Chapter 154
Chapter 154
Standing outside my door was the tiny, thin Grandma Next Door.
A wave of guilt washed over me. I had been way too harsh just now.
I quickly nodded and bowed as I said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was you…”
Grandma spoke in dialect; I spoke Mandarin. Grandma was short and small; I was very tall. Grandma was old and hard of hearing; I tended to speak pretty quickly…
In short, conversations between us were always a little difficult.
I had a very special, very warm feeling toward her.
To tell you the truth, deep down, I have this foolish kindness and softness in me.
I moved here last May. Back then, I wore a mask and a hat every day and didn’t speak to a single neighbor I happened to run into.
Most of the people living in these resettlement apartments were villagers from nearby. Their houses had been demolished, so they had moved here. About half of them were elderly people – the homeowners – and the other half were university students nearby, who were renting.
Because those elderly people had all once lived in the same village, they were always warm, sincere, and extremely familiar with strangers.
As someone with a hoarse voice and an introverted personality, I was most afraid of that kind of instant familiarity. I just wanted to be invisible.
On the day I moved in, I ran into an old man in the elevator carrying a whole basket of beans. He asked me kindly, “Young one, which floor?”
I showed him my eyes from between my hat and mask, glanced at him, and held up a “6” with my fingers.
He pressed the button for the 6th Floor for me. I said quietly, “Thank you.”
He chuckled and asked, “Just moved in?”
I shook my head. “I’m here to visit a friend.”
Yes, I lied to him. But I didn’t mean any harm. I just wanted to live quietly in a place where no one knew me, without having contact with anyone.
Contact between people can bring warmth, but if there is no contact, there will be no trouble.
After I moved in, I kept leaving early and coming back late, and I never once met the neighbor across the hall.
Until the morning of the Dragon Boat Festival, when I opened my door and saw a sprig of mugwort at my doorstep.
The neighbor across from me, whom I had never met, had placed a sprig of mugwort in front of my door.
In that instant, I felt something inside me begin to melt.
I stared blankly at that sprig of mugwort for a long time, and even took out my phone to snap several photos of it.
Call me starved for love if you want. Call me melodramatic if you want. I really am easily moved by this kind of kindness.
Finally, one day, I ran into Grandma Next Door in the hallway. Ignoring my own hoarse voice, I thanked her again and again.
Grandma smiled, looking terribly embarrassed. “It was nothing. Don’t thank me.”
After that, she brought me more and more things: a slice of watermelon on a summer night, a bowl of freshly boiled dumplings, a basket of newly fried golden pastries, a hot jar of eight-treasure porridge…
I didn’t like eating any of them, but I made an effort to finish them all.
Of course, every time she brought me these things, she would knock on my door in the quiet night with a loud “thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.” So after getting irritated by the knocking again and again, I would accept her kindness again and again…
Grandma was a widow and lived here alone. Once, when she took out her key to open her door, I had peeked inside a couple of times – her home was extremely simple. She didn’t even have flooring installed; it was still a bluish-gray cement floor.
Her son lived in another building in the same complex. He was a big, tall, burly truck driver.
At this moment, Grandma was standing in the doorway, tilting her face up as she said to me, “Come to my place and help me check something!”
I asked, “Huh? Check what?”
She pointed at her door. I followed her gesture and looked over, only to find that her home was especially dark.
It was already cloudy outside, and she had the curtains drawn. The whole apartment, along with the cement floor, looked gloomy and eerie.
“I bought a case of liquor. Can you help me scan it and see if it’s real or fake?”
Oh, I got it. She wanted me to use my phone to scan the QR code for her.
I nodded, turned around, and picked up my phone. “Let’s go. I’ll take a look.”
Once I entered her home, I felt the light was even dimmer. My eyes could hardly adjust to the gloom.
She led me toward the innermost room, saying as she walked, “I bought it downstairs. They said they were selling it to me cheap, but I just don’t know if it’s real or fake…”
At that moment, I suddenly remembered something: when I came out, I had been too focused on listening to her talk and had forgotten to close my own door.
I wanted to go back and shut it, but I kept feeling a chill at my back.
What was I worried about?
I was worried that her tall, burly son, reeking of sweat, was lying in ambush in one of the rooms.
As soon as I walked past, he would flash out from behind the door, throw a black bag over my head, knock me unconscious with a stick, and sell me to Northern Myanmar.
My worry had nothing to do with gender, because men and women both looked tiny standing in front of her son… and both men and women could be sold to Northern Myanmar.
On high alert, I looked toward every corner and room in her home. At this point, I no longer planned to go back and close my door. If anything felt off in her place, I would turn and run. With my door wide open, I could charge straight into my own home.
At that moment, I was extremely conflicted. The alarm bells in my head were already blaring, but I couldn’t turn around and go back. She had been so good to me. What reasonable excuse could I possibly give for going back right then…?
But the farther in we went, the more frightened I became. Why was she leading me to the innermost room? She wouldn’t hurt me, but the same might not be true of her son. Maybe she had been coerced by him…
As I struggled with that thought the whole way, I had already followed her to the innermost room.
By then, cold sweat had broken out on the tip of my nose.
I took out my phone and sent 925 a brief WeChat message:
“I went into the neighbor across the hall’s place alone. If you don’t hear from me in five minutes, call the police.”
