On the morning of August 11, the Y City emergency management website turned black and white. Several media outlets in Tonghua reported on the wildfire.
Back then, news didn't travel very fast. Many people only learned about what had happened by reading the newspaper.
Lin Ya spotted the paper on the table at home. She and her father had gotten into the habit of casually flipping through the day's news.
But today's front page was covered in huge letters, a long headline that seemed to squeeze the air from her lungs.
A wildfire has broken out in Tafa Village, Wuming County, Y City. Two firefighters have died.
At first, Lin Ya only read the account of the fire. She couldn't find the names of the firefighters who had died. But when a familiar name appeared in the second-to-last paragraph, her eyes lost focus, and the newspaper slipped from her hands to the floor.
As soon as Xu Yongguang's mother learned of his death, she abandoned the cucumbers growing in her greenhouse and bought a train ticket to Y City. Just as she left the station, she saw Xu Yongguang's captain.
Anxious the whole way, she immediately asked where Xu Yongguang was as soon as she saw him.
Xu Yongguang was already waiting at the funeral home for his mother to take him home. He and his teammates lay there alone, waiting to make their final journey home.
The moment she saw Xu Yongguang, his mother broke down in tears. She couldn't bear to imagine that her child, who had been six feet tall, now lay in a box only a few dozen centimeters long.
On the way back to L City, Xu Yongguang's mother couldn't stop crying. Beside her was the only thing he had left behind, and it was just a box.
A phone number and a name were written on it. She knew they belonged to someone else, so she didn't open it or touch what was inside.
On the morning of August 13, Xu Yongguang's mother rode a bus back to her hometown. She knew that she
