She boils two pots of water every morning. If the first pot is cooked out, the second pot will be used.
She has been working as a barista at an independent cafe called "The Second Pot" in Newtown, Sydney, for three years.
Lin Zhiyi holds a master's degree in comparative literature from Nanjing University. Come to Sydney in 2024 to study for a PhD in Comparative Literature at USyd. The instructor died of illness in early 2024, and other professors were unwilling to take her on. The flight ticket was booked, the visa was signed, and she went on time. She has not yet received a Ph. D.
The boss, Marcus, is a white man from Sydney who has been sober for eight years. He doesn't understand the literal meaning of her Chinese, but at certain moments he is so accurate that she thinks he understands.
Her 485 work permit will expire in eleven months.
She doesn't tell anyone about it.
She didn't tell anyone that the silver hairpin left by her grandma had recently begun to have its own meaning.
Grandma Lin Yuee was from Qianshan, Jiangxi. She passed away at around 6:40 in the morning in 2009. She was eleven years old. Before her death, grandma put the silver hairpin into her palm and said five words to her:
Listen to the water and don't ask the fish.
Lin Zhiyi thought she couldn't remember this sentence clearly.
Until a man who started coming to the store in September called her Lin for the first time.
Until she boiled the second pot of water every morning, the sound of boiling water began to contain a word that she couldn't explain.
Until she gradually discovered that she did not walk into the Second Pot store by chance.
A silver hairpin that cannot speak on its own.
A cafe that shouldn't have aura nodes.
Someone who traveled halfway around the world to find her.
The second half of a grandma's unfinished sentence before she died.
She already asked.
Intention: Cultivation is not a shortcut to escape from the mortal world, but a mirror to see yourself.