The summer after graduating middle school, Fang Long had gone to Guangzhou once — that time, Zhou Ya had borrowed a small sedan from someone and driven her, Auntie, and her uncle-by-marriage there for a trip. That had been Fang Long’s first “family trip.”
Towering skyscrapers, hurrying pedestrians, unfamiliar dialects, murky air, fashionable young people, tap water with a strange smell, an array of Cantonese-style dim sum, bustling and noisy commercial streets… every detail had left a deep impression on Fang Long at the time. But the deep impression was of no use now — to her, this city remained foreign.
It was simply too big; after getting off the highway, the car had to drive for nearly another hour before reaching the bus terminal. The two girls, luggage in hand, stood dazed at the station exit for a good while; the road before them was wide and long, stretching endlessly in both directions.
Luo Xin had been to the provincial capital once more than Fang Long, but she too was lost; in the end it was Fang Long who ran over to ask a convenience store clerk nearby, and only then did they learn which direction the subway station was. The two of them peeked at how others bought tickets at the machine, fumbling for a good while before finally getting two round tokens. The turnstile gates were the kind that moved when you pushed the bar through; Luo Xin, inexperienced, swiped her ticket and went through, only to have her luggage get stuck outside the gate. The two of them, flustered, lifted and pushed in a panic, looking a mess, panting from exhaustion.
Once they finally made it onto the subway, Fang Long didn’t dare let her guard down either, keeping her eyes fixed on the route map the whole time, listening carefully to the station announcements, terrified they’d miss their stop. Yet they still managed to make a mistake, getting off in the wrong direction at a transfer station. The two of them, dragging their suitcases while huffing and puffing to find a subway staff member, muttered to each other that big cities really were different — even the length of a single subway station platform was longer than an entire street back in Andrew Town.
Luo Xin wasn’t reporting to her new job until the next day, so she was staying at a hotel with Fang Long that night. Called a “hotel,” it turned out to actually be a small inn, just named “Yali Hotel.” The inn was located on the main road of an urban village, flanked by a Shaxian snack shop and a Lanzhou noodle place. Looking at the neon sign out front reading “Hourly Rooms,” Fang Long felt a bit dazed, momentarily feeling as if she’d somehow ended up back in Andrew Town.
The entrance was tiny, with no elevator, and the room was on the fifth floor. Luo Xin, though venturing far from home, had a large and heavy suitcase she couldn’t lift alone, so the two of them had to carry it up together, one in front and one behind.
The standard double room had dim lighting and old furniture; pulling back the curtains revealed none of the glittering city lights you’d see in TV dramas, but at least it was clean and tidy. Having worked up a sweat carrying the luggage up, the two decided to shower first before heading out to eat.
While Luo Xin was showering, Fang Long called Zhou Ya. The call connected quickly, and his familiar low, hoarse voice came through: “Hey, Long Long.”
Fang Long’s heart trembled, her eyes inexplicably growing a little damp, and she answered softly: “I’m at the hotel now.”
“Just got to the hotel now?” Zhou Ya stood in front of the stall, glancing back at the clock on the wall inside — it was already six in the evening, and customers had already arrived at the shop. “Your last call was at four, I thought you’d have arrived long ago.”
“The subway was so complicated, we had to transfer, wait for trains… and after getting out of the station we still had to walk for ages…” Fang Long opened the window to get some air, but the moment she cracked it open, the noise from downstairs came flooding in, so she quickly shut it again, muttering, “This Guangzhou city, why is it so huge…”
Zhou Ya chuckled softly: “I told you to just take a taxi straight from the station to the hotel, but you wouldn’t listen, insisted on taking the subway instead.”
“Such a long distance, how expensive would a taxi be?”
“I gave you the money, so use it. Don’t split every yuan in half before spending it.”
Fang Long puffed out her cheeks, clearly unwilling.
The night before, once she’d finished packing, Zhou Ya had come into her room and tucked a manila envelope into her bag, saying it was travel money for her. She’d said she had her own money, that a trip to the provincial capital was well within her means, but Zhou Ya had insisted she take it, just in case. After Zhou Ya went back to his room, Fang Long had opened the envelope and counted — Zhou Ya had put in five thousand yuan. Besides hundred-yuan notes, there were also some fifties and tens.
“You don’t know anyone here — what if you run into some unlicensed cab driver? And this time you’re not by my side either…”
Fang Long’s voice grew softer and softer, like maltose slowly melting from the heat.
Zhou Ya could hardly bear the little ancestor acting coy like this; his ears itched, and his neck tingled as if electrified. He switched the phone to his other ear, scratching his itchy earlobe, and instructed gently: “Taxis in the big city aren’t like the ones out here that mess around however they please. Once you get in the car, remember to check the license on the dashboard — it has the driver’s name and ID number on it, note it down on your phone, and the license plate too…”
Fang Long burst out laughing, cutting him off: “Zhou Ya, you really are like my parent.”
“Tch, I basically am.” Zhou Ya said, mildly annoyed, rubbing the side of his nose.
Since he was her “parent,” well, there were plenty of names to call him then, and Fang Long, pitching her voice higher, called him all sorts of things, throwing out whatever title came to mind.
Zhou Ya, ears burning from listening, gritted his teeth: “Keep it up then, don’t come crying to me when you get back…”
Fang Long was about to needle him further when the bathroom door opened and Luo Xin walked out, toweling her hair. Fang Long quickly said “bye” to Zhou Ya and hung up.
Luo Xin looked at her teasingly, smiling: “Who were you on the phone with?”
“With my—” Fang Long suddenly paused, thought about it, then said honestly, “With my boyfriend.”
“Well, look at you, secretly got a boyfriend and didn’t even tell me!” Luo Xin’s eyes went wide and round. “Who is he?”
