Mud beads

When Yu Zhu transferred from the minibus to a bread truck run by villagers, the chain stores were no longer visible on the roadside.

The driver didn't leave on time, sitting in the driver's seat smoking. He waited until there were five or six people in the van before slamming the door shut. One set of the back seats had been removed, and inside were two bags of rice, a case of bottled liquor, and several packages waiting to be delivered to the village. The passengers all knew each other, nodding and greeting each other after boarding, asking about farm work and whether anyone's children were going home for the holidays. A bundle of plastic water pipes lay at Yu Zhu's feet, and behind her, a passenger was holding a cardboard box containing chicks; their tiny chirping sounds drifted from under the perforated lid.

At first, you could see a few auto repair shops and building material stores outside the window, but later all that remained were low self-built houses and utility poles. The walls along the road were painted with faded fertilizer paint, and eight out of ten shops were closed, with roller shutters pulled down to the ground and white-painted "Shop for Rent" signs printed on them.

The driver stopped at each village entrance, and people got on and off. Someone took a bag of rice, paid through the window, and asked him to bring medicine from town the next day.

The more intersections the car passed, the shorter the buildings became, and finally, the mountains slowly rose up from afar.

The gray-brown ridges stretched along both sides of the road, their slopes covered with sparse shrubs. The river, appearing and disappearing along the dirt road, was narrow, with large expanses of whitish pebble beach exposed to the sunlight. Villages were crammed into the slightly wider parts of the valley, their newly installed blue corrugated iron roofs flashing past the car window. Young people were almost nowhere to be seen along the way.

Around 4 p.m., the bread truck finally stopped at a fork in the road.

Yu Zhu was the only one left in the car.

"We're not going any further in." The driver turned around and pointed to the narrow road on the right through the windshield. "You'll arrive in about five or six miles."

Yu Zhu nodded her thanks, picked up her bag, and got off the bus.

A weathered iron sign stood by the roadside, its painted lettering faded to mere outlines by the sun. She took out her phone again to check the address Liang Xia had sent, and after confirming it was correct, she continued walking uphill along the dirt road.

The valley fell silent again.

The road was a gentle uphill climb, with the sun shining directly overhead and no trees offering shade on either side. She had walked less than a kilometer when sweat began to bead on her forehead, and the backpack straps started to dig tightly into her shoulders.

Her body had changed at some point; she used to be able to easily walk five or six kilometers of mountain road carrying a basket on her back.

When a person leaves a certain way of life for too long, their body seems to forget about it first.

Moth

Before the navigation signal completely disappeared, Yu Zhu finally reached the factory gate.

The factory gate stands at the end of the valley, with two cement pillars of different heights. The metal lettering on them has long been removed, leaving only a few darker squares on the wall. The rusty sliding gate lies askew to one side, and the guardhouse has no glass, filled with dilapidated benches and plastic bags blown in by the wind.

Yu Zhu walked in through the gap.

Several sections of the workshop's corrugated iron roof had collapsed, and the exposed steel frame gleamed a rusty red in the sunlight. Most of the windows were broken, the rest covered in a thick layer of black ash. Waist-high weeds grew on both sides of the road, and the concrete floor was cracked by the grass roots. Half a chimney stood at the foot of the mountain, its red and white paint mostly peeling off, and birds flew in and out of its top.

Behind the factory building is the staff quarters.

Several gray brick buildings lined up at the foot of the mountain. The buildings were not tall, and the walls were stained black by rain. The flower beds downstairs were overgrown, and the branches of roses had grown over the cement edges, forming a thorny shrub. Next to them stood a cement pool table, its tabletop cracked in the middle, from which a tuft of thin grass sprouted.

Yu Zhu looked around and then looked up at the old building, which was almost identical, but couldn't find any trace of the building number.

Suddenly, an oxcart slowly drove up from the road behind the factory area. The old man driving the cart was wearing an old straw hat. When he saw Yu Zhu, he pulled on the reins.

"What are you busy doing here?"

Yu Zhu was taken aback, then bowed slightly: "I... came back to visit on behalf of a friend."

The old man looked her up and down warily, then glanced at the bag on her back.

"What's there to see here?" He gestured with his chin towards the empty factory buildings. "It's been closed for over ten years, there's nobody here anymore!"

"Have they all moved away?"

"In the first few years, there were still a few old people guarding it, but later the water and heating were stopped, and no one could stay there." The old man pointed to the innermost part with the tip of his whip, "The building near the mountain collapsed once, so no one dares to go in there."

Yu Zhu nodded, then asked, "What did this factory used to make?"

"Ore processing. All the stones brought out of the mountains are sent here." The old man squinted and looked at the workshop in the distance for a while. "It used to be so lively, it was noisy day and night. But then it went downhill, even reforms couldn't save it, it owed wages for several years, and then it just went out of business."

The wind blew through the broken factory buildings, and the sheet metal made a short, sharp thud.

Yu Zhu gripped the backpack strap, hesitated for a moment, and then looked up.

"Excuse me, which building is residential building number three?"

The old man shook his head, turned around and counted the buildings, then pointed to the foot of the mountain.

"The innermost building, the second to last one."

After saying that, he shook the reins, and the oxcart moved forward again.

"I dare not stay too long, it gets very dark at night!"

Yu Zhu responded and quickly thanked her.