925 usually replied to me instantly, but this time, there was no response at all.
I sighed and shoved my phone back into my pocket.
Grandma Next Door walked to the innermost part of the room and pointed at a big box on the table.
I leaned in for a look. It was a brand I’d never seen before.
She scratched her hair. “They said the original price was tens of thousands, but they sold it to me for two thousand. My grandson is getting married this year, and I wanted to buy some good liquor to make us look respectable. They said you can scan it to verify whether it’s real or fake. Could you scan it for me…?”
I said, “Then I’ll have to open the box. The QR code is inside.”
She nodded. “Go ahead.”
After I helped her scan the code, all that came up was information for some no-name brand, plus the words “Original price: 30,000 yuan.”
She’d been scammed by some unscrupulous seller, just like my grandma had been.
My grandma was always getting coaxed by those people who held seminars for old folks and called her “Auntie” as affectionately as if she were their own mother. They’d sweet-talk her into buying piles of sixty-something-yuan mite-removal soap, seventy-something-yuan toothpaste, and several-thousand-yuan donkey-hide gelatin, and she’d treat them like treasures and give them to us.
I sighed and explained to Grandma Next Door, “The content that pops up when you scan it was designed by the seller too. It’s like if I sold you a box of liquor, I could write that the original price was five hundred thousand, then sell it to you for five thousand and make you think you got a bargain.”
Grandma Next Door took a moment to process that, then said, “Sigh. I can’t let my son know. He’ll probably scold me.”
I said irritably, “He definitely will scold you! How could you spend several thousand on this liquor? Can you still return it?”
She shook her head. “That person left after selling it.”
Then she added, “Forget it. I’ll just keep it at home and slowly drink it up.”
I hurriedly waved my hand. “Hey, don’t just drink it! What if there’s something wrong with it and it’s unsafe? You could make yourself sick!”
…
After returning home, I felt like it had all been a false alarm. I always had a habit of assuming the worst of people. My guard was a little too high.
Only then did I remember that I’d already spent more than five minutes at Grandma Next Door’s place.
Worried that 925 had already called the police, I quickly opened my phone and found my chat with 925-
He hadn’t replied to me at all.
Great. Turns out the clown was me.
To be honest, I was a little annoyed. The moment I’d messaged him, I’d been treating him like a brother I could entrust myself to in an emergency.
I typed again: “False alarm. I overthought it. I’m already home.”
About two minutes later, 925 finally replied: “The delivery guy got stopped by the access control downstairs, so I went down to get my food. I only just saw your message. Sorry, Huahua!”
By then, I was washing my hands, and I noticed the hand soap was basically empty.
I didn’t have time to reply to 925. I took my phone and went downstairs to the supermarket.
The moment I entered the supermarket, 925’s WeChat voice call came through.
My heart tightened as I stared at the incoming call screen, and I quickly hung up.
He called again. I got a little angry and, after hanging up, immediately sent him a message: “I don’t do calls.”
925: “I was just a little worried about you. Sorry for overstepping…”
Me: “That’s not what I mean. I mean I don’t like phone calls. It’s not about you. I’m at the supermarket. We’ll talk this afternoon.”
At the supermarket, I bought some ingredients too, planning to go home and make myself a spicy hot pot stir-fry.
The moment I stepped through my front door, I caught a strange smell.
It wasn’t fragrant, and it wasn’t foul. It was unfamiliar.
Just as I’ve mentioned in my novels, every person’s home has its own unique smell, and sensitive people can sense when an outside scent has mixed in.
But I didn’t think too much of it. After all, my door had been open for a few minutes that morning. Any smell from the hallway could have drifted in.
If this were in a novel, that sort of “not thinking too much of it” might mean the protagonist was too careless; but in reality, that kind of “not thinking too much of it” is perfectly normal.
There are too many things to think about in the real world. I had to wash the ingredients, rinse the rice, and steam it; I had to brush the cat, remove cat hair from my own clothes, and take advantage of the weekend to do a serious round of laundry and hang it outside to dry… Being busy dulls a person’s sensitivity.
After finishing all of that, I lay down comfortably on the sofa, playing a movie on my tablet while chatting with 925.
925 was still hung up on the fact that I hadn’t answered his call that morning. He asked why I didn’t like phone calls.
I told him the truth: “Because my voice sounds awful. I’m afraid I’ll scare you.”
925: “Ha. How bad could it possibly be? I don’t believe you.”
I said, “It’s the truth, not an excuse.”
925 asked in return, “Then do you not like talking in real life either?”
Me: “Right.”
925: “But you said you were really good at telling stories to people when you were little.”
Well, look at him. He was pretty attentive. He could even reason things out.
Since we’d already gotten to this point, I simply told him the reason.
“I wasn’t born with an awful voice. My vocal cords were injured.”
925: “Oh, so that’s what happened… I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
He hurriedly tried to smooth things over. “I had a high school classmate who injured his vocal cords too. He went cycling with a bunch of classmates, and ended up falling on some rocks. After that, his vocal cords were never the same.”
Me: “Oh. That’s a shame.”
925 changed the subject, and we started talking about Shen Teng’s movies.
None of the above was enough to make me dislike 925, but the way he suddenly called me really did make me a little uncomfortable.
However, something even more uncomfortable happened that night. Looking back, the discomfort from that daytime incident really didn’t count for much at all.