When I was six, I saw a woman in red at the hospital.
Her face was deathly pale, blood ran from the corners of her eyes, and she stood at the end of the corridor, smiling at me.
She asked, “Mingming, would you lend me your eyes?” After that night, my fever wouldn’t break.
Grandma rushed in from the countryside in the middle of the night. She cut her finger and braided five strands of different-colored thread into a five-colored cord for me.
She said, “You mustn’t take this cord off before you turn twelve.” “Don’t listen to anyone who tells you to take it off.” I always thought it was a good-luck charm.
Until the night of my twelfth birthday, when one of the strands snapped. I saw them again.
