"I need to go back to my hometown in Chongming to sweep the tombs. My dad says I should ask the ancestors to bless me with a girlfriend this year," Nick said, his eyes unconsciously flicking toward Sherry. To his surprise, Sherry's face flushed, and she lowered her head to quietly nibble on her corn. Looks like Nick has a chance.
Wang Zifang spoke next: "It's the season when cherry blossoms bloom in Japan. I want to go. How about we go together?" She turned toward me as she said this.
Sherry replied, "I've been there many times. This time I plan to go to Korea to buy cosmetics."
"Then you can come with me," Wang Zifang said, looking at me.
I froze. I'd never considered traveling abroad, so I didn't even have a passport. Now I had no idea what to answer.
"He can't go," Nick suddenly interjected. "He has to drive me back to Chongming Island, round trip takes a whole day. Not enough time for Japan, but you two can stroll along Nanjing Road—that works perfectly."
Nick, you genius, I thought, secretly giving him a thumbs-up.
Wang Zifang seemed a little disappointed but quickly recovered: "Alright, then, let's settle it like that."
Nick winked at me as if to say, "Lucky guy, huh?"
After we split, I felt an inexplicable nervousness, like none of this was real. I quickly called my dad, telling him to burn extra joss paper during Qingming for good luck.
The next day, I invited Nick to lunch, and took the opportunity to borrow 5,000 RMB from him. Watching the pained expression on his face, I pretended not to notice, then handed him the car keys: "I'm not driving you back. You go yourself. Tank's full, just don't drive into the sea, alright?"
During the Qingming holiday, Nanjing East Road gleamed like a river of light. Crystal chandeliers in the shop windows reflected on the asphalt, casting shimmering patterns. I stood under the carved dome of the Peace Hotel, staring at my reflection in the glass wall: faded jeans, plaid shirt, utterly out of place among the fashionably dressed Hermes-carrying crowd.
Wang Zifang had swapped her beige trench coat for a navy-blue knit sweater. At the ends of her hair was a pearl hairpin—proof of her words that "nurse salary only buys Uniqlo."
"Up ahead, there's an old shop famous for crab meat xiao long bao. Want to try it?" She pointed at the neon-lit queue, perfectly blending in with tourists holding selfie sticks.
As the line moved, she suddenly pointed across the street: "Look at that Bvlgari window display. Doesn't it look like a nouveau riche in a hazmat suit?" I snickered, my tense shoulders relaxing. Indeed, the golden jewelry behind the glass looked like petri dishes from a lab—a comparison that reminded me of late-night bug-fixing sessions with Nick.
By the time we got our food, it started raining again. Raindrops drummed jazz rhythms on the plastic roof. She held her disposable lunch box, blowing on the soup to cool it: "When I was a kid, my dad brought me to Shanghai for treatment. We lived in the alley behind Nanjing Road. At 4 a.m., we'd line up for an expert appointment. The registration fee alone could buy half a month's meals."
Her lashes trembled in the steam. For a moment, I saw myself twenty years ago in a county hospital corridor—my mother clutching a lab report, mishearing "RH-negative" as "genetic disease," crying and soaking the form.
"Want another portion of shepherd's purse wontons?" I reached for the scanner, but her icy fingertips pressed on my wrist.
"Save the money for a metro card," she shook her phone. "I just got a coupon. This one's on me."
When the Bund clock struck seven, we turned onto Jiangxi Middle Road. Damp winds carried piano music from old Western-style buildings. She stopped at a secondhand bookstore window. A yellowed copy of The Art of Computer Programming, Volume III, lay in the corner.
"Is this the programmers' bible?" she asked, dragging her nails across the plastic cover, leaving streaks on the glass.
I stared at the price tag, my throat tightening. Old Shanghai really had its own currency. In my hometown, that book would cost ten yuan; here, even the musty smell of paper had a "nostalgia premium"—80 RMB.
"Actually, there's a digital version…" I began, but she suddenly tugged me into the next-door convenience store: "Look! Second item half-price oden!"
