After the family split up, my stepmother and scumbag father begged me to come home.

The village was not yet fully awake in the morning.

Under the eaves of houses on both sides of the dirt road, people came out to empty dirty water and greeted passersby.

Several chickens were pawing at the base of the wall. When they heard footsteps, they scattered and then quickly gathered back together.

When I reached the village entrance, I ran into several people carrying hoes who were heading to the fields.

They were all familiar faces from the village, surnamed Zhou and Li, living a few houses away from the Lin family. They would nod to each other when they met.

They were standing at the crossroads smoking, hoes resting on their shoulders, waiting for everyone to come together.

"Hey, Qianqian, where are you headed?" The middle-aged man at the head of the group took his cigarette out of his mouth, squinted at the three people's baskets, then looked at Ding Xiaohu. "You've brought the Ding family's kid with you too?"

"Uncle Zhou," Lin Qianqian called out with a smile, "We're out of food at home, so we're planning to go into the mountains to see if there are any wild vegetables or anything we can eat."

She said this in a very normal tone, as if she were saying that the weather was nice today. She was neither humble nor arrogant, and she didn't try to elicit sympathy.

Uncle Zhou was stunned for a moment after hearing this, and then exchanged a glance with the person next to him.

The man next to him, surnamed Li—known as Li Laosan—stashed his hoe on the ground, shook his head, and said, "You know, the Lin family is really something..."

He didn't finish his sentence, but the meaning was already quite clear.

"That's right." Another younger person chimed in, his voice not loud, but loud enough for those around to hear, "He abandoned his perfectly good daughter, and this father is only concerned with himself, raising someone else's child while leaving these two sisters to fend for themselves. What kind of father is that?"

"Those old folks in the Lin family are no good either." Uncle Zhou threw his cigarette butt on the ground and ground it with his toe. "They're so biased, they treat their youngest son like a treasure, but they don't care about their second son's kids at all..."

As he spoke, his voice grew louder, as if he was getting angrier and angrier.

Lin Qianqian stood there, the smile from before still on her face, but it had faded a bit, like a cup of tea steeped for the third time—the flavor was still there, but the heat had dissipated.

"Uncle Zhou, Uncle Li, we'll be going now, while it's still cool," she said.

Uncle Zhou seemed to have been reminded and quickly stopped talking, his expression changing from indignation to embarrassment: "Alright, alright, go ahead. Qianqian, if anything happens in the mountains, just call out. Don't go deep into the mountains, there are man-eating monsters there."

"Okay, I understand. Thank you, Uncle Zhou."

Lin Qianqian led A Long and Hu Zi past them.

The men carrying hoes made way for the three men, their eyes following their retreating figures for a while. They shook their heads and whispered something, their voices fading into indistinct.

Lin Yulong walked in the middle, head down, his pace quickening slightly.

His basket was still empty, but his gait had changed; his shoulders were slightly hunched forward, as if he wanted to hide himself.

Ding Xiaohu walked at the very back, glanced back at the adults, then turned back and whispered in Lin Yulong's ear, "Yulong, did you hear that? Uncle Zhou said the Lin family are no good."

Lin Yulong remained silent.

"That wasn't about you," Ding Xiaohu said again, "it was about your family..."

Lin Yulong remained silent, but his shoulders relaxed a little.

Lin Qianqian walked at the front without ever looking back. Her basket swayed gently with each step, the knife inside occasionally bumping against the basket with a dull thud.

After leaving the village and heading up the mountain, Lin Qianqian stopped at the first bend and looked back.

The village was already below, a hazy gray expanse with rooftops connected to rooftops, and a few wisps of smoke rising from the middle, thin and drifting obliquely in the morning breeze.

"Sister Qianqian," Ding Xiaohu called out to her.

"Um."

"Aren't you angry about what those people said just now?"

Lin Qianqian adjusted the straps of the basket to her shoulder and started walking again.

"What's there to be angry about?" she said, her voice soft but clear. "They're telling the truth."

Ding Xiaohu thought about it and felt that it made sense, but something still felt off. He scratched his head, quickened his pace to catch up, and the contents of his basket rattled all the way.

Lin Yulong walked in the middle, and this time he raised his head.

The mountain path curved ahead, and sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the ground like scattered coins. The three of them stepped on the dappled sunlight, making their way deeper into the mountains.

The smoke from the village chimneys behind me grew fainter and fainter until it blended into the sunlight and disappeared from view.