Chapter 47
Yang Ye woke from her dream, her eyelids still heavy. The scenery outside the car window was rapidly receding into the distance, and the sunlight filtered through the window glass, illuminating her blanket-covered knees.
She felt warm all over, and she stretched slightly in her seat. Then she raised her hand and rubbed her sleepy eyes, trying to dispel the lingering sleepiness. She blinked a few times and heard Zhou Yiheng and Xiao Xiao whispering in the front row.
"Should we drive on the right side at the intersection just now?" Xiao Xiao's voice was filled with doubt, and his finger kept sliding across the navigation screen which did not change at all.
After exiting the tunnels, the navigation system suddenly stopped working. Perhaps it was because we had been in the tunnels for too long, the signal on our phone had weakened, and the navigation system couldn't be changed in a short period of time.
Zhou Yiheng held the steering wheel and looked at the highway ahead. "It should be at the next intersection. Just before entering the tunnel, the navigation said to turn after seven kilometers. It shouldn't be seven kilometers now, right?"
"Really?" Xiao Xiao fiddled with her phone, but the map remained motionless. "Where's your phone?"
"In my bag," Zhou Yiheng replied.
"Forget it." He put his bag on the back seat, unplugged the cell phone cable, and turned off the phone.
Yang Ye sat up and looked in front of her. The emerald green mountains were particularly clear in the sunlight, with undulating peaks and floating clouds of pure white. Clouds of all shapes appeared in the blue sky. The mountains seemed very close to them, or perhaps very far away.
Xiao Xiao tapped her fingers unconsciously on the cushion a few times. She glanced back and saw Yang Ye, who had already woken up. "Boss, you're up!"
"Yeah, I heard you talking," Yang Ye responded.
The phone lit up again, and the connected screen turned into a map.
Yang Ye asked: "We took the wrong road?"
"I don't know yet," Xiao Xiao said as her fingers quickly entered the destination on her phone. She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the prompt to keep right after 800 meters.
"That's right, that's right." She put the phone back to its previous position and saw the remaining kilometers.
We'd only driven a little over 400 kilometers. The highway was busy, but not too crowded. Monday pressed the accelerator, and the car drove over the ramp and onto the other side of the highway.
Yang Ye took a deep breath and turned his head to look out the window again.
The scenery hadn't changed much, and the car had fallen silent for a moment, with only the sound of the air conditioner and the occasional drop as we drove over a hill.
She fumbled for the pillow next to her and placed it on the car window. She leaned her head against it. She had a dream when she fell asleep. She couldn't remember what the dream was about, but she remembered standing on the ridge of a dirt field, looking at the empty field in front of her. There was no one around, only the sound of the wind blowing past.
Golden wheat, ears drooping slightly. It was probably autumn. She tried to recall her dream, but the images were like a fog, completely blurred and indistinct. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't piece them together.
In her dream, she heard the resistance charge in the distance, the bombardment of machine guns and bullets, shouts and roars, cries of fear and grief. The wails, one after another, stung her ears and tortured her already fragile nerves.
"Boss" Xiao Xiao turned around and handed her a pack of biscuits. "It's still more than 20 kilometers to the service area. Eat something first."
Yang Ye took the biscuit, her consciousness still not fully gathered. She forced a smile and said, "Thank you."
After unpacking, she suddenly thought of asking the two people in front of her, "Where are Li Cheng and the others?"
"Wait for us at the service area ahead," Xiao Xiao said. Li Cheng had set off earlier than them. As they were driving, they realized they were running low on gas, so they took a detour to fill up before getting back on the highway. They ran into a traffic jam along the way, and the round trip took them over half an hour.
Zhou Yiheng yawned. The straight highway was so long that his energy and strength couldn't keep up. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and said to Xiao Xiao, "It's your turn to drive later."
Xiao Xiao nodded and said, "Let's change at the service area."
The car slowly pulled into the service area's parking lot, its tires rubbing against the road, sending a few tremors through the car. Li Cheng, who was smoking in the parking lot, spotted the license plate of the approaching car and waved. Zhou Yiheng pulled up near Li Cheng's car and several of them opened the door and got out.
Putting out the cigarette in his hand, Li Cheng walked over and asked, "How is it?"
"It's okay." Zhou Yi moved his neck, arms and shoulders horizontally. He always looked forward while driving, and his neck was a little stiff.
Seeing Yang Ye, who was still a little depressed, he asked, "Did you sleep all the way again?"
"Yeah," she responded perfunctorily.
"Take a break, eat something, and replenish your energy." Li Cheng pointed to the rest stop in the service area. Zhou Yi stretched lazily, and Xiao Xiao narrowed his eyes and nodded.
It happened that at the entrance of the service area, several students who were in the same car with Li Cheng came out after buying drinks.
Xiao Xiao saw that Yang Ye had no intention of leaving, "Boss, aren't you going?"
Yang Ye shook his head.
Zhou Yiheng wanted to say something but Xiao Xiao grabbed him and pushed him towards the rest stop.
Yang Ye stayed where he was, leaning against the car door.
