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He sat by himself, with his back against the coarse tree trunk, reading the note in his hand over and over. He had studied it forever, hoping that there would be something there. But there wasn't.
It was Haizhen's final letter. It wasn't a will, Haizhen never had one of those. It was a letter that she wrote when she was little - for a moment like this. He had read it every day, on the tree like this:
"Hi, to whoever is reading this. Probably meihua, mama says. Well then, if so, hi meihua, and if not then hi whoever. mama said I should write a will, but I'm just going to pretend like I didn't understand the brief because wills are boring. I'm not going to die anyway, not before I get what mama says we're looking for.
i miss all of you guys a lot, even though I love my new home so much. meihua, say hi to kai, renjun, yizhou, biyu, yangyang and jinlei for me. i'll be back soon, i promise. Mei, i hope you found your power soon. mama keeps looking over my shoulder and telling me to write it more proper and say what she told me say but that's so boringggg."
Then the handwriting changed, seemingly Haizhen had edited it more recently. To make it more of an explanation than a letter to a friend.
"I don't plan on dying, but in case I do, I just want to explain some things. We've all been away from each other for a very long time so we all have forgotten some of the details.
We all lived in that house by the field, and we all used to have fun. I still don't know to this day why we were all put there, but it was like a nursey or an orphanage. But at one point, we had to go home. I was first.
My birth mother came to collect me one day. I loved both her and her wife and I chose to stay. I hoped that you guys wouldn't think of it was betrayal, but you did. Then I heard that Biyu and Yangyang found families too. Jinlei, Kai and Meihua were sent to Korea. And Yizhou ran away when things turned sour. So Renjun was alone. In that house, and in that field. Even the people who once looked after all of us didn't want to look after Renjun. I always found it weird.
My power was killing people, meanwhile Renjun's was saving people and giving life. My mothers loved me so dearly despite how I was, and Renjun was one of the purest people in the universe yet no one wanted to give their time to love him. So Meihua, if you're reading this, you may still not remember what I'm talking about, but love Renjun. Love him with your whole heart.
We all hoped that after Jinlei, Kai and Meihua came back, things would go back to normal. They were only supposed to be out in Korea for a few months, but that became two going on three years. In that time, my mothers created UNW (united new worlds) in an effort to fight against the government who tried to persecute us for being different. But they died. They were killed and I had to take over.
At first, things went well. But then, I was naïve and I trusted the wrong people. More specifically, I trusted Kai. We all kept in contact, and I told all of you about UNW. Kai and Yizhou told the government and that's when things became dangerous. I know to this day, that at the time, that's not what they wanted to do, that they were forced. But in the end we all forget where we truly came from.
