Lou Zhiyun's words sounded somewhat familiar.

Ha Yue stared blankly at the other person's gradually blurring figure in the night for a moment, then immediately remembered that she had interacted with Xue Jing in the same way half an hour ago downstairs at the hotel.

She relaxed her guard against Lou Zhiyun, realizing that he probably didn't intend to commit a crime of passion by robbing her small shop; he might have feelings for her.

Thinking about this, she couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed, not because of Lou Zhiyun, but because she was wondering: Could it be that her behavior of wanting to apologize to Xue Jing just now also seemed like sending him romantic signals between a man and a woman?

The rocking horse outside the shop, which had been running for three minutes with just one coin, stopped rocking. The little girl ran in, clinging to her grandmother's leg and pleading, "Just one more time, please? The rocking horse ended before it even started."

The elderly grandmother touched her granddaughter's forehead, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and had to get up again to go out and insert coins. In the meantime, Ha Yue also charged her phone.

On the screen, apart from Lou Zhiyun's unfamiliar caller ID and WeChat friend request, Xue Jing did not reply to her messages, as expected.

Ha Yue, her toes gripping the insole, reread the message she'd sent to Xue Jing without thinking several times. She realized he might genuinely misunderstand her intentions. After a long silence, she erased the two awful messages from her mind, sighing inwardly: Whatever, who cares what he thinks? Her intention wasn't to date her ex-boyfriend anyway. Maybe he's not replying because he has a girlfriend and wants to avoid suspicion. That's fine too. If Xue Jing has a girlfriend, and she still asked him out to dinner, what would his girlfriend think?

She didn't want to become one of those "green tea" ex-girlfriends that often appear online.

Xue Jing is now considered a semi-public figure, and she could easily become a scandal in the public eye.

It's just a meal. If you don't want to eat, you don't have to. It's not a big deal. The past is like ashes, and there's no need to make a clear judgment about it.

She doesn't have time to suffer emotionally over an ex-boyfriend.

Half an hour later, the little girl who had ridden the rocking horse ten times was finally dragged away by her grandmother from the entrance of the small shop. This time, Ha Yue carefully checked that all the switches in the shop were turned off before calling Zhao Chunni to tell her that she would be back soon, as would Zhu.

When I got home, dinner was already prepared. It turned out that Zhao Chunni was in charge of cooking for both families today.

Before Aunt Siqin left her house, she took her hand and quietly told her not to be angry with her mother. In fact, as soon as Ha Yue left home, she regretted losing her temper. She sat alone in the yard for a short while before rushing to the stove to start a fire. She said that Yueyue liked her Hui Shao noodles the most and that she had to make more before Yueyue came home.

Aunt Siqin is a few years older than Zhao Chunni. She bought out her urban residents' pension insurance a few years ago. Now she has raised her child on her own and helped her son get married. She can still receive nearly 2,000 yuan in pension every month. She can make a living and no longer needs to work odd jobs to earn money.

However, a woman who was used to working couldn't stay idle. After getting married, she lived with her son and his wife. During the day, neither of her children were at home. Jinzi drove for the Cultural Bureau, and her daughter-in-law, Cao Xiaoyu, worked as a designer at a printing shop in the county. So she offered to come over during the day to take care of Zhao Chunni.

A lunch and a dinner—the two old friends spent the whole day chatting and laughing.

Ha Yue was delighted and grateful. She tried to give her aunt a fee for her services, but the aunt refused, saying that the two families were already close. So she could only exchange the money for equivalent vegetables, fruits and supplements, and regularly send them to her aunt's house in boxes.

After the conversation ended, Auntie, carrying a large bowl of packaged noodles, happily bid farewell to Ha Yue. Watching Auntie walk into her yard, Ha Yue looked back at the light shining from her house, and the smile on her face turned somewhat bitter.

Aunt Siqin didn't know that Ha Yue hadn't eaten Hui Shao noodles since the year his father left home.

Zhao Chunni never liked the dish "Hui Shao Mian" (a type of noodle dish). She only started learning to make it because her father and daughter liked it. After Ha Jianguo left, she simply regarded this kind of home-cooked food as a kind of spiritual betrayal.

At that time, Ha Yue was too young to understand and didn't know how to read her mother's expression. Once, when she had gastroenteritis, she complained that her mother's cooking was not to her liking and begged her mother to make her another bowl of noodles that her family used to eat.

Zhao Chunni went berserk and dumped the entire table of food into the trash can, punishing her by not allowing her to eat for two whole days.

Ha Yue still remembers the fear of having to rummage through trash cans for food in the middle of the night because of hunger.

Why would Zhao Chunni make her noodles on her own initiative?

Ha Yue didn't think it was because her sick mother had started to regret her past actions.

Human nature is hard to change.

Zhao Chunni's temper is like a rock in a latrine—stinky and hard. She's probably trying to be nice to her today because she's forgotten about Ha Jianguo leaving home. Her timeline has suddenly regressed to more than ten years ago.

After dinner, the mother and daughter cleaned up the dishes together. The weather was getting colder, and in another half month, the outdoor temperature in Suicheng would drop rapidly below zero after winter began.

Piglets that have just been weaned still need to live indoors.