We crouched under the eaves eating radish, and she magically produced a capsule toy ring. "A gift from the bookstore," she said, slipping the red plastic gem onto my pinky. "Doesn't it look like a Marvel Infinity Stone?" I looked into her eyes, glittering with neon reflections, and noticed a faint scar on her earlobe.
The humid Mei season fermented in the Shikumen brick gaps. Wang Zifang's heels tapped on the bluestone pavement like an old telegraph machine. She pointed at a faded "Tobacco & Paper" sign down the alley, laughing: "When I was a kid, there was a shop like this in the alley. I stole popping candy and got chased by the old lady."
I looked at the rusted cast-iron door plate—Lane 147, No.6, Jiangxi Middle Road. Even phone maps barely displayed it.
"You really know Old Shanghai," I said, wiping sweat from my neck, watching her search the weathered brick wall. Despite her care, her pant legs brushed the mossy wall. Nearby, a moldy mattress piled up, and stray cats darted past discarded refrigerators, mixing the smell of formaldehyde and rotting fish.
"Found it!" she suddenly tiptoed and pulled aside ivy, revealing faded chalk drawings in the wall crevice—a crooked Doraemon.
"This is from my dad…" she began, but before she could finish, three men in blue workwear emerged from under a drying rack. The bald leader pinched a half-smoked cigarette, sparks flickering in the damp alley.
"Need a light, kid?" The smoke hit me as my lower back pressed against something hard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tattoo on his sleeve—a cherry blossom from the ".jp" domain in my medical report.
Wang Zifang screamed just enough, muffled by a sheet hanging behind her. She struggled inside the white fabric like a cocooned silkworm.
The bald man pressed a syringe against my shirt buttons. "Come with us, or…"
The alley echoed with a scrap collector's call: "Old TVs, fridges, computers—collecting!" A rusty tricycle ran over broken glass. An old man in a straw hat shakily unloaded cardboard boxes. The bald man signaled, and his accomplices pretended to help.
In the moment they brushed past, the old man flipped the stack of boxes. Old newspapers flew everywhere, and the nylon rope snared the bald man's wrist. The syringe clattered to the ground.
"Die, huh!" The old man threw an aluminum lunchbox at another thug, hot soup steaming on impact. A hidden taser zapped the third man's neck. The moves flowed naturally, like a routine alley fight.
By the time sirens sounded at the alley's entrance, the scrap tricycle had vanished. Only the shredded mustard greens in the lunchbox and a soup-stained arrow on the concrete remained, pointing to Wang Zifang slumped in the corner. Her pearl hairpin had cracked, revealing metallic gleam—later, I learned it was a miniature camera.
"You okay?" I reached out, but she recoiled, as if shocked. Her pale face now carried an unnatural flush, like a child caught lying. The red-and-blue police lights flickered across her trembling fingertips. I noticed callus beneath chipped nail polish—odd for a pampered girl.
On the way back, we silently avoided the subway station, walking along the Suzhou Creek. Freight ship whistles startled a flock of egrets. She suddenly pointed at an unfinished building across the river: "Doesn't that look like a coffin standing upright?"
I followed her finger. Shadowy figures swayed inside the concrete frame, as if someone were tracking us with a telephoto lens.
Passing a convenience store, she insisted on buying bandages to treat my scratches. Under the warm yellow lights, her fingertips delicately tore open the packaging.
"Actually…" she started, but the automatic door's ding-dong interrupted. A hoodie-clad teenager rushed in to buy oden, his crew-cut giving him an air of courage.
Rain poured harder. We huddled under the eaves waiting for the bus. Her hoodie pocket vibrated; when the screen lit up, I glimpsed Japanese in an encrypted chat: 「Action Failed,Return!」—Mission failed, return immediately.
As bus 74 splashed through puddles, she suddenly shoved the umbrella at me and dashed off: "Something urgent just came up!"
I was left alone, disheveled in the wind.