There are six stores in total on Huaiyin Street. A coffin shop, a shroud shop, an incense shop, a paper shop, an old medicine shop—and my family's breakfast shop.
I grew up on this street and didn't see anything wrong with it. I grind soy milk at five o'clock in the morning, receive an old lady carrying a thermos box, charge her a hundred yuan, and then put the money under a light bulb and burn it to ashes. After eleven years, I got used to it.
Until that early morning, the old lady did not come.
The girl who came scanned the QR code and paid six yuan. After drinking the soy milk, she said it was delicious. That night, a dark spot appeared on the palm of my right hand, which I couldn't pick off or wash off. My dad's notebook had the same mark on it, and next to it he wrote: "If you pass your heart in seven days, you will die if you pass your heart."
I went to see Uncle Wang at the coffin shop, and he said, "You took money from the living. That old lady was a shady. If she didn't come, you had to take over the work for her. Go to the funeral parlor and stay overnight for the dead to earn a penny."
"There is a dead rule at the wake: no matter what she says to you, don't speak."
The girl lying in the funeral home that night was the girl from the morning. At three o'clock in the morning, she sat up and handed me a copper coin: "Boss, can you add a spoonful of sugar?"
I couldn't help it. It's over.
It's good-looking and good at logic and writing.