Chen Han’s WeChat popped up for the third time, and Qi Yang was stuck at a long red light.
Sixty-five seconds.
He slumped back into the driver’s seat, propping his forehead on his hand, then spread his thumb and index finger on the phone screen to zoom in on the map.
Two more intersections to the destination, four minutes until seven o’clock.
Chen Han’s message was curt: Five minutes. If you can’t make it, we’re done.
Qi Yang tapped the screen to pull down the chat box and replied: Don’t wait. We’re done now.
He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, popped a cigarette out of the pack, and stuck it between his lips.
Just holding it, not planning to light it. Then he glanced up and saw the young woman in the backseat staring at him through the rearview mirror, her eyes red-rimmed.
She looked about eighteen or nineteen, and she’d been on the phone since she got in the car.
In less than a ten-minute ride, she’d been going off like a one-woman stand-up comedy routine, her speech getting faster and faster until she was on the verge of a meltdown.
The argument had spiraled from explaining why she was late, to blaming who walked the dog less, to not washing his own underwear after a shower… and finally hit rock bottom with, “Do you even know your mouth reeks of dead rat? Every time we kiss, I want to puke.”
At that point, the conversation was heading straight for a breakup.
Qi Yang didn’t want to hear any of this messy crap. He was already annoyed enough.
But there was no escape in the cramped car, and he couldn’t roll down the window in the freezing snow. Staring at the countdown on the red light, he rested his wrist on the steering wheel and tapped his index finger impatiently.
“I’m selfish? Then let’s break up!”
A sharp, cold laugh from the backseat. The light turned yellow. Qi Yang stomped on the gas.
They finally reached the destination. The young woman hung up the phone briskly, jumped out in a flurry, slammed the door, left a bad rating, and was gone—all in one smooth motion.
A deduction notice popped up. Qi Yang lazily grabbed his phone, checked today’s earnings, and turned off the ride-matching system.
This so-called relationship with Chen Han was slightly better than the last one. It lasted twenty-three days.
Twenty-three or twenty-seven—he couldn’t remember. Either way, it hadn’t hit a month.
They’d met through a rideshare. Chen Han left her bag in his car, and Qi Yang returned it to her, adding her on WeChat. He didn’t accept the red envelope she sent as thanks, but she started messaging him every couple of days.
One thing led to another, without any formal confession or ceremony, and they just started dating.
They started dating because of a rideshare, and broke up because a rideshare made him miss their date.
Kind of fitting, really.
He didn’t feel sad.
Partly out of habit, partly because he didn’t have the headspace.
No sooner had the breakup happened than Zou Meizhu called, right on cue. Qi Yang answered, and a screeching sound like nails on glass assaulted his ear.
“Yangzi!” Zou Meizhu’s weak voice cut through the screaming. “Off work yet?”
Qi Yang moved the phone away from his ear, lit the cigarette, and asked flatly, “Is it starting again?”
“Yeah.” Zou Meizhu sounded half-dead. “I tried to teach your sister how to cook, but she got upset. Hurry back.”
“Why the hell are you forcing her to learn cooking?” Qi Yang frowned. “Did you know how to cook when you were twelve or thirteen?”
“I thought she needed to build life skills. She can’t just…”
“Enough.” Qi Yang cut her off, turning the car around to head home.
Just before hanging up, Zou Meizhu muttered, “Buy some of Old Chen’s pig head meat from the intersection. Mom wants some.”
Qi Yang hung up without another word.
Driving a rideshare wasn’t Qi Yang’s real job. He had a regular gig, managing a car rental company. The boss was a woman he’d known since school—a big sister figure—and she looked out for him.
But he had two mouths at home to feed, and no matter how much he earned, it felt like throwing money into a dry well—not even a splash.
Today’s rideshare fares turned into a bag of pig head meat.
Qi Yang crouched by the flowerbed in the neighborhood and smoked another cigarette in silence.
It was already pitch dark at six or seven in the winter evening. The crooked decorative lamp cast a weak, dying glow, making a few kids playing in the snow by the flowerbed look like little ghosts.
A snowball smacked the ground in front of Qi Yang. He crushed the cigarette butt into it.
