Breakfast Cart at the Gate of the Community

The breakfast cart at the entrance of the community was the first fixed coordinate Lin Xiaoman found in this strange city. At 5:30 every morning, Uncle Zhang's dining car is set up on time. The steaming heat is wrapped in the aroma of soy milk and fried dough sticks, dispelling her fatigue after working overtime and quietly catching the confusion hidden in her eyes. She always orders pancakes with eggs, and he always pours an extra spoonful of her favorite sweet sauce. Over time, the taciturn Uncle Zhang became the person who understood her taste best, and the occasional appearance of a young man beside the dining car to help pass out tissues added some indescribable ripples to this familiarity. Until that rainy day, she saw Uncle Li staring at a yellowed photo in a daze. The young man's eyes were red and he kicked the broken soy milk bowl into the corner. It turned out that the smoke and smoke between these square inches contained worries more complicated than the neon lights in the city, and also contained the power that could gently tie two lonely souls together.