"Come back if you have a hard time out there. Director Li said last time that you are a college graduate, and a volunteer of our welfare home as well, and he can think about arranging for a position of clerk in Sanitation Inst.i.tute. A salary of 700 yuan per month will be enough to feed yourself. If you have a lot of money you can live a rich life, yet if you live in poverty, you must accept the reality. Don"t worry about it."     

"Yes, I see. I have An Hua take care of me, so just rest a.s.sured. She gets a very high salary in that company, several thousand yuan per month. And the company is recruiting clerks right now, and I"ve already got an interview notice, so it"s impossible for me not to go. What"s more, by the time I"m offered the position I will surely buy a lot of things for you to eat, and for children as well."

Fang Ruxiang sighed. It has been for twenty years, and it may be the time for the child to go to the outside world to enrich her experience. While she is thinking of this, the bag sewing is almost finished. Patting Jiang on the head, she said, "Now take this and keep your money safe. When going outside, do not talk to strangers casually, especially those strange men."

Jiang Youyou lay in bed after a bath. Next to the pillow were the train ticket and that "thief-proofing briefs". It was very hot. This room was for only one person, and the electric fan was shaking weakly. Even mosquitoes seemed so kind and warm that they gave up biting her. Even though she lay flat, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s stood firm like two hillocks. This perhaps had something to do with her love of swimming. Jiang Youyou stared at her own body and was in a daze. Then she picked up the briefs and put it on. "The briefs make me peculiar," she thought.

"The banknotes stick luxuriously to my belly, but where is my tomorrow?"

When waking up, she suddenly felt being unable to drag herself away from this city in which she had already lived for twenty years. Although she neither knew who her biological parents were, nor did she know what their purpose of bringing her to this world was, she still felt joyful. The welfare home was a free kindergarten, and every one of her past friends saw her off at the railway station. In her eyes, Fang Ruxiang was her mother. Though her childhood was dark to some extent, bright days accounted for most of the time in her memory.

Li Le was a blind man, but he was in a good relations.h.i.+p with Jiang in the welfare home. He reached out to hold Jiang Youyou"s hands. He had calluses on the palms, due to giving people ma.s.sage. A blind man with no fortune nor background usually lives as a fortune teller or a ma.s.seur. Two tears flowed out from Li Le"s hollow eye sockets. He said, "Take good care of yourself. I"ll miss you."

Li Le was fond of liquor. Although he could never see the colour of the sky, he could judge whether it was a bottle of Erguotou, Jiannanchun, Yanjing Beer or Qingdao Beer by tasting it. As long as a person he met spoke to him, he could exactly determine who the person was next time. He could feel the subtle touch of a spider"s silk across his face. It had been a long time since his girlfriend cleaned the room and there was the smell of a strange man in it. In the body of his girlfriend existed the other men"s s.e.m.e.n, so they broke up. He groped for his mobile phone and called Jiang Youyou. The two sat in boredom till dawn. The welfare home"s walls were thick but not very high. The moonlight was free but the beer must be paid. The bottles were thrown to the opposite deserted land with a dull thud. Jiang Youyou accompanied him to laugh, to cry and to get drunk. Time froze at this moment, only the dead leaves swaying off the top of the wall to the ground.

When Jiang Youyou got on the train, many of her friends standing in the row cried. Especially Fang Ruxiang, she followed the starting train, running slowly and crying hard. Her medium-heeled leather shoes in purplish red color, which she had worn for quite a long time, were half peeled off on insteps. Jiang Youyou sniffed and strove to make herself look firm and carefree. She knew if she cried, the people outside the gla.s.s window of the train would feel even more reluctant to let her go. She forced a smile, but tears rolled down her face, and then fell down on her new s.h.i.+rt, like pearls.

A tissue was handed over, and a naturally curly-haired boy of about fourteen or fifteen, who was as thin as a medium-term drug addict, was looking at her seriously. "Here, don"t cry any more, my townsgirl. To go to work out of your hometown, that is the way it is. You cannot take all your family with you."

Jiang Youyou took the tissue and blew her nose hard with it, and then she folded it for another blow, nodding with grat.i.tude.

The boy saw Jiang Youyou"s big travel case was still on the ground, so he offered to put it on the luggage rack. When he stood on tiptoe to put the case on, the sleeves of his s.h.i.+rt slid down and a black tattoo could be seen on his arm. It was a snake.

What kind of presage this would be? Jiang Youyou was overwhelmed by a strange feeling.

The old man opposite might be his father. It was somewhat hot, so he took off his socks and rubbed the toes back and forth with his fingers. After doing this he put the fingers beneath the nose to smell, seeming to be satisfied with the odour of the mixed smell of fermented soya beans and ink. Now he was peeling an apple and asking Jiang Youyou questions in authentic Hubei dialect about what Jiang Youyou was going to do this time, whether she would go back for the Spring Festival, if she could get a salary of one thousand yuan a mouth and so on and so forth. Jiang Youyou was not going to respond. She didn"t sleep well last night and felt dizzy. She wanted to take a nap on her seat, listening to him chattering alone. "I"m going there to do some marginal business. I was told that the Two-yuan stores are doing very well. I"m taking my son to open such a store there. Some people say we Hubei natives are smart, in fact…"   

"Stop talking. The others are all asleep." The boy frowned and said, "I"m sick of you chattering on every time when you come across a girl like Sister Chenhua."

"It"s a pity our Chenhua died too early, or the three of our family will go to open a store in Shenzhen, and then what a happy life we will live," the old man choked with sobs.

"Come on. She"s already died, so don"t think about it any longer. Just eat your apple."

Jiang Youyou"s eyes half opened. The old man handed her an apple. She saw the dirt in his fingernails and quickly shook her head, "Thank you, but I cannot have this because I cannot stand this tart flavor. Just enjoy it alone."

Jiang Youyou lay on her back. She didn"t want dinner. Thinking that the thin stack of banknotes in the "thief-proofing" bag on her briefs were still there, she felt very safe, and then she went to sleep with an easy mind.

Waking up in the morning, she found the next seat and the seat opposite were all empty. The train was pulling in the station while the father and son had left. Jiang Youyou felt a little lost. This is the life. Most strangers only pa.s.s you by, and a few of them may exchange a few words with you before hurriedly disappearing. Only one stranger might spend a lifetime with you, or if he couldn"t, this guy might return to the starting point, that is to say, he would become the most familiar stranger for you.

If life is a novel, Jiang Youyou has just turned to the first page of hers. No one knew what would happen next.