A-Wang led Jiang Yu through the winding, fishy-smelling alleyways until they stopped in front of a sheet-metal shack bearing a sign that read “Zhou’s Seafood.”
A middle-aged man with a bare chest was lounging in a rattan chair, smoking a water pipe, wisps of smoke curling around him.
Hearing footsteps, he only lazily lifted his eyes.
“Uncle Zhou, taking in goods.”
A-Wang set the battered bucket down on the cement floor with a clatter.
Zhou Dafu blew a smoke ring and gave it a leisurely once-over.
The next second, the pipe slipped from his lips and clattered to the ground.
He shot up as if electrocuted, shuffling over in his flip-flops, plunging his hands into the bucket with near reverence to cup the green crab on top.
Its shell was glossy black-green, its belly swollen, and its two massive claws swung about, thicker than his own wrists.
Looking further down, dozens of purple sea urchins were piled at the bottom, spines thick and sturdy, each one plump and full.
Zhou Dafu had been buying seafood on this island for over a decade. Wild catches of this quality, he’d only heard about from the older generation.
“Girl—” He jerked his head up, eyes gleaming, voice tight. “This… where did it come from?”
Jiang Yu’s expression was cool and distant. She only asked, “Buying or not?”
Zhou Dafu choked on his words, immediately realizing she didn’t want to discuss it.
He switched to a businessman’s smile in an instant, grabbing a calculator and tapping away: “The urchins are big—thirty-five each, forty-eight of them, that’s one thousand six hundred eighty. These three green crabs are top-grade, I’ll round it up for you… two thousand! How about it?”
Jiang Yu said nothing, just watching him quietly.
Zhou Dafu felt unnerved by those clear, warmthless eyes, and gave an awkward chuckle. “Cough, just kidding. The crabs I’ll count as eight hundred, total two thousand four hundred eighty—let’s drop the change, two thousand five hundred!”
He cheerfully counted out twenty-five red bills from the drawer and handed them over.
Jiang Yu took the money and, in front of him, counted it three times at a leisurely pace before tucking it into her inner pocket.
The feel of the bills carried a solid warmth.
Transaction complete, Jiang Yu turned and left. She’d barely gotten a few steps away when she heard Zhou Dafu’s lowered, urgent voice from inside the shack: “A-Wang! Which beach was she on? Take me there now!”
Money in hand, the first priority was a place to stay.
A-Wang was a warm-hearted sort, so he brought her to an abandoned stone house next to his own yard—three hundred a month in rent.
The place was small, but the stone walls were thick and could block the sea wind.
Inside, there was only a hard wooden plank bed and a table with a chipped corner.
Jiang Yu paid without hesitation, then went to the general store to buy the cheapest bedding and toiletries. Of the two thousand five hundred, only one thousand eight hundred remained.
Night fell, and the sea wind whimpered against the window.
“Thump, thump.” A knock at the door.
Jiang Yu opened it to find A-Wang’s mother, Aunt Lin, holding a coarse ceramic bowl, steam rising from it.
“Girl, it’s cold out—have some fish soup to warm yourself up.”
Aunt Lin’s voice was loud and hearty, and her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes.
Jiang Yu looked at the bowl of rich white fish soup, hands hanging at her sides, unmoving.
Her whole life, what she’d received most was disgust and expulsion. This kind of pure, unconditional kindness was so foreign to her that her instinct was to step back.
“Take it! It’ll get fishy once it cools!”
Aunt Lin wouldn’t take no for an answer, pressing the warm bowl directly into Jiang Yu’s icy hands before turning and walking off, muttering, “Poor thing, skinny as a sheet of paper.”
Jiang Yu stood in the doorway holding the bowl for a long time.
One sip went down, warmth sliding from her throat all the way to her stomach. It was fresh, it was warm. Jiang Yu’s fingers tightened slightly around the ceramic bowl.
Early the next morning, the moment Jiang Yu pushed open her door, Aunt Lin’s furious shouts came from the neighboring yard: “What the hell! The chicken coop’s got a hole in it—three hens ran off!”
Then A-Wang’s wail: “Mom! Both my bike tires are flat! They were fine yesterday!”
Jiang Yu stood at the door, the towel in her hand frozen mid-air, her face slowly sinking.
Not a coincidence.
In the Jiang family, anyone who showed her kindness would start having bad luck the very next day.
Her providential luck would unconsciously devour the good fortune of those around her. That was the root reason she’d been called a Jinx and cast out of the house.
