On a midsummer afternoon, the heat was like a steamer, and the streets were empty. Most of Pingchuan Town’s permanent residents were elderly people and children, and at this hour they were all at home taking an afternoon nap.
After finishing a morning’s work, Lian Wan drove the truck back to the yard.
Seeing the road was empty, Lian Wan stepped on the gas, her eyes fixed warily ahead. The box truck sped over a speed bump and jolted up and down. Luckily, she had already delivered the cargo and was heading back empty, so there was no worry about goods getting shaken loose in the back. But the peace knot hanging in the cab swayed with the truck’s movement, occasionally smacking against her head.
Lian Wan reached out and brushed at it lightly, but didn’t brush it away.
She reached out again, and this time missed, batting only at the air.
The next second the peace knot swung back and whacked her on the head again.
It wasn’t that annoying, and it didn’t hurt when it hit her head, but this was the thing Lian Wan hated most, just like walking into an inescapable, tangled fog, throwing punches at the air, dissatisfied on one hand, and at a loss on the other, whether with people or things.
Lian Wan stepped on the brake, slowed the truck a little, yanked the peace knot off by her head, and tossed it onto the passenger seat piled with junk.
The truck was still moving. Lian Wan kept a tight face, looked down from above at the empty street in her view, and furrowed her brows a little, her bone structure looking flawless in the midday sunlight.
Lian Wan had a good face. Everyone in Pingchuan Town knew it, young and old alike. That might sound a little unbelievable, but Pingchuan Town was small, the kind where you could stand on a rooftop and see to the end of it at a glance. It wasn’t some small town nestled among mountains and water either. Everything in it was just as its name described, and just like countless small towns forgotten by the tide of the times, there were no ever-changing buildings, only trees that blotted out the sky, long streets that weren’t wide at all, and time, stretched out a little longer, counted in silence.
In a town like this, the distance between people was inconceivably close, as if you only had to poke your head out, without even stretching your ears, to know what the family next door had eaten for breakfast today, or what the husband and wife across the way had said to each other last night.
Not to mention that Lian Wan had grown up in Pingchuan Town from childhood and had never gone anywhere else. The reason people first knew there was such a girl was the fire in West District. As the only daughter of the two people who died in the disaster, she stood at the front of the long funeral procession hand in hand with her grandmother.
A pale, tall girl with a pair of eyes that were extremely calm when looking at people. Though she didn’t like talking, everyone was still very tolerant of her, and more or less held an affectionate attitude toward her.
As for whether that attitude was condescending, that depended on the person.
When people treat the suffering of others, they inevitably compare it with their own lives. It seemed that drawing a little good out of suffering was one of life’s commandments.
So, amid everyone’s tolerance, the path of the child who had lost her parents was not smooth. Her taciturn personality, the glances from classmates and teachers that were faint but impossible to ignore, the grandparents and grandchildren’s difficult life, and then her grandmother’s death on the eve of the college entrance exams, all seemed to have drawn a full stop on Lian Wan’s youth.
Lian Wan didn’t get into university.
There were plenty of people in town who graduated from high school and couldn’t get into university, but only she seemed born different from the others. Not only did she grow prettier and more outstanding as she got older, her spirit was high too. There weren’t many jobs in town, and even fewer that young people were willing to do. Among the classmates who didn’t go to university, only she neither married nor went into a factory. First she learned to drive a tricycle from a master and delivered feed to the feed factory. Later, somehow, she got her truck driver’s license and joined the town’s Truck Fleet. From then on, it was considered that she’d finally taken the proper path. Once Lian Wan started driving a truck and hauling and delivering goods through the streets and alleys, the neighbors no longer treated her like a child.
After all, the spirited way she jumped down from the driver’s seat was enough for anyone who saw it to praise her as dashing.
You’ve grown up. If your family knew, they’d be able to rest easy too.
That’s what they said.
To Lian Wan, words like that were meaningless. That same feeling of punching at the air seemed to come back again.
So she responded with her usual silence, her face cold as she gave a very unsociable nod.
Still doesn’t like talking. People thought that. Then they went right on being tolerant of her.
The truck drove along the road. A faint heat breeze came in through the half-lowered window, making people drowsy. After taking off the peace knot and seeing no one around, Lian Wan pressed the gas a little harder, thinking of getting home faster for her nap.
The pale blue box truck soon turned into a side road.
At midday in the middle of summer, the truck yard was outdoors. Stay there a little too long and you’d be soaked in sweat. It was called a truck yard, but in truth it was just a vacant lot cleared of weeds, where most of the motor vehicles in town besides cars were parked. When she drove to her familiar spot, the Truck Fleet’s vehicles were already parked here and there. Lian Wan backed up with practiced ease, pulled the handbrake, turned off the key, wiped over the dashboard once, then opened the door and jumped down, shaking the towel against the door handle. There was something crisp and neat, even beautiful, in the way she moved.
Not far away, a driver she knew had also parked and come out. Seeing her, he let out a long whistle, then called out:
Xiao Lian, no jobs tonight, want to go drink?
Lian Wan looked over and saw it was someone she often ran routes with. The corner of her mouth curved a little, as if frozen, but she didn’t say whether it was a yes or a no. She just waved once, then turned and walked away.
Leaving the little lane by the truck yard and turning into a long street brought her into a stretch of green shade that blotted out the sky. This whole area was old residential housing, with yards piled with clutter, faded red-brick walls, ivy strutting like it owned the place, clotheslines hung dense with laundry, and climbing vines tied to the iron railings of balconies, as if a patch of spring had been bound there.
Lian Wan didn’t carry an umbrella. A scattering of dappled light fell across her face, light and dark interwoven, making her features look even more defined.
