Mu Mei stood in front of the shower mirror and gently wiped away the mist with her fingertips. Water drops slid down her face, and she couldn't tell whether it was warm water or tears. The face in the mirror is 37 years old, with fine lines at the corners of the eyes and years of fatigue between the eyebrows.
She had just put her eight-year-old son to bed, checked her school bag for tomorrow, and packed the shirts her husband would wear to work tomorrow. Everything is in order and everything is as calm as water.
"Is that it?" She muttered to herself in the mirror.
In the living room, her husband Li Xiangyang was watching the football match on TV, keeping his voice low to avoid disturbing her from resting. He was a good man - he could cook, didn't smoke, took his kids to soccer on weekends, and remembered her birthdays and wedding anniversaries. There are no big storms in their lives, only steady flow.
But I don't know since when, Mu Mei's heart was always missing a piece. The gap seemed to get bigger and bigger with time, especially in the dead of night, when she was lying alone on the bed, listening to her husband's even breathing, that inexplicable emptiness swept over her.
She recalled the conversations among the young mothers waiting for their children at the school gate this afternoon:
"My child is enrolled in the Mathematical Olympiad class, which costs RMB 8,000 per semester."
"We just bought a house in the school district and the monthly mortgage payment is 12,000 yuan."
"I heard that Mrs. Chen's husband has been promoted and earns one million a year..."
Mu Mei just stood aside quietly, holding the vegetables she bought at a discount in the supermarket yesterday. Her family's monthly income is barely over 10,000 yuan. In this city, it is not considered a hardship, but it is not affluent either. School district housing, interest classes, study abroad, these are all distant words to her.