The warmth of that fish soup seemed to linger in her stomach, but now it burned.
Silently, she went back inside, took out a piece of chalk, and drew a heavy line across the ground in front of her stone house.
A line she would not easily cross, and would not allow others to approach.
She couldn’t drag anyone else down anymore.
Carrying her tools, Jiang Yu headed to Moon Bay on the west side of the island.
In her vision, there were still points of light beneath the sand, but they were dimmer and sparser than yesterday.
She understood now—the luck in the seafloor needed time to recover. Draining the pond to catch all the fish wasn’t the way.
Even so, the haul was still considerable.
She dug down along the brightest point of light. First, a nest of plump clams, then, deeper, the iron shovel struck something hard.
Pushing aside the black mud, three giant geoduck clams, each the size of a large bowl, lay still.
“Hey girl, what are you digging around for?”
A voice came from behind—it was Old Chen, a veteran fisherman on the island. He was carrying half a bucket of cat’s eye snails, and when he caught sight of what was at Jiang Yu’s feet, his eyes went wide.
“This soil’s no good—geoducks can’t possibly grow here!”
Old Chen had spent decades working this tidal flat and considered himself an expert. He put on a stern face, eyeing Jiang Yu with suspicion. “Girl, you didn’t buy these from the market in town and bury them here just to film a video for attention, did you? You young folks these days, always pulling these flashy stunts!”
Jiang Yu acted as if she hadn’t heard him. She bent down, tossed the last geoduck into the bucket, picked it up, turned, and walked straight past Old Chen.
Completely ignored, Old Chen’s face flushed red with anger. He spat on the ground. “Playing tricks and acting mysterious—let’s see how long you can keep this up!”
That afternoon, at Zhou’s Seafood.
Zhou Dafu stared at those three top-grade geoducks, his hands trembling slightly. Without a word, he slapped down twenty-four hundred yuan in cash.
A-Wang watched from the side, his eyes full of admiration. “Sis, your luck is insane! Do you know how popular beachcombing livestreams are online right now? With skills like yours, if you started streaming, you’d blow up across the whole internet!”
He pulled out his phone and opened a video to show Jiang Yu. On screen, a streamer was making a huge fuss over a few small fish, with comments flying past at lightning speed.
Jiang Yu’s hand paused mid-motion as she was putting away the money.
“Sis, don’t mind the noise they make. What’s trending now is exactly your style—quiet, aloof, letting the catch speak for itself! It’s called immersive experience!”
A-Wang pitched hard.
Jiang Yu glanced at the so-called “big catches” on the screen, a faint smirk crossing her lips.
“I’m not great with words,” she said.
“You don’t need to talk!”
A-Wang grew anxious. “You just dig—the netizens will lose their minds on their own!”
That night, Jiang Yu sat by the bed counting her earnings—three thousand six hundred yuan in total. For the person she used to be, that wouldn’t have covered a single meal.
But now, it was everything she had to stand on in this isolated island.
Money. She needed more money.
She took out her old phone, downloaded a livestreaming app, registered, and completed the real-name verification.
When it came time to fill in her username, her finger hovered over the screen. What flashed through her mind was the cold line from the family announcement: Jinx, cursed with malevolent aura, life or death not to be considered.
After a moment of silence, her fingertip landed and typed out seven characters.
【Jinx’s Beachcombing Diary】
At three in the morning, Jiang Yu was startled awake by the sound of waves outside her window. Sleep wouldn’t return.
She pushed open the door, wrapped her coat tighter, and gazed out at the pitch-black sea.
Suddenly, her pupils contracted sharply.
At the far, far edge where sea met sky, a sliver of silver light flared without warning—like a cold bolt of lightning, silently tearing through the darkness of the deep ocean’s night!
It wasn’t golden light, nor purple—it was a silver-white tinged with some primordial aura, flashing and gone in an instant.
Jiang Yu’s heart skipped a beat.
That light… it wasn’t like something lifeless!
It was more like some ancient behemoth that had slumbered for a thousand years, deep within the black abyss, sensing her arrival through ten thousand layers of seawater, slowly opening its eyes.
It was a precise response that crossed time and space—or perhaps… a call.
She stood facing that direction of the sea for a long time, until the sea wind had chilled her to the bone.
“…Probably just a distant fishing boat’s light.”
She murmured to herself, turned, and closed the door.
Outside, the sound of the waves seemed heavier now—thud, thud—as if coming from somewhere impossibly far away. A deep, heavy heartbeat.