This [home] was missing one person—and also had one too many.

Right then, thousands of feet up in that congealed, sullen sky, lightning split the flawless dark, a purple scar scorching the watcher’s eyes.

Like a lamp snapping on, spears of light drove through the floor‑to‑ceiling glass into the living room, sharp as ice needles.

The girl’s pale face, lips pressed thin, lit up in a blink; you could watch the blood drain from her mouth like ebbing tide.

“Shaohan is my niece, and Bairong… my older brother’s… first child,” Ye Weibai said, eyes on the photos, voice flat as still water. “She lived in this house for quite a while.”

He didn’t notice the girl’s unease; he kept watching those frames like frozen ripples. “But… you can’t feel it at all, can you?”

“You can’t feel that a fourth person ever existed in this house, right?” His words fell like cold rain. “Bedroom; kid’s room; guest room; living room; kitchen; toilet; bath—towels; toothbrushes; bowls and chopsticks… and… the photo wall.”

Ye Weibai paused, breath held like frost. “Not a single trace of her… a living person, who clearly lived here for a long time, yet left no shadow, no dust.”

Cold sheen iced his pupils; he spoke the chill truth, not seeing Mu Ling’s fists slowly clench, or her teeth sink into her lip like a trapped bird biting a cage.

“The reason’s probably simple—because it was already full.” Ye Weibai tilted his head and stared at the snow‑white ceiling, spotless as winter, then sighed like wind through bare branches. “This house, this [home]—was full. Like teaming up to run a dungeon: once the party’s full… it means… they don’t need you.”

“In this [home], father, mother, child… were already happy, so full it brimmed like an overpoured cup; add one more, and it’s [too much], and it might crack.”

“[Too much] means [extra], [not needed]—it means [trash]. And [trash] gets cleaned away, even the residue gets scrubbed like sand from glass, leaving nothing behind, because that’s what [trash] is…”

“Enough—!!!”

The scream tore out of Mu Ling’s throat like a snapped string, shrill as a knife, shattering Ye Weibai’s words and flooding the room like a storm surge.

Ye Weibai blinked, then looked at Mu Ling; her pupils had pinched to needles, her rims were blood‑red, her breath ragged like bellows, and she glared at him with a gaze sharp as broken porcelain.

Her fists were tight, knuckles white like chalk, as if she’d swing any second like lightning finding a rod.

“Little Bell,” Ye Weibai called her nickname softly, voice like soot‑warm ash.

Mu Ling froze; panic flickered across her face like a startled sparrow. She stepped back, dazed, hands fluttering like leaves. “S‑sorry, s‑senior, I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Ye Weibai shook his head, that motion calm as a slow wave. “You don’t have to explain. Everyone has a past that stings like winter air.”

“Senior—” the girl’s eyes opened wider, a ripple crossing dark and light like moon on water.

“Mm?”

She hesitated, mouth parting like a petal at dawn, words swelling then sinking; she pressed her lips and let a breath roll out of her nose like mist. “...Mm. Senior… you… go on.”

She wanted to speak, but something like a stone in the throat weighed her down; she swallowed it like bitter tea.

Ye Weibai didn’t mind; he smiled, mild as dusk. “There’s nothing more to push. I got what I came for. We can go.”

“...Okay.”

…

…

Ka‑ka‑ka.

The elevator slid down like a falling seed.

Under the same white light, the man and the girl stood, shadows pooled at their feet like ink.

From just now till now, the girl had been quiet, the cheer and spring in her gone like sun behind clouds.

Ye Weibai’s words had tugged loose the careful gauze she’d laid over an old wound, hooking out dull pain like a fishbone.

In that narrow box, a low mood swelled like heavy fog; with the drop’s weightlessness, it wrapped them like damp cloth on skin.

But Mu Ling was still Mu Ling; quickly, she reached for speech, her voice light as a feather drifting.

“Senior.”

“Mm?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I almost…” she paused, words snagging like thread, “almost hit you.”

Ye Weibai lowered his gaze; she raised hers; their eyes met like flint, and he saw under her neat fringe the red rims, the clear black‑and‑white wetted like dew—she’d shed tears somewhere in that storm.

He turned away, eyes on the doors as if on horizon. “Dream on,” he said, dry as sand.

“I—” she started, and a big hand pressed down on her head, firm as a warm stone, rough like bark, making her sway like a reed; her sentence broke like a wave.

The hand’s owner spoke in a rich, husky tone, a voice like a lit cigarette burning slow. “Little Bell, you’re asking for a beating—you can’t beat me. Got it?”

“...”

She stayed silent; with her head pushed down, her face hid like a moon behind clouds, but her long lashes trembled like moth wings. Her fists clenched, then loosened—clenched, then loosened—like tides, and after a long moment she mumbled, “Not necessarily.”

