Chapter 1

After the National Day holiday, it was the time of Cold Dew, and the lingering heat in Sui City finally subsided, much like the fallen leaves scattered across the streets.

At 6:30 a.m., the sky began to brighten, and Ha Yue was awakened by the cold on her wire mesh bed.

This 1.5-meter-wide single bed was a birthday gift from her father, Ha Jianguo, when she was in the third grade. Although it now looked old and worn, wholly out of place for an adult young woman, it was a rarity at the time—a custom-made item commissioned by Ha Jianguo from a furniture factory 50 kilometers away, for a significant sum of money.

Back then, Sui City was transitioning from rural to urban living, and average annual incomes were low. Take Ha Yue’s family, for instance. The furniture in their house hadn’t changed since her parents, Ha Jianguo and Zhao Chunni, got married.

But children don’t concern themselves with the hardships of their parents’ livelihoods. Nine-year-old Ha Yue had long grown tired of squeezing into the same kang bed with her parents.

At that age, she had just begun to develop a sense of self-awareness and picked up a new term from her classmates—she cried and made a fuss every day, demanding her “privacy.” So when Ha Jianguo brought workers to deliver the wire mesh bed and set it up in her small bedroom, Ha Yue was so excited by the sight of the gleaming new bed that she jumped onto her father’s back and planted kisses on his face, declaring her admiration.

“Thank you, Daddy! You’re so good to me. You’re the best daddy in the world.”

This memorable event even made its way into a summer essay Ha Yue wrote that year. With vivid language, it was chosen by her Chinese teacher as a model composition and read aloud to the entire class.

Unfortunately, that childlike and lively essay hasn’t survived to the present day.

That bed was the last gift Ha Jianguo gave his daughter. Before Ha Yue’s tenth birthday, her “best daddy in the world” disappeared from their home, along with a bundle of his clothes and shoes.

As for the reason? “He ran off with that tramp from the furniture factory who sold us the bed.”

At least, that’s how Zhao Chunni explained it to her daughter while using the essay booklet to light the stove.

Sitting up on the creaky wire mesh bed, Ha Yue had no time to reminisce about her father, whom she hadn’t seen in over a decade. Glancing at the faint light outside, she quickly gathered her hair, jumped out of bed, and began her daily routine with practiced efficiency: lighting the fire, boiling water, and starting her workday.

Not that it was anything like a proper job.

Three years ago, the pandemic had disrupted the economy, and the foreign trade industry, where she worked, was hit particularly hard after she graduated with a bachelor’s degree.

Though she was a young woman, in her more naive days, Ha Yue had dreamed of excelling in her field, dazzling others with her exceptional translation skills, and making a name for herself in Ji City.

Promotions, pay raises, rapid career progress—all before thirty, she’d own her own property in a prime location, silencing anyone who had ever looked down on her.

If luck was on her side, she also planned to settle on a suitable man for marriage. This man, in her mind, had to be entirely unremarkable in both looks and assets, ensuring marital fidelity.

She had every confidence she could build a family with a man wholly unlike her father. Together, they would raise children who would become new citizens of Ji City.

Day after day, she imagined this life—working, earning money, dealing with life’s minutiae. Then, after retirement, she’d enjoy the company of her grandchildren, living a blissful, if utterly mundane, life.

Reality, however, had other plans.

As a nine-to-nine-six corporate drone, social opportunities were scarce. After graduating from university, even her “plans” proved less enduring than her surprise romantic encounters during her student years. Outside the campus bubble, adult relationships were weighed down by the stench of money, and dating suddenly lost its purity.

In the dating scene of first-tier cities, survival pressure was immense, and everyone was seeking partners of higher value than themselves.

To her dismay, even the “ordinary guy” type she particularly favored was looking to climb the social ladder through their relationships.

And apart from her decent appearance and passable job, Ha Yue’s only standout achievement was having emerged from the underwhelming education system of an eighteenth-tier city to attend Ji City’s top university.

But when you really think about it, Ji University produces at least ten thousand graduates a year, the majority of whom are postgraduates.

