Little Circus Bravely Enters the Big World

In the late summer of 1985, the night wind from the North China Plain carried the smell of diesel into the canvas tent of the traveling circus. Sixteen-year-old Lin Wan clutched a crumpled admission notice - she had failed in the provincial key mathematics department and her tuition had tripled. My father disappeared, leaving only three hundred yuan. He was squatting at the county bus station with 300 yuan of savings in his hands, and was thinking about going to the dock to carry goods when he was suddenly caught by the sound of a bell. In front of the faded red silk tent, a girl in a floral skirt was rubbing a bell on tiptoes. The moonlight leaked through the holes in the roof and fell on the butterfly-shaped birthmark on the back of her neck. "Do you want to do some odd jobs?" Lin Wan held up the money, "As long as food and accommodation are included." Zhao Laohu, the class leader, held the banknotes and squinted at him: "Feed the stables with grass, and ignore the rain." Late at night, Lin Wan was curled up behind a leaky prop box, eating cold steamed buns, when he suddenly caught a glimpse of the girl - Su Xingran squatting by the river, spinning repeatedly against her reflection in the water. She had bruises on her ankles, but she hummed an off-key song: "Moon boat, rock and roll, take me to see the Old Times Bridge..." Lin Wan approached by accident, but she suddenly raised her head, with stars in her pupils: "Do you believe it? Some things are born to shine." Zhao Laohu's curse came from deep in the tent: "You little bitch! If you don't practice twenty somersaults tomorrow, don't even think about eating!" In the distance, the old accountant of the County Cultural Center was flipping through his account book, rubbing the yellowed pages of the "1983 Overseas Remittance Record" with his fingertips. At this moment, the old-fashioned mechanical watch in Lin Wan's pocket suddenly stopped - the back of the dial was engraved with a butterfly pattern that had the same shape as Su Xingran's birthmark.