The sunlight was pleasant.
The splashing sounds from the river channel mingled with the clamoring voices, gradually subsiding into invisible steam rising all around.
Zong Hang stood rigid, one bare foot resting on top of his other shoe.
In that brief moment, he saw Yi Sa tilt her head slightly, and so the devastating landing he had anticipated didn’t occur.
But he couldn’t see clearly and couldn’t be certain: when the shoe flew past at high speed, had it perfectly missed her face, or had it grazed it?
He stood motionless, and the whole world cooperated with him – the clouds stopped moving overhead, and the bright green leaves of the traveler’s palm were frozen in the air.
Even if the Earth had stopped rotating it would be fine, but… Yi Sa was walking towards him.
Zong Hang’s lips went dry, his skin surface slightly burning, sweat forming under his arms, the beads of sweat slowly rolling down his skin, dying in the dense cotton fibers of his t-shirt.
Yi Sa hadn’t hung up the phone – this call was still important enough that it shouldn’t be interrupted by a minor incident.
But she was furious. If it had been thrown by a child, that would have been one thing, but this was a grown adult – what was he doing playing like a child with a renewed sense of innocence?
So when she walked near Zong Hang, she turned her phone face-down to prevent the person on the other end from misunderstanding, then said: “Psycho.”
After saying this, she didn’t stop, brushing past him with contempt on her face, not even bothering to lift her eyelids to look at him.
The phone call continued, the other end waiting for her response. Yi Sa tried to keep her voice gentle, but contempt still crawled across her entire face: “Uncle Ding, I know these minefields better than the people who laid them. If I wanted him dead, I wouldn’t have let him see that sign.”
Whatever response came from the other end, she just laughed coldly: “I have no relationship with him. He’s been quietly watching me for two nights – what’s that about? Do I have something to hide?”
Nearby, a small tour boat accelerated, its stern cutting white waves through the muddy yellow river surface like a zipper being pulled to the end.
Yi Sa stared at the rippling zipper mark, her voice gradually lowering: “Help me tell him, this is the Mekong River, not your Yellow River waterway.”
Zong Hang still stood in place, feeling his physical body unbearably heavy, too heavy to move.
It seemed her face hadn’t been grazed by the shoe, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten away with just being called a “psycho.”
The thrown shoe still lay not far away. He didn’t even have the strength to hop on one foot, walking barefoot on the muddy ground to the shoe, stuffing his grit-covered foot back into it.
Some children came to pull at him, gesturing to continue playing. He shook his head, shoulders slumped, walking step by step toward A Pa, moving like he was at death’s door, like Kua Fu after chasing the sun, each step potentially resulting in a spray of blood.
A Pa and the group playing with the washbasins were having great fun, and though they knew Zong Hang had returned to sit, they had no time to pay attention to him.
After a while, they heard Zong Hang say drearily: “A Pa, I want to ask you a question.”
A Pa lifted his foot and forcefully kicked away an approaching washbasin, not looking up: “Go ahead.”
“If you’re walking down the road, and then a shoe comes flying toward you at high speed, almost grazing your face as it passes by…”
A Pa pondered which field this question belonged to: shoes, flying, involving object trajectory, speed, and air resistance…
“…do you think you could smell the odor from inside the shoe?”
A Pa asked: “Sneakers or sandals?”
“…Sneakers.”
A Pa frowned.
Sneakers – that wasn’t very optimistic.
“Were your feet smelly?”
Zong Hang replied blankly: “I wash them every day, but… nobody’s feet smell like flowers, right?”
A Pa gave his opinion: “I think you could smell it.”
Zong Hang fell silent. He lifted his head to look at the distant lake.
Sunset was approaching, and oddly-shaped clusters of clouds over the lake were tinged with dark blue. The sunlight changed from apricot yellow to apricot red, patiently outlining the clouds, adding borders, and adjusting light and shadow.
A large cloud mass reclined against the horizon, like an irregularly shaped Buddha sitting cross-legged.
A Pa happened to turn his head and saw Zong Hang with eyes closed and palms pressed together – his posture wasn’t standard, but his attitude was devout.
Strangely, there wasn’t any grand temple statue over there.
