Chapter 69: The Street on the Slope

There are many mountains in Xiao Cheng, and so, naturally, there are many slopes as well.

It’s impossible for everyone to build their houses on flat land.

A few traffic lights past the Big Wardrobe Department Store Street, you’ll see a long, sloping road.

The coarse, brownish cement ground is riddled with cracks, and in those crevices, quite a few withered weeds have already died.

This place must have once been a village, but it was later absorbed into the city, turning into a street.

Probably to save on materials, the slope is rather steep.

Those riding bicycles have to get off and push; never mind whether you can ride up, just the effort of doing so is probably three to five times more than simply walking.

On both sides of the slope are many low, single-story houses, and the few that are slightly taller are only three stories at most.

To build a house here, you have to level the foundation first, resulting in various differences in height.

Steps of different shapes and materials can be seen everywhere.

A few children ran by, shouting loudly in the local Xiao Cheng dialect,

Even people from this province probably wouldn’t understand much if they came here.

An Jing, who grew up in the countryside, naturally understood, and could speak it too, but she preferred speaking Mandarin—after all, slogans like “Speak Mandarin Well” were written all over the walls.

Old houses, moss-covered ceramic washstands, and tiny shops by the roadside with hardly any decoration…

Here, having blue-green glass windows is considered fashionable, since many households are still using those old wooden windows.

Time seems to have stopped here.

Everything looks like it’s from the 1980s or 1990s.

The poster at the door of a barbershop by the road still has a date in the lower right corner: 1991.7.

That was even before An Jing was born.

“Why did we come here?”

She finally couldn’t hold back and asked, “Is this where you live?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“…You’re taking me to your house?”

“What? Are you afraid to follow a girl home? As a boy, are you scared I’ll eat you up and leave nothing behind?”

“…I just don’t get why we have to go to your place, alright.”

An Jing puffed out her chest, but because of the height difference, it didn’t look imposing at all.

“Of course we’re not going to my house. You really want to go?”

“Then where are we going?”

“To poke someone.”

“Huh? What are we doing?”

Zhang Qiqi glanced back at her and couldn’t help but laugh: “Want to know?”

“Honestly, you’re asking me for help, but you won’t tell me what for—how am I supposed to help you?”

An Jing rolled her eyes dramatically.

“There’s an old lady living near my house. She raised her grandson by herself, but actually, she also has a granddaughter.”

“Uh… and then?”

“Her granddaughter went missing last year.

She fell seriously ill right after, and her mental state’s been getting worse and worse.”

“What the hell, you’re not planning to have me pretend to be her granddaughter, are you? Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“Her granddaughter wasn’t as tall as me!”

Zhang Qiqi grinned wickedly, pushing her hand onto An Jing’s head.

“Then what if she really starts treating me as her granddaughter? That’d be way too much trouble!”

“Later? Hah… We’ll deal with it if it comes to that. Her family’s poor, can’t afford treatment. A few days ago she had a stroke and was sent to the hospital, but she was sent back before she even recovered.”

“Ugh…”

“So now she can barely speak, and probably won’t live much longer.”

Zhang Qiqi’s tone was very calm, as if she were just talking about where to shop for groceries today.

“Then… why do you want me to pretend to be her granddaughter?”

“To make her feel a little happier. What if she suddenly recovers?”

“Even if it works, she still needs a hospital, right…”

An Jing scratched her head and smoothed her messy short hair.

Following Zhang Qiqi, she turned a corner and walked into a small alley along the slope.

The alley was very narrow.

On the right were houses, and on the left, either the hillside or someone else’s leveled foundation.

Each house was packed close together.

The alley, already small, had clotheslines strung overhead, and sometimes you had to squeeze right through the hanging clothes.

Probably because of the lack of sunlight, there was a persistent damp smell everywhere.

Almost everyone who lived here was poor.

Some rented houses, some had homes here.

An Jing saw a single-story house squeezed between two slightly taller buildings, looking just like a storage shed.

The door was wide open, and inside lay a filthy, unshaven middle-aged man, wrapped in a tattered quilt so old that the cotton inside had turned black.

All that was left inside was a table and a wardrobe, nothing else.

The faucet was installed at the door, and the handle to turn it on was kept away like a key.

A bit further on, to the left, was a small teahouse dug directly into the hillside.

The rusted iron door was covered in dents, and if you looked inside from the outside, you’d see the floor was even lower.

A few plainly dressed but neat men were playing cards inside, and a woman who looked like the proprietress was carrying a bowl of egg-drop rice wine, hurrying toward them.

At the end of the alley was an orchard full of tall orange trees.

On the edge of the orchard stood an old house with a yard.

Though it looked run-down now, it must have been quite grand when it was first built.

The house had three and a half stories, with a red pillar wrapped by a dragon.

On the roof, besides green tiles, were a few exquisitely carved roof ornaments.

The heavy, red-painted main gate looked formidable.

Zhang Qiqi strode up, grabbed the bronze lion’s head ring, and knocked hard.

It was quiet inside, with not a sound to be heard.

