In Watermill Head Village, morning mist condensed into dewdrops beneath the blue-tiled eaves. Fan Youfu hunched over a camphorwood chest, stuffing oilpaper parcels inside.
The yellowed parcels bulged and gleamed with grease. The aroma of roast chicken and smoked fish carried a long way.
Fan Dazhi sat beside him with a rag clenched in his hand, absentmindedly wiping dust that did not exist from the table. After a long while, he looked up at his father's slovenly, greasy back and could not help asking, "Dad, do you love me?"
Fan Youfu weighed two silver ingots in his hand, tucked them into a parcel, and scolded him with a laugh. "You little brat... what father doesn't love his own child?"
Fan Dazhi propped his chin on one hand and asked again, "Then... did you love my mother?"
Fan Youfu's hands paused on the bundle's straps. He frowned. "What's gotten into you so early in the morning? Why are you talking nothing but nonsense?"
Fan Dazhi's expression dimmed, his fingers stubbornly rubbing at the tabletop. "You didn't love my mother. I've known that since I was little..."
"Nonsense!"
Fan Youfu suddenly slammed the bundle onto the low table on the kang bed, overturning a bowl of wine. Yellow rice wine splashed across the front of his clothes, where patches lay piled upon patches. "Your mother died of illness! Even the doctor said there was no saving her!"
Fan Dazhi's fingers turned white, and he rubbed a mark into the tabletop. He remembered that winter night many years ago, when the blood his mother coughed up soaked through the kang mat, while his father squatted in the courtyard sharpening that rusty woodcutting blade. The moonlight stretched his father's shadow long-so long it swallowed the last glimmer of candlelight in his mother's room...
"You