At night, they slept with their backs to each other. The stone figure slept on Cang Ji's chest, rising and falling with each heave of his chest. It was asleep, but Jing Lin was awake. Rain had started to pour again outside. Thunder boomed.
Jing Lin listened to the rain as he meditated. He was about to rest when he heard the faintly discernible sound of the bell ringing in the rain. The bell led his mind drifting out of the chamber where he saw another scene.
The rain was still pouring.
A bare-footed child emerged from the bamboo fence and hopped towards the thatched hut with a fat leaf on his head. It was dark inside the house, and it reeked of foul medicine.
The youngster ran to the inner room, leaving muddy footprints behind. A sickly and scrawny man was asleep on the old couch.
The young child kneeled down at the edge of the couch. Awash by the rain, his eyes shone even brighter. He took out an oil paper package from under his thin cloth and pulled it apart layer by layer.
Lying inside was a sugar cake the size of his palm. Looking at the sugar cake, he could not help swallowing his saliva. He gave the man a push.
The man's eyes were closed.
The child whispered. "Father, have some cake."
The man turned a deaf ear.
The child pushed the cake beside the man's pillow and rose to run outside. He had only just stepped over the threshold when he turned back. He dabbed his fingers on the sugar cake residue and put it in his mouth to taste. Before he could savor the sweetness, he heard footsteps outside the door.
"Chuanzi." The woman took off her wet headscarf, exposing her plain face. She was sturdier than others, which was how she had been able to carry firewood and wield a hoe to raise a husband and a child.
Wiping away the rain from her face, she sat down at the door to rest her feet and beckoned to her young child. "Why aren't you wearing shoes again?"
The young child giggled and stretched out his muddy legs to show her. The woman's face was hidden in the shadows. Jing Lin could not get a clear look at her.
He could only sense the child taking a few steps forward. The child then threw himself into the woman's arms and called her "mother" affectionately. The woman embraced and spoke to him with her head against his.
The sounds of the rain muffled those words, so Jing Lin could not make out what she was saying. The child raised his arms to hug the woman's neck, acting like a pampered child.
Jing Lin looked on coldly. He had no mother, so he did not know where the fun in having one was. He saw the child jumped for joy, then fell asleep in the woman's arms.
The woman held the child in her arms, with one hand on his back. As she gazed at the rain outside, she hummed a tune to lull him to sleep.
The sound of the rain quickened.
There was a heaviness on Jing Lin's back, which almost pressed him into the bedding. He woke up in an instant. With some difficulty, he rolled over. Cang Ji's face was right before him; He was sound asleep.