“Um, inside…”

An Jing was about to say something when the wooden door slowly creaked open.

A little boy, gray from head to toe, peeked out, his eyes especially bright.

“Hey, brat—”

Zhang Qiqi didn’t mind at all, reaching out to ruffle his head.

“How’s your Grandmother?”

“She’s still in bed…”

“Did your aunt come by?”

“She did.”

“Why didn’t she help you wash your clothes?”

Zhang Qiqi frowned, “They’re filthy.”

“She was busy today…”

“Alright, let me check on your Grandmother.”

Zhang Qiqi squeezed past him, smiling as she introduced An Jing, “This is my friend, call her ‘Big Sis.’”

“Hello, Big Sis!”

he shouted politely, sending a shiver of goosebumps down An Jing’s spine.

This was totally Zhang Qiqi’s idea of a prank.

But since she was here to play the role of the granddaughter, An Jing couldn’t refute it.

“Okay, go play!”

Zhang Qiqi patted his head, and he simply went to the ground and started playing marbles again as if nothing had happened.

He didn’t seem worried at all about his Grandmother’s serious illness, or the fact that she could die at any moment.

“Kids really are carefree…”

As they walked inside, An Jing couldn’t help but sigh.

“Of course, kids don’t understand how heavy the word ‘death’ really is.”

Zhang Qiqi smiled, glancing at the boy, who was making sound effects for his marbles as he played, “He’s only in first grade—he has no concept of any of this yet.”

“What about his parents?”

“They’re divorced, neither side wanted to take the kids, so they left them all with Grandmother.”

“Then his grandfather should at least help out…”

“His dad… hasn’t been heard from in years.”

“That’s just too much.”

“The poorer the place, the more outrageous things you’ll see.”

Zhang Qiqi pinched An Jing’s cheek with the hand she’d just used to ruffle the boy’s head.

“What the hell, why… Your hand is so dirty!”

“Disgusted?”

“That kid probably hasn’t washed his hair for half a month, you know…”

“Pfft, it’s not that bad. Little boys just like to play, so their heads are always dirty.”

Zhang Qiqi grinned wickedly, stretching out both hands, “The more you don’t want me to touch you, the more I want to!”

“Ugh, stay away from me—!”

“Hahaha—your scared face is so cute.”

“Is it really okay to call a boy cute?”

“Why not? There aren’t many boys cuter than you, are there?”

Zhang Qiqi leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Big Sis just loves to gobble up little boys like you.”

“Geh—! I have a girlfriend already!”

“Huh?”

Zhang Qiqi was clearly stunned, “Who? Xiao Ru?”

“It’s Zhu Ying.”

She lifted her chin proudly, “Way prettier than you!”

“Tch. So it’s Zhu Ying, huh.”

“Hmph, so I advise you, don’t get too close to me, or I might just cheat on her.”

“Pfft… Hahaha—do you even know what ‘cheating’ means?”

“I don’t care, just stay away from me!”

“Alright, alright.”

Zhang Qiqi gave An Jing a firm pat on the back.

“Now hurry up and get in there!”

With that, she trudged a few steps forward and pushed open the door.

The living room was very spacious, but unlike outside, the interior was extremely simple.

They hadn’t even painted the walls.

The few pieces of furniture were all battered and barely usable.

A small steel wire bed was placed beside a stove covered in cobwebs, and on it lay an old woman, her face wrinkled like she was eighty or ninety, resting quietly.

“Grandmother, I brought your Granddaughter to see you.”

Zhang Qiqi said lightly, quickly walking to her bedside.

The smell here was terrible, but she didn’t seem affected at all, still smiling as always.

An Jing forced herself to endure the stench, which was like garbage left uncleaned for ages and fermenting inside, and stepped forward.

The old woman slowly opened her eyes, looking drowsy and confused as she turned toward An Jing.

“Grandmother, this is your Granddaughter. I found her for you, so don’t worry anymore.”

Though her body couldn’t move, her eyes could still turn.

She stared hard at An Jing’s face, and the wrinkles on her forehead seemed to relax a little.

She struggled to open her pale lips, trembling for a long time before finally squeezing out two words from her throat.

“Granddaughter…”

“Grandmother, I’m back.”

An Jing nervously clutched her clothes, trying her best to imitate a granddaughter’s feeling, “Sorry for making you worry.”

“You… suffered…”

“I’m fine.”

“Good… good…”

After saying these words, it seemed she had used up all her strength, and she just looked quietly at An Jing, a gentle, peaceful smile in her eyes.

“Now you can rest easy, right, Grandmother?”

Grandmother lifted her eyelids and smiled at Zhang Qiqi as well.

“She still has to go with me to take care of other things, so we’ll leave for now. We’ll come see you again when we have time!”

The old woman didn’t answer, just silently watched the two of them leave the room, her eyes still filled with a trace of reluctance.

As soon as An Jing stepped outside with a smile still on her face, her expression immediately collapsed.

She hurried to a corner of the yard where the weeds grew thick, and before she could even steady herself, she doubled over and vomited.

It was a bit rude, but that smell was really too much for her to handle.