Talking to Dad in Dream

On the day his father left, Lin Wan was ten minutes late. She didn't cry. In three days, she had done everything she needed to do, including keeping the wake, paying the bill, and choosing the urn, except for her eyes. When her aunt asked her why she didn't cry, her mother answered for her: She was not close to her father. On the first night after the funeral, she slept in the attic of her father's watch shop and dreamed that he was sitting under the lamp repairing watches. He raised his head and asked her: Have you eaten yet? When she woke up, the old watch in her pocket that her father had worn for forty years was still three minutes behind. Later, she discovered the rules: when she sleeps with this watch, her father will come; in the dream, he cannot say anything that she does not know; and every time she dreams, he becomes lighter, repeats more, and the tone becomes her own. She began to prepare for sleep as if she were preparing for an interview. She wanted to know how he spent those seventy days, and why he didn't come home night after night in the last six months. Until one night, my father suddenly said: "I have paid back the money from Ah Heng." Lin Wan had never heard of this name. According to the rules, he shouldn't be able to say it. If you want to keep him, you have to use him up. This was her only chance to bargain with her father, at the cost of him disappearing faster.