Chapter 22
When I arrived in Shenyang, I had to transfer trains, but none were immediately available, so I could only take a long-distance bus. I sat for three hours on a bus crowded with small merchants from Shenyang, and filled with a variety of odors. By the time it was getting dark, I finally reached Fei's city.
This is a famous steel city. Due to transportation needs, the station was built near the steel mill. As I got off, I turned around and saw a row of intimidating, dark-red large steel furnaces standing tall in the evening haze.
The long journey had made me somewhat tired; I thought of looking for a restaurant to get something to eat, but realizing I still didn't know where Fei was, I put that thought aside for the moment.
Luckily, the address she had left was quite detailed. I took a taxi to her residential community. It was still the matchbox-style apartment buildings constructed around the mid-1980s, their vermilion exteriors now somewhat mottled with age. I found Building 5, Unit 3, Floor 5, Apartment 2. Before knocking, I took out a handkerchief to wipe my face, then straightened my clothes—still wearing the sports shirt I had donned that morning to play ball with my father. When I felt I didn't look too disheveled, I began to knock.
But I knocked for half an hour.
It wasn't until a neighbor's door opened that a middle-aged woman looked me up and down, then spoke, "What are you knocking for, there's no one home."
I was taken aback, "Is this the Qiao residence?"
The woman didn't respond to my question, but her words lifted my spirits, "Feifei probably won't be back for at least another hour."
"Is it the girl who studies foreign languages?"
"Who else around here?"
I wanted to ask her where she had gone, but the woman had already shut the door.
Right, I hadn't made a mistake, I was indeed hungry at that point and needed to get something to eat—a bowl of zhajiang noodles. I'd wait for her to come back.
But I couldn't go too far, so I ate a bowl of noodles at a small restaurant near her home. When I came out, I saw a middle-aged woman tending a small cigarette stand. Exhausted, I needed a smoke, but the stand had no good cigarettes. I said, "People's Great Hall."
The woman pointed to "Seven Wolves."
I looked at her, and took a pack of "People's Great Hall" from her cigarette case myself.
Before I could ask, the woman smiled and gestured with her hands: 12. I lit one and walked back to sit on the stone steps below Fei's building. Now, it was completely dark. I watched my cigarette glow intermittently, thinking about being in a strange corner of a strange city, all for this girl, with whom I had shared indulgent joys not long ago.
I saw someone approaching, vaguely it seemed like Fei's silhouette, holding something, and she was not alone.
I stood up and walked over.
By her side was the cigarette vendor, with Fei holding her cigarette case. She wore a simple blue dress and her long black hair was tied in a ponytail, making her unpainted face look small and youthful, like a junior high school girl.
I could see her clearly now as she walked past me. She saw me, but since it was dark, didn't recognize me.
I said softly, "Fei."
She suddenly stopped, turned her head, "My goodness. I was wondering if it could really be you."
Qiao Fei
"Yes, this is my home, a house given by the street office. This is my mom, yes, she's a deaf-mute. My dad is also a deaf-mute. That's why we don't have a phone. He was hospitalized, just had a heart bypass surgery in Shenyang, and was transferred back here, I was just taking care of him."
(End of Chapter)
This book is first published by Xiaoxiang Academy, please do not reprint!