Ch. 006| His Mother Asks
He cooks dinner and finally tells his mother what happened; she asks whether there was a cyan oil lamp, and reveals the women of their family have known of this for generations.
March 16, 2065. Monday. 17:30.
Shuyuan Station on the Rivermag Line. Platform three.
The evening commute. The platform was crowded.
Like that morning, Gu Mingye went to the third car and took his usual window seat.
The usual commuters — the middle-aged man from the morning, the office lady in the mask, the girl with the guitar case — were all home from work by this hour. In their place was another batch of faces he didn't know.
Among the new batch, two people saw Gu Mingye and stopped for half a second.
Moved to other seats.
Gu Mingye set down his bag and sat by the window.
He was used to it himself by now. Counting from that morning, he no longer counted which number this reaction was.
The doors closed; the train moved.
17:50. Qingcaohe Station.
He got off.
Out of the station, through the stretch under the elevated Rivermag track, toward the Old River District.
He didn't usually walk this way on a Monday evening — Mondays he was at the cram school on Shuyuan Street and didn't take the last train back until 23:48.
Usually at this hour on a Monday, the alleys of the Old River District would already be into evening.
Today he was home six hours earlier than usual.
18:00. The little bridge over the old river embankment.
The evening light was different from yesterday's.
Yesterday afternoon it had been straight, orange, with a touch of yellow. This evening it slanted, red, like it had been filtered through something.
The leaves of the old banyan stirred lightly in the wind. Some of them were lit red by the evening light, some still the ordinary green.
No one in front of the Earth God shrine.
No one strolling on the bridgehead stretch. The people who'd just passed all looked like commuters hurrying home. No one stopped to look at the shrine. No one stopped to look at the old banyan.
Gu Mingye went over, crouched, and looked at the censer.
The ring of scorch underneath was in the same spot as yesterday afternoon.
It just looked a little fainter today.
Like someone had wiped it again in between.
He didn't crouch long.
Stood up, crossed the bridge, kept walking.
Toward the old house in the Old River District.
18:30. The old house.
He opened the door and went in.
The place was empty. His mother's night shift didn't start until 22:00 today. She wouldn't be home now — maybe out buying groceries, maybe eating dinner somewhere nearby.
No lunchbox on the table, no note. His mother had worked the morning shift from 06:00 to 14:00, come home and slept a few hours, and probably hadn't fully woken yet.
Gu Mingye set down his bag, went into the kitchen, turned on the tap, washed his hands.
Done, he picked up his phone.
He opened LINE. In his mother's chat, the last message was from 17:30 yesterday, before she'd left for the night shift: "I'm off to work."
Gu Mingye thought for a moment.
He typed: "I'm home."
Two words.
He hit send.
The message went out, turned to read.
On her end she was typing.
About thirty seconds later: "I'll be home before 19:00."
Gu Mingye looked at the screen.
He knew his mother didn't actually need to be home by 19:00 today. She usually came back around 21:00, tidied up and rested a while, then went out at 22:00 for the night shift.
She'd changed the time because he'd sent those two words.
Gu Mingye put the phone down.
18:45. The kitchen.
He opened the fridge and looked at what was there.
The vegetables his mother had bought yesterday were still in it — napa cabbage, eggs, tofu. In the freezer was half a bag of dumplings, from last month.
Gu Mingye took out the dumplings and set them on the counter to thaw. Cut up some of the cabbage and put it in the soup pot. Found a piece of chicken breast at the bottom of the fridge, cut it up, and seasoned it with salt and pepper.
The level a person who can't cook can manage.
But he could make a pot of soup, fry a piece of meat, boil dumplings.
He turned on the gas.
The flame came up, the blue kind. He set the soup pot over it and added water. The chicken went in the frying pan first.
He didn't cook often. Usually his mother did, or he microwaved something. Today he wanted to.
Not because he was hungry. Because he knew his mother would be home at 19:00, and he wanted the place to smell of cooking.
19:00. His mother came home.
The sound of the key turning, the same as always.
Gu Mingye turned off the gas and went to the entryway.
His mother pushed in. She saw the steam in the kitchen, stopped for a second, saw Gu Mingye standing in the living room.