The kids stared over at him. He stood up, stomped his feet, brushed the snow off his head, and headed upstairs.
Qi Yang lived in an old residential area on the outskirts of the city.
This place used to be a separate town, not part of the city at all—once the bustling center of that town.
Over the past decade, as the city expanded and developed, the town was absorbed into the urban area. But it ended up like a stepchild, always excluded from redevelopment, becoming the shabbiest pocket of the city.
Like a dirty patch of dog plaster.
And just like his family, shamelessly clinging to the fringes of the city.
The old six-story building had no elevator. Qi Yang lived on the fourth floor.
When he was halfway up the stairs between the second and third floors, Qi Xing’s ear-piercing scream cut through everything, punctuated by a neighbor’s furious cursing.
As soon as he unlocked the door, the screaming stopped.
Used to it, he bent down to change his shoes and called out, “Qi Xing.”
Two figures—one big, one small—slipped out of the room. Zou Meizhu wore a relieved expression and quickly took the plastic bag from Qi Yang.
“I’ll make dinner,” she said, sniffing the pig head meat happily as she headed to the kitchen. “You play with Xingxing for a bit.”
Qi Yang looked toward the corner. Qi Xing was wearing a loose, long-sleeved nightgown and had been standing there since she came out of the bedroom, not moving.
Even after Qi Yang changed his shoes, took off his jacket and hung it in the wardrobe, and went to the bathroom to wash his hands, she still stood there.
The only change was that her face turned to follow his movements, like a sunflower turned into a spirit, with only one foot wearing a slipper.
Zou Meizhu bustled around the house, equally used to ignoring her.
“Wearing flower socks today?”
Qi Yang grabbed the other slipper from beside the TV, walked over, crouched in front of her, and lightly scratched the top of her left foot.
Qi Xing’s toes twitched.
She had a red sock with yellow flowers on her left foot, but a blue sock with green flowers on her right.
Qi Yang signaled her to lift her foot and put on the slipper. Instead, she stretched out her right hand and opened all five fingers.
“What happened to your hand?” Qi Yang pinched her thin, chicken-claw-like fingers and checked each one.
Qi Xing pointed with her left hand to her right thumb, then to her index finger, and pushed her hand closer to his face, letting out a loud “Mm” from her nose.
It was a little red.
“Did you burn it?” Qi Yang guessed based on Zou Meizhu’s earlier call.
Qi Xing nodded.
“Let your brother blow on it.” Qi Yang blew on her hand twice. “Okay, put on your shoe now.”
Only then did Qi Xing lift her foot and carefully slide it into the slipper.
“Come here, let me comb your hair.” Qi Yang rubbed her head and led her to the sofa. “You look like a shaggy dog.”
Zou Meizhu came out of the kitchen with a bowl of congee and sighed as she watched the siblings.
“Oh, my life. Why is it so hard?”
She’d been saying that for ten years, ever since Qi Xing was diagnosed with autism ten years ago.
At first, Qi Yang was lost along with the adults. Then his dad abandoned the family and bolted, leaving him angry, helpless, and desperate… until now, when he was just used to it and numb.
Qi Yang felt like his ears must have grown eighteen layers of calluses. He was completely immune to it by now.
“Let Qi Xing’s hair grow out. Stop cutting it—you make it look like a donkey chewed it off.”
Qi Yang gathered Qi Xing’s fine, thin, yellowish hair and tied it into a lopsided bun on top of her head.
“Take her out in the sun sometimes. Missing a few rounds of mahjong won’t kill you.”
Qi Xing turned to look at her brother, touched her own head, then lost interest and pulled a few stickers out of her nightgown pocket.
“Easy for you to say.” Zou Meizhu had long accepted Qi Yang’s blunt attitude since she started depending on her son to support the family.
“She won’t go outside. She spends all day fiddling with her crappy notebooks and paper.”
“If I let her hair grow out, will you wash it for her? Before I die, it’ll still be me, her own mother, taking care of her.”
“Wait… who are you calling a donkey, you little brat?”
One remark, fifty comebacks.
Qi Yang and Qi Xing both played dumb, one doing hair, the other playing with stickers.