Moth

Building No. 3 is older than the buildings in front.

Large patches of white alkali had appeared on the walls, and the unit door was long gone, leaving only two rusted hinges. She walked up the cement steps, each step kicking up a light cloud of dust.

Yu Zhu stopped on the second floor.

The security door was tightly closed, and the door panel was covered with small stickers, layer upon layer. Some had lost their stickiness and fallen off in front of the door, while others were peeling off from the edges and about to fall off as well.

Yu Zhu looked down, and when her gaze fell to the ground, she slowly squatted down.

There were several pencil marks on it.

It is a simple line drawing.

Four stick figures stand side by side, their arms outstretched and joined together. Two taller figures stand in the middle, and two shorter ones stand on either side. The adult's face is half-eaten by dampness and plaster, but the heads of the two smaller figures are still relatively clear.

On the left is a crookedly written character for "summer".

The character on the right is "Winter".

The character "冬" was written very large, with the two dots at the bottom at different heights, and the last stroke was written too heavily, leaving a small, blackened pit on the wall.

Yu Zhu stretched out her hand, her fingertips slowly landing on that word.

The wall was cold, and the pencil marks were long gone. Her fingers paused there, then moved away, and finally she slowly pressed her forehead against it.

Suddenly, a series of hurried footsteps came from upstairs.

Yu Zhu was startled and instinctively turned her head away.

A little girl peeked out from around the corner of the stairs.

She was about eight or nine years old, her hair tied up in a bun at the back of her head, with a few stray strands sticking to her sweaty forehead. Seeing a strange woman squatting in the stairwell, she was startled, quickly taking a half-step back and pressing her hand to her chest.

"That scared me to death."

The girl took a couple of breaths and then poked her head out again.

"I thought they had found me."

Then, the sound of children shouting came from outside the building.

"Xu Ran, come out! I can't find you—"

The girl tiptoed and glanced out the window, a smug smile spreading across her face. She ran downstairs along the wall, then turned back to look at Yu Zhu after a couple of steps.

Aren't you leaving?

Yu Zhu took one last look at the painting on the wall, then propped herself up on her knees to stand up.

She followed the girl out of the apartment building.

The sun had already set above the mountain ridge, its orange-red light slanting through the factory area, casting long shadows of steel frames. Several children stood in the middle of the abandoned courtyard, their trousers, shoes, and hands covered in dust.

"How boring." Xu Ran walked out of the building and pointed to a few younger children at the entrance, laughing, "You guys can never find me."

The children, who had initially looked annoyed, were immediately drawn away when they saw Yu Zhu come out from behind.

"Who are you?" someone asked.

Looking at the children rushing towards her, Yu Zhu was at a loss for words: "I... came to find someone."

"ha?"

The children looked at each other.

"There's no one here anymore." Xu Ran stood among the children, her expression serious. "It's very dark here at night. There are snakes, and maybe even ghosts."

After she finished speaking, she looked Yu Zhu up and down. The wariness in her eyes came quickly and disappeared just as fast.

"If you're looking for someone, I can take you to Teacher Zhang."

She looked up at the sun and pointed to the mountain road behind the factory: "Come with me, Teacher Zhang knows everything."

The children exchanged glances and nodded in agreement.

After Xu Ran finished speaking, he turned and walked out of the factory, giving no one time to react. Yu Zhu was stunned for a moment, adjusted the backpack on her shoulder, and followed Xu Ran.

The guesthouse was far from here, and the last bread truck had already left. She really needed to find a place to stay before dark.

Xu Ran skipped along the mountain path, sometimes kicking a pebble and sometimes bending down to pick a newly blooming wildflower by the roadside.

"Hurry up!" she said, turning back as she walked. "We're all from Houshan Village, and the school is up there."

Yu Zhu leaned on her knees and panted for a while by the roadside.

The other children walked back to the village along the valley, but Xu Ran, who lived at the school, had to get back to the primary school on the mountain before dark.

A small dirt road led to the school, winding its way up the hillside, lined with poplar and apricot trees. The three kilometers she had walked during the day had exhausted most of Yu Zhu's energy; her sweat-soaked long sleeves clung coolly to her back in the mountain breeze. Xu Ran, walking ahead, moved so lightly her feet barely touched the ground, running a short distance before stopping to wait for her.

As the sun sets, the last vestiges of red light in the distance slowly fade along the mountain ridge, and the sky deepens from blue. One by one, the lights in the village come on, scattered across the valley at the foot of the mountains, appearing very small.

The school is built halfway up the mountain.

A low wall encloses a concrete playground; the iron gate, painted green, already shows signs of rust at the edges. A flagpole stands in the yard, the national flag hanging beside it, occasionally fluttering in the evening breeze. Several single-story houses line up in a row, white lights shining from their windows.

Xu Ran saw the school and immediately started running.

She rushed into the courtyard and shouted at the top of her lungs toward the lit bungalow:

"Teacher Zhang—"

The door opened quickly.

A woman in her thirties came out carrying a washbasin. Her hair was casually tied back, and she was wearing a light blue shirt.

The woman looked at Xu Ran, and just as she frowned as if she was about to say something, she noticed Yu Zhu standing outside the door.

Xu Ran had already run up to her, turned around excitedly, and pointed towards the door.

"We have guests!"