"You didn't go to cram school today?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Wanted to come home."
His mother looked at him.
She didn't take off her bag. Didn't change her shoes. Stood in the entryway.
"Are you feeling sick?"
"No."
"Did something happen at school?"
"Not really."
His mother stood in the entryway three seconds. Then she crouched, changed into her slippers, set the bag on the shoe cabinet. Came in.
"You're cooking?"
"A little. Soup and chicken."
"Then I'll shower. Ten minutes. Then we'll eat together."
"Mm."
His mother walked past him into the bathroom.
The water came on.
Gu Mingye went back to the kitchen, turned the gas back on, kept going.
19:20. The dinner table.
His mother came out from the shower, changed into pajamas, hair wrapped in a towel. She sat down.
Gu Mingye brought the soup, the chicken, the dumplings to the table. The rice was leftover from last night, warmed up in the cooker.
The two of them ate.
His mother took a sip of the soup.
"Not bad."
"Mm."
"The food you cook, Mingye — it's a little like your Waipo's soup."
Gu Mingye looked up. "I never met Waipo."
"I know." His mother drank her soup. "But what you cook tastes a little like hers."
Gu Mingye looked down and ate his chicken.
The two of them ate quietly for about ten minutes.
His mother finished, set down her bowl, took the napkin and wiped her mouth.
She didn't get up right away to clear the dishes. She sat there.
"Mingye."
"Mm."
"Can I ask now?"
20:00. The living-room sofa.
The two of them sat down. His mother took the towel off her head and set it aside.
Gu Mingye didn't know where to start.
"I don't know how to say it."
"Take your time."
"I'm going to say some things that sound strange."
"I'll wait."
Gu Mingye looked at the cup of hot water on the coffee table. A faint mist hung over the surface.
"After cram school last Friday, I took the last train," he said. "And then —"
He stopped.
His mother didn't push.
The mist over the cup of hot water kept rising, drifting slowly up.
"And then I got off. At a — place that shouldn't exist."
Hearing himself say it, he thought it sounded foolish.
But his mother didn't laugh.
She didn't ask what "a place that shouldn't exist" meant, either.
She only looked at him and waited for him to go on.
"And then?"
"And then I just kept walking, home."
"The time you came in at half past five in the morning?"
"Mm."
"I passed the house at 04:50 that day and checked you weren't in. Went back to the hospital at 05:00. Off by thirty minutes."
"I know."
The two of them were quiet.
His mother reached out, picked up the cup of hot water, took a sip.
"Mingye."
"Mm."
"Can I ask one question?"
"Mm."
"At the place you got off — was there a cyan oil lamp?"
Gu Mingye looked up.
His mother was looking at him. Her eyes were calm, not like someone asking an absurd question.
Like someone asking a question she already knew the answer to and only wanted to confirm with him.
"There was," Gu Mingye said.
His mother nodded.
She didn't follow with any details.
She said: "Grandma told me about something like that once."
Gu Mingye looked at her.
"Grandma — got off the train too?"
"She didn't get off," his mother said. "But she said that kind of train exists. Her mother told her, and her mother heard it from the one before her. On the women's side of our family, several generations of us have heard about this."
She paused.
"Grandma said that kind of train isn't something everyone sees. The ones who do, there's usually only one in the family per generation. In her generation it was her. In the one before, it was her mother."
"And you?"
His mother smiled a little. "I've never seen a cyan oil lamp in my life. But I know it's there."
"Why my generation?"
His mother thought about it.
"Grandma said it can skip a generation. Sometimes the mother's generation sees it, and the next one skips over. Mine didn't see it, so maybe it lands on yours."
She took another sip of water.
"You're my son, not my daughter. But Grandma said men see it too. Just fewer of them than women."
Gu Mingye didn't speak.
His mother drank again.
"I didn't believe it before. The first few years after I married in, when Grandma first told me these things, I thought it was superstition. Later I studied nursing. I've seen a lot of people in the wards see someone where there's no one. I thought it was a deathbed hallucination."
She paused.
"But sometimes I'd think — what if it isn't."
She looked at Gu Mingye.
"What you saw, I don't need to know all of it. I only need to know — what you saw is real. I'm not going to treat you like there's something wrong with your mind."
