Chapter 975: Chapter 975: Direction of Home_1
He looked at her smiling brows and eyes, her eyes clear and ethereal, proud like a cat that had stolen a fish.
Yet, what she said was exactly what he had longed for.
*
Because she had to get up early the next day to shoot a movie, after dinner Hannah had Arnold drive her back to the hotel.
As midnight approached, the snow began to fall even more heavily.
Heavy clouds hung outside the window, and the piercing cold wind swirled the pure white snowflakes in the air. The courtyard was layered with snow, sinking into a hole with a mere step.
The cold was bone-chilling, desperately trying to drive away all warmth, only to be starkly blocked by the tightly closed doors and windows.
That night, Hannah had a rare dream.
The dream was of a snowy day, just like this one.
But the snowflakes were tinged with billowing gunsmoke, not pure white as they hit the ground but instead a bloody red.
The ground was a desolate mess, and the woman’s face was as gentle as ever, as if it could endure endless suffering, forever kind and soft.
She looked up slightly, her eyes lingering on the vast starry sky, "Hannah, do you see? That’s the direction of home, where your father is—that’s our home."
In front of her, the little girl covered in wounds was already in unbearable pain, but still bit down hard on her teeth.
"Father? What father do I have? Where was he when I was gravely ill, when I fought stray dogs for food, when I was humiliated and beaten black and blue?"
Tears fell from the woman’s eyes, and her gentle yet fragile face showed a hint of shock, eventually turning into a vacant and nostalgic look. She repeated the same line she had said countless times, "...Hannah, no matter what, he’s your father."
"No, I don’t have a father!"
The girl’s hands, filthy and dusty, clenched tightly, her knuckles protruding until they bled, yet her eyes showed determination and stubbornness.
Back then, she was still young and couldn’t control her emotions. The little girl would still cry and feel indignant.
But every time she looked at her mother, there was always hope in her eyes.
She thought that the man had betrayed their family, betrayed the entire planet, killed countless people—her mother should wake up from that.
But she didn’t. All her admonishments were met with her mother’s rebuttals.
She always said, "You’re still young, you won’t understand, he is your father after all."
Not understand?
Traitors should be scorned by everyone, yet that man had fled for another woman and for power and status, and in the end, it was she and her mother who bore it all.
Does such a man truly deserve to be a husband and father?
Is that faint blood relation really so important?
Important enough that she had to be grateful to that man as her father, even when she was hanging by a thread, climbing out of piles of corpses?
Because an irresponsible man left, was this family supposed to fall apart?
She never stopped yearning for her mother to stand up, to forget that man, and they could have had a good life together.
But that never happened.
After the war, the planet was barren, overgrown with weeds. Her mother’s favorite pastime was always sitting at the doorstep, looking in the direction where the man, that so-called father, had left, telling her,
"Hannah, that will be your home one day, go find your father, listen to him, he is your father."
And she was covered in blood and mud, struggling to carry the food she had hunted that day, standing silently before her mother.
