I didn’t answer immediately.

This assignment could be called a trap for anyone in our department. Going to Africa required getting over twenty types of vaccines, facing dangers that truly involved life and death, and though they said three years, if the project couldn’t be completed, even ten years of youth could be thrown into it.

But I was different.

I had gone to a big company, passed all the certificates I could take, and everyone thought I had become respectable, that I was making money.

But standing in front of Cheng Xia, I knew the distance between him and me was still very far.

Real estate was declining. For a small employee like me without background or education who wanted a promotion, it was too difficult to climb up. There was a senior colleague in another group in the same position as me who hadn’t been promoted or gotten a raise in ten years.

But he was a local with several rental properties.

Old Feng was giving me an opportunity.

But I knew this trip carried great risk, and I wouldn’t be able to come back for several years.

In other words, choosing to go meant there would be no more possibility between Cheng Xia and me—that dream I’d been having since my teens would be completely shattered.

Originally I thought, if he asked me not to leave, I wouldn’t go. So what if he had a girlfriend, I could become sisters with his girlfriend, I could be a little more humble, a little more shameless…

But watching him send text messages to his girlfriend, I discovered that I was unwilling.

I was unwilling to forever be a shadow crawling on the ground, resentfully and uglily spying on their happiness.

I wanted to have equal dialogue with him, not to be pitied by him, ignored by him, always treated as the person closest to him yet who would never be considered by him.

This longing was so strong it even exceeded “being with Cheng Xia forever.”

At that time, I didn’t know why myself.

So I got on the plane, without even saying goodbye to Cheng Xia—after that unpleasant parting, we never contacted each other again.

This was my first time on a plane. All along the way I nervously stole glances at others, learning by watching, before finally smoothly sitting in my seat.

Looking at the blue sky outside the window, I suddenly remembered the feeling I had the first time I took a train. It was the same feeling—fearful, anxious, yet expectant. Except back then, I knew I would see Cheng Xia soon, and his direction was my direction.

But now, I was going to a place without him.

I wanted to send him a WeChat message, but all the words seemed so awkward and contrived. I typed then deleted, deleted then typed.

Just then, after two months, Cheng Xia’s message suddenly popped up: Want to get spicy hot pot today? Should I come to your company to find you?

“The plane is about to take off, please turn off your electronic devices.”

At this moment the flight attendant came over to tell me to turn off my phone. Old Feng glanced at me, so I turned it off.

In the tremendous roar, the plane flew higher and higher. For the first time I saw this coastal city from this angle. How beautiful it was—sapphire blue, the sparkling ocean, just like a dream.

How fortunate I was to have met you.

How fortunate I was to finally part from you.

Goodbye, Cheng Xia.

Later, I finally understood why Old Feng wanted to bring me along.

This person had a rigid personality. Once he decided on something, he had to do it well. To put it nicely, he was a fierce general under the upper leadership. To put it less nicely, he was inflexible.

He was the chief officer. The various people under him all had tempers, and the African foremen were especially lazy. Say a few words and they’d slap you with a hat of racial discrimination.

When he got impatient communicating and mediating with people, there had to be one of his own people in the middle to smooth things over.

He originally wanted to bring a man, but among our batch of male employees there weren’t any promising ones, so he chose me—he told me later that he actually didn’t expect me to be able to stick it out.

While following him to look at blueprints and calculate settlements, I also braved the scorching sun, running around the site with the subproject managers. At night I still had to cram French. The Africans had too many opinions, and Old Feng and I couldn’t understand them, which put us in a very passive position.

Old Feng’s brain worked faster than normal people’s, and he was a workaholic. I simply couldn’t keep up with his pace and got scolded bloody by him every day.

When Old Feng cursed at people, it was truly harsh. There was a senior colleague in our engineering department, over six feet tall, who was made to squat on the ground crying by his scolding.

Fortunately, I had long since developed a face thicker than a city wall. After he finished scolding, I quickly handed over a cup of hot water. “Master, rest a bit before scolding more… By the way, could you explain this to me? How is this calculated?”

The first month, I lost ten pounds dramatically.

The second month, I finally got used to the work rhythm. Then I got infected with salmonella.

This disease wasn’t fatal, just tormenting. I’d been healthy since childhood, and this kind of violent high fever was a first for me.

