Chapter 30

It takes another forty minutes by bus to get from the town to the county seat.

But after such a long high-speed train ride, she felt nauseous and couldn't eat anything. She was so sick from the acid reflux that she didn't take the bus and instead spent five yuan to get into a minivan.

Driving a minivan still makes me feel nauseous, but it's still much better than a bus with all sorts of mixed smells.

In the past, Ms. Wang never let her ride in a minivan when traveling back and forth, not for any other reason than to prevent her from being abducted by unlicensed taxi drivers.

Song Yihuan had a good attitude about this. On her way from the high-speed rail station to the bus station, everyone stared at her full head of pink hair.

If the unlicensed taxi driver were a human trafficker, he definitely wouldn't let her get in his car.

Just as we were about to arrive, Ms. Wang sent her message at the perfect moment:

Where are you? I'm waiting for you at the main intersection.

In their dialect, "main road" specifically refers to that one road, the widest one with a small shopping mall behind it.

The bus stop is on that road, but unlicensed taxis don't go there; you have to stop before you turn the corner—there are cameras on the main road to catch unlicensed taxis.

Song Yihuan was caught red-handed taking an unlicensed taxi.

"Mom, take it."

Surprisingly, Ms. Wang didn't scold her; instead, she reached out and took the pink suitcase from her.

She hadn't seen Ms. Wang for a year, not even a video call. She always felt that Ms. Wang had lost weight, but in fact, Ms. Wang's weight was very stable, the kind of stable that comes from being thin.

She was the kind of woman who was very thin, with visible veins and bones under her skin when she spoke. Her voice was hoarse and raspy, and she had a very loud voice that wasn't very gentle.

Superstitious older people would say that a woman with a face like her is unlucky.

Before her grandfather passed away, her grandmother always said that Ms. Wang was not blessed. After her grandfather and father passed away, her grandmother started to curse herself for not being blessed.

Song Yihuan simply couldn't understand this kind of ridiculous logic.

The suitcase was dragged from the cobblestone path onto the asphalt road, then onto the gravel-strewn dirt road, the sound of the wheels growing louder and louder. Song Yihuan actually breathed a sigh of relief; this way, even if she spoke, she wouldn't be able to hear clearly, and she wouldn't have to make small talk.

The mother and daughter could chat for a bit on the phone, but when they actually met in person, she really didn't know what to say.

When she signed the letter of intent to withdraw from the experimental group, she thought she had severed all ties with Ms. Wang for the rest of her life.

Now I think that idea was naive of hers; no mother in this world can voluntarily break ties with her daughter.

After she fled, Ms. Wang's tone on the phone was unusual; she spoke in a deliberately high-pitched voice, which made Ms. Wang detect a hint of gentleness in her voice.

"Mom misses you." That's what Ms. Wang said during her first phone call.

As she watched Ms. Wang dragging her suitcase away, memories flooded back, and she couldn't recall how she had hardened her heart and refused to come back a year ago after receiving the phone call.

Song Yihuan took a breath and chased after him, shouting loudly despite the rumbling of his suitcase: "The town is so dirty, not even as clean as the roads in our county. When I got off the train, I smelled a strong sewer odor, and there was garbage everywhere, with piles of bricks taller than a person next to it."

Ms. Wang glanced at her, took her arm, and felt the hard bones dig into her arm, causing her pain—Ms. Wang's arm had less flesh than hers.

"Otherwise what? In town, people litter and urinate anywhere and nobody cares. But here, every plot of land is accounted for. This plot is for drying corn, that plot is for setting up a stall to sell small items... People are so messy that they get chased and beaten up."

"Hehe." Song Yi laughed, "Unwritten rules are more powerful than laws."

"The law doesn't care about personal feelings."

Her family was considered wealthy; their self-built house was very close to the main road. It seemed far to walk there if you didn't talk, but you arrived in no time if you chatted with them.

According to their local custom, people are usually kept in the gatehouse after they pass away, but my aunt passed away in the hospital, so her coffin is still there, and the gatehouse only has an empty coffin.

Benches were scattered haphazardly in the courtyard, and many people were sitting there. Most of the relatives and friends were familiar faces, and she could even tell them by how close or distant they were.

Even strangers could roughly guess how close or distant the person was—because the closer the relationship was to the aunt, the more relieved the expression seemed, while the more distant the relationship, the more sorrowful the expression appeared.

