For the next three or four years, I hardly ever noticed the crescent moon.
My new father was good to both me and my mother.
He was kind, patient, and honest.
His family had a small house with two rooms.
He and my mother slept in the inner room, while I slept alone on a wooden bed in the outer room.
At first, I wasn’t used to it.
I kept wanting to stay close to my mother and sleep beside her.
But after a few days, I began to love having a little room of my own.
The walls were clean and white.
There was a long table and a chair.
Nothing fancy.
But to me, those simple things made the room feel like it belonged to me.
I even had a new quilt.
It was thicker and softer than the old one.
For the first time, I could sleep through the winter without waking up from the cold.
My mother slowly changed, too.
She began to gain some weight.
Color returned to her face, and she no longer looked as pale and exhausted as she used to.
Even the thick calluses on her hands, left behind by years of washing clothes, gradually disappeared.
I no longer had to run to the pawnshop just to get enough money for food.
My new father also sent me to school.
I learned to read and write like the other children.
When he had free time, he would play with me.
He was always patient and gentle.
I knew he was a good man.
I really did.
But I could never bring myself to call him Dad.
Perhaps he noticed how uncomfortable I felt.
He never forced me.
Whenever he looked at me, he would simply smile.
His eyes were kind and clear.
Sometimes my mother would quietly talk to me when he wasn’t around.
“Try calling him Dad.”
I knew she wanted me to accept him.
I didn’t want to make things difficult for her.
And I wasn’t trying to be stubborn.
I understood everything.
The reason my mother and I could eat well, stay warm, and live a peaceful life was because of this man.
So I tried to accept him.
But that one word still wouldn’t come out.
During those three or four peaceful years, I almost completely forgot about the crescent moon.
Maybe I saw it from time to time.
But I never paid attention.
I would glance at it and forget about it moments later.
There were only two nights I could never forget.
One was the night my father died.
The other was the night my mother remarried and left our old home in that red bridal sedan.
Both nights had the same cold crescent hanging in the sky.
That faint moonlight.
That bitter cold.
Those memories had been carved so deeply into my heart that time could never erase them.
Even now, that moonlight feels clearer and colder than any other light in the world.
Like a smooth piece of pale jade, cool beneath my fingertips.
Whenever I remember those nights, I can almost feel that cold again.