“Stop, stop…” Ba Yunye pressed her hand over her mouth and let out a muffled cry.
Diao Zhuo couldn’t stop the vehicle right away; he drove a little further before pressing the brakes. Ba Yunye jumped out of the car—there was nothing left in her stomach, and she was throwing up pure water. “Damn it…” she cursed, kicking sand with her foot to cover up what she’d expelled, then rinsed her mouth with water.
“Here, chew on this.” Old Wang produced a leaf from one of his pockets—she recognized it immediately, being from Yunnan herself—mint. She popped it into her mouth and bit down, and sure enough, the freshness was instant.
As a female driver who ran western routes and had navigated countless switchback mountain roads into Tibet without batting an eye, she hadn’t expected to be undone by the rolling dunes of the Badain Jaran Desert. Perhaps she’d drunk too much water at the start and her stomach couldn’t handle the jolting—it had been churning relentlessly—and Ba Yunye had already gotten out to be sick three times.
Long Ge’s vehicle pulled up alongside her, and Hippo leaned out of the passenger window with a teasing grin: “Could it be that our lady is with child?”
“Get lost,” Ba Yunye said, wiping her mouth. She walked back to Diao Zhuo’s car. “Get out. I’m driving.”
Diao Zhuo got out. By the time he settled into the passenger seat, a cigarette was already between his lips. While Ba Yunye adjusted the seat, she heard him ask: “Are you pregnant?”
“And if I were, could you actually marry me or what?” Ba Yunye replied evenly, reaching up to adjust the rearview mirror a couple more times. He didn’t respond for a long moment, and she didn’t give it a second thought. She put it in gear and pulled away, smooth and effortless.
Diao Zhuo held the cigarette between his fingers and lowered the window, resting his hand on the edge. As the car set off with a slight lurch, the ash that had gathered at the tip of the cigarette fell away and was quickly swallowed by the wind.
“Marry.”
“Marry my foot—you actually dared to say yes!” Ba Yunye was caught off guard and got annoyed instead, shooting him a sideways glare. “It’s obviously because your driving is terrible and made me carsick—and now you have the nerve to tease me.”
“If my driving isn’t good enough, go find Old Wang next door.” As Diao Zhuo spoke, Ba Yunye happened to pass Old Wang’s vehicle. The walkie-talkie crackled, and Old Wang, seeing her overtake him, immediately reminded her not to rush and that she’d be better off following his lead.
Ba Yunye was well accustomed to being the one in charge, but she conceded reluctantly—this was his turf.
Diao Zhuo closed his eyes to rest. “Slower, driver.”
Ba Yunye pinched her voice: “Yes, master.”
“You’re the one who should be called ‘Pigsy’—why else would people call you Master Ba?” Diao Zhuo enunciated each word with crisp precision.
“Speaking of that—did you know that when I’d just left the military, there was an opportunity for me to teach at a martial arts academy, but I turned it down in the end?”
Diao Zhuo waited for the next part.
Ba Yunye held the back of her head in both hands. The mint leaf was doing wonders—her mind felt clearer, and some old memories drifted back to her.
“I hate teachers.”
“Underachievers always hate teachers,” Diao Zhuo hit the nail on the head.
“In fifth grade, our regular language teacher went on maternity leave and we got a substitute—a new teacher, fresh out of school and just assigned to us. I’ve completely forgotten her name. One time we had a composition assignment, the topic being ‘My Wish.’ The other kids wrote things like wanting to become scientists and send satellites into space, or wanting to become doctors and cure cancer. The shameless ones wrote about wanting to become teachers and then spent the whole essay showering praise on teachers.”
Diao Zhuo had written that kind of essay too—his wish at the time had been to become an astronaut. The corner of his mouth curved slightly upward. “What about yours?”
“I wanted my parents to take me to a park—my dad would push me on the swings from behind, my mom would take photos, and then we’d play on every single piece of equipment there.”