That's incredibly strange.

For example, the one who was pounding on the chair and wiping away tears, crying the most unrestrainedly, was the auntie who sold braised food across the street. They were not related, but she was probably there for the banquet.

Song Yihuan walked to the corner where black mourning clothes were piled up and reached out to take one, but Ms. Wang slapped it away.

“You’re not wearing it,” she said.

"All right."

Song Yihuan didn't argue with her. If she wasn't allowed to wear mourning clothes, then she wouldn't wear them. She always felt that such formalities were only meaningful to the living.

She smiled at her aunt's rather beautiful black-and-white portrait and mouthed an apology.

In their county, there is still a custom of burial, but the aunt was not buried. The hearse took her to the town's crematorium and placed her in the town's cemetery.

Before my aunt went to the ICU, she said that fireworks or satellites containing ashes would be nice. But when my grandmother heard this, she just wiped away her tears, and Ms. Wang sternly told her not to talk nonsense.

Only Song Yihuan, a child who couldn't speak, took these words to heart; they were completely useless.

When I took my aunt to school in the afternoon, the weather was neither sunny nor cloudy. There were clouds in the sky, but they weren't thick. There was sunshine, but no sun. It was a rather unremarkable day.

Song Yihuan followed slowly at the back of the line. Ms. Wang wouldn't let her touch anything related to the funeral, so she just walked along, listening to the occasional sighs that drifted by.

"How pitiful..."

"So young."

...

She had a hard time discerning how much of what was said was directed at her aunt, how much at her, and how much at their cursed family.

“I spend my whole day on one of your jobs, and I only earn a pittance, not even enough to buy a new tire cover.”

The square-headed man stood beside the hearse and cursed. He was a very peculiar-looking man with unusually thick and short legs and a low, stable lower body—most people in his area who made a living from funerals had this build.

"Bullshit!" Grandma cursed in a gruff voice, "You bunch of leeches, you're all worthless..."

“Mom,” Ms. Wang interrupted her grandmother’s barrage of profanities, stepping forward to block her way, “making a pittance? The funeral clothes, incense, and banquet—aren’t they all arranged by you? How much kickback is enough?”

"Let's keep things separate. I drove over ten kilometers from town; even if I didn't do anything special, I certainly put in the effort..."

When Song Yihuan returned from town, she heard shouting and cursing at the door before she even got back inside. She sat on the bench by the door, leaning against the wall and listening for a long time, but she still couldn't understand what her grandmother and mother were arguing with the funeral director about.

"Hey! Sister Xin Xin." Song Yihuan grabbed Sister Xin Xin who was passing by, "What's going on?"

Xin Xin succinctly stated: "If a triangular nail punctures a tire, they'll make you pay for it."

"Oh." Song Yihuan finally understood. "What does that have to do with our family? Isn't it just these people fighting each other for business?"

“We didn’t take the main road and there were no surveillance cameras, so they had to chase after us for money.” Xin Xin sat next to her on the bench. “My aunt’s arguments are really fierce; she almost shoved her face into his forehead.”

"Who knows if your family is just too heartless to pay the fees and then put nails in there?" Seeing that he had no hope of getting money, the square-headed funeral director completely lost his temper, "Don't come looking for me if anyone in your family dies again..."

Before she could finish speaking, Song Yihuan and Xin Xin both gasped.

"Hey, Mom!" Before Ms. Wang could make a move, Song Yihuan suddenly jumped up.

"He's finished." Xin Xin shrank back in fear.

Before Song Yihuan even reached the location, Ms. Wang's fingernails had already scratched Mr. Bai's face, leaving two and a half long bloody marks from the corner of his eye to the bridge of his nose.

......

"They wouldn't let me wear mourning clothes, and then they dismantled someone else's hearse themselves."

Mr. Bai jumped into the car as if fleeing, driving it erratically.

As the car drove away, everything, whether it was black or white floral or plain linen, was torn to shreds and left on the ground. An auntie selling braised food passed by, hands on her hips, spitting and cursing the bad luck.

Song Yihuan sat on the edge of the bed, holding a huge shiitake mushroom with her chopsticks, and took small, disgusting bites of it.

Ms. Wang sat on the edge of the bed folding paper ingots. With each fold and pull, the flat origami puffed up and turned into a three-dimensional ingot.