He couldn’t help asking: “Young Master, what are you praying to?”
Praying to Buddha.
Begging that Yi Sa wouldn’t remember him.
If she did remember, then praying they would never meet again – he was too embarrassed.
There was no need to trouble Buddha – Yi Sa truly didn’t remember him.
She rarely gave proper attention to insignificant people.
The first time, she hadn’t even looked at Zong Hang’s face before he was dragged out and beaten, howling like a ghost and wolf the whole time. When it was over, she had caught a glimpse: his face was black and blue, with two streams of nosebleeds sliding over his skinned lips down to his chin.
The second time, her attention was on the phone call, with no energy to spare. She vaguely remembered the troublemaker hunching his shoulders, timid and hesitant.
These trivial matters and people – she had no energy to remember them.
She walked to the dock exit, where her boat rental customer was waiting for her, pushing a motorcycle.
The motorcycle had been wiped clean and shiny, all necessary oil had been applied, and all screws that needed tightening had been tightened.
This was appropriate – on this rent collection trip, he had said his wife had just had another child, household expenses were high, and he could only pay half the money. After she had berated him, she agreed to let him pay the other half with dried fish.
That big package of dried fish was wrapped in a red low-quality plastic bag, tied on top of the various packages bound to her motorcycle’s rear storage box.
Yi Sa pushed her hair back to keep it from covering her eyes, then took the helmet he handed her and put it on.
The sun was about to set, and the journey home was long – she estimated she’d be riding until night.
Four hours later, Yi Sa’s motorcycle was still bumping along beside Tonle Sap Lake.
It was mainly because of the poor road conditions – the bike rattled like it was falling apart. She stopped at a high point beside the lake, held a flashlight in her mouth, and used tools to tighten several important parts. Then she sat sideways on the seat, opened the plastic bag, tore off a strip from the edge of the dried fish, and slowly chewed it.
Before her, Tonle Sap Lake was truly a vast expanse of water, endless and boundless, without human voices, gleaming with blackish fish scales.
This lake is connected to the Mekong River through a narrow channel.
In their professional terminology, such lakes had a specific name – they weren’t called “inland lakes” or “freshwater lakes.”
They were called “hanging lakes.”
Like when someone is sick and needs an IV drip, where saline solution enters their bloodstream through a thin infusion tube and needle.
The Mekong River was like that person, the connecting channel was the infusion tube, and Tonle Sap Lake was like that bottle of saline hanging up. In the old vernacular, getting an IV drip was called “hanging water.”
So, lakes like this were called hanging lakes.
That afternoon when she spoke with Ding Changsheng on the phone, saying she had no relationship with Ding Xi – that wasn’t quite right.
They had met once, in 1996.
She was still small then, not yet four years old, but already clever. Her kindergarten teacher said she had more schemes than a fly had legs, so she caught a fly and carefully counted its legs, and after counting felt insulted: only six!
In her understanding, more was better, so of course having more schemes was better too.
That year, her father Yi Jiuge took her and her sister Yi Xiao on a long journey. She liked these grand family outings, especially going so far from home: it took a day by bus and a day and night by train to arrive.
When they left the station, countless passengers pushed and shoved their bags and packages. She was inexplicably excited, looking up to see the station sign high above.
Xining.
At that time, there were still grayish-brown mountains behind the train station.
Just learning to read cards, she shouted: “Xi Ding! We’ve arrived at Xi Ding!”
Yi Jiuge lovingly patted her little face, red from the cold. Yi Xiao glanced at her and said: “Mentally challenged.”
A green Jeep came to pick them up and took them to their accommodation.
The place they stayed was called “Jianghe Guest House,” quite large, reportedly converted from an elementary school, three stories high with public toilets at the end of each floor.
After settling in, she discovered that her father knew all the guests who were already there and those who were about to arrive.
She guessed it might be a dinner party that would last many days. She liked such occasions because she wouldn’t get beaten when she made mistakes – she just had to put on a show of wailing, and those kind uncles and aunties would protect her, saying: “Let it go, she’s just a child.”
Then they would slip her two pieces of candy.
