There were still more than three hours until two o’clock. Before heading home, Mo Fei did not forget to stop by the fruit shop downstairs to pick up the peaches she had reserved earlier.
“What a scorching day,” Li Hong complained as she packed the peaches for Mo Fei. She had originally displayed her fruit outside, but by now she had already moved everything into the shop.
“Yeah.” Mo Fei nodded in agreement as she looked up at the blazing sun hanging high in the sky. This kind of heat should not have appeared during this season.
When she had gone out that morning, the sun had not risen yet, so it had not been hot. But now, with noon approaching, the temperature had already climbed to thirty-four degrees Celsius. Many people had left home wearing long sleeves that morning, yet now they were sweating profusely, drenched as though they had been soaked in water. Mo Fei, however, unexpectedly felt that it was still bearable. Although she had broken into a sweat, it was nowhere near as severe as everyone else’s.
Just as Mo Fei was about to head upstairs, she suddenly heard a violent crashing sound in the distance. Turning her head, she saw that somehow, on the road she had just taken home, a massive fissure had suddenly opened up in the ground. A car happened to be driving over it and became wedged directly inside the crack, causing the vehicles behind it to crash into one another in succession.
Mo Fei’s expression darkened, and an intense sense of unease welled up inside her.
Perhaps having heard the sound of the key unlocking the door, both children ran to greet her at the entrance.
“I brought peaches for you two.” Mo Fei lifted the bag containing two jin of large peaches.
Mo Jianian naturally took the bag from her and handed her a pair of slippers.
Meanwhile, Mo Jiayue picked up a fan and began fanning Mo Fei.
With weather like this, even indoors, anyone without air conditioning or a fan would probably faint from the heat. Mo Fei glanced at the old-fashioned air conditioner in the house, then at the two children whose sweat-soaked hair was plastered to their foreheads.
In the past, they would only run the air conditioner for a few hours a day during the hottest days of July and August. But it was only May, and it was already this hot.
“Let’s turn on the air conditioner.” Without a second thought, Mo Fei pulled the remote control out of the drawer.
“Yay!” Mo Jiayue could barely stand the heat anymore and had already run beneath the air conditioner, waiting for the cool air to come out.
Mo Jianian came over carrying three freshly washed peaches and hesitated before speaking. “Mom, the electricity bill for the air conditioner is too expensive. We can just use the fan.”
“Let’s splurge for once today. I’ll put it on energy-saving mode.” Mo Fei casually picked up a peach and took a bite. It was sweet, crisp, and delicious.
Once all the doors and windows were tightly shut, cool air set to a constant twenty-six degrees Celsius quickly filled the home.
The heat lingering on Mo Fei’s body gradually faded away, and the sweat on the children’s heads slowly disappeared as well.
“Come sit down. I have something I want to talk to you about,” Mo Fei said before going to prepare lunch.
The two children exchanged glances before running over to sit beside Mo Fei, listening attentively.
Mo Fei then explained her plans to move and sell the apartment.
Although this place was close to the market and the hospital, making everything convenient, there were too many people around, and many of them knew the family of three. They all knew there was no able-bodied adult man in the household. If someone truly intended to cause trouble, she could hide inside her space, but the two children would suffer instead. Moving was absolutely necessary.
Mo Jiayue had only eaten half her peach, but the moment she heard they were moving, she became excited. “Really? Where are we moving to?”
Mo Jianian thought more carefully. “Mom, we’ve lived here since we were little. Why are we moving? Where are we going?” In truth, the apartment was not in very good condition. After living here for years, problems like aging electrical wiring and blocked pipes cropped up from time to time. What worried Mo Jianian was that moving to a better place would cost much more money.
“Don’t worry about the money. We’ll rent a place,” Mo Fei said after seeing through his concerns. “Things haven’t been peaceful lately. I want to move you somewhere safer. If necessary, I’ll ask your school for leave so you can stay home for a while. Primary school lessons are easy. I can teach you myself.”
Mo Jianian let out a soft sound of acknowledgment and nodded, accepting Mo Fei’s decision.
After talking with them, Mo Fei opened a cartoon on her phone for the children to watch while she went into the kitchen to prepare lunch.
Mo Jianian had already cooked the rice, and it was being kept warm. Mo Fei only needed to prepare the dishes.
Sometimes, when Mo Fei was simply too busy, Mo Jianian would even cook a few simple dishes himself, such as stir-fried eggs with chili peppers or stir-fried cabbage. The child was truly considerate. Mo Fei could not help sighing to herself before beginning to chop the vegetables with rhythmic thuds.
The first dish was cold shredded lettuce salad. The lettuce strips Mo Fei sliced on the cutting board were even thinner than those made with a shredding tool. The bright green lettuce was mixed with minced garlic, chopped bird’s eye chilies, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, black vinegar, and chili oil, making for an incredibly refreshing dish.