Lian Wan’s home was a house left behind by her grandmother, a property allocated by her unit many decades ago. Back then, Pingchuan Town was still thriving, with large factories and state-owned enterprises. Young people took pride in working there. The towering smokestacks were the town’s most eye-catching landmark, thick black smoke rising from one corner of the town into the blue sky, and workers in gray-blue uniforms flooding into the residential district like a tide after work.
Decades passed. By the time the young Lian Wan walked into this place, the flowers and green shade were still the same as before, but it all seemed to be covered by a layer of fog. The years that had quietly remained here over the years had climbed onto her shoulders, as if they wanted to use her vigor to shake off the dust and rust all over the ground.
When she reached the first floor of her own building, Lian Wan’s steps paused, and her gaze drifted to the side uncontrollably.
The roll-up shutter of the newly opened grocery shop downstairs had already been raised. Rows of goods filled with all kinds of things were neatly arranged behind the glass doors. Even in broad daylight, the lights inside were on. The two glass doors were shut, and two bright red plastic welcome stickers were pasted symmetrically on them: Welcome.
Tacky, yet especially eye-catching against all this lush green.
Lian Wan was tall, and from her angle she could vaguely make out a figure sitting behind the door, head lowered, most of her features obscured by the bright red sticker crossing over them. Only half a pale forehead and a head of black hair, flowing down like water, could be seen.
Lian Wan heard her own brain automatically saying: She’s there…
With the sunlight helping, the half-hidden figure became even more hazy because of those soft lines.
Lian Wan’s feet shifted restlessly.
Those two glass door stickers didn’t let light through. Under the midday sun they looked as clear as if they had been washed with water.
Bright red, as if they could scorch your eyes.
Lian Wan felt her eyes being dazzled. Otherwise, how could she have, for some ghostly reason, walked closer and closer?
The closer she got, the faster her heart beat.
Soon, the transparent barrier was right before her. Lian Wan reached out and steadily pushed open one glass door. She had been calm enough at first, but the moment she accidentally touched the words Welcome, as if seared by an unfamiliar tongue of flame, she immediately let go in a flash.
The shock-absorbing glass door slowly drew back, and the bell hanging on it rang once.
The shop had air conditioning on. The coolness rushing toward her, and the fluorescent lights, left nothing concealed.
The grocery store was newly opened. The shelves were new, the goods were new, the checkout counter was new, and the woman sitting behind the counter was fresh too, as if she was born with the ability to catch the eye.
She didn’t look up.
Lian Wan was a little disappointed, and also somewhat timid after a long time. She circled around the shelves, pretending to be choosing something.
She dawdled for quite a while, and in the end, just as she often had these past days, took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and placed it on the cashier counter, indicating she wanted to pay.
A soft but unmistakable sound. The woman, who had been keeping her head down and scrolling on her phone, finally looked up.
A moment later, a smile came into her eyes.
“It’s you?” she said, her voice gentle, but the tail end of it didn’t drift off into the air. Instead, it carried a rather meaningful tone.
Lian Wan gave a “mm”.
Her voice was calm, not flustered.
The smile in the woman’s eyes deepened. She glanced at her, then lowered her head to look at the bottle of water.
The shop fell quiet all at once. Only the clock on the wall kept ticking.
“Is this brand good?” the woman asked after studying it for a while, drawing out her words.
Lian Wan was startled by her almost coquettish tone, and even her expression stiffened. “Mm…”
Seemingly dissatisfied that Lian Wan had answered her with only one syllable again, the woman said nothing. She simply lifted her head once more and looked at her, the smile in her eyes fading, replaced by an openly appraising gaze that was not at all unpleasant.
Lian Wan was caught by her gaze, not daring to move at all. She was annoyed at herself for being bad with words, yet a little sulkily thought that fortunately, she wasn’t ugly, so she wasn’t afraid of being looked at.
“It’s hot outside, isn’t it?” The woman looked at her for a moment, then asked leisurely, “You’re going home this early today? No work to do?”
She threw out two questions in a row, as if determined to make Lian Wan speak.
Lian Wan had been standing for a while and lightly braced herself on the counter with one hand, honestly explaining to her, “There wasn’t much work today. I’m free this afternoon.”
She was half a head taller, and she looked cold and indifferent, yet when she spoke there was something a little soft about it, even a nasal tone, and her voice was very quiet, as if she were afraid of startling her.
Still not many words, but Zhou Yanqian was already more than satisfied.
She was content, picked up the bottle of mineral water, and scanned it. The mineral water taken from the fridge had sat on the table too long, and a lot of water droplets had run down the bottle, pooling on the dark brown tabletop and clearly reflecting the shapes of the two of them under the light.
Following those wet marks, Lian Wan saw several cigarette butts strewn crookedly in the ashtray nearby, each one stained with conspicuous lipstick.
The lipstick marks were as eye-catching as the lipstick color itself.
So she really smokes?
Lian Wan’s mind jolted, but she was an honest girl. Her first thought was only that the woman was beautiful, and that she admired her. Before she could think of anything else, she then heard the owner of the lipstick marks say, “The machine for scanning payments seems to be broken. Scan me instead.”
The woman’s slender fingers tapped a few times on her phone screen, then held it out toward Lian Wan.
Lian Wan did as she was told. She lowered her head, scanned it steadily, then took the bottle of mineral water from the woman’s hand.
The two of them briefly touched, and each felt the other’s warmth.
But what appeared on the screen was not a transfer request, but the friend-addition page.
Lian Wan’s brain went blank. Her fingers froze, unable to react for a moment.
There was no one speaking in the shop, but Lian Wan knew she was being watched.
The bottle of mineral water was still seeping, and in no time her hand was wet with dripping water.