Chapter 2
The shed was small and cluttered, the kind of space that accumulates years without anyone noticing. Broken tools leaned against the walls beside ones that still had use left in them, old baskets stacked in no particular order, wooden crates pushed into corners and forgotten. Dust covered everything in a thin grey film.
Chen Guowei pulled his sleeves up and got to work.
His hands trembled as he lifted the heavier boxes, his arms protesting with every movement. The hunger from breakfast still sat hollow in his stomach and his body had nothing to draw on, but he kept moving. He sorted the tools — good ones set aside, broken ones stacked separately. He straightened the baskets, cleared out the debris, swept the dirt floor as best he could. Slow, methodical work. The kind that doesn't ask much of your mind.
He was nearly done when it happened.
His foot came down on a flat stone slab set flush into the floor near the back wall — easy to miss, half hidden under a film of grime — and the shed vanished.
He was somewhere else entirely.
A cave. The air was cool and smelled of wet earth and moss. He stumbled, his heart lurching into his throat, and instinctively pressed himself against the stone wall beside him. It wasn't completely dark — pale light filtered in from somewhere ahead, enough to make out the rough shape of the space around him — but that did little to slow his pulse. He stood there, chest heaving, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Then his back touched the wall and he disappeared again.
He was back in the shed.
He stood completely still for a moment, staring at the floor. The shed looked exactly as he'd left it. Same tools, same baskets, same thin blade of morning light coming through the gap in the door. Like nothing had happened at all.
He let out a slow breath.
Then a mouse shot out from behind a crate, scrambled directly across the stone slab, and startled him badly enough that he stumbled forward. His hand slapped down on the slab to catch himself —
And he was back in the cave.
This time the fear was still there, sitting quiet in his chest, but something else was sitting alongside it now. He steadied himself against the wall, looked toward the pale light ahead of him, and felt the corner of his mouth pull upward almost against his will.
He made his way carefully toward the entrance.
It was heavily overgrown — thick curtains of vine and creeper draped over the opening, rocks piled at the sides as though the mountain itself had been slowly trying to seal it shut. He pushed the vines aside and stepped out.
He stopped breathing.
It wasn't a village. It wasn't anything like the commune he'd woken up in that morning. Ahead of him, not far at all, was a market — a real one, sprawling and loud and alive, the kind he hadn't seen since his previous life. Stalls and storefronts stretched out in both directions, people moving between them with bags and carts, the smell of food drifting over on the breeze.
He rubbed his eyes. Looked again.
Still there.
He took a step forward — and then stopped.
He looked down at his hands. Cracked knuckles, dirt worked deep into the lines of his palms, grime under every nail. He looked at his clothes. Patched cotton trousers, a shirt that had been mended so many times there was barely any of the original fabric left, the collar fraying at the edge. He thought about how he must look to the people out there and felt heat rise in his face.
The excuses came quickly, the way they always do when a person needs them. I don't even have an ID. I can't work without papers. And even if I could, what would I do looking like this — I should come back when I have proper clothes, when I've sorted myself out, when I'm ready.
He turned around.
And then he thought of Lihua.
Eight years old and the size of a five year old. Sitting across the breakfast table that morning with her patient eyes, eating water with leaves in it and not complaining. He thought of Xiaomei, thirteen and already carrying herself like someone who knew what it meant to go without. He thought of his mother, ladling out that thin porridge with a smile on her face while her legs quietly swelled beneath her trousers.
In his previous life he'd had a family that fell apart before it ever really came together — arguments that never resolved, a divorce that left everyone scattered, no one looking out for anyone. He'd learned early to look after himself because there was no one else.
But this morning a little girl had stood in his doorway and called him big brother.
He stopped walking. Stood there for a moment. Then he raised his hand and slapped himself across the face, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to wake up.
What are you doing.
He turned back around, clenched his fists at his sides, and walked toward the market.
He kept his head down the whole way, bracing for stares, for whispers, for the particular kind of cruelty that can live in people's eyes when they look at someone who has nothing. But it didn't come. People glanced at him the way people glance at strangers — briefly, without malice — and looked away. A few faces held something soft in them, a quiet recognition, the kind that comes from knowing that hard times don't choose their people carefully. Nobody pointed. Nobody laughed. Everyone here had seen difficult seasons. Some were still in the middle of one.
He was almost to the edge of the market when he heard a man shouting.
"Need workers! Strong backs for unloading trucks! A hundred and fifty per day!"
The words landed like a stone dropped in still water. A hundred and fifty. He thought of Lihua's wrists. Of the empty pot on the stove.
He ran.
The man was somewhere in his forties, broad-shouldered, standing outside the entrance to a grain shop with the easy authority of someone who owned the place or at least ran it. Chen Guowei skidded to a stop in front of him, slightly out of breath.
"Uncle — wait. I can do it. I want to work."
The man looked at him. Took in the patched clothes, the hollow cheeks, the frame that hadn't seen a proper meal in longer than it should have. His expression was not unkind.
"Boy," he said, not roughly, "this is serious work. You shouldn't play around here."
Chen Guowei clenched his jaw. "Uncle, I swear I can work. I'm young, I have energy. I won't let you down."
The man studied him for another moment, then exhaled slowly through his nose. He turned and disappeared into the shop without a word, and Chen Guowei's stomach dropped — but then the man came back out carrying a container of cooked rice, vegetables piled on top, a few pieces of pork nestled in the middle.
"Here." He held it out. "Eat."
"Uncle, I can't take that — that must be your lunch—"
"You called me uncle," the man said flatly, "and then you don't listen to me?" He stepped forward and pressed the container firmly into Chen Guowei's hands. "If you don't eat this, forget the job. I'm not having you collapse on me while you're hauling my stock."
Chen Guowei opened his mouth. Closed it.
He looked down at the food in his hands — real food, warm, more in this one container than his family had seen in days — and felt something give way in his chest without warning. His eyes burned. He blinked hard, but it was too late. The tears came before he could stop them.
"Hey." The man's voice shifted, quieter now. "What's going on? You alright?"
"I'm fine." He turned his face slightly, wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist. "Sand. Got in my eyes."
The man looked at him for a long moment and said nothing. Then he simply reached over, pulled open the shop door, and gestured for Chen Guowei to come inside.
"Come. Sit. You've got thirty minutes before the trucks arrive — eat first."
The inside of the grain shop was cool and dim, sacks of rice and corn stacked along the walls, the air carrying the dry, dusty scent of stored grain. Chen Guowei sat on a low stool near the back and ate. He choked twice trying to swallow too fast, and the man set a cup of water down beside him without comment.
When he tried to say thank you, the man waved him off.
"What are you thanking me for? It's just food." He settled himself on a crate nearby, arms crossed comfortably. "Since you're calling me uncle anyway — call me Uncle Wei. And you — what's your name, boy?"