As the culture shifted toward materialism, her qualities of hard work and ambition lost their appeal. Bright students from humble backgrounds saw their worth plummet. Even the once-idolized “old money” aesthetic was now being copied by internet influencers, leaving someone like Ha Yue—a relic of a bygone era—labeled with a new, mocking term online: “small-town test-taking machine.”

Public opinion is powerful, and breaking out of this malicious stereotype proved beyond her reach.

The day she was left unemployed and single, she had already spent a month and a half working remotely in her rental apartment in Ji City. Despite her diligence—working day and night to Skype with VIP clients—her orders were pitifully few.

During her undergraduate years, she had passed the TEM-8 exam and earned the highly coveted CATTI Level 1 certification. A minor celebrity in the Ji University foreign language department’s Class of 2015, she had even achieved the company’s top sales record six months into her job by closing deals during a European business trip.

But none of this mattered in the grand economic downturn that ravaged logistics and labor alike.

Facing endless order cancellations and broken contracts, all Ha Yue could do was apologize and explain, as if she were a delinquent debtor. She watched helplessly as her company’s client base and incoming payments dwindled away.

They say the ultimate fate of foreign trade professionals is going solo.  

So, when her balding middle-aged boss, with a bitter expression, awkwardly informed her that next month’s salary might not be paid and that he couldn’t even afford the penalty for breaking the office lease, she didn’t push for the N+1 severance pay she was entitled to. Instead, she cheerfully terminated the contract.  

And then?  

Entrepreneurship failed. Life, like an enormous gear that cannot be stopped, continued grinding forward. No matter what kind of setback a small individual might face, the vast, boundless universe moves on as though it’s a preprogrammed game, one event triggering the next in rapid succession.  

Before she knew it, time had flown by. She realized she’d already spent two years in Sui City—the very place she had sworn after her college entrance exams she’d never return to.  

In these two years, Ha Yue’s daily grind had remained more or less the same.  

First, she would mix feed with soybean meal and use it to feed the geese in the yard. While they were gathered around the trough, distracted by their meal, she would clean up their droppings and replace their water.  

By the time the sun was fully up, she would take a basin of warm water to her mother Zhao Chunni’s room to wake her up.  

Half a month ago, Zhao Chunni had suddenly insisted on raising pigs at home. Decades earlier, when life was extremely hard, Ha Yue’s maternal grandmother, who had lived in the countryside, used to keep a small pigsty in the yard. She would raise two pigs to keep each other company for a year, slaughter them around the winter solstice, and have fresh pork to eat. The family couldn’t finish it all, so they’d sell the extra at the market.  

But that was all ancient history. Nowadays, living standards had improved, and no one wanted to spend an entire year raising pigs just for a few hundred pounds of cheap pork. Rural families keeping pigs for their own consumption were becoming rarer, let alone those in towns. Raising pigs at home, with the accompanying stench, was simply unthinkable.  

At first, Ha Yue firmly opposed the idea, citing her already busy schedule managing a shop and a yard full of geese. But after days of silent standoff between mother and daughter, she began to soften when she saw her mother’s stubborn and frail figure.  

She thought perhaps her mother missed her late grandparents and wanted to relive the hard yet familiar routine of raising pigs. After all, people often say older folks are like children—they find comfort in revisiting the past. Perhaps raising pigs might even ease some of her mother’s negative emotions. Reluctantly, she agreed.  

Thus, starting a week ago, another task was added to her already busy mornings.  

Before making breakfast, she now had to check on the two piglets, barely a month old, that they had brought home and placed in the west wing of the house, making sure they were still lively and well.  

While Zhao Chunni washed up slowly in her room, Ha Yue busied herself in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.  

Breakfast for the two of them was usually simple: steamed corn, steamed sweet potatoes, and a pot of tea eggs served with porridge.  

On days when she was especially tired from the previous night’s physical labor—like unloading goods—she’d make do with something easier, like instant noodles. Today was one of those days. She boiled two packs of instant noodles, tossed in a handful of greens, and called it a meal.  

By the time she placed the noodles on the table, there was still no sign of Zhao Chunni. Massaging her sore arm, injured from unloading the night before, Ha Yue walked into her mother’s room—only to step straight into a puddle of water in the washbasin. She found Zhao Chunni, with her back to the door, frantically trying to mop up the spilled water with a face towel.  

