Different Wild Dogs, Same Bones

In 1997, in the small southern town of Tengcheng, downstairs of an old residential building, at dusk, a girl wearing an old sweater carried a brown suitcase and looked up to the third floor. The mottled wall reflected the setting sun, and her shadow was stretched very long.   In 1997, autumn came earlier than usual in Vine City. You were standing downstairs in the third unit of the Family Courtyard of the Power Supply Bureau, holding the suitcase's lever in your hand, your knuckles turning white. Your mother, Wei Mingzhen, is urging you from the front, with a familiar and impatient eagerness in her voice - she is always like this, and every time she joins a new man, it's like grabbing a life-saving straw. The man in the house on the third floor is Chen Libin, a technician from the power supply bureau. His wife is dead and he has a son who is two years older than you. Mother said, this will be your home from now on. But you know, from today on, you have to learn to live by looking at other people's faces. The smell of food wafted from the corridor, and there was the sound of a young boy slamming the door impatiently.