“Mm?” Ye Weibai’s tone rose like a bird taking off.

“Ah, ah, nothing. I surrender! Senior, I surrender! Don’t flick my forehead! That hurts like hail!”

…

…

It shouldn’t have been like this.

A [home] is something that keeps a mark if you ever crossed its threshold, like footprints in wet earth; that’s why kin are tangled tight and hard to cut.

Because she left an imprint in the physical space of [home], and also drew a stroke in each member’s inner [home], like ink on paper.

But when that stroke turns into a blade, people start to hate the cut like a thorn under skin.

This World holds plenty of those hateful “why are we kin” questions, and those “how do we share the same blood” anchors that drag like weeds.

A violent father like iron and lash; a mother gambling like a moth to flame; a son parasitic as vine… The World is wide, and even ancient bloodlines can’t heal some marrow‑deep cruelties and crimes.

Those people are hated; they are [extra], like rust on a blade.

But Shaohan wasn’t that kind of person.

The kid was awkward, stubborn, sometimes solitary as a stray cat, but that’s not enough to make one hate her like rot.

Yet she was handed the word [extra], a tag pinned like a thorn.

It wasn’t born of her own traits; it was branded by her [family], like hot iron on hide.

Tagging is one of humanity’s great inventions; once a tag sticks, not only outsiders believe that stamp, but in time—long enough, often enough—even the person believes it like a mirror etching the face.

[Fat Pig], [Beanpole], [Dope], [Idiot], [Study Freak], [No‑Brains], [Unhappy]…

—I guess I’m a [Bitch]—the one tagged starts to accept it, as if she’d pasted it on herself in the mirror, and it won’t peel, and doesn’t need to peel.

That’s what’s terrifying, like mold creeping silent.

“It was my mistake.” That was Ye Weibai’s thought after he walked the house and faced that wall of photos, a low tide of regret washing in.

Regret followed, heavy as rain on old tiles.

He’d underestimated the pain that Shaohan had walked through, the thorns in her past path.

Only in this house did a dust‑covered memory stir; he recalled vaguely that, because their grandfather’s health was poor, Shaohan had lived here—inside this three‑person [home]—for a long stretch, like a wintering bird.

Into a once‑happy [home] came a new role like a sudden gust—and though they had always known of her, they all blindly ignored her, defaulted her identity to outside the [home], not to be embraced, an [impurity], a [foreign body].

Left in the old countryside, that arrangement might have been the [best] for everyone, like water avoiding fire; no one bothered anyone, their city trio stayed perfect, and on holidays they’d go back, see her, take her traveling, salving a guilt they didn’t admit, a balm like thin lotion.

No one raised objection; no one felt uneasy, the calm flat as a pond.

But calm cracked. This sudden [foreign body] came like a splinter into healthy skin; not obvious, but aching deep, and if not handled well, it inflames, oozes, then rots and collapses like wood left in rain.

Caught off guard, the “three” felt the pressure like a weight on chest, and moved by instinct, not thought, the way beasts do—simple, bloody, feral as fang.

So—let’s just not treat her as [kin], but as a [guest], like a passerby at the door.

That way, no crossings; no bad changes, like rivers kept apart.

It wasn’t only the young son who didn’t understand; he only read the room’s weather and acted, like a sapling bending to wind. Nor was it just the mother in panicked loss; she simply unfolded a mother’s defensive instinct around her own [home], because Shaohan was the “former woman’s” child, a thorn in the heart.

But why… why did the true kin—the father—do the same? That question hung like a bell with no sound.

Why would he treat his own daughter with a [guest]’s distance, like frost on glass?

He couldn’t know how much it hurts, how cruel that cold can be, like a winter that never thaws.

Violence hurts flesh, but “cold violence” crushes a heart like a fist of ice.

— The words were polite, like umbrellas in drizzle.

— The answer floated like fog.

— The pause held like a crack in ice.

— The protest thinned like a thread.

— The split stung like a torn seam.

— The word fell like a dull stone.

— The refusal shrank like a shadow at dusk.

— Silence spread like ink.

— The excuse fluttered like a torn leaf.

— The hum trembled like a thin string.

So polite, like porcelain; but… Shaohan wasn’t a [guest].

Every courteous question, every measured step back, every over‑polite gaze was a transparent, sharp knife, cutting into the small girl’s heart, which had come into this family with fear but more hope, carving lines like frost cracks.

The wound bled inside, red as flame, but because it bloomed within, no one else could see; even when the pain made her shake like a leaf, she could only scream soundlessly—because there was no [kin] to tell.

So she endured, quiet as stone; the wounds multiplied, crossing like tangled vines, twisting together ugly as matted rope, yet clearly, inch by inch inside the small girl, they outlined a single word—

[Foreign Body].