She wandered around the guest house every day, scrounging a spoonful of malted milk from one room, begging for a sip of canned orange juice from another while listening to them gossip.
The adults talked freely about scandals in front of her, thinking she was too young to understand.
She understood, and she was naughty.
Not the kind of naughty with malicious schemes, but the kind where children follow others’ lead with snobbery: whoever the adults cursed, despised, or looked down upon in their conversations, she would immediately follow suit, like chasing the latest fashion trend.
So after growing up, whenever someone said children were “pure and innocent,” Yi Sa would sneer. Having been a child, she had the right to speak – children had no soul, they were just mirrors, faithfully copying everything around them, following examples, most susceptible to “demon possession.”
Some sentimental people wrote articles saying they wanted to “forever remain an innocent child” – she didn’t want that. She preferred herself with opinions and edges. Being a child forever was terrifying, like blank paper that could only be smeared by others.
The adults would also talk about her, sentimentally patting her head, saying: “Poor little one, lost her mother when she was just a few months old.”
She mentally rolled her eyes: Poor? She didn’t feel that way. She had never experienced the blessing of having a mother, so she didn’t feel the lack of one as suffering.
The name “Ding Xi” was heard among those idle conversations.
According to them, he was an orphan, found by Ding Changsheng on a winter’s day near the Yellow River not far from Qikou Town. When found, he was nearly frozen to death, with mud-yellow ice crystals still on his body – couldn’t be helped, the Yellow River water was just too yellow.
Ding Changsheng was infertile and had been with his wife for so long without having any children, so he took this found child as his son.
A few days later, Yi Jiuge told her: “Weren’t you complaining about having no children to play with here? Today an uncle surnamed Ding is coming, bringing a little brother, they’ll stay on the first floor.”
She knew which room – only the one at the right end of the first floor was still empty, so she ran there.
Yi Jiuge thought she was just bored from having no playmates these past few days, but that wasn’t it – she just wanted to see what a found child looked like. There were all sorts of rumors in kindergarten, like found boys didn’t grow penises but found girls did, and at midnight, wild children would return to their original form, usually as black cats, or if they were more powerful, as white weasels.
At the door, she didn’t go straight in, just poked her head in a little bit.
Ding Changsheng had just arrived and was still unpacking while quizzing Ding Xi on various subjects across different fields.
For example: “What’s the next line after ‘The sun sets by the mountains’? Five times five is twenty-five, so what’s five times six?”
And so on.
Ding Xi stood at the side, dark and thin, six or seven years old but only the size of a four or five-year-old, with a bowl cut.
In 1996, the gap between north and south, city and countryside was still very obvious, visible in dress and appearance: city people were called “fashionable,” country people were “rustic.”
Ding Xi was very rustic, the kind of rustic that hit you in the face with earthiness, and he was slow too – couldn’t recite “The Yellow River flows into the sea,” and only after thinking for a long time could answer that five times six was thirty.
Ding Changsheng asked again: “What’s a ‘hanging lake’?”
Ding Xi seemed to have dough in his mouth, and couldn’t answer.
She couldn’t bear it anymore and shouted: “A hanging lake is a lake that connects to a big river through a thin channel, like when people get an IV drip, hanging water! A hanging lake.”
Ding Changsheng hadn’t expected someone at the door and was startled. Ding Xi was shy, his head almost shrinking into his shoulders like a startled shrimp.
She lifted her proud head, didn’t enter the room, and left.
She looked down on Ding Xi – she was from the city, she was fashionable, she was fair-skinned, she wasn’t found but naturally born, she was smart, and she was lovable…
Later, when Yi Jiuge asked her how playing with the little brother went, she angrily said: “Who wants to play with him? It would lower my standards!”
The dried fish was finished, leaving a faint fishy smell on her fingers. Yi Sa pulled out a bottle of mineral water from her luggage, unscrewed the cap, and poured water to wash her hands.
As she washed, she suddenly wanted to laugh.
Little brat, barely old enough to talk, yet already using phrases like “lower my standards” – who knows where she learned to talk like that.
More than twenty years had passed.
They had all grown up.
The world had changed, but those secrets of the great rivers were still growing.
She and he had both entered the game.