How did hiring someone to press a pig image during Chinese New Year become a top trend?

The old lady turned and went into the house. She rummaged through the cabinet for a while, and when she came out, she had a small cloth bag in her hand, which she opened and placed on the stone table.

Inside the cloth bag was a small bag of tea leaves and a neatly folded piece of paper.

There were only two lines of writing on the paper. The handwriting was very small, but the strokes were so neat that it didn't seem like it was written casually.

"The food is delicious, thank you. It's not that your son doesn't want to come back, it's just that some paths, once taken, are temporarily irreversible. But as long as this bowl of rice is still here, he has a direction."

There was no signature or inscription.

Xu An stared at the handwriting on the paper for five seconds.

He recognizes the character.

There is a very subtle pause at the corner of the horizontal stroke with a hook in this character. When the pen tip turns, it will slightly deviate to the left by half a millimeter before turning back. He had seen this feature in the annotations on the hand-drawn map on the wall of the Ludongshan Meteorological Station.

The lettering on GS-01.

He didn't say anything, folded the paper, put it back in the cloth bag, and handed it back to the old lady.

"Grandma, please keep this piece of paper."

The old lady took it, rewrapped it, and put it back in the cabinet.

"I kept it. Although I don't know who wrote it, it's a plausible statement. He said my son didn't not want to come back. I've believed that for three years now."

Xu An helped the old lady steam the rice she had eaten that afternoon. When he was rinsing the rice, he noticed that there wasn't much rice left in the rice container, probably enough for four or five days. But when the old lady grabbed the rice, the amount in that bowl was exactly the same as the bowl she ate; she hadn't reduced the amount just because there was less rice.

After steaming the rice, he swept the fallen leaves in the yard and kicked the pebbles on the dirt road between the old lady's house and the provincial highway to both sides.

Someone in the live stream noticed a detail.

"You see, when An Shen was sweeping, she deliberately avoided touching a pair of old rubber shoes on the stone steps at the courtyard gate. Those rubber shoes were men's size and were quite large, so they were left there covered in dust. They must have been worn by her son before he passed away."

"The calming effect is becoming more and more refined."

Before leaving, Xu An took out a bag of peanuts he had bought for two yuan at the market from his canvas bag and placed it on the stone table.

"Grandma, next time you serve rice, put a few peanuts in the bowl. Rice with peanuts tastes better than plain rice."

The old lady stood at the door watching him put the canvas bag back on and adjust the shoulder strap so it wouldn't rub against his wound, then walk towards the provincial highway. After he had walked seven or eight steps, she called out to him from behind.

"Young man."

Xu An turned around.

"Who made these shoes?"

Xu An looked down at the pair of cloth shoes on his feet that were almost worn out.

"My mom made it."

The old lady clenched her fist on the door frame for a moment, then let go.

"I've seen those stitches before."

Xu An paused for a moment.

"The year my son passed away, there was a woman at the market in town who repaired shoes for free. My son's rubber shoes were torn, and she sewed them up. After she finished, the woman said something to my son."

"What did you say?"

"She asked me to pass on a message to the man digging the well ahead, telling him that the person he's waiting for is almost here."

Xu An stood in the middle of the road, sweat dripping down his back from his collar, running down his spine to his waist.

"Mother-in-law, what does that woman look like?"

The old lady thought for a while.

"She's not young anymore, she's thin, and she has a red string tied around her wrist. She doesn't talk much when she's mending shoes, but her hands are very steady. I knew then that her needlework was not the work of an ordinary person."

Xu An didn't ask any more questions.

He nodded to the old lady, turned around, and continued walking. After walking twenty steps, the sun shone on his back, and the shadow of his canvas bag swayed left and right on the road. He tightened the bag strap again.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

News about Zhao Nian.

"Brother Xu, there's new progress at the post office. The locker manager sent me scanned copies of the renewal signature forms from previous years. I compared the handwriting year by year. The signatures for the first deposit in 2006 and the first renewal in 2011 were from the same person, but the handwriting changed from 2016 onwards. The signatures for 2021 and 2026 are from a different person. That means that since 2016, someone else has been handling the renewals. This person isn't your mother, but they know about the lockers and the renewal rules."

The second one followed immediately.

"I enlarged the second person's signature and cross-referenced it with the handwriting in the hand-drawn map you took at the weather station. The similarity was 91%. Brother Xu, the person who has been renewing your mother's subscription since 2016 is GS-01."

Xu An stood by the roadside and read the two messages three times.

He put away his phone and looked up at the road ahead.

The provincial highway made a sharp turn about 300 meters ahead and then disappeared behind a mango grove. There was a newly painted white line on the road surface of the bend that was not yet dry and was reflecting the sunlight.

GS-01 is renewing its mother's insurance.

GS-01 left a note for an old lady by the roadside saying that her son did not want to come back.

GS-01 waited at the weather station for the child who was walking.

