Tong Qiuyi, a woman who has endured the betrayal of her husband Li Songyang, finds herself drawn back into his life when he is diagnosed with advanced liver cancer. As Li Songyang grapples with his mortality, he seeks to make amends and secure his l...
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The woman kept making phone calls after having breakfast. She didn't sit by the phone; instead, she walked around the room with the cordless handset – there was one in the living room. Her style of casually walking around and looking in different directions seemed like an imitation of those characters in foreign movies who talk on the phone. Especially the female protagonists, who often stroll around with the phone, the long cord twisting around their feet or trailing behind them, giving a carefree and absent-minded appearance.
At this moment, the woman felt a bit pleased with herself, although she didn't want to admit it. She thought that feeling pleased was a somewhat frivolous attitude, and she believed her mindset was more elevated. The woman was not yet forty, an age marked by a combination of imitative and creative desires.
The casually walking woman turned into the kitchen and noticed the pale blue empty water barrel on the water dispenser. She remembered she needed to call the water station to order water, so she decided to quickly end the current vague phone call.
She began dialing the water station's number but couldn't get through. The voice on the other end was flat and unhelpful, repeating, "The phone number you dialed does not exist or has been changed."
The woman's temper flared up. She had accepted the mineral water called "Qing Ling Shan" when it was promoted by the manufacturer during a home visit. Just a few days ago, she had successfully called for water delivery. How could the number now be "non-existent"?
Frustrated, she called the directory assistance, and the reply was, "The number you inquired about is not registered."
The woman was angered. Words like "dishonest" and "rogue" murmured in her mind.
She remembered that the last time, she had followed the advice of the water delivery boy and bought 10 water tickets for a total of 100 yuan. At that time, it seemed convenient – just hand over a water ticket each time, avoiding the hassle of preparing the exact amount of money every time.
As it turned out, this was a trick by the water station. They deceived all the users at once, took their money, and then disappeared from the city.
The woman thought, pulling open a small drawer next to the stove and taking out the stack of water tickets, slightly narrower than playing cards, worth 100 yuan.
Indeed, if the water station's number existed, the tickets were still money. Otherwise, they were just a stack of waste paper. Now the woman noticed that the "waste paper" had the address of the "Qing Ling Shan" mineral water delivery station printed on it: a certain district, a certain road, and a certain number in this city. She had never paid attention to the address on the water tickets before. When you could summon the service with a phone call, the address didn't seem important. But now it mattered.
The woman estimated that the address was about 6 kilometers from her residential area, a distance not too far nor too close in a medium-sized city. The woman decided to go to the water station as indicated on the ticket. Perhaps for the sake of that 100 yuan (she had mentally considered it void), or perhaps to confront being fooled as a customer. The woman had reasons to believe she had been deceived. This feeling was not unfamiliar to her – dealing with businesses that were hot-tempered and lacked credibility, living a wealthy yet unstable life, often made her experience such situations. All promises seemed dubious.
