On Hongqi Street in 1986, summer cicadas made the asphalt seem to melt. Zhao Jianguo stared at the erguotou in the enamel basin, his throat feeling as if it held a lump of red-hot charcoal. This was his third life. In his first two, he had either drunk himself to death in a hospital or fallen to the knives of his wife, Cheng Xiaomei, and her ex-boyfriend.
After being reborn, he emptied the liquor cabinet overnight. He was cold as ice toward the usually overbearing Cheng Xiaomei, yet took special care of Lin Wanqiu, the seventeen-year-old girl who worked in the shop. He never missed bringing her meat buns on Wednesdays, and when she miscalculated the bill, he defended her, saying, “Kids make mistakes.” No one knew he was trying to make up for what he had done to her in his previous life. But that attempt at making amends gradually brought stranger things to light.
Cheng Xiaomei suddenly seemed like a different person. She stopped standing with her hands on her hips and shouting, and began studying bookkeeping under the lamp. At night, she would even take out her sewing kit and stitch a back support for Zhao Jianguo. When her ex-boyfriend, Zhou Zhiqiang, showed up in bell-bottoms, she clutched Zhao Jianguo's clothes and trembled, her voice shaking. Even more suspicious was Lin Wanqiu. She was always flipping through a little notebook with a worn-out cover behind the shelves. She remembered what every customer wanted and every time Cheng Xiaomei got the books wrong. Sometimes she would look up, her eyes holding a composure beyond her years, as if she were watching for something.
The lipstick mark on the account book was never explained. The note Zhou Zhiqiang sent was secretly burned by Cheng Xiaomei. A few lines of hurried writing would sometimes show in Lin Wanqiu's little notebook, only for her to flip past them quickly. As the cicadas grew louder, Zhao Jianguo ran a hand over the back support Cheng Xiaomei had sewn and suddenly felt that this rebirth was some kind of setup. He wanted to rewrite fate, Cheng Xiaomei was hiding secrets, and the girl who always kept her head down while arranging the goods might have seen through everything long ago.
