Chapter Forty-Nine: Chinese New Year
Lin Yu was sitting in the airport waiting hall, waiting for his flight home during the Spring Festival travel rush, when he received the text message that his work injury compensation and year-end bonus had been deposited into his account. The boarding announcements over the loudspeaker mingled with the surrounding noise of the crowd.
She stared at the string of suddenly appearing numbers in her bank app, so excited she almost jumped for joy, even considering splurgeing on a temporary upgrade to business class. Then she remembered that just last month, when she learned her compensation had been approved, she had eagerly given Lin Min an advance on a gold bracelet.
Returning to my hometown from Shanghai is a long journey. First, I have to take a five-hour flight, and then transfer to a three-hour train after getting off the plane. Each round trip is a real ordeal.
So, except for the Spring Festival, Lin Min never let her go home. During other short holidays, she would always find ways to sponsor Lin Yu to travel, saying that she wanted to make up for the regret that she had not seen the world before she turned eighteen.
In previous years, Lin Min would always arrange for Uncle Liu to pick her up from the airport before she returned home. Although Lin Jianguo had interfered this year, at least she didn't have to wear a heavy down jacket and snow boots, dragging a bulky 24-inch suitcase while running frantically on the platform to catch the only three green trains a day. Such a scene would be quite undignified for a sophisticated urban woman living in Shanghai.
The phone lit up, and Yao Fangfang's name silently appeared on the screen. As soon as Lin Yu answered, he heard a chuckled complaint from the other end.
"Banban! You fly straight home every year. My son can already call me 'Mom,' but I've never seen what his godmother looks like. Aren't you ashamed?"
Outside the floor-to-ceiling window, the lights of the preceding flight flickered in the fog, and a mechanical female voice was broadcasting flight information over the loudspeaker. Mixed with the background noise of a child babbling on the other end of the phone, Lin Yu felt a pang of guilt.
She spent four years of her university life in Linjiang. The streets and alleys of this city hold her most vivid memories of her youth. The milk tea shop with the perpetually long queues at the school gate, the evening breeze along the river in early summer, and the hot pot restaurant she and Chen Guang frequented.
But ever since his falling out with Chen Guang, Lin Yu has drawn an invisible forbidden zone in his mind for the area of Linjiang, and even those familiar memories have become sensitive words that need to be deliberately avoided.
The emotional impact of the beauty of the past and the current devastation made Lin Yu feel a vague and inexplicable aversion to this city.
"Fangfang..." Lin Yu's fingers unconsciously twirled the corner of the boarding pass, and his voice softened.
"Tickets for this year's Spring Festival travel rush are so hard to get. I'll definitely make time to go back and see you after the New Year, okay?" The child's innocent laughter came from the other end of the phone, gently touching her heart.
As the boarding announcement came on, Lin Yu hung up the phone with Yao Fangfang and got up to join the end of the line.
Lin Yu's phone suddenly lit up, and Jiang Chuan's WeChat profile picture popped up. Lin Yu clicked on it and saw that he had sent a message wishing her a safe journey. Since the day they parted, Jiang Chuan had been like a wild beast marking its territory, trying to leave his mark on every aspect of Lin Yu's life.
Every morning, she would receive three meals a day delivered to the front desk by him, along with fresh flowers accompanying the breakfast. Lin Yu belatedly realized that his aggressive tenderness was like weaving an invisible net, gradually entangling and besieging her life.
Now everyone in the hospital knows that Lin Yu has a fervent suitor, and even the usually attentive Team Leader Dong has started to deliberately keep his distance from her.
The other male colleagues who were usually close to her kept their distance, never chatting with her except about work. Lin Yu couldn't help but admire Jiang Chuan's shrewdness while feeling ashamed of the secret vanity welling up inside her.
The glass jars in the apartment and office were completely filled with the flowers Jiang Chuan had sent. The flowers seemed to have been carefully selected by him; each one was exceptionally resilient, with full and vibrant petals, as if they would bloom until the end of time.
She had to send Jiang Chuan a WeChat message in advance to tell him her itinerary, so that he wouldn't continue to send the flowers to the unclaimed office after she left.
Lin Yu glanced at her phone again, then decisively turned off the screen, leaving Jiang Chuan's greeting lying alone in the chat window. Switching her phone to airplane mode, she took a deep breath, casting those troubling thoughts 30,000 feet below her.
The plane landed on time, and Lin Yu was immediately enveloped by the biting cold air from his hometown as soon as he stepped onto the jet bridge.
She hurriedly put on her hat and pulled her collar tighter, but the snowflakes that got into her collar still made her sneeze loudly, and she immediately felt the warm greetings from her hometown.
The moment the phone was turned on, a call from her father, Lin Jianguo, popped up.
The airport in his hometown wasn't big; the baggage carousel was just a few steps from the exit. While waiting for his luggage, Lin Yu tiptoed through the crowd of people waiting to pick up his father and immediately spotted that familiar, chubby white figure.
The father was craning his neck and looking anxiously. The years and alcohol had distorted his once upright figure, and steam was rising from his sparse head.
The handkerchief clutched in his hand kept wiping his sweaty forehead, which looked particularly out of place in the minus thirty degree weather where his breath turned to ice, making him look like a freshly steamed bun.
Lin Yu, dragging his suitcase, squeezed through the crowd and waved to his father from afar. Lin Jianguo was taken aback at first, then his eyes lit up like a light bulb, revealing a genuine yet bewildered smile.
The car was well-heated, and Lin Yu adjusted his seat back, glancing out of the corner of his eye as his father frequently wiped away tears from the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief.
"Your eyes are still the same?" Outside the window, the snow-covered trees rushed past. "Haven't you taken them to the hospital?"
Lin Jianguo smiled vaguely, opened the thermos, and took a sip of strong tea. "It's an old problem, just blocked tear ducts. A few eye drops will do the trick."
He kept his eyes fixed on the highway where light snow was falling, driving as fast and steadily as ever.
“Those attending physicians at the county hospital are all the naughty ones from your class back then. How could I dare let them treat me? I’m afraid your dad would go in upright and come out horizontal.”
Lin Yu didn't expose Lin Jianguo's little scheme of avoiding medical treatment, and didn't want to argue with him about something that couldn't be resolved immediately on the eve of the holiday, so she could only ask instead, "How is Grandma?"
"It's great. The old house is going to be demolished, so he's living with us now. It's just that he's really hard of hearing, so he always talks to you two at the same time."
Lin Yu recalled the low, single-story house by the railway. The house was dilapidated, with mottled brick walls, and the yard was so narrow that you could touch the clothesline just by turning around.
But there was a small plot of land in the backyard where Lin Yu loved strawberries. Every summer, her grandmother would specially set aside a row for her strawberry bushes. Lin Yu loved her grandmother; although she was rough and impatient, she showed Lin Yu a special fondness for her.
Grandpa was a retired soldier. He suddenly passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage the year Lin Yu was born, and he didn't get to enjoy the good life of a high pension. Grandma, who was illiterate, worked hard for most of her life, but in her old age, she could only rely on her good-for-nothing children to make ends meet.
Her knees were bent into an odd arc from overwork in her youth, causing her to wobble as she walked, like a carriage traveling on a bumpy road. She needed to go to the hospital for treatment and medicine every few days.
But Grandma would still set aside a portion of her meager living expenses to buy Lin Yu the snacks and candies that Lin Min usually forbade her to eat.
Whether it's out of sympathy for Lin Yu's parents' divorce when she was young, or because she is naturally liked by her elders, Lin Yu is confident that she is her grandmother's favorite child among the grandchildren, without exception.
Now that the old house is going to be demolished, the hazy memories have suddenly become exceptionally clear.
Lin Yu seemed to see again the two tall poplars in front of the old house. In the height of summer, their emerald green leaves rustled in the wind, mingling with the distant roar of coal trains. Sunlight filtered through the layers of leaves, playing the most familiar and beautiful melody of her childhood on the sandy road.
Those scorching afternoons under the blazing sun, the images of coal dust dancing in the beams of light, and the Big Bubble Gum that Grandma always kept in her pocket—all of these, along with the old house soon to be demolished, will now turn into debris under the bulldozers.
Looking at the snow scene outside the car window, Lin Yu suddenly felt nostalgic for the childhood he spent by the railway and his grandmother who stood by the roadside with a limp, calling him home for dinner.
As the car slowly drove out of the toll station, Lin Yu looked at the familiar street scene outside the window and finally felt a real sense of returning home.
The newly built buildings on both sides of the road stood out against the snow, their glass curtain walls reflecting the winter sun, making her sigh softly that this small town was also quietly transforming.
As the school buildings flashed past the car window, Lin Yu instinctively sat up straight. After two more roundabouts, they would reach Lin Min and Liu Wenbin's home. Lin Yu had already told Lin Jianguo that he would stay with Lin Min for a few days before visiting him and his grandmother on the first day of the Lunar New Year.
The wheels crunched over the freshly packed snow. The sculpture in the center of the roundabout, which had been a galloping horse, had been replaced by a bare square flowerbed, its flowers withered and fallen, looking particularly desolate in the dead of winter.
“That’s how it is in small places,” Lin Jianguo said with a smile, gripping the steering wheel. “Don’t expect earth-shattering changes, but we’re always making progress by patching things up.” His gaze swept over the newly built shop signs, a complex smile playing on his lips.
"Let's stop here, Dad!" Lin Yu pointed to the roadside not far away.
To avoid embarrassment, Lin Min did not come downstairs to greet her in advance, but she knew that Lin Min was probably peeking out of the window at that moment.
"Go back and rest early. I'll come see you after the 30th." Before getting out of the car, Lin Yu took out the sweater she had carefully selected for him and his grandmother from her bag and handed it to him. "It's cashmere. Remember to hand wash it. If it shrinks, my little nephew will have to take it."
"You're wasting money again!" Lin Jianguo complained, but his wrinkles crinkled into a smile, making his swollen, round face glow. "I'm relieved that you're doing well in Shanghai. Don't just squander any money you save."
“I’ll feel at ease if you drink less, especially during the Chinese New Year period.”
Lin Yu stood by the roadside with her luggage, watching her father's car slowly drive away. As she turned around, she subconsciously looked up at the top floor, and sure enough, Lin Min and Liu Wenbin's two small heads were squeezed in front of the balcony window, waving at her.
Snow slid down from the eaves and burst open in the sunlight at her feet. At that moment, Lin Yu suddenly felt that it was so good to be home.
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