After placing the cold shredded lettuce into the refrigerator, Mo Fei started preparing the other two dishes: cucumber and egg soup, and stir-fried squid with garlic scapes. One cold dish, one hot dish, and one soup. The meal was complete.
After lunch, the two children got ready to head to their enrichment classes. The classes were not far from home, located in a tall building in the distance, only about a ten-minute walk away. Since Mo Fei had to stay home and wait for the real estate agent to arrive, she did not accompany them.
However, just before they left, Mo Fei took two five yuan notes from her pocket and slipped one into each child’s hand.
“It’s too hot. If you get thirsty, buy yourselves something to drink.”
Most of the children at the tutoring center were their classmates. When they saw the other children buying drinks and ice pops, they would inevitably be tempted. Mo Fei knew that very well.
“Oh, right. Remember to walk beneath the shop awnings when you go out. Don’t walk along the main road,” Mo Fei reminded them again as she watched them leave. From what she had seen so far, those ground fissures only appeared suddenly on major roads and had not yet affected the nearby buildings.
Mo Jiayue looked at the crisp new five yuan note and happily squinted her eyes. “Ice pops! Big Brother, let’s go buy ice pops. I want the strawberry flavor.”
Mo Jianian stared at the money in his hand in surprise. Their mother had suddenly become so generous. She used to give them only one yuan at a time as pocket money, but now she had given them five yuan each all at once. He nodded in agreement with his sister, and the two siblings headed toward the tutoring center together.
After the children left, Mo Fei walked around the apartment tidying things up. She carefully wiped away every stain she could find so that when the agent came to take photos of the property later, it would look much nicer.
Right on schedule, the real estate agent knocked on Mo Fei’s door.
“Miss Mo, I’m Luo Yonghe from Anxin Real Estate. We spoke on the phone earlier. Just call me Xiao Luo.” The agent, who looked to be in his thirties, first handed Mo Fei a business card before taking a pair of shoe covers out of his pocket and putting them on. “This is our company’s photographer, Xiao Xia.”
“Hello.” The photographer carried his equipment on his shoulder. He was suffering badly from the heat, and even speaking seemed to take effort.
“It’s fine. Just changing your shoes is enough. You don’t need to wear shoe covers.” Mo Fei did not like putting others to unnecessary trouble. It was also her first time selling a house, and she had not expected the agency to send not only an agent but also a dedicated photographer.
“It’s alright. That’s our company’s policy. The photo session will be quick, about ten minutes.” Luo Yonghe smiled. “Your apartment is in pretty good condition and has a warm, lived-in atmosphere. Besides Qinglang Primary School, it’s also close to Heguang Middle School. Properties here are in extremely high demand. I think we can even raise the asking price above the previous one million two hundred thousand yuan.”
Mo Fei nodded, poured both the agent and the photographer a glass of water, then took out the property’s ownership documents so the agent could register them.
After the photos had been taken, the three of them left Mo Fei’s apartment together.
The photographer returned to the company on his own, while Luo Yonghe climbed onto his electric scooter to take Mo Fei to view the rental properties.
It was just after two o’clock, when the sun was at its fiercest. Wearing a helmet and sitting on the scorching hot seat of the electric scooter, Mo Fei became so overheated that her vision began to blur slightly.
She silently added another item to her shopping list. She needed a water purifier and an ice maker. A household ice maker cost around ¥1,000 and could produce ice continuously twenty-four hours a day. She would also buy several ice pop molds. Both the children and she herself could not tolerate the heat, and having ice cubes would make it much easier to keep cold drinks…
The more Mo Fei thought about the things she wanted to buy, the more she felt that even the ¥1.2 million she was about to receive would not be enough. She could not simply sit back and wait. She had to keep earning money.
Finding a remote storefront was easy, but finding one that the owner was willing to rent on a monthly basis was much harder.
In the end, after talking himself hoarse, the agent finally found a storefront whose owner agreed to rent it by the month for three months at ¥800 per month. The storefront was about fifty square meters and surrounded by empty land, practically at the outskirts of the city. Mo Fei, however, was very satisfied with it. She signed the electronic contract on the spot, collected the key from the landlord, and then sent the storefront’s address to the wholesalers she had placed orders with that morning.
The storefront had been settled, but choosing a place to live required much more careful consideration.
Throughout the afternoon, Luo Yonghe took Mo Fei to four or five different properties, but she always managed to find some fault with each one. Just when Luo Yonghe thought he would lose the deal that day, Mo Fei unexpectedly nodded in approval of the one they were currently viewing.
The residential complex was located in the developing southern district of the city. It was quiet, with a large shopping center about one kilometer away. Outside the complex were two twenty-four hour convenience stores and a pharmacy. There was even a park currently under development nearby.
Luo Yonghe showed Mo Fei two properties there. One was a ground floor unit with a two hundred square meter garden. The other was a one hundred fifty square meter penthouse with a one hundred square meter rooftop terrace.
