This was an alley, an old alley that had still been easy to find ten years ago but could no longer be found anywhere in K City. Its mottled single-story houses and uneven stone-paved road showed that it had already endured many decades. The scent of time and the scent of generations of people living their lives slowly drifted from every corner of the alley, enough to stir something inexplicable in any city dweller accustomed to high-rises and fast-paced living, leaving them standing stupidly at the entrance, taking a deep breath, and letting out a sigh.
What were they sighing over? Perhaps the childhood that had already slipped away—the childhood when a chalk stub suddenly hit you on the head, followed by the homeroom teacher roaring, "XX, go stand at the back of the classroom!"
On the pockmarked concrete wall was a line of agonizingly ugly chalk scrawl that I had looked at for more than a decade and intended to look at for the rest of my life. Quite a few characters had even been replaced with pinyin: A Jun is a big sha idiot! —Xu Qianqian liu.
I vaguely remembered that day. I had snatched half a bun from some little girl who had grown up with me, simply because I had been curious whether food girls had eaten tasted different. She had stayed mad at me for the entire day. Things I had completely forgotten slowly surfaced at that moment: this was one of countless stupid incidents between me and that little brat who had been suspected of having ADHD since childhood.
From deep within the alley came a call that had rung out again and again at dusk many years ago, and still occasionally echoed in my ears even now: "A Jun! Come home for dinner!"