All three lines point to the same person, who knows where his mother is and that Xu An is on his way, but never shows himself.

He switched the canvas bag strap from his right shoulder to his left. The red marks on his right shoulder stung briefly when the wind blew, but then the pain subsided.

There was still a road ahead, and at the end of the road was a post office cabinet containing the things his mother had left him.

In a direction he couldn't see, someone was sweeping the road ahead for him.

Xu An took a step.

After walking about ten steps, he suddenly stopped, took out his phone from his pocket, opened his contacts, found his grandfather's number, and dialed it.

The phone rang three times before I answered it.

"Sir, I've eaten."

There was a moment of silence on the other end, followed by a chuckled hum.

"That's good, are you full?"

"I'm full. There's a big bowl of white rice and pickled radish."

"middle."

Xu An hung up the phone and continued walking.

The comments in the live stream chat slowly floated by, one by one.

"The first thing he said when he called his grandfather was, 'I've eaten,' because he knew that those who didn't get to eat that bowl of rice would cause those waiting for them to worry for a lifetime."

"I called, I called right now. My mom answered and asked me what was wrong. I said nothing, I just wanted to let you know I had a bowl of beef noodles for lunch and it tasted pretty good. She said, 'Are you sick? Why are you making a phone call?' But I heard her laugh."

"That six-second phone call to calm my nerves was more effective than fifteen thousand bowls of rice."

The sun had moved slightly westward, but the heat hadn't diminished. After Xu An passed the sharp bend, the road ahead straightened, and the mango trees on both sides cast intermittent shadows on the road surface.

He walked along a road where shadows and sunlight alternated, the contents of his canvas bag growing heavier with each passing item, but his steps were lighter than they had been three months ago.

Even at 3 p.m., the sun still had that scorching heat that made you want to curse when it hit your head.

When Xu An reached the edge of a small town called Batou, his water bottle was completely empty. The dryness in his throat spread down his esophagus, and even swallowing felt like his Adam's apple was scraping sandpaper.

The town is small, with a main street and two rows of bungalows. The cement pavement on the street is whitened by the sun. Two farm tricycles and a bread cart with a flat tire are parked on the side of the road.

There weren't many people on the street. It was the hottest time of day, and even the dogs were lying in the shade, panting and unwilling to move.

Xu An found a small shop, the kind made of corrugated iron shed, with a string of faded grayish-white plastic flags hanging at the entrance. He bought a bottle of mineral water for two yuan, poured the water into his old bottle, and then returned the mineral water bottle to the shopkeeper.

The proprietress, a woman in her fifties with short hair, paused for a moment when she saw him return the bottle.

"Why did you return the bottle, young man?"

"The bottle is still usable, you can keep it."

The proprietress moved her lips a couple of times but didn't say anything, then put the empty bottle in the cardboard box under the counter.

As Xu An was resting and drinking water in the shade of the convenience store, he heard a sound coming from across the street.

It wasn't the sound of arguing or working; it was the chaotic noise of several people talking at the same time, but their words didn't match at all, interspersed with short phrases like "Press which one," "Not this one," and "You pressed the wrong one."

He turned his head and glanced at it.

Diagonally opposite is an old two-story building with a wooden sign hanging at the entrance. The words "Batou Village Comprehensive Service Station" are written in red paint, but half of the red paint has worn off and the rest is almost illegible.

The service station door was open, and two old men were sitting on the steps smoking pipes. Inside, you could vaguely see several people huddled together, heads down, with something seemingly placed in the middle.

Xu An hadn't originally planned to go.

But he heard a voice, an old woman's voice, with a heavy local accent but a high pitch, as if she had been shouting many times and was getting a little anxious.

"I just want to see what my grandson looks like. Can any of you teach me how to use this phone?"

There were just over two hundred people watching the live stream, and some were typing.

"An Shen, did you hear that? An old lady is begging someone to teach her how to use a cell phone."

"This kind of thing is too common. There are plenty of elderly people in rural areas who don't know how to use smartphones. Do you think everyone can swipe the screen and tap icons? What's as simple as breathing for young people is as difficult as taking an exam for people in their seventies and eighties."

Xu An stuffed the water bottle into the side pocket of his canvas bag and stood at the door for about seven or eight seconds.

Then he walked across the street, went up the steps, and entered the service station.

The room was not well lit; a fluorescent light tube was buzzing overhead, one end of which was blackened and flickering violently.

Six elderly people were gathered around a long table against the wall.

Four women and two men, the oldest of whom looked to be in his early eighties and the youngest in his sixties, each held a mobile phone in their hand. The models were all different, some new, some old, some big, and some small, but the common feature was that the tempered glass screen protectors on the screens were peeling at the edges, and two of them had dust under the screen protectors.

There was an old-fashioned electric fan in the middle of the table. The fan was spinning, but the wind it emitted couldn't even move the papers on the table; it seemed more like a charade.

As soon as Xu An entered, all six people turned their attention to him.