The winter Liang Shuang turned sixteen, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. After a year of treatment, her condition kept getting worse.
Snow fell outside. Her mother seemed in good spirits and smiled as she said, "Remember to top up my phone credit for me."
Liang Shuang nodded. "Sure."
Liang Shuang wasn't brushing her off. She was just so busy: cooking for her mother and helping her wash, going to the hospital to pick up medicine, going to school, and asking her father for money.
Once she got busy, Liang Shuang forgot.
When Liang Shuang got home after evening study that day, she discovered her mother was gone.
She didn't dare check the call history. She didn't know whether her dying mother had desperately tried to call on a phone with no credit. Cancer had robbed her mother of her independence, her life, and her ordinary days. It had taken Liang Shuang's mother from her too.
Liang Shuang would never forgive herself for the rest of her life.
But she acted as if nothing had happened. She didn't even cry.
Until one winter, ten years later, Liang Shuang was sitting in a small restaurant in an unfamiliar city, eating an ordinary bowl of egg noodles, when tears suddenly began to fall.
"My mom made this." She repeatedly wiped her face with her sleeve. "I'm sure this is my mom's cooking."
After saying that, she put down her chopsticks and walked toward the greasy, fluttering curtain that separated the kitchen from the dining area.
Theme: The stars in the sky say nothing.