Diao Zhuo knew she meant every word.
“Not only did the new teacher give me a low grade, she held up my essay as a negative example to bring a laugh to the whole class. As it turned out, not a single person dared to laugh.”
He reached over and laid his hand gently on the back of her head, stroking it softly—a quiet, wordless comfort.
“Don’t bother me while I’m driving,” Ba Yunye said. She wasn’t the type who needed anyone’s pity. She waved him off, refusing to let Diao Zhuo touch her. “Whether the other kids knew I had no parents, I have no idea. But one thing was common knowledge—anyone who dared laugh would get a beating from me after class.”
“Those who read the situation well are the wise ones.” Diao Zhuo’s sympathy shifted to her elementary school classmates.
Ba Yunye seemed to find even her own story funny and laughed for a moment before continuing: “I don’t know who told the section chief about it, but apparently the new teacher got severely reprimanded. After that, whenever she saw me, she’d go out of her way to avoid me. You could say that was the first lesson I, as a student, ever taught her.”
Ba Yunye hadn’t even finished being smug when she felt the bottom of the car give way beneath her—the left rear wheel spun uselessly several times. “Ugh! We’re bogged down.”
Getting out to look, she saw that the vehicle had lost control cresting a dune, and half the body was now buried in sand. Sand cascaded down around the spinning wheel, piling into a small anthill-shaped mound in no time.
Ba Yunye calmly picked up a shovel and cleared the sand away from the buried wheel. Diao Zhuo had already attached the tow rope, and the front vehicle started up and quickly hauled the stuck car free.
Old Wang gave the rear tire a kick. The fine sand clinging to the mudguard shook loose, and he chuckled: “This line of work is no easy thing—even us seasoned drivers get bogged down all the time.”
Long Ge wiped the sweat from his brow; the sleeves of his shirt were coated in fine sand. “It sure would be nice if we had a drone.”
Old Wang shook his head. “Tourist drones can only take off at the edge. Flying deep into the desert isn’t permitted.”
Hippo asked: “Is that because of weapons testing in the area?”
“That’s what I’ve always figured.” Old Wang chewed on a few mint leaves to stay sharp, leaving a toothpaste taste in his mouth. “You lot who travel the western routes—can you photograph the military supply trucks on the roads into Tibet? Can you photograph those military stations? Same principle. We ordinary folk definitely have to support national policy.”
With that, everyone got back in their vehicles. A message came through on the satellite phone: the meteorological department had detected two strong air currents converging from the east and west, which meant a sandstorm would soon sweep through the desert.
“A sandstorm… The thing I fear most is inexperienced people panicking and trying to outrun it, thinking their two legs can get them away in time,” Long Ge said, rubbing his hands together. His protruding beer belly nearly pressed against the steering wheel. “If the three students can come through a sandstorm without a scratch, that would prove at least one of them has some capability. But if they’re all completely useless—heh…”
Hippo sat pensively. Long Ge glanced at him. “What are you thinking?”
“I think something might be going on between Ba Yunye and Diao Zhuo.”
“You’re blind,” Long Ge snapped.
“Long Ge…” Hippo seemed to struggle to get the words out. He hemmed and hawed for a while before finally continuing: “Do you… toward Ba Yunye… really…?”
“I know what you’re all wondering,” Long Ge said. He kept his eyes fixed on the road, driving with full attention, but a faint air of a big brother’s authority crept into his tone. “It’s not possible. How old is she?”
Hippo was unconvinced. “Come on—men, even at eighty, still have an eye for a twenty-year-old girl.”
Long Ge scoffed.
“How long have you been single?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Don’t tell me you…” Hippo hugged his own shoulders as if he were cold. “You like men?!”
“You guess.”
“Don’t you go falling for me now!”
Long Ge’s forehead veins were practically bulging. “If I had a pistol right now…”
Hippo helpfully finished: “You’d definitely shoot me with one bullet.”
“No—” He ground his back teeth. “I’d switch to a machine gun and turn you into a sieve!”
