Chapter 103 I had a hard time when it was both true and false
The clothes were scattered all over the floor in the store. Zhu Yingning gathered all the clothes and stuffed them into the storage room. She also moved the valuables on the cash register into the storage room, locked the storage room and the cash register one after another, and then left and walked to the nearby police station.
Spring is a season of prosperity. The street trees have already produced new buds, tenderly adorning the branches, with dots of green standing out among the dark brown, like inverted torches, burning a dim fluorescence in the blue hour.
She walked forward step by step, her heart sinking as she tried to sort out the whole incident in her mind, but she had no clue.
When she reached the police station entrance, Emily was standing there smoking a thin, women's cigarette. Seeing her, she crushed it in surprise and waved her hand in front of her to disperse the smoke. "Yingning, how did you know we were here?"
Zhu Yingning didn't say how she got here. She just looked at her and asked, "Are you going to tell me what happened?"
Emily fell silent.
She understood the deeper meaning behind her silence; it was simply that she was treating her like a child and didn't want her to get involved. So she nodded and said, "Then I'll wait here for Sister Weiwei to come out. Is she in there?"
"...Yeah." Emily responded softly in her throat. Knowing that it was useless to persuade her, she simply stopped trying. The two of them waited side by side at the door of the police station, one waiting to go in and the other waiting to leave.
After waiting for more than ten minutes, a strange man came jogging here and waved to Emily.
"He's my boyfriend." Emily pointed with her little finger and said hesitantly, "Then I...will leave first?"
Zhu Yingning waved goodbye to her: "Goodbye, Sister Emmy."
She stood alone at the door and waited for more than half an hour. Yi Yi came out, her face pale. She looked at her with a heavy heart, said nothing, just nodded slightly, and left to catch the subway.
Zhu Yingning's legs felt a little sore from standing, so she simply squatted down, hugged her knees and waited.
Zhu Zhiwei was the last one to come out. Her appearance had been slightly tidied up, but Zhu Yingning could still easily see the long and thin scars on her face hidden by her hair, like a few winding little snakes.
When living in the mountains, there would be quarrels or physical conflicts between villagers from time to time. Zhu Yingning often saw people fighting. The logic of men's fights and women's fights was different. Men were good at using their fists, while women were good at using their nails. She knew at a glance that the scratches on Zhu Zhiwei's face were mostly from a woman's scratching.
Her hair also looked like it had been pulled apart and then combed again, roughly trimmed with fingers. Although the shape was neat, a closer look revealed a lot of broken hairs, twisted and tangled into strands.
Zhu Zhiwei caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, his steps paused for a moment, then he passed her without looking away and continued forward.
She got up and followed him.
Zhu Zhiwei walked slowly, and Zhu Yingning followed without difficulty, even walking ahead of her if she wasn't paying attention. She always controlled her pace, kept a certain distance from her, and didn't ask any questions, just following silently, like her shadow.
It is the evening rush hour and the streets are crowded with cars. If they are not careful, they will be drowned by the low beams and drown in the river.
Zhu Yingning followed Zhu Zhiwei walking aimlessly on the street. After walking for an unknown amount of time, they arrived at the bank of the South Moat.
At this time, there are occasionally elderly people who have finished dinner early and come out for a walk, leading one or two noisy children, or walking slowly in strollers. There are also young couples in school uniforms, with a distance of half a person's width between them. Their hands seem to be touching, but they never really touch, and they are close yet distant.
Their appearance here, one in a daze and the other in silence, seemed out of place no matter how you looked at it.
The evening breeze brought the fishy smell of the river. Zhu Zhiwei finally turned around. There were two rivers hanging upside down on her face. Tears wet her carefully applied makeup and stained her eyelashes stickily.
"Ningning, do you still remember the question you asked me?"
They had talked a lot together, and Zhu Yingning had asked Zhu Zhiwei countless questions, so many that logically, she shouldn't have known what Zhu Zhiwei was referring to at this moment, but she nodded and said, "I remember."
She had just arrived in Beijing and when she met Zhu Zhiwei, she asked her if she had been doing well in the past few years. At that time, Zhu Zhiwei said that if she was not doing well, then there would be no one who was doing well in the world. But now, Zhu Zhiwei said, "I am not doing well at all."
Zhu Zhiwei took out her phone, opened the album, and pulled out a photo from the private album, holding it in front of her. Zhu Yingning looked over and saw a completely unfamiliar little girl in the photo, being held in the arms of a middle-aged couple.
**
Zhu Zhiwei—oh no, it was still Zhu Juan at that time.
Zhu Juan first came to Beijing in 2007.
This year saw the convening of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the successful launch of Chang'e-1, and the official implementation of the Property Law. Most importantly, next year will be the highly anticipated Beijing Olympics.
Initially, Zhu Juan had no plans to come to Beijing. She simply wanted to find a small, affordable place to live in a third- or fourth-tier city and earn a living by working a modest job—whether it was screwing screws in a factory, processing food, or serving dishes in a restaurant. She wasn't afraid of hard work; she simply wanted to carve out a niche for herself.
