Forgotten Convenience Store

At the end of the old alley in the east of the city, there is a convenience store that buys memories. The frustrated person trades his painful past for a roomful of stuff, except for the shopkeeper, who never touches the row of old bottles at the bottom of the shelf. On the night of the power outage in the twelfth lunar month, when he was fishing for bottles with a flashlight, his fingertips felt cold to the touch. It is a bottle with only the word "" on it. His own handwriting. It has been seven years, and he has long forgotten what he put in it that evening. The flashlight flashed, and a seven-year-old girl came up, squatting at the door making dumplings, with flour smeared on her face. A car. Blood overflowed with the patter of rain. And my own voice, over and over again: "Forget about myself." That's what he said. He sealed a period of his life with his own hands. He unscrewed the cap, like unscrewing a can of kerosene that had been stored for a long time, and seven years of breath rushed to his face, making him lean back. An An squatted beside his knees and counted her white hair, holding up a crooked firefighter's calendar and shouting to him, "This is my dad." And then it all shattered - the car accident, the emergency room light, a piece of paper he couldn't sign. He didn't cry, sealed the bottle, put it in his arms, and sat in the darkness of the empty alley all night. At dawn, he stood up and tore off the seals on the shelves one by one. This time, he decided to remember.