Benben didn’t care about the confused look on his own face and shouted loudly, “What’s wrong with you? Wait for me!” as he took off running after her. The two of them suddenly started yelling and running as if their pants were on fire, drawing the attention of everyone on the podium and all the third-year students. Many people stood up in surprise, and the cheers spread like wildfire.

Zoe Young couldn’t hear anything.

She could only feel the sun was blinding, everything before her eyes was a blur, as if the hot tears were being blown away by the wind rushing toward her.

Beside her was the sound of another person running and breathing. That wasn’t Charles Morgan, it was Benben, the Benben she thought she had lost, just like when they were kids, as if nothing had ever changed.

So run toward the sun, with no finish line.

“Alan Carter, at that moment, I felt like I was flying toward the sun.”

Zoe Young didn’t know where Benben had gone. After finishing her 0 meters, she was patted on the head and praised by the PE teachers near the finish line, as if this new student was a silly little pet. They wouldn’t let Zoe Young sit directly on the grass to rest, insisting on leading her to walk slowly in circles, saying otherwise it would be bad for her health... Dizzy and disoriented, Zoe Young finally caught her breath, looked around, and only then realized Benben was gone.

Just like a drop of water, refracting a brilliant rainbow in the sunlight, dazzling Zoe Young’s running steps.

Then, in an instant, it evaporated, not even a shadow left behind.

So in the end, you still don’t want to appear together with me?

Zoe Young forced a smile, her knees weak as she shuffled toward her class, raising her hands and greeting everyone’s enthusiastic applause with a big smile.

In the end, Class Three, which had the most sports students, won first place overall, while the most coveted Spiritual Civilization Award, which the class arts committee member cared about most, was given to everyone in a rather ironic way. Class Two got the “Best Spiritual Civilization Award,” and several other classes tied for the “Spiritual Civilization Award.” Zoe Young stood in the line with a frown, suddenly feeling very, very indignant on behalf of the arts committee member who had left early.

Those collective honors that you won’t even remember years later, at a certain moment, can make a girl work herself to exhaustion. Zoe Young didn’t understand why the arts committee member was so persistent—this award, given to all fifty-six people in the class, but fifty-five of them didn’t care.

Unlike when they came to the sports field, on the way back, everyone sat in the bus without singing, each person battered and weary, carrying their big bags and bundles that had been baked all day in the sun and dust, swaying along the road with blank faces.

Zoe Young sat next to Michelle Cindy. After a whole day of shouting encouragement, her throat was hoarse and she really didn’t want to say anything, so she just stared blankly out the window at the golden sun-drenched street scene.

When they were dismissed, she called out to Michelle Cindy: “Where do you live? Can we walk together?”

She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but a trace of panic seemed to flash across Michelle Cindy’s face. She didn’t answer right away, but softly asked back, “Where do you live?”

“Haicheng Community.”

“We’re not on the same way.”

Zoe Young felt a little embarrassed, but Michelle Cindy’s evasive manner made her forget her own awkwardness for a moment. As Michelle Cindy turned to leave, Zoe Young suddenly had a crazy idea.

Zoe Young slung her bag over her shoulder, carrying a plastic bag with a seat cushion inside, and sneakily followed behind Michelle Cindy, about ten meters back. Since there were quite a few classmates heading home along the way, she was confident Michelle Cindy wouldn’t notice she was being followed.

Five minutes later, after winding through a maze of old buildings and dilapidated houses, Zoe Young looked up and realized the new apartment complex ahead was very familiar—even the construction debris that still hadn’t been cleared from the lawn felt especially dear.

This was clearly her own home, Haicheng Community.

Zoe Young grew more excited and nervous. Even though she was already exhausted, her attention was as focused as a young leopard on the hunt, eyes fixed on the slightly chubby girl ahead.

“Alan Carter, I know it’s wrong to pry into other people’s secrets. But why am I so excited?”

Michelle Cindy walked past the building where Zoe Young lived, crossed through Haicheng Community, and finally stopped in front of a row of old buildings on the outskirts of the community, built twenty years ago.