“Mom, fighting can get you detained,” Song Yihuan said seriously. “Haven’t you heard? If you lose, you’ll be hospitalized; if you win, you’ll be detained.”

Ms. Wang deftly folded the gold paper and said, "This is nothing, it's hardly a fight."

“…Alright then,” she asked. “Are the gold ingots folded for my aunt?”

Ms. Wang said fiercely, "Don't ask."

"You're not even going to touch it, can't I just ask?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

Ms. Wang glanced at her and said, "Go see your dad tomorrow, and get a blood test and a PET-CT scan the day after tomorrow."

Song Yihuan looked up: "My high-speed train is the day after tomorrow."

"How long has it been since your last check-up?" Ms. Wang's eyebrows almost stood up. "You have to get checked whether you want to or not."

Song Yihuan wanted to argue, but her mind was filled with the image of her grabbing the funeral director, so she sighed and said, "Then I'll change my ticket and leave the day after tomorrow."

Ms. Wang neither confirmed nor denied it.

On the day of the follow-up examination, she was forced to go to the town hospital to have her blood drawn. She lost count of how many tubes were drawn, only knowing that the nurses couldn't hold them with both hands and put them into a refrigerated box in two separate sessions.

Ms. Wang held her medical insurance card and ID card, and instead of staying with her, she sat far away and waited.

After all the tests were completed, she took Ms. Wang's arm and led her out of the hospital. Ms. Wang had driven there, and her car was parked at the entrance.

Ms. Wang stuffed all the colorful papers and painkillers from the hospital into a plastic bag and put it in the back seat of her car.

Song Yihuan didn't get on the bus. She wanted to go to the hair salon in town to touch up her hair color, but she couldn't figure out how to bring it up.

Touch-up painting is very cheap around here, but the materials are of poor quality and supposedly carcinogenic. Although this didn't really deter her, Ms. Wang still wouldn't let her go.

You absolutely must not tell the truth.

"Get in the car, what are you waiting for?" Ms. Wang opened the passenger door.

Song Yihuan hesitated before saying, "I'd like to wander around the town."

"OK."

Ms. Wang agreed with unusual ease, without asking any further questions. Song Yihuan, who had a whole bunch of persuasive words in her mouth, suddenly found herself speechless, leaning blankly against the car door with her head tilted to the side.

"Do you want your mom to take you?" Ms. Wang asked when she saw that she hadn't closed the door.

"No need, no need, there's no need to deliver to such a small place."

Song Yihuan quickly closed the door, reached for the back door, and grabbed her small bag.

I pulled, but it wouldn't budge; the car door was locked.

"I'll take the bag back for you," Ms. Wang said. "Your ID card and medical insurance card are inside; you've lost them."

"oh."

Song Yihuan watched Ms. Wang's car leave, somewhat bewildered.

It's quite frightening when your mother, whom you haven't seen for a year, suddenly becomes understanding; you always feel like something is going to happen.

This fear of the unknown lingered with her until she took a bus to the train station the next day.

The town's train station was small and dilapidated, with construction tarpaulins erected around the entrance for a whole year, but nothing was happening inside. Despite its small size, the station was surprisingly crowded, with woven bags and urea bags scattered everywhere, and even people lying flat on the ground.

She had to tiptoe to walk around the short distance from the entrance to the security checkpoint.

There were two ticket machines next to the security checkpoint, both of which had signs in black and white indicating they were broken, so she had to queue in the long manual ticket collection lane.

Inside the manual window was a man in a blue railway uniform, which he wore carelessly, with only one button haphazardly fastened, revealing a yellowish undershirt underneath.

When it was her turn, the man in the blue uniform didn't say anything, but stretched out his hand and slapped it on the table.

Overwhelmed by the stench of the crowd around her, Song Yihuan's brain went blank, and she asked blankly, "Huh?"

"ID card!"

The woman in the blue uniform leaned close to the microphone, and the speaker on the glass blasted into her face.

"Wait a minute." She reached into her bag and rummaged around for a while, but couldn't find her ID card.

As she opened her suitcase, ignoring the complaints from the crowd behind her, the loudspeaker announced again:

"Move aside and look for it!"

ID card……

She awkwardly dragged her luggage aside and squatted down to rummage through it.

She opened every little compartment, inside and out, and took out everything inside.

I've searched everywhere, but I can't find it.