“Mom? Are you okay?” Seeing her mother mistakenly using a face towel as a rag, Ha Yue felt her heart tighten. She quickly stepped forward to help her up, but the moment her hand touched Zhao Chunni’s shoulder, it was firmly brushed aside.  

Seeing that her mother seemed unharmed, Ha Yue stepped outside to fetch a mop.  

“Don’t bother. I’ll clean it myself. It’ll be done in no time. You go eat your breakfast. I made noodles—if they get soggy, they’ll taste bad,” she said, raising her voice a little as she moved the mop back and forth over the yellowed tiles, quickly working her way to where her mother stood.  

“Mom, I said I’ll handle it. Can you move aside?”  

“Mom!”  

“Mom, I’m talking to you! Why aren’t you answering?”  

“What, are you summoning a ghost? Showing off how capable you are? You caused me enough trouble as a kid, always making me mad. All I did was accidentally knock over the basin—do you have to be so impatient? Am I a child?!” Zhao Chunni’s silence, like a balloon slowly inflating, finally burst with a loud and sharp retort.  

Seeing her mother finally engage with her, Ha Yue relaxed her frown.  

Instead of arguing back, she simply focused on pushing the mop around her mother’s feet, forcing her to step aside and leave the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her mother sneaking a glance back at her before leaving, as if trying to gauge her mood.  

“By the way, this towel’s too old. Just throw it away. I’ll bring you a new one from the shop tonight,” she called out after her.  

Breakfast that morning didn’t go smoothly. From the start, it was clear it wouldn’t. As always, Zhao Chunni had her complaints.  

She grumbled that there was too much water in the noodles, making the soup bland, and that the runny poached egg inside tasted fishy because it wasn’t fully cooked.  

After quickly rinsing the dishes and making sure her mother took her medicine, dressed properly, and tied her hair, Ha Yue prepared to leave. But like an overly attached child, Zhao Chunni followed her all the way to the yard and even to the front gate, watching her as she left.  

As she inserted the key into her electric tricycle and sat on the seat, her mother leaned in and asked, “Can you come back earlier from the shop today?”  

“Why? Do you need something?” Ha Yue turned to ask, but Zhao Chunni’s expression instantly turned awkward.  

She averted her gaze, pretending to examine the tattered Spring Festival couplets still hanging on the gate. A gust of wind blew, making the paper rustle. She frowned and tore down the nearly disintegrating red paper, crumpling it in her hand. Her tone turned harsh as she spoke.  

“Something, something, something—what could I possibly need? You’re just hoping something happens to me, aren’t you? You came back so late last night, long after it got dark. Your old mother was practically starving to death, you know?”  

Zhao Chunni wasn’t actually old. In fact, she was only 48. By the World Health Organization’s age classification, she had just entered middle age. But ever since Ha Yue could remember, her mother always referred to herself as “your old mother.”  

It was her way of asserting authority.  

If she insisted on turning herself into an “old woman” in name, what could Ha Yue do about it? She just let her be.  

Curling her lips into a slight smirk, Ha Yue turned on the electric tricycle and quickly backed it out of the gate. She responded without much thought, “Who told you to wait for me? Didn’t Auntie cook you dinner before she left? You could’ve just eaten on your own!”

“Anyway, make sure to come back early today! The days are shorter now. Don’t stay out until the middle of the night closing the shop—it’s dark outside!”

This was her mother worrying about Ha Yue’s safety, though her tone didn’t make it obvious.

A smile flickered across Ha Yue’s face. She didn’t bother replying directly as her mother, now herded by a gaggle of squawking gray geese, had already turned back into the courtyard.

She raised her voice, shouting toward the house, “Then you don’t go out alone either! Wait until Auntie comes over so you two can keep each other company. Also, don’t forget to take your medicine on time!”

“Did you hear me?”

“Zhao Chunni! Take your medicine, got it?”

After a moment, Zhao Chunni, without her usual sharp retort, replied obediently from behind the half-closed courtyard door, “Got it.”

Only then did Ha Yue shift her electric tricycle into drive and head off toward her shop, just five hundred meters down the road.