"Do you smoke?"
Unable to hold back, Du Heng asked as he looked at the woman's fingers, even though he knew his question was pointless.
The man who had accompanied her responded, while the woman continued to struggle for breath.
"She smokes. She's been smoking since she was in her teens. Back when times were tough, she smoked dry tobacco, the kind where you roll your own tobacco leaves. Later, when our living conditions improved and tobacco leaves became harder to buy, she started smoking store-bought cigarettes, two packs a day."
After hearing the man's words, Du Heng couldn't help but pause. "And she still smokes now?"
The man's expression became complicated, and he glanced at his wife from the side. "Yes, she still smokes. If I try to stop her, she gets angry with me."
That would mean she had been smoking for about forty years. And given the current state of her health, smoking two packs a day... was she courting death?
