Starting from the next day, it was a long National Day Golden Week holiday. Bai Yang didn’t go to the fox hunting competition his father had mentioned. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested, but running up into the mountains to bake in the sun in such hot weather wouldn’t make you ham—you’d be more like a sausage. Only those tired of living would do that.

Nanjing was a furnace every year, hot enough to kill dogs.

Which then become hot dogs.

During lunch today, Dad mentioned to Bai Yang about running into Uncle Wang yesterday afternoon while driving.

“You didn’t drink, did you?” Mom was very sharp.

“No, no,” Dad quickly denied, “I was driving, how could I dare drink?”

Dad loved drinking but didn’t dare to.

Because he had terrible drinking behavior, and would always black out. After drinking himself into a stupor, he would never remember what he had done. According to Mom, shortly after they got married, he once used his drunken state as an excuse to dismantle their Changhong TV—oddly enough, the drunk Dad couldn’t remember anything else, but he remembered exactly how to take apart the TV.

After sobering up, he reported to the police that his house had been robbed.

The thief had taken apart the TV.

“Your Uncle Wang told me he heard you chattering on the channel recently,” Dad said. “He said you haven’t even taken the exam yet, so put the radio aside for now and focus on preparing for the college entrance exam.”

“Oh.” Bai Yang lowered his head and continued eating.

The Uncle Wang that Dad mentioned was naturally Wang Ning.

Back in the day, Dad, Wang Ning, and Zhao Bowen were known as the Iron Triangle of Southern Jiangsu, famous in the HAM circle. Later, Zhao Bowen went to university to study physics and now teaches at Nanjing University. Dad failed the college entrance exam, so he joined the military, serving as a communications technician in the Navy. After leaving service, he didn’t take an assigned position but stayed in the city driving for Didi.

As for Wang Ning, he was coasting at the city’s Radio Management Committee, a very leisurely workplace where one could spend the whole day with a pack of cigarettes, a cup of tea, and a newspaper. When Bai Yang was young, Dad often took him to play there. The office was located in the Radio Management Committee building on Longpan Middle Road in Xuanwu District, an unremarkable gray concrete building.

Theoretically, the Radio Committee could monitor all wireless communications in the city, whether amateur channels or not. They were the official radio monitoring agency, shouldering the responsibility of maintaining Nanjing’s electromagnetic environment and communication order. But in this era, amateur radio was becoming increasingly niche, so the Radio Committee had let their guard down, weapons stored, and horses released to the southern mountains. They mainly focus on broadcast and police channels now.

So did they still monitor amateur channels? Yes, they did. But did they listen? No, they didn’t.

At most, they would check recordings if someone filed a complaint.

As long as you weren’t broadcasting at excessive power on amateur channels or randomly cursing, they left you alone.

As Wang Ning put it, who would want to listen to a bunch of greasy middle-aged men in their forties and fifties shouting all day?

“Also, about that callsign you mentioned last time, BG4MSR, right?”

Bai Yang nodded.

“That callsign doesn’t exist,” Dad said.

Bai Yang was stunned.

“Someone made up a callsign to fool you,” Dad said. “What kind of people are you running into? A woman’s words…”

“A woman’s words?” Mom raised an eyebrow.

“…are as gentle as water.”

Bai Yang nodded, somewhat absentmindedly. The callsign wasn’t important; fake or not, it didn’t matter.

At this moment, Bai Yang wasn’t in the mood to think about callsign issues. He just hoped to receive that girl’s reply soon. He wanted to know if the time capsule had been successfully received.

If she had dug up the time capsule, then Bai Yang would have been certain about which era that girl lived in. The tritium tube inside the photo frame was a hidden but reliable time indicator.

But he couldn’t contact BG4MSR during the day. In the morning, Bai Yang had tried calling 14255, but there was no response—maybe she wasn’t online.

Usually, they would communicate after 10 PM, so Bai Yang could only wait until tonight to learn the results.

Just thinking about having to wait until 10 PM made Bai Yang wish he was eating dinner now instead of lunch.

But they had plans to watch “The Captain” this afternoon.

Bai Yang sighed. Despite having free time to watch a movie, he wasn’t in the mood. He couldn’t get interested in any activities before tonight’s 10 PM contact. He was so preoccupied with that time capsule that it was all he could think about. The next time something would make him this anxious and concerned would probably be his college entrance exam scores next year.

Maybe even the exam scores wouldn’t make him this nervous.

After all, failing to get into Nanjing Aeronautics and Astronautics University from its affiliated high school was unlikely.

After going downstairs and turning a corner, he saw two people waving at him from the community entrance, riding bicycles. Since shared bikes couldn’t enter the community, Yan Zhihan and He Leqin were waiting for him at the gate.

“Little sheep! Hurry up!”

What’s the rush for a 3 PM showing? Bai Yang thought to himself.

He Leqin wore a blue Li-Ning T-shirt with black three-quarter pants, sitting on the bicycle seat with one foot on the pedal and the other on the ground, looking down at his phone. Yan Zhihan wore a white short-sleeve top and denim shorts, her slender white legs ending in white sneakers, with a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head. She held two frozen bottles of Nongfu Spring water. Both were hiding from the scorching sun in the tree shade. Seeing Bai Yang approach, the girl leaned her bicycle against the community fence, jogged over, and stuffed the mineral water into his hands.

“You’re so slow,” Yan Zhihan said.

“Well, we eat late at my house,” Bai Yang shrugged helplessly. “You know that understanding is everything.”

“Little sheep, go scan a bike,” He Leqin looked up and said.

“What? We’re biking there?” Bai Yang was surprised. “Wanda is in Xinjiekou!”

“We’re biking to the subway station, you dummy,” He Leqin said. “You want to walk to the subway in this heat? Are you stupid?”

Bai Yang scanned a Hellobike, and the three of them squeezed into the bike lane heading toward the subway station, chatting casually.

“What time will the movie finish?”

“Around five?”

“What should we eat tonight? Hey hey hey… Yan-ge, stop squeezing me! You’re going to make me fall!”

“Who told you to ride so slowly? Move aside and let me go in front.”

“Let’s find a place to eat at Xinbai tonight, how about a frog? Haven’t had a frog in ages. I’m the world’s number one frog killer! They call me the Frog’s Nightmare.”

“Stone pot bullfrog?”

“Hey you two, Little sheep, He-dashao, there’s a cat café upstairs at Xinbai! I want to pet some cats.”

“What’s so fun about petting cats? Let me tell you, those cat cafés all smell terrible because they can’t open the windows, so the smell gets strong and unpleasant.”

“Is ‘The Captain’ any good?”

“The ratings on Meituan are pretty good.”

“Since when can you trust Meituan ratings?”

“I wanted to watch ‘The Climbers.’ Wu Jing is in ‘The Climbers,’ one punch kills the traitor! Ha!”

“Yan-ge, Wu Jing is also in ‘My People, My Country.'”

“Then let’s watch ‘My People, My Country’! My country—!”

“Yan-ge, we already bought the tickets, it’s about to start.”

“Ride faster! Ride faster! The green light ahead only has ten seconds left! Rush through! Quick quick quick!”

“Hey, are you all in such a hurry to reincarnate?”

“Charge—!”