Ever since discovering that Xiao’ai had gone missing, her mother, Liu Chengru, had been unable to sleep, unable to eat a single grain of rice. She was lifeless and hollow, lying half-reclined on the sofa all day, staring out the window. The television was fixed on the news channel, and her phone was always plugged in and charging, terrified of missing any piece of news about her daughter.
Old Meng was equally frantic with worry. He went to the police station lobby every single day, waiting and hoping for word that Xiao’ai had been rescued—yet each day brought only disappointment. Yesterday, a police officer had told him that the Badain Jaran scenic area had already organized five search teams to go in, but there was still no new information.
He made a bold decision: he booked two plane tickets to Baotou and would leave tonight.
Walking through the front door, he found several of Liu Chengru’s old friends had come over, along with Xiao’ai’s close friend Dan Dan, and two unfamiliar faces who turned out to be newspaper reporters. Liu Chengru was in tears, telling the reporters about her daughter’s disappearance.
“We had no idea our daughter had a classmate named Zhang Tian’en—Xiao’ai never mentioned this boy when she came home. But Zhe Ming… we knew about him. The two of them had been together for a few months. Our daughter was grown up, and we didn’t interfere, but if we’d known he would take Xiao’ai into some desert, we would never have allowed them to be together—never…”
The reporter asked: “Didn’t they tell the two of you clearly before they set out to hike through the desert?”
Liu Chengru shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “Xiao’ai is such a good girl. Before, she would tell us everything… she wouldn’t hide things from us, she really wouldn’t… sob… this time I don’t know what happened…”
Dan Dan, seated beside her, seemed to have something to say and held it in for a long moment. “Auntie, the truth is, Xiao’ai went hiking through Tiger Leaping Gorge in Shangri-La with Zhe Ming over the summer. Zhang Tian’en was there too.”
“What?!” Both Old Meng and Liu Chengru were stunned. “Didn’t she say she was going to Shangri-La’s ancient town?!”
Dan Dan shook her head. “She posted about it on her social media, which is how I knew.”
Liu Chengru was devastated—she had never seen that post on her daughter’s social media feed, which meant Xiao’ai must have blocked her, her husband, and the other relatives. She couldn’t understand it. She had carried Xiao’ai for ten months and been by her side through every stage of her growing up—she should have been Xiao’ai’s closest person in the world. So why had her own daughter blocked her?
The reporters seized on this new detail and quickly noted it down.
“Old Meng…” Liu Chengru burst into loud sobbing and grabbed her husband’s arm. “How could she… why doesn’t she understand how much we worry! We only made her travel with tour groups because we were afraid she’d get hurt going out on her own… and now look! She’s too reckless—she hid it from us once, and now she’s hiding things again… sobbing… if anything happens to her, I won’t want to go on living! I won’t!”
“Alright, reporters, no more interviewing.” Old Meng issued his order to leave. “I’ve booked tickets. I need to take Xiao’ai’s mother to the airport now.”
“Of course! Of course!” Liu Chengru nodded repeatedly.
“We now bring you a brief news update. Three university students who set out to hike through the desert several days ago remain missing. Local authorities have organized rescue teams and herdsmen to search deep into the desert, and volunteers from civilian rescue organizations have also traveled to the area to join the search. Additionally, due to the impact of powerful air currents, a massive sandstorm has erupted over the Badain Jaran Desert, and the scenic area has been temporarily closed.”
Liu Chengru’s vision went dark and she suddenly fainted, sending everyone into a flurry.
Dan Dan couldn’t get close enough to help and could only stand to one side in anxious helplessness. The truth was, Xiao’ai’s parents were no different from her own—or perhaps from any other parents: they believed that over a decade of raising a child would draw them ever closer, not knowing that the greatest wish of a grown child might be nothing more than to put distance between herself and her parents. Parents forever waited for their children’s gratitude; children forever waited for their understanding.