Chasing the Southern Breeze

Joanne Lin had been standing in the interrogation room for nearly a day, her face haggard and her appearance utterly disheveled. The strong light above the table shone directly on her, her eyelids half lowered, yet still revealing her stunning beauty.

"Answer me!" The mans voice was as concise and stern as ever. Joanne startled, her eyes snapping open. Her tongue unconsciously moistened her cracked lips; she was parched, the interrogation room was no place for the living.

"Officer Hunt, how many times do I need to tell you? I had no knowledge of the child abuse at the kindergarten. On the day of the incident, I was abroad attending an International Early Childhood Education Forum."

Her expression was resolute. Brought straight here from the airport, she was inexplicably labeled with the nonsensical crime of child abuse.

She denied it over and over, but he wouldnt believe her.

"Still you argue!" Unable to face the mans almost murderous gaze, Joanne shrank back. He loved children dearly, but there was no child abuse in her school.

"Im not arguing, I havent harmed the children." Her answer implied that she hadnt harmed her students, and if he cared to understand, it could also mean she hadnt harmed their child!

"Ha." Ethan Hunt sneered, stood up, and approached her. With each step, he tried to see through her, scaring her into retreating until she had nowhere left to go.

The man stopped a fingers breadth from the tip of her toes, his breath scorching. She was frightened, lowering her head— the man who appeared in her dreams every night was right in front of her, yet she couldnt embrace him.

She had so much she wanted to say, yet all she could do was numbly answer his questions.

"Joanne Lin, youre still the same as before, disrepecting the law."

The past was vivid in her mind. Whenever Joanne was scared or nervous, she would habitually fidget with her clothes. He glanced at her, quickly averting his gaze, not wanting to look at the malicious woman anymore.

The day of their divorce, they held their divorce certificates, calmly agreeing to vanish from each others worlds, as if it had all been a nightmare.

But now, it seemed the dream had awakened.

Joannes eyes were blurred with tears, her voice broken and sobbing. The womans cracked lips, washed with tears, regained a hint of color, trembling uncontrollably.

"Do you think this time you can shirk responsibility like you did back then?" The mans words were like thunder, echoing in her ears.

"I... Im sorry, Ethan, Im not... not..."

"Finally, you admit it, the child abuse incident at your kindergarten."

"No... no..." Joanne shook her head helplessly, her body feeling as if it had been stripped of strength, slowly collapsing to the ground, her teeth releasing her lips, a trace of blood appearing on them.

Joanne distinctly saw the man she loved so deeply, dressed in a police uniform, looking at her as if she were his mortal enemy. Had it not been for the constraints of that uniform, he would have, like in the past, unleashed his fierceness upon her.