Rain dripped down Shen Tong's umbrella ribs, making small pits on the muddy ground of the flea market. She stood at the far end of the stall, her eyes fixed on the sandalwood painting box covered with mildew. The patina formed by oxidation on the copper lock resembles some kind of skin disease, while the gilded "L. M.1879" On the inside of the lid glows strangely in the dim light.
"French product." The stall owner suddenly said, his cigarette butt flickering in the rain, "Left by the painter." His right eye twitched nervously when he quoted three hundred yuan, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, as if he had stayed up too many nights.
When Shen Tong was paying, she noticed that a section of the little finger of the stall owner's left hand was missing, and the skin at the fracture shriveled into an ugly sarcoma. This detail reminded her inexplicably of the specimens soaked in formalin in the anatomy classes at the Academy of Fine Arts.
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The painting box made a dull sound on the workbench of Shen Tong's apartment. When she wiped the copper lock with an alcohol cotton pad, the cotton pad suddenly caught an almost invisible dent - it was a tiny triangular engraving, the edge of which had been oxidized and blackened. The moment the lid of the box popped open, a smell somewhere between carrion and herbs hit her face, reminding her of her grandmother's camphor wood box filled with dried medicinal herbs when she was a child.
The lining inside the box was covered with spiderweb-like cracks. At the position corresponding to the third rib, a dark brown stain the size of a fingernail was particularly conspicuous. When Shen Tong used tweezers to pry open the edge of the warped lining, the lights in the apartment suddenly flickered and the refrigerator compressor made a dying buzz.