She went into a grocery store on the first floor of one of the gray, old buildings.

Zoe Young waited quietly in the distance, feeling a bit strange. The sports meet had just ended, she’d eaten a stomach full of snacks and her mouth was sticky and sour—why would Michelle Cindy go to the grocery store to buy something?

When her calves were stiff and her bag was weighing her down so much she could barely breathe, she suddenly understood.

She looked up. Above the dark, dingy grocery store hung a dirty, old signboard.

“Michelle's General Store”.

Zoe Young’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Actually, having a family-run convenience store wasn’t anything magical, but for some reason, those five big characters felt as rare as a meteorite crashing to earth from outer space.

She walked over slowly. There were quite a few people beside the store. Although it was late spring, today’s weather was unusually hot.

Zoe Young hid by the flowerbed and quietly watched the shirtless adults playing chess and mahjong at the entrance, the sweating cold beers leaving rings of water on the ground, and even the dust kicked up on the road when the shop owner’s wife chased her husband—the shop owner’s wife was the same woman who had dragged Michelle Cindy away by the arm on the first day of school, her mother.

And that shifty-eyed, greasy, sleazy-looking man, who was being scolded by the shop owner’s wife as she poked his back but still kept his eyes glued to the mahjong game, must be Michelle Cindy’s father.

“You lost that new seat cushion again at the sports meet, didn’t you? All you people from the old Xin family are the same, I must have owed you in my last life, huh? ...”

After scolding her husband, Michelle Cindy’s mother went inside to lecture Michelle Cindy. Zoe Young stared at the dark doorway, not knowing what was happening inside, but hearing the clattering and constant yelling, she knew things couldn’t be good for Michelle Cindy.

Zoe Young picked up her bag and seat cushion, lowered her head, and quietly left.

“Alan Carter, I really don’t understand.

“Her mother seems so fierce, so hateful toward her and her good-for-nothing, lazy father—sorry, I don’t mean to say it like that—but if she resents them so much she wishes she’d never given birth to Michelle Cindy, then why is the store called ‘Michelle's Mini-Mart’?

“Did life change her original intentions, or did she herself forget what was truly important in life?”

When Zoe Young got home, her mother hadn’t finished work yet. She put down her bag, ran into her mother’s room, soaked her mother’s underwear in the washbasin, gently scrubbed it with clear soap, then, afraid it wouldn’t be clean enough, rinsed it four or five times before carefully hanging it on the balcony with small clips. With the remaining time, she hurriedly tidied up the house, lined up the slippers by the door, and quietly waited for her mother to come home.

Zoe Young had always disliked those showy homework assignments like “prepare a foot bath for your parents.” She was embarrassed to say “I love you” to her mother, and always felt that the best family affection wasn’t about declarations, but about the natural understanding and routine of daily life.

She wasn’t trying to express anything to her mother at this moment.

She just felt an indescribable gratitude in her heart.

Thank you, Mom.

No matter how hard things get, thank you for not becoming that kind of mother.

Zoe Young knew that her gratitude and relief actually contained a bit of cruelty toward Michelle Cindy.

But she couldn’t help but clutch her chest and feel lucky to have survived.

We always learn happiness from the pain of others.

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10. Precipitation

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Grandma was sick.

In the hospital corridor, Zoe Young stood quietly to one side, trying to calm her breathing to nothingness, so she could minimize the smell of disinfectant she inhaled.

Zoe Young rarely got sick. Even when she caught a cold, she would recover after taking some medicine. Her impression of hospitals, apart from coming here for vaccinations as a child and school physicals, was only that night when Grandpa Green passed away.

“Alan Carter, I hate hospitals. I always feel that even when old people get sick, they shouldn’t go to the hospital. The moment you step through the door and breathe in that first whiff of disinfectant, it’s like you’ve gotten acquainted with Death.”

Words like these, so unfilial and inauspicious, she could only swallow. She wanted to stop the adults from sending Grandma to the hospital, but she couldn’t say it out loud.