When he arrived at his building, the lights in the apartments upstairs were already off. Song Tianyao slowed his pace and quietly walked past the second floor where he lived, went up to the third floor, and gently knocked on the door a few times. Almost several tens of seconds later, his Scribe Hui turned on the living room light, yawning and wearing glasses, and opened the door to appear in front of Song Tianyao.
"Secretary Song... Secretary Song?" Upon seeing Song Tianyao standing at the door, the Scribe Hui's previous drowsiness immediately vanished.
Song Tianyao stepped into the room. "Where's your boss's wife?"
"The landlady asked me to take her across the harbor back to Kowloon this afternoon. She still needs to decide how to settle Brother Hua's family, so she's staying in the Squatter Area tonight and hasn't come back," said Scribe Hui to Song Tianyao while deftly buttoning his T-shirt.
Song Tianyao cursed under his breath as he walked to the bed where Lou Fengyun had slept the night before. Sure enough, the bedding was neatly folded, but the woman from the previous night was nowhere to be seen.
"Should I go and find a way to buy a few bottles of beer? Secretary Song, do you want to go to the rooftop for some fresh air like last night?" Scribe Hui asked from behind.
Song Tianyao turned around with a dark expression, his eyes practically spitting fire. "How exactly did you learn to be a clerk? My voice is so nasal I'm about to catch a cold, and you went to the rooftop in the middle of the night to get some fresh air? Go to the rooftop yourself and clear your head! I'm going to bed! You idiot..."
After saying that, Song Tianyao took off his suit jacket, closed the bedroom door, and lay down on the bed where Lou Fengyun slept. The bed still had a faint smell of Chinese medicine and women's jasmine perfume, which kept wafting into Song Tianyao's nostrils, making him even more irritable. He turned over, put the pillow on his head, closed his eyes, and muttered angrily:
"Last night, when she didn't want to, she deliberately told me that her leg injury was mostly healed, looking like she was ready to be taken advantage of. But when I wanted to, she disappeared. Is this widow in cahoots with the Foreign Girl lawyer to play me? What a coincidence! If I see you tomorrow, you're dead meat."
At this moment, Scribe Hui outside the bedroom door, seemed to have figured out why Song Tianyao had rushed here in the middle of the night. So, he shamelessly opened his mouth through the bedroom door and asked, "Secretary Song, should I go across the sea to pick up Sister Yun...?"
"I'm going to cross the sea to pick up your old mother in the dead of night... Aren't you afraid the boat will capsize and your lame landlady will drown? If you can't speak properly, shut up and pretend you're mute! Mention women again and I'll send you overboard to wash your brains!" Song Tianyao grabbed the cigarette pack from beside the bed and smashed it against the bedroom door, cursing, "Sooner or later I'll make you and your damn landlady turn into lesbians! I'm already suffering from a lot of stress, and after hearing your words, I'm suffering from both physical and emotional distress! Damn it! Your landlady hasn't died from your anger yet, she's really incredibly lucky."
Chapter Ninety-Six: Hong Kong's Water and Tears
Perhaps it was because he wasn't used to the new bed, or perhaps it was due to other physical reasons, but in any case, Song Tianyao woke up before dawn. He put on his coat, gently opened the bedroom door, and peeked inside. His Scribe Hui, was wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep on the wooden bench in the living room. Without waking him, Song Tianyao quietly opened the door, preparing to go downstairs and take a rickshaw back to the hotel for another nap.
Just as he was stealthily passing by the second floor of his house, the door was pushed open from the inside, and Song Chunliang came out carrying a bucket in each hand, followed by Zhao Meizhen carrying a large steamer.
Under his parents' wide-eyed stares, Song Tianyao sighed dejectedly, his head bowed. Lately, he had been having a run of bad luck, and he should find out which temple was particularly efficacious and go to offer prayers to change his fortune.
"You're not even going home now, you're just sleeping on the third floor?" Zhao Meizhen, carrying a large iron pot, pushed past Song Chunliang and leaned close to Song Tianyao, saying, "Are you planning to skip out on your parents and sneak downstairs? What's so great about that widow? She lets you... wait a minute? Widow Yun clearly went back to Kowloon yesterday afternoon, but only Scribe Hui came back for dinner? You slept with a man all night?"
"Do you believe I'll drink on the rooftop until dawn?" Song Tianyao said weakly to Zhao Meizhen, his head bowed.
"I don't believe you. Why does your voice sound so nasal? You little rascal, did you really go out in the wind again? Did you catch a cold? Come home, I'll make you some ginger tea later."
Song Tianyao yawned and said, "My nose is fine. What are you and my Dad planning to do so early in the morning?"
"Go buy some water," Zhao Meizhen replied casually, then continued to press her son about why he had gone upstairs to sleep in the middle of the night instead of coming home.
Song Tianyao ignored his mother's gossip. "Didn't we get a tap at home that provides water for nine hours a day? This isn't Kowloon, we don't need to go to the street to buy water anymore."
"The water tap at home has a meter, and it costs money to use it. Every morning, a 'firecracker' drives by on this street with a water truck, and you can fill a whole bucket for five cents. Today I'm going to buy a big wooden bucket to store water. Let's go, let's go, or we won't get a turn." Zhao Meizhen originally wanted to continue asking Song Tianyao questions, but when Song Tianyao mentioned fetching water, she immediately realized that she could ask about gossip later, but she had to take advantage of the deal right away, so she urged her husband to hurry downstairs to fetch water.
"Didn't you get enough of the dirty water from the Fire Ghosts when you lived in Kowloon? That unclean water was rainwater drawn directly from the reservoir by the Fire Ghosts to put out fires. The water from our taps now, while not as good as the spring water that Foreign Devil Britain drink, is still filtered and much cleaner than the reservoir water. It's safe to drink after boiling, and even if you drink tap water, you'll have fewer worms in your stomach than people who drink the water from the Fire Ghosts' waterwheels," Song Tianyao said, standing at the top of the stairs to block his parents from speaking.
When Song Tianyao's family lived in Squatter Area in Kowloon, getting water was a major problem every day. Hong Kong is a water-scarce city. Although it is humid and rainy, the ground is mainly composed of granite layers, which cannot provide a stable and sufficient supply of groundwater. Moreover, the area is small and cannot store rainwater in large quantities. The fifteen reservoirs in Hong Kong, which mainly rely on rainwater storage, could not meet the water needs of Hong Kong in the face of the huge population surge after the war. As soon as there was a slight shortage of rainwater, the reservoirs would dry up immediately, forcing the Hong Kong Colonial Government to restrict the water supply.