The snow was everywhere, and the cold wind cut like a knife across her face. It wasn’t until she was squeezed onto the train by the crowd that Ye Ling’s lost eyes found focus, confirming this wasn’t a dream.
"Lingzi, come here." Her grandmother’s familiar voice came from the front in her memory.
Ye Ling looked up, and her grandmother in her fifties appeared to be in her sixties, looking just as she remembered. Her face was forever kind. Ye Ling didn’t understand what was happening. Her grandmother had clearly died in that rented room, after being mocked by her younger sister, and in her loneliness and guilt toward her ex-husband, Shen Bin, without a single family member by her side, she died at the age of twenty-two.
But how could she be here?
And on a train no less.
The cold wind from outside surged into the train door, jolting her awake. In her memory, her grandmother had died in the year she got married, yet now she stood living and breathing in front of her. Surrounded by the noisy crowd, pressed in until she was by her grandmother’s side, even her grandmother’s calloused hand clasped hers. She knew this was not a dream; everything was real. She was not dead, and neither was her grandmother. She looked down, Ye Ling slowly widened her eyes looking at her outfit.
Ye Ling was like a puppet as her grandmother dragged her forward, her whole being plunged into her memories.
Wasn’t this the dress she wore when she was fifteen years old, going with her grandmother to the city to spend New Year with her parents? Ye Ling remembered this outfit so vividly because it was associated with a bad memory of her sixteenth New Year. On the first day of New Year, she sat on the train with her grandmother heading back to the countryside. It wasn’t until after graduating middle school and needing to go to high school that she returned to the city because her family couldn’t afford for her not to study.
Ye Ling’s father was a professor, a man of high education in those days, but was fired from school for having a second child. Ye’s father was lucky; in an era when jobs were either official or inherited from parents, he was hired by a private development company to do research, primarily geological exploration, in the company’s logistics department.
Though a private enterprise, it enjoyed benefits similar to state-owned factories, with its own family quarters, surpassing some state-owned factories even in terms of accommodation, which was locally well-known. It was said that no one felt anything but envy working there.
Ye’s mother was pregnant and had just followed her husband to the new location, so they left their only one-year-old daughter, Ye Ling, at the old home. Ye Ling stayed in the countryside for fifteen years, only going to the city with her grandmother for New Year’s once. Although she was raised in the countryside, she was spoiled by her grandmother. Watching her parents favor the sister, Ye Qian, beside them, whom she was always reluctant to accept, she constantly compared herself to her sister. Ye Qian was sweet-mouthed and charming, beloved by everyone, and her sweet and delicate appearance was very likable. Moreover, she was always seen as yielding to her elder sister, Ye Ling, and everyone thought Ye Qian was sensible.
In contrast, Ye Ling was clumsy with words and inwardly weak, yet always openly revealing her resentment over her sister being liked and her discontent. Naturally, this didn’t endear her to people. Growing up in the countryside, she felt pushed aside when she returned to the company’s family quarters, making her even more timid. Disliking the familial bias towards her younger sister, she always contradicted her parents whenever they reproached her. Over time, this led to her parents, who were never close to begin with, disliking her even more.
This resulted in her family naturally siding with her sister in any sibling conflict.
Being squeezed by the crowd into the carriage junction by the door, Ye Ling’s thoughts gradually returned. As the year-end approached, many people were on the train, their clothes a singular blue or military green, perhaps gray—the early ’80s clothing had very monotonous colors.
Ye Ling and her grandmother managed to find a spot to stand because beside them was a chicken coop, with the carriage door behind them. With her grandmother’s age, she took advantage of her seniority to claim this corner.
"Lingzi, just hold on. We’ll arrive tomorrow morning. Your father mentioned in the telegram he’d come to pick us up," said Old Mrs. Ye, who looked quite spirited for her age.
Knowing her granddaughter was spoiled by her upbringing, the grandmother moved her body closer to the chicken coop, blocking the pecking chicken heads, so her granddaughter could lean against a cleaner corner.