Gu Mingye didn't speak.
He knew what he should say right now — but he didn't know how to say it.
"Thank you, Mom," he said.
Two words.
It was the third time he'd said thank you this afternoon. The first was to the woman at the convenience store. The second was to Teacher Lin, though she hadn't heard it.
The third was now.
To his mother.
His mother reached out, put a hand on his head, and ruffled it gently.
"Don't thank me. I'm thanking you, for being willing to tell me today."
21:30. His mother napping in her room.
She'd get up at 21:50, change into her uniform, and leave at 22:00 for the night shift.
Gu Mingye sat on the living-room sofa, opened his bag, took out the notebook.
Opened it.
The red-paper, black-ink "過" slip was still tucked between that day's page and the next.
He took it out and laid it on the coffee table.
Turned on the desk lamp.
Looked closely.
The "過" in the middle — that patch of ink — was still raised. Still seeping.
But there was one new change — the fuzzed-up rim around the edge of the slip had originally all been a faint paper-red.
Now that ring of fuzzed edge had gone darker.
Like moisture had started moving from the patch of ink in the middle out toward the edges of the slip.
Like the paper, the whole sheet, had started drinking that ink in.
Gu Mingye ran his thumb lightly over the edge of the slip.
The edge was a little cold.
Where the ink sat in the middle was warm.
He ran his thumb back and forth between the edge and the middle, making sure he hadn't gotten it wrong.
Like the slip was doing something he didn't understand.
He set the slip gently back in the notebook, tucked between that day's page and the next. Then he closed it and laid it on the coffee table.
The instant the notebook closed, the living-room light flickered once.
Not the way it flickers in a power cut. The way an old bulb flickers. He looked up at the LED ceiling light — it was on.
He looked down at the notebook.
Shut.
He didn't open it.
21:50. His mother got up.
She came out of the room, changed into her uniform, hung her nurse's badge around her neck.
"I'm off."
"Mm."
"Lock the door after midnight."
"Mm."
His mother went to the door, paused, and looked back.
"Mingye."
"Mm."
"If tonight you — see anything."
"Mm."
"Don't handle it yourself. Message me. I'll take leave and come back."
"Mm."
His mother went out, shut the door. Two creaks on the stairs. Her footsteps went down and faded into the alley.
Gu Mingye listened to his mother's footsteps recede, slowly.
The living room of the old house came back to him alone.
The same living room as the one at 06:30 that morning, when he woke and his mother hadn't come home.
That morning he'd thought he was the only one in this living room who knew about last night. Now he knew his mother had known all along, and had only been waiting for him to speak first, unwilling to walk out ahead of him.
He opened the notebook and, below last night was real, kept writing.
His hand was steadier today.
Mom knows too.
23:00. The living room.
Gu Mingye sat on the sofa, looking at the red-paper, black-ink slip on the coffee table.
The patch of ink in the middle was more raised now than it had been in the afternoon.
The ring of fuzzed edge on the slip was darker than in the afternoon.
He didn't touch it.
He let it sit there.
The old house at eleven was quiet.
Only the sound of the fridge compressor running. And, far off outside the alley, the low frequency of the Rivermag sliding along the elevated track, that rub of magnetic rail.
He closed his eyes.
Not to sleep.
Just to listen and see whether there was anything over by his left ear.
There wasn't.
Only the compressor, and the Rivermag.
But he knew the night was still long.
His mother wasn't off until 06:00. Seven hours to go in between.
He glanced at the clock on the wall, the second hand stepping notch by notch.
He opened his eyes.
On the coffee table, the closed notebook — there was a very slight something, something he figured he must be seeing wrong — the edge, like it was moving.
Not the way wind moves something. The window was shut; there was no wind in the living room.
It was something deeper, behind the cover of the notebook, moving inside.
He didn't open the notebook to look.
He knew that if he opened it again tonight, the slip inside would have more changes he couldn't explain than it had a moment ago.
He'd rather leave it here for today.
Tomorrow morning, after it got light, he'd look.
【Ch. 006 End · Shuyuan Station on the Rivermag Line, Qingcheng → the old house in the Old River District】
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