Second Night

Introduction to the work 2:07 in the morning, Chen Yu always wakes up at this time. In the dream, it was always the same old locust tree and the same young man with his back turned to him. He couldn't see the face clearly, but he stood on the bluestone road every night, a few steps away from him, but he couldn't walk past it. After waking up, there was a warmth that did not belong to him in his palm, as if someone had just held his hand. Until the world starts to collapse around him. Elderly people in Jinyuan Community disappeared one after another. Uncle Li, Aunt Chen, Uncle Zhang, Grandma Wang, and Uncle Liu—the last five households that refused to sign when Huaishu Village was demolished seventeen years ago. Surveillance footage captured them walking out of the unit late at night, stopping under a streetlight, raising their heads, smiling, and then disappearing from the screen. Each saw the same person, but described it completely differently. Only Chen Yu knew that they might have seen the same person. The red string that appeared inexplicably under the pillow, the nursery rhymes that appeared out of thin air on the refrigerator, the lights that flickered on time on the roof of the building on the other side in the early morning - all clues pointed to the community built on the ruins on the other side of the river. When Chen Yu pushed open the door that shouldn't have been opened, he dug out a body under the soil. Wearing the clothes he wore when he was fourteen years old, he has the same face as him. There are only four words engraved on the tombstone: Wait for someone. Seventeen years ago, when Chen Yu left Huaishu Village, he left the Ping An Jade given by his mother to a young boy and said, "I will come back." He didn't come back. In order to keep his name carved on the tree, the boy was buried under the old locust tree and never grew up.