Fang Long didn’t dare tell her “you literally just saw him this morning.”
“Next time,” she said. “I’ll introduce him properly next time we get the chance.”
Her stomach was growling with hunger, and she wanted to finish showering quickly to go eat, but just as she’d lathered up her hair with shampoo, she noticed the water from the showerhead getting colder and colder. Before long, the shower water had turned completely cold, sending shivers rippling across her skin at the touch.
Fang Long, hair full of suds, ran to the door and called out loudly: “Luo Xin! Did you have hot water when you showered earlier?”
Luo Xin called back: “Yeah, I did! But it was just lukewarm, never got really hot! Why, what’s wrong?”
“There’s no hot water!”
“What?! Wait, I’ll go ask downstairs!”
In the end, Fang Long finished her shower in cold water — it turned out the hot water supply at this run-down inn was limited, and once used up, it took about an hour to refill and reheat. Fang Long rushed through her shower, sneezing several times while drying off.
Heading toward the subway station there was a large shopping mall; there was no “McDucky’s” here, but the real fast food chain’s sign glowed in the night, and upstairs there was a Pizza Hut and a Xianzonglin dessert shop, along with the conveyor-belt sushi place Fang Long had put on her “must-eat list.”
The two girls had agreed before entering the restaurant that after all their trekking about that day, they absolutely deserved to eat their fill — but as they ate, checking the price chart on the table against each plate, the sushi going into their mouths somehow didn’t taste quite as delicious anymore.
The white plates were the cheapest, the black-gold plates the most expensive — with only one piece per plate, the salmon arranged to look like a rose — a single piece of sushi costing over twenty yuan.
“Those influencers I follow, every time they eat sushi it looks like it doesn’t cost them anything…” Luo Xin craned her neck, watching from afar as the octopus gunkan sushi she wanted slowly made its way over on the belt. “Every time, after they finish, they take photos of their stacked plates, and I noticed — not a single white plate among them, two stacks piled sky-high…”
For small-town girls like them, blogs were now the “window” to a new world. Without even opening the window, just standing before it, they could easily glimpse other people’s colorful lives.
Both of them in their early twenties — one in the provincial capital, one in a small town. One rotated through different luxury bags every day; the other had only just learned from a blog that these bags were called “luxury goods.” One’s single sushi meal might cost as much as the other’s half-month salary — after all, look, a single “Love Blossom” roll cost as much as a whole day’s food budget. While one dozed off in a college lecture hall, the other had already clocked an hour on the assembly line, sitting in a workshop, repeating the same motions day after day. One posed sweetly in photos with a boyfriend who drove a BMW; the other had been “promised” by her family to a “good match” waiting to collect a bride price…
“Comparing yourself to others will be the death of you. I know this kind of comparison is pointless, but I think it’s only human to long for things that aren’t yours.”
Luo Xin picked up the sushi she wanted, dipped a piece heavily into the wasabi-soy sauce, and stuffed it into her mouth, mumbling, “Some people are born in Rome; I could run my whole life and never get there. I don’t even dare fantasize anymore, just getting a little taste of it now and then makes me happy enough… ow! So spicy, so spicy!”
Whether it was the wasabi or her emotions, Luo Xin’s eyes turned red, tears streaming down, even her nose starting to run.
Fang Long quickly pulled out tissues from her bag, handing her a couple — eating out in the big city, even tissues cost extra, absolutely outrageous.
Luo Xin was like a cracked cup, leaking drop by drop for a while, complaining about her relatives, her parents, her supermarket boss, the small town… Fang Long didn’t join in the complaining, didn’t offer comfort, didn’t say any hollow encouraging words — she just listened quietly. She understood Luo Xin’s feelings well, and understood her longing too. Since getting into blogs herself, Fang Long had also bookmarked a few bloggers, checking their pages every week, watching lives that felt out of reach to her.
But what Fang Long longed for was perhaps different from what Luo Xin longed for — she just wanted a home. A high bed with soft pillows, warm tea and hot meals, laughter and sorrow, bickering and compromise — that alone would be enough.
Once Luo Xin’s mood had settled a bit, Fang Long, in one go, grabbed two plates of “Love Blossom” and several black-gold plates, filling up the little table in front of them completely.
“This one’s on me!” Fang Long’s voice was full, like a shriveled sponge finally soaked with water. “Wishing my friend nothing but smooth sailing in her new city! May you never take the wrong subway line again! May your Cantonese sound better than the actors on TVB! May your salary rise every year! May you eat sushi whenever you want! And may you find everything you’re looking for, sooner rather than later!”
Luo Xin’s eyes grew wet; she picked up her teacup and clinked it against Fang Long’s, blushing as she laughed bashfully: “Then… then… how about we get two more bottles of marble soda?”
Fang Long laughed heartily: “Sure!!”
At the same time, hundreds of kilometers away in the small town, the food stall was packed with customers, smoke and the bustle of the evening filling the air. A’Feng had just taken an order from a table and turned to call for Zhou Ya, who was on knife duty tonight, to chop the pig liver and goose wings — only to find Zhou Ya staring blankly at his phone.
A’Feng had a guess, raising an eyebrow with a grin: “Mute Bro, something’s off with you — you’ve been staring at your phone all night, waiting for someone’s call?”
Zhou Ya paused briefly, stuffing the phone back into his back pocket, glaring at him: “None of your business.”
A’Feng grew even more delighted: “Ohh — Mute Bro’s got something going on!”
Other staff nearby overheard, curious: “What’s going on, what’s going on?”
Zhou Ya ignored them, picking up a braised goose wing and tossing it onto the cutting board, the cleaver rising and falling with crisp, decisive thuds. He chopped away in silence, thinking to himself — how could this little ancestor not even send a single message, was she having too much fun to remember him?