However, on the green train, the old lady sitting next to her asked her, "Amei, where are you from? Have you heard of the Bird's Nest?"
She thought to herself, "This old woman is really looking down on me. Who hasn't seen a bird's nest?" So she said dissatisfiedly, "Of course, there are many bird's nests in the trees in our mountains. Whether they are round, flat, or stacked on top of each other like candied haws, I have seen them all. Not only have I seen them, I have even touched bird eggs."
The old lady laughed toothlessly and waved her hand, saying, "It's not this Bird's Nest! It's the Beijing Bird's Nest, the Bird's Nest of the Beijing Olympics!"
She told Zhu Juan about the Beijing Olympics, how countries around the world would send representatives to Beijing, how they would compete to see who could run the fastest, shoot the most accurately, or create the smallest splash when diving, with the winner receiving the gold medal. This was what it meant to bring glory to the country. As she spoke of this, her face, as old and worn as a withered tree, lit up, as if she herself were part of that effort.
Zhu Juan listened to the detailed analysis of the game along the way. When she arrived at her destination, she lowered her head and counted the money in her pocket. She found that she had enough money to buy a ticket to Beijing, so she changed her mind at the last minute and decided to go to the capital to see what the difference was between the Bird's Nest there and the Bird's Nest in the mountains.
She successfully found the Bird's Nest and admired the building for a long time. Before she could figure out what it tasted like, all her money was swindled away by a scammer who was looking for customers outside the Bird's Nest.
The scammer, wearing a student's social practice uniform and holding a stack of pens, asked her, "Do you want to buy a pen?"
Having been scammed out of her money, Zhu Juan must have had very bad luck, but she also felt very lucky. As she wandered the streets, hungry, the moon rose high above the horizon. The proprietress of a street-side grilled fish restaurant came out to clear the tables and chairs. Seeing her dirty, calloused hands, she had an idea and asked, "Girl, do you want to help out in my shop? I'll give you something to eat."
I found my first job by accident.
The restaurant is owned by a husband and wife, the man 39, the wife 36. They have a son and a daughter; their son is in junior high school, and their daughter is in elementary school. Since opening the restaurant, the couple has always run it themselves. However, business has been so booming lately that they often don't have enough staff in the evenings. They decided that business would only get better in 2008, so they decided to hire a helper now to help serve food and wash dishes. Helpers don't need to be fancy; they just need to be down-to-earth and willing to work.
Zhu Juan, who was down-to-earth and hardworking, became the only helper they hired.
The boss and his wife said that their business was good, and they were not lying. It was more than just good, it was so good that it was scary. When they were busy, they were like spinning tops, being whipped by an invisible whip and could not stop for a moment.
Although life was tiring and hard, there was hope. When Zhu Juan received her first salary in life, she almost cried. She put the money in her pocket, thought about it, and went to the stationery store to buy letter paper and envelopes. She wrote the first letter to Zhu Yingning in her crooked handwriting.
If things continue like this, Zhu Juan will probably work in this restaurant until the couple retires and then take over their business.
Unfortunately, it didn't take long before the couple started to dislike her.
The wife often said to her husband, "Have you noticed that Xiao Zhu hasn't been as agile lately? She often makes mistakes when serving dishes and has broken several bowls while washing them. Sometimes, even when the shop is busy, she'll just sit on a bench and stare blankly. One time, it was even worse, she fell asleep! She even complained to me about the awful smell in the kitchen and said we might have bought stale ingredients. We've been here for so many years and have always had a good reputation. Why should I need her to teach us what ingredients to use? How did she change so quickly? She was fine for the first two months after she came here. I thought she was simple and hardworking, but now it seems she's full of tricks."
The husband turned over in a daze, yawning and trying to evade his wife: "If you are unhappy with her, just find a chance to punish her."
"I need to talk to her..."
The boss lady found an opportunity and tactfully said to Zhu Juan, "Xiao Zhu, have you been too tired recently and feeling unwell? How about this, I'll give you half a day off so you can go to the hospital."
Zhu Juan looked puzzled: "I'm not sick."
"I've noticed you've been feeling down lately, often daydreaming and distracted. Perhaps you're sick?"
The boss lady said this with the intention of mocking her and warning her, hoping that she would understand the deeper meaning. Unfortunately, Zhu Juan was very straightforward and thought that the boss lady really cared about her. Upon hearing this, she burst into tears of gratitude: "I understand, boss lady, I really feel tired easily recently. I'll go to the hospital right away."
The boss lady was stunned, but she couldn't let him go. After all, she was the one who said "I'll give you half a day off" a second ago. She had no choice but to grit her teeth and put on a fake smile as she sent Zhu Juan away. She turned around and continued to complain to her husband: "Country people just don't understand good or bad words."
Zhu Juan went to the hospital foolishly, and the results of the examination in the hospital changed her life.
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