She looked towards the sun, shrouded in its rays, as if separated from the clamor of the surroundings. The sunlight cast a faint halo over her, a warm glow that couldn't dispel the weariness emanating from her.
Li Cheng exchanged a few words with the students who came over. Then he turned around and saw Yang Ye standing there. He noticed something strange about her and asked, "Don't you want to go eat something?"
"I'm not hungry yet." Yang Ye glanced at him, his voice full of fatigue.
Seeing Yang Ye's silence, Li Cheng's mouth twitched, as if he wanted to say something, but he swallowed it back. In the end, he didn't say anything else, but just walked quickly to the Kaifeng food in front of the rest stop. A few minutes later, he returned with two cups of coffee and some packed food.
"Here, have some coffee to refresh yourself." Li Cheng handed the bag to her.
Yang Ye took it and said softly, "Thank you."
She opened the lid of the cup, and the rich aroma of coffee filled the air. The hot steam rose into wisps of white mist, blurring her eyes.
He might have thought of Yang Ye's concerns. For Yang Ye, that place was a place he couldn't let go of, but he couldn't really go back to. "The hotel I booked is near Gongti, a little way from where you used to live."
"It's okay, I'll probably go over there too." Yang Ye took a sip of coffee.
At the beginning of last month, she received a call from the agent who was entrusted to take care of the house.
She had returned a few years ago to review and renew the property rights for her old house. She contacted someone she knew and, through several connections, finally secured the property title. But she had been there and back so quickly that she didn't even know what the old house looked like now.
So when she picked up the phone and saw it was a Beijing number, she was stunned for a long moment. She wondered if it was a scam, or perhaps an insurance salesperson, but she didn't think it was realistic for someone from Beijing to call her. So she picked up the phone. The voice on the other end was young, a little nervous, and apologetic. "Is this Miss Yang?"
"Who?" Yang Ye asked.
"I'm Xiao Zhao, the agent you asked to look after your house," he introduced himself. "Miss Yang, are you available to answer the phone now?"
Yang Ye responded: "It's convenient, you decide."
"Ms. Yang, the house you asked us to look after was burglarized a few days ago. The police couldn't contact you, so they called us."
"A thief broke in?" Yang Ye was surprised. The house hadn't been occupied for decades at least. How could it be so old and dilapidated that it attracted thieves?
"We just discovered it when we got there, so we rushed to let you know. Don't worry, nothing important was missing from the house. The mortise lock at the gate was broken, and there were signs of rummaging through the house."
"I understand," Yang Ye said.
"Miss Yang, you can come back and take a look when you have time. The latch on your front door is open. It's an old wooden door. We didn't know how to fix it, so we just tied it up with a chain twice."
Yang Ye sighed lightly, "I'll come in a while"
"Okay, tell me in advance when you come over, and I'll get the key for you." The other party hung up the phone.
Her teacher hadn't visited the old house for a long time. The decoration and furnishings in the house were still the same as before she left. Time seemed to have stopped here.
She actually moved to the south not long ago, maybe only about thirty years at most.
After the war, she returned to the old house and lived there alone for a long time. Later, the two streets in front and behind the house were included in the demolition plan, and all the neighbors she knew moved away. However, because her house was in a protected area, it was never included. She had repaired it several times, but it always failed again after a few years.
From dawn to dusk, she was alone in her two-story courtyard, empty all day. She'd forgotten which old neighbor had mentioned that they could clean up the unused rooms and rent them to migrant workers in Beijing. Tenants came and went in her two remote rooms, but none stayed long-term. Yang Ye remembered the woman who stayed the longest: she'd rented for five years before getting a promotion and moving to the Gongzhufen area. The shortest stay was, I think, three weeks. It was a recent graduate who, after finding a few jobs, said she couldn't make it in Beijing and returned home.
Later, she left Beijing and settled in the south. The old house remained closed. Long ago, when she visited Beijing, she took a look around the house. The tables in the main room were covered with thick dust. Because no one had lived there for so long, there was little sunlight. The Western furniture that once cost hundreds of dollars was now moldy, and the house was always filled with an unmistakable odor of decay.
It wasn't that no real estate agents had approached her; even close friends had urged her to sell her house and move abroad. With the world moving at an ever-faster pace, Yang Ye's situation might not have been discovered yet, but how would she hide in the future? But Yang Ye disagreed. She refused to sell her house or leave the country.
"I didn't even want to leave during the most difficult times, so why should I leave now that everything is peaceful?" she said, sitting in a chair, to her friends who came to persuade her. Several elderly people with gray hair, some even younger than Yang Ye, refused to budge, no matter how much they tried to persuade her.
For her, it contained too many of her past memories, whether of laughter or sadness, a past that could no longer be touched. It was like a scene from a movie, constantly repeating in her mind and becoming an inseparable part of her heart.
Looking sideways at Yang Ye standing beside him, Li Cheng suddenly remembered what Liu Guoxing had said when he was drunk earlier. Yang Ye was a person who could not go back, but also could not move forward. She was stuck in the same place, in 1937.
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