Summer comes early in Yuli.
Under the old banyan tree at the back door of Fuyu No. 2 Middle School, every evening at six o'clock, there would always be a tall young man wearing an old school uniform standing. He didn't talk to anyone, didn't look around, just waited quietly.
At the end of the alley, another young man will walk out on time, with his head lowered and his schoolbag on his back. The shadows of the two people overlapped in the orange sunset, and then they walked one behind the other towards the building without an elevator in the old residential area.
There was a smell of oil smoke and laundry detergent in the corridor. The door lock on the fifth floor was a bit astringent and had to be lifted up to unscrew it. One room and one living room, the walls are peeling off, and the water heater is always slow. There are two pairs of bowls and chopsticks on the folding dining table, one of which has a cartoon puppy carved on its head.
This is their home.
His parents divorced the day after his brother's eighteenth birthday, and they each had new families. No one took my brother away. The elder brother didn't cry, he just knelt down and said to his younger brother: Mom and Dad are on a business trip.
He said another sentence in his mind.
——They don't want you, I want you.
The idea: to build a home on top of the ruins.