On the last day of the National Day holiday, Cheng Lele flew to Taixi. Running into the holiday rush, flights were busy and the plane was delayed. By the time she arrived in Taixi, it was already getting dark. Cheng Lele casually hailed a taxi. The scenery outside the car window flew backward rapidly.

In just a moment, night had fallen thick outside. The so-called scenery was just silhouettes of buildings cut out by dim yellow streetlights. Cheng Lele earnestly pressed against the window to look, but couldn’t make out anything meaningful.

She hadn’t been back in a long time. In the first few years, she hadn’t even come back to sweep graves. With that precedent set, later, to avoid Chen An, she would come early or late to sweep graves, leaving right after without staying. Cheng Dong’s grave was in the north of the city, so she didn’t need to enter the city proper. If not for this work assignment, she might not have gotten a close-up look at Taixi’s changes.

In her years at Tongda, Cheng Lele never knew that her hometown’s Xingchen Cinema was actually under the Tongda theater chain. Tongda’s focus was on their own directly-operated cinemas. Cheng Lele was in the operations department, mainly supporting new store managers’ operational work for their first year, essentially part of the store-opening team. There were many franchise cinemas, and the department that dealt with them was the distribution department, which normally just sent down film sources and promotional materials—the cooperation wasn’t close.

So when Mark proposed having her support the Taixi cinema, she was shocked. Beyond the shock, she calmly refused. However, Old Dog Huang’s decision was unassailable. Xingchen Cinema being resold could be understood as a new store opening, which matched her job function, and on the surface didn’t seem like making things difficult for her. As long as she didn’t make a scene at the labor bureau, she couldn’t get an explanation within the company. After much deliberation, she could only agree to the company’s decision.

Since she was here, she might as well settle in.

The company was rarely merciful, allowing her a transition period to find housing and reimbursing the first seven days of hotel accommodation. The hotel she booked wasn’t far from Xingchen Cinema, and the taxi ride there would even pass by that area.

She asked the driver to remind her when they got close to the cinema.

While waiting at a red light, somehow, Cheng Lele suddenly remembered something.

Back then, Chen An had her write the essay “My Dream” for him. As for why he had her write it, she couldn’t remember clearly. What she wrote at the time was—I want to open a cinema with endless movies to watch, endless popcorn to eat, and endless cola to drink.

Teacher’s comment: Hedonism!

The next year, the Chinese teacher changed, but the essay topic assigned was identical to the previous one. Chen An revised the original essay she had written and turned it in. The gist was—I want to open a cinema, to see all kinds of people, to hear sounds like silk and strings, to dream fantastic dreams.

Teacher’s comment: A poet’s temperament!

The past floated up silently like this. Cheng Lele was lost in old memories when she heard the driver say the Xingchen Cinema was just ahead.

Cheng Lele craned her neck to look over. Above that familiar standalone building, red lights flickered on and off in the hazy air. The flickering lines outlined four characters of varying heights and sizes. Cheng Lele squinted and read them out—”Sheng Chang Ying Wan” (Factory Production Film Complete).

…

Something wasn’t quite right.

Cheng Lele remembered this area was Taixi’s most prosperous commercial street, with a rotating restaurant that overlooked all of Taixi and drew crowds. Behind the rotating restaurant was a late-night food street that operated until late at night. On weekends, the food street was bustling with voices and people shoulder to shoulder. Further back from the food street was Women’s Street, which, as the name suggested, was full of shops with women’s consumer themes—clothing, jewelry, beauty salons, and hairdressers, everything you could think of.

But as the wheels gradually went deeper into Zhonghua Road, the situation was vastly different from the liveliness in her memory.

All along this road, only scattered commercial shops still had their lights on. Pedestrians were few and far between. The clamor of the past was long gone. The rotating restaurant area was pitch black, and the food street and Women’s Street were nowhere to be found.

“Driver, please stop here for a moment.”

While paying, Cheng Lele asked: “Why is it so desolate here? I remember this area being very lively back in the day.”

The driver waited for the receipt to print out. Accompanied by the mechanical printing noise, he said: “You haven’t been here in a long time, have you? This area hasn’t been doing well these past two years. Now everyone goes to the east side of the city. That’s the new development zone. A few days ago, they even opened a shopping mall several thousand square meters big.”

Hearing this, Cheng Lele’s heart sank: “A big shopping mall? Does that mean there’s also a cinema there?” The data platform hadn’t shown any other cinema data, so there probably wasn’t one. But just because there wasn’t one now didn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be one in the future.

The driver shook his head: “Don’t know. Those are places young people like to go. I don’t understand such things.”

With that, he handed over the receipt.

Cheng Lele took it, said thanks, and pulled her suitcase toward the cinema.

The wheels rolled over the road, making a rattling sound that made the surroundings seem especially quiet and desolate.