Crossed-Out Name

I raised him for eighteen years. In his will, I became a name to be deleted.After the earthquake, widower He Jianguo brought a six-year-old boy home from a relief camp. He built a life around school fees, quiet evenings, and braised ribs simmering for a son who still called him Uncle He.Now Chen Yuan has found his biological father—the man who disappeared before the earthquake that killed his mother. Jianguo tries to make room for their reunion. Then a discarded page in a print shop reveals a choice he never imagined his son would make.The boy he intended to leave everything to has named his birth father as his own heir. Every reference to Jianguo is to be deleted.Jianguo has never been good at saying what he feels. But as his son drifts toward a man whose absence has shaped his whole life, silence is no longer enough. Across a dinner table, with two wills laid side by side, father and son must face what they have mistaken for love—and what they still have left to say.Set in contemporary China, this standalone work of short fiction explores adoption, the pull of blood ties, and the ordinary acts that make a family.