That morning, his application for temporary leave was approved.
Yuan Su bought a ticket on the next flight to Nanhua.
Buying a last-minute flight during the Spring Festival travel rush cost several times the usual fare.
He did not hesitate.
The plane passed through heavy clouds, buffeted by turbulence.
The two-hour flight felt as long as a century.
Yuan Su leaned back with his eyes closed, but could not sleep at all.
He still had that kraft-paper envelope.
The twenty thousand yuan had once been a thick stack. Now only a few notes remained.
At the time, he had not thought much of it. All that chaos had left him barely able to breathe, and all he could think was that his mother's medical bills were covered, that he could hold on a little longer. But now, in the quiet, the details he had overlooked began surfacing one by one.
Nie Yang always smoked the cheapest cigarettes in the shop. Sometimes, when the craving hit, he bummed one off someone else, then grinned and promised to return the favor after payday.
He never ordered meat with his meals. Often, he made do with instant noodles, or ate two bowls of rice with the free soup, saying a full stomