Chapter 1: This Auntie
This summer is exceptionally hot, with people living in the city feeling like they’re being roasted by the sun every day, enduring temperatures over 40 degrees from the ground, their baked-dry figures moving listlessly, the cacophony of cicadas almost unheard in the city, with only the sound of cars and their wheels, and occasionally a whiff of exhaust sprayed onto your legs by a passing vehicle, which really makes you want to die.
At this moment, those sitting in air-conditioned vehicles can’t help but feel grateful for the chilling cold wrapping around their bare legs.
Industrial exhaust is still being emitted, filling the entire high-tech city with murky smog, amassing a variety of strange odors.
Qin Xiangnuan suddenly awoke with her head feeling muddled, as if haunted by intermittent, disjointed dreams; moments from childhood, adulthood, her previous existence all replaying like a rewind, fragments of nearly forgotten things beginning to piece together again.
The air-conditioned coach is of the enclosed type, with the air conditioning set very cold, not knowing how many degrees exactly. She opened her bag and took out a coat, a common canvas bag that could be bought outside for dozens of yuan, and the piece of clothing, a grey shirt washed to fading, but she still couldn’t bear to toss it away.
"Younger auntie, where are you heading?" asked the young man sitting next to her with a grin.
That one term, "younger auntie", felt to Qin Xiangnuan like a thorn deeply pricking her heart.
"I’m going back to my hometown," she managed to squeeze out an awkward smile on her face, reflected by the bus window, revealing her current look.
She didn’t like looking in the mirror on normal days. The mirror showed the time ripped away from her, as well as a face that once seemed young, starting to wither day by day, turning ugly and aging. She says she’s only thirty-nine. Would anyone believe that?