Yu Yuanyuan struggled to process what her brother was telling her, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t understand.

Seeing her confusion, Yu Mingxi finally said more directly, “My sister… she passed away.”

“What?!?!” Yuanyuan’s pupils widened in shock, her tiny body trembling.

Such a cute little baby… gone?

Yuanyuan’s understanding of death was simple:

To leave the world forever, never being able to be with loved ones again, turning into ashes, and being buried in the ground, where a little flower would bloom—one that couldn’t speak or think.

Even though this understanding softened the harshness of reality, it was still cruel enough for Yuanyuan to grasp its enormity.

“Why…?” she whimpered, tears welling up in her eyes. “Yuanyuan didn’t even get to play with her…”

Yu Mingxi couldn’t explain everything to this little girl.

The truth was too painful, too heartbreaking.

Even remembering it made his own heart ache, piercing like a thousand needles.

Memories rushed back, uncontrollably flooding his mind, the same ones he had tried to bury for so long.

When his sister was only three months old, she had been kidnapped.

The kidnappers had targeted their father, demanding a ransom. But when it came time to exchange the money, the kidnappers suddenly changed their minds and refused to return his sister.

His father, desperate, chased after the kidnappers in his car, speeding down the highway. The kidnappers’ car lost control on a bridge, crashing into an oncoming vehicle before plunging into the river below.

By the time they recovered the car from the river, it was dark. The doors were wide open. There were no signs of the kidnappers, and more tragically, no sign of his sister.

His parents had waited on the riverbank, day and night, hearts shattered.

As long as there was no body, they clung to the last thread of hope.

The kidnappers were missing, and with the car doors open, maybe—just maybe—they had escaped with his sister to the riverbank.

Yes, at that time, Yu Mingxi, his father, his mother, and even his younger brother Yingze had all believed that.

But within days, the police found the bodies of the kidnappers, bloated and decomposing in the water.

There was no trace of his sister, no tiny body nearby.

After almost two weeks of searching, they found the pink blanket his sister had been wrapped in, caught on tree branches miles downstream.

The blanket was so filthy and torn that it was barely recognizable, full of rips and holes.

Even now, Yu Mingxi felt that finding that dirty, tattered blanket was more brutal than finding her body.

His parents refused to give up hope, not as long as her body hadn’t been found. But day by day, that hope faded.

When the search team finally withdrew, his father’s expression had been terrifying—worn and silent in a way Yu Mingxi had never seen before.

It was also on that day that his mother, unable to bear it any longer, asked for a divorce.

The kidnappers had targeted his father, but his sister had paid the price, and for that, his mother could never forgive him.

Yu Mingxi wasn’t sure what the search team had told his parents, but he had looked up information on his own.

There had been incidents where people had jumped off that bridge before, and their bodies were never recovered. If a grown man, over six feet tall, couldn’t be found, what hope was there for a three-month-old baby?

The river’s fish, the powerful currents, the sharp rocks—any of them could have destroyed his sister’s body.

Even the kidnappers hadn’t survived. How could his baby sister?

They never found her body, but they all had to accept that she was gone.

After a simple funeral, his mother left the house with her bags packed. His sister’s clothes and toys were buried under the headstone in her place.