As time went by, this disappearance spanned twenty years. Although we never gave up, we were definitely not as eager as we were at the beginning.
Until the end, we had to believe that he was dead.
It wasn't until I received this letter that I started to mention the whole thing. After receiving this letter, I asked many friends and people at the post office. Even they were puzzled and generally thought
, this is a prank.
It was as if one of my best friends was teasing me on purpose.
A letter disturbed my calm mind. But life must go on, right? And although this letter was quite strange from the postmark to the date to the address, in addition to rekindling our enthusiasm for finding our father,
It did not bring any clear clues. And the incident that happened next was vaguely related to the incident twenty years ago. (To be continued)