Mo Fei decisively chose the three-bedroom, two-living room penthouse. Living on the ground floor would not only be damp, but it would also leave her feeling less secure. Although the penthouse would be freezing in winter and sweltering in summer, she could solve that problem by putting up shade netting and growing greenery.
“What did you say the rent here was again?” The more Mo Fei looked at the penthouse, the more satisfied she became.
She had heard that the owner had renovated it to a high standard as a future marital home. Unexpectedly, work circumstances changed, and she was posted to Europe. She had not had time to return for several years, so the apartment had remained vacant ever since.
The owner was a young woman who stipulated that the apartment could only be rented to a clean female tenant, and only on a long-term lease.
“The rent is ¥5,000 per month, so that’s ¥60,000 a year,” Luo Yonghe quoted.
Mo Fei had actually checked the average rental prices in this residential complex on her phone. She smiled gently and asked Luo Yonghe to give her the real price. Otherwise, there would be no need for her to grant his agency exclusive rights to sell her apartment.
Eager to close the deal, Luo Yonghe said, “If you sign a minimum three-year lease, it’ll be ¥50,000 per year. What do you think?”
“Alright, three years it is. When can I move in?”
“As soon as we go back to the office and sign the contract.”
The money Mo Fei had left was not even enough to cover one year’s rent. She had to use her credit card to scrape together the ¥50,000 and paid the first year’s rent upfront.
Now she truly had nothing left. Her pockets were cleaner than her face.
Yet Mo Fei was delighted. Housing had been her greatest concern. Living in that forty square meter apartment, surrounded by so many neighbors, there was no telling what might happen in the future. For the children’s sake, and for her own, they had to move somewhere with better conditions.
Looking at the remaining credit limit on her credit card, and figuring that there was no reason not to use it if she had it, Mo Fei called a moving company.
After renting the apartment, Mo Fei returned to the storefront and stayed there for more than two hours, receiving a batch of supplies that had arrived that day, while some of the other orders would not arrive until the following day or the day after.
The move took place that night. Mo Fei specifically reminded the movers to be as quiet as possible. The old apartment building had poor soundproofing, and despite their best efforts, several neighbors still opened their doors to see what was happening.
Those who were more familiar with Mo Fei all asked where she was moving to. Mo Fei laughed it off, saying only that her work situation had changed. She never mentioned where she was moving.
Her son and daughter were even more tight-lipped. They stayed by Mo Fei’s side, greeted the neighbors they knew, and said nothing more.
The fruit shop on the ground floor had not closed yet, and the moving company’s truck was parked not far from the fruit stand. When Li Hong saw Mo Fei come downstairs, she asked in surprise, “Xiao Mo, why didn’t you mention you were moving?”
Mo Fei replied politely, “Ah, it was a last minute decision. I hadn’t made up my mind before. This afternoon, I happened to find a rental place while I was out.”
“Oh dear, you’re the one I got along with best in this building. Now that you’re leaving, I really…” Li Hong quickly stuffed a box of watermelon and some pineapple into the children’s hands. “Come, take these with you.”
The two children glanced at Mo Fei. Only after seeing her nod did they accept them, then they sweetly said, “Thank you, Auntie Hong.”
“Ah, such good kids.”
Before leaving, Mo Fei bought several hundred yuan worth of fruit, delighting Li Hong so much that she insisted on rounding down the total and even threw in an extra jin of peaches.
Mo Fei then said to Li Hong, “Sister Hong, remember to stock up on rice, flour, cooking oil, medicine, emergency supplies, especially things for cooling down and preventing heatstroke…”
Before Mo Fei could finish, Li Hong laughed. “Xiao Mo, don’t tell me you believe what people are saying online, about natural disasters coming and the apocalypse arriving. It’s all rumors. The authorities already debunked them! Last week so many people rushed to supermarkets buying things like they were free. I bought over a dozen bags of rice and flour myself, and now I’m worried about how long it’ll take to eat them all.”
…
Mo Fei had devoted herself to cooking, while the original owner had been busy with work. Regardless of which “Mo Fei” it was, neither had the habit of browsing trending topics online. She had no idea that discussions about natural disasters and the apocalypse had already flooded the internet.
But once enough people started talking about something, it became a case of the boy who cried wolf, and no one believed it anymore.
It was just as laughable as the Mayan prophecy claiming that “December 21, 2012, would be the end of the world.”
It was already the year 2030. Blue Star was still perfectly fine, and the people living on Blue Star were doing just fine as well.
Those promoting the coming disasters were just a group of young people chasing the latest trend. Once the experts debunked the rumors, they simply moved on to the next hot topic.
Mo Fei shook her head helplessly and boarded the Huolala moving truck with the children. Sitting beside their packed luggage, they headed toward their new home.