Xu Yan made it to the age of twenty-seven, but everyone around her had left.
Her mother drank pesticide when she was nine. In high school, Cheng Yu, the only senior who had ever brought light into her life, died in a car accident while bringing her soup. He had his guitar with him and an unsent confession card. Later, Grandma Meng, her neighbor, became her last refuge. But Grandma Meng left too.
The day she sorted through Grandma's belongings, Xu Yan found sixteen bundles wrapped in old newspaper in the bedside table, arranged from the Start of Spring to the Major Cold. Each bundle held five hundred yuan and a piece of dried tangerine peel candy.
Suddenly, she remembered how, every first day of school years ago, Grandma would slip a bundle like that into her schoolbag. She had never opened one. Later, the money she slipped to Grandma had never been spent either. Grandma wrapped it back up just as it was, added candy, and waited for her to come home.
She had come home too few times.
She opened three of the sixteen bundles. She wanted to open the remaining thirteen one at each solar term, so they could keep her company a little longer.
Her flower shop was called “Aftercare.” No one understood what it meant, and she never explained.
Ahem, my own five stars