Lying in bed, I only felt fire burning violently throughout my body.

I had many, many dreams.

I dreamed of when I was very small, when my mom left home without hesitation by bus. My dad smashed everything he could smash. I was so scared I wet my pants. My dad looked at me with red eyes, and I cried saying, “Dad, don’t kill me.”

I dreamed of Grandma. She bent over picking up a plastic bottle, smiling with satisfaction, then caught sight of me passing by with my classmate and quickly covered her face and ran like a thief. I called after her, “Grandma! Grandma!” but couldn’t catch up to the old lady.

I dreamed of my sisters from the electronics factory. When they were playing wildly and enjoying their youth, I was doing practice problems all night. They mocked me, then bought lots of coffee and snacks to put on my desk.

What I dreamed of most was still Cheng Xia.

Him at sixteen, buzz cut, his smile clean and shy, wearing his school uniform standing at the entrance to the wet market waiting for me, the sunset of the entire city surging from behind him.

He said, of course we won’t be separated, you wasted a wish.

He said, whoever looks down on you, I’ll accompany you to look down on them twice as much.

He said, what’s so great about not finding a job, I’m here.

He ran toward me in that coastal city, his hair blown like a unicorn’s, revealing his pale forehead.

I wanted to reach out my hand toward him, but suddenly woke from the dream.

It was the crude dormitory in Africa, a dark room where, aside from spiders crawling around, there was nothing.

I went to the bathroom and vomited for a while. Finding that I could stand shakily, I took a flashlight to the next room.

“Boss, how are you doing?” I asked.

Old Feng had also caught it, more severely than me, burning with fever until his consciousness was muddled, his whole body spasming.

Africa lacked medical resources. Most people held to the spirit that minor illnesses won’t kill you and major illnesses can’t be escaped, so going to the hospital was useless.

I fed Old Feng water, then sat beside him changing hot towels to cool him down. If his brain got burned out, I’d have to suffer along with him.

The next day, Old Feng still wasn’t better, and neither was I. Forcing myself, I helped him organize the materials that needed to be used into categories.

The chief engineer said, “I originally thought you two had that kind of relationship, but now I see it’s not that! It’s a TV drama!”

“What TV drama?”

“The Grand Eunuch.”

There was another problem at the site. The African foremen went on strike. The engineering colleague and I rushed over without stopping to listen to the workers’ representatives’ opinions. They actually said that the Chinese looked down on them.

Our people’s faces turned green with anger. They kept stealing oil, stealing parts, stealing cement… When working they dragged their feet. How could you possibly have a good expression toward a bunch of thieves?

If Old Feng had come, he probably would have slammed the table and started arguing. After patiently listening to three hours of verbal sparring from both sides, I told them in clumsy French: Look, they haven’t looked down on a woman at the construction site, so how could they look down on such respectable laborers?

The leader couldn’t help but laugh, then quickly recovered his seriousness, pounding the table and shouting: This matter involves racial discrimination and must be resolved.

I said, “How about this—you list down all the behaviors you feel are offensive, and I’ll directly request instructions from our big leader to formulate behavioral guidelines for Chinese supervisors. But as the price, you must also abide by the behavioral guidelines we establish.”

Each side took a step back. When both parties nodded, I already felt dizzy and lightheaded.

The car hadn’t come yet. The senior colleague let me rest on the loading truck for a while. Africa’s sunset was outrageously brilliant. Even the dusty construction site showed a certain magnificence.

I saw several children running around in the construction site’s garbage dump, as if picking something up. The workers kept chasing them away. They scattered in all directions, then regathered after a while.

A child ran past my side. I asked, “What are you picking up?”

The children were very shy. They told me in a babble of voices that they were picking up stones. There were treasures in the stones that could be exchanged for money.

Before I could understand, they scattered with laughter.

The senior colleague came over to explain that there was iron in these construction waste materials, and they smashed the stones to exchange for money.

“These kids are very pitiful,” he said. “Each family has four or five children. Although free elementary school has been made universal, most still can’t attend and just run around aimlessly all day like this.”

“But smashing and smashing, they grow up,” I said. “Children from poor families have their way of growing up.”

The high fever made me dizzy and confused. I only felt that I had merged into one with those children breaking stones in the sunset.

I was breaking open a giant stone, hoping that inside, there would be enough treasure.