Dinner was the pig head meat he’d brought back with plain congee. Qi Yang only ate one steamed bun—no appetite. Qi Xing ate like a cat, and Zou Meizhu finished off half the plate of meat.
A mahjong buddy called, and Zou Meizhu answered with a quick “Be right there.” She looked at Qi Yang, slightly embarrassed.
“Auntie Wu said her colleague’s daughter is looking for a boyfriend. I’ll go ask for you.”
She made up a flimsy excuse, her maternal instincts suddenly flaring up as she started worrying about Qi Yang’s love life.
“You never take care of your own affairs. How long has it been since your last relationship? You’re twenty-eight, tall and handsome, and every relationship ends after one date…”
“Just go already.” Qi Yang was sick of hearing it.
His voice came out a bit loud. Qi Xing looked up at him, and he patted the back of her head. “You go play too.”
The front door and Qi Xing’s bedroom door closed at the same time. Qi Yang slowly cleaned up the dishes, flopped onto the sofa, and grabbed his phone.
Chen Han hadn’t replied to his WeChat. Her contact was already deleted.
He hadn’t told his family about Chen Han, and he hadn’t told Chen Han about his autistic sister—there was no point dragging a girl into a doomed relationship.
The day he accepted that Qi Xing would need care for life, he’d already prepared to stay single forever.
He was about to open the ride-matching app to check for any morning carpool requests when Liu Dameng’s avatar popped up with a message.
Liu Dameng: Guess who I ran into!
Qi Yang tapped the keyboard, but before he could type, Qi Xing came out of the bedroom with a notebook and called out, “Ah.”
“What’s up?” Qi Yang put down his phone and looked at her.
Qi Xing didn’t answer. She took his hand and led him to the little desk in her bedroom.
She laid the notebook flat on the desk. It was covered in scribbles he couldn’t understand and random stickers.
On the corner of the desk was a pile of sticker backing paper. Qi Xing pointed to her little tin box where she kept her stickers.
“Out of stickers again?” Qi Yang glanced at it, and Qi Xing nodded.
Making stickers for Qi Xing was a daily routine Qi Yang had mastered.
He’d grab any illustrated magazine or old textbook—or draw some patterns himself—stick double-sided tape on them, and they were good enough for her. She wasn’t picky.
“Come on.” He led Qi Xing to his room and pulled a big cardboard box out of the wardrobe.
The box was full of old magazines and books, some from his school days, all saved for Qi Xing’s sticker cutting. He’d nearly used them all up.
“Tear out whatever you want. Pick a page and draw a circle around it.” Qi Yang turned on the light. “I’ll go to the bathroom, then I’ll make them for you.”
No sooner had he finished than his phone rang in the living room.
Qi Xing squatted down to pick her materials. Qi Yang stepped over her to grab his phone, thinking it was work-related, but saw it was Liu Dameng again.
“Something up?” Qi Yang headed to the bathroom with the phone, peeked in, and saw there was no toilet paper.
He switched the phone to speaker and wandered around the living room looking for more.
“Shit, Yangzi.” Liu Dameng’s loud voice boomed, twice as loud as usual. “You didn’t reply to my message. Guess who the hell I ran into!”
“Talk normal,” Qi Yang said, bringing the phone back to his ear. “Who?”
“Is your sister next to you?” Liu Dameng caught the cautious tone and figured Qi Xing could hear. He straightened up. “Please, sir, guess who I ran into today?”
“No.” Qi Yang wasn’t in the mood for games. “If you’re not going to say it, I’m hanging up.”
“You’re no fun.” Liu Dameng clicked his tongue. “You won’t believe it. I swear to God… Holy shit.”
Qi Yang tossed the phone back onto the sofa, grabbed a new pack of tissues, and headed for the bathroom.
“I ran into Mu Yicong!” Liu Dameng shouted excitedly.
Qi Yang paused at the bathroom door and turned to look at the phone.
“Guess where I saw him?”
Liu Dameng was annoyingly making him guess again, but this time, he couldn’t hold himself back from blurting it out. With three parts excitement, four parts mystery, and four parts schadenfreude, he laughed.
“I ran into him at the andrology hospital!”