As for the geese in the yard, they need to be eaten one after another before the first snowfall, either braised, stir-fried, or processed and frozen in the freezer for later use. Otherwise, the meat will become tougher and tougher, which is secondary. The main problem is that a separate warm greenhouse needs to be built for the geese in winter, which is too much trouble. Ha Yue really doesn't have the time to raise geese.

She would never let Zhao Chunni go to the market to buy poultry again next spring.

Ha Yue turned on the TV and tuned it to her mother's favorite shows while she leaned back on the sofa. The two barely spoke during dinner. Zhao Chunni kept her head down and ate her noodles quickly. She ate so fast that she choked and coughed several times. Ha Yue poured her water twice but couldn't find a suitable opportunity to start a conversation.

The melodramatic 8 PM soap opera was playing out a story about a husband's infidelity. The mother and daughter were three seats apart. Ha Yue was perched at the end of the sofa, silently turning her head to check on her mother's reaction. However, her relaxed face showed no emotion; she was just nodding drowsily at the television.

Under the interplay of light and shadow on the television screen, Ha Yue suddenly had the illusion that Zhao Chunni's entire face seemed to be slowly melting.

Two years ago, when I took Zhao Chunni to Jicheng for a face-to-face consultation, the doctor told me privately about the progression of Ha Yue's Alzheimer's disease.

As the brain disease progresses, patients not only gradually lose their memory, but also lose their ability to understand their surroundings. Emotional instability, compulsive repetitive behaviors, and urinary and fecal incontinence are common clinical phenomena. At the same time, patients' appetite and libido will increase.

This is a one-way street whose condition has worsened; the destination is known, and there is no possibility of turning around or making a U-turn along the way.

The doctor had clearly told her this, but for the past two years, Zhao Chunni had been in very good condition, so good that Ha Yue had become somewhat confused about these scientific facts.

Maybe? Maybe Zhao Chunni's mild symptoms can last for another ten years or so.

She's just like all middle-aged people who are starting to get old; she forgets to add salt when cooking, forgets where her phone is, occasionally forgets what she's doing, and when she walks down the street, she doesn't remember the way home.

Unfortunately, the miracle she imagined will not happen, at least today, she realized this clearly once again.

Because Zhao Chunni's pants, which had been wet with urine from wandering outside for a long time that afternoon, were still hanging outside the window.

The crying sound from the television suddenly became unbearable. Ha Yue clenched her fists and went out into the yard for some fresh air, and also to check if the two little pigs, who had been running around outside all afternoon, had gotten sick from eating random things.

Because of motion sickness, the piglets looked a little listless and didn't finish their evening feed. Ha Yue stirred some vitamins and probiotics into their food bowls and added some warm water before going back inside to get her mother's change of clothes. She then woke her up and went to the east wing to prepare a bath for her.

After Zhao Chunni changed into her pajamas, lay on her bed, and closed her eyes, Ha Yue finally had time to go to the bathroom to wash up.

The hot water in the water heater had run out, and it would take another twenty minutes to boil it again after it was refilled. So she sat on the edge of the bathtub with a towel in her arms and casually browsed her WeChat Moments on her phone.

Grandpa Zhang, my neighbor in the back row, won thirty yuan playing mahjong this morning, and Aunt Li, my neighbor in the front row, is having longevity noodles for her birthday today. Ha Yue's WeChat Moments are now filled with these trivial gossips, but that doesn't stop her from enjoying reading them and giving them likes.

The bathtub under her bottom was newly installed two years ago. Zhao Chunni had always lived in a bungalow and had never used a bathtub before, but this did not stop her from gradually enjoying the relaxation of taking a bath. Although at first, when Ha Yue returned to Suicheng and prepared to spend money to renovate the bathroom, she expressed strong contempt, thinking that Ha Yue was just messing around and wasting money.

After scanning through all of my WeChat Moments.

The red dot in the contact list was still lit. Ha Yue clicked on it, looked at Lou Zhiyun's profile picture, hesitated for a moment, and did not choose to accept the other party's friend request.

If they were just ordinary customers, she wouldn't mind exchanging contact information with them; it's a necessary enthusiasm for doing business. But after noticing Lou Zhiyun's ulterior motives, she had to act cautiously.

Although Lou Zhiyun seems to fit Ha Yue's criteria for choosing a partner back in Jicheng, Ha Yue is not in the mood to consider personal feelings right now. Besides, if he knew that she had a mother with Alzheimer's disease who needed long-term care, he would not want to develop a deeper relationship with her.

There's no point in starting something that won't lead to anything; it's just a waste of energy.

Moreover, unlike big cities, small towns don't allow you to easily let go of your ex after a breakup and not see them for years. Here, the land is vast and sparsely populated, and even the slightest thing can become a topic of conversation for a whole year.

She had no intention of reciprocating his affections, nor did she want to get into any trouble.

As the clock struck ten, the red light on the water heater went out. Just as Ha Yue was about to put her phone on the small stool, a text message suddenly lit up on the screen.

She opened the message, her brows furrowing slightly before slowly relaxing, and then repeating this process over and over again.

The message was sent by Xue Jing.

The reply came four hours after she texted him that evening.

But the other party didn't seem to want to explain his delayed reply; he simply replied politely, "Of course I won't bother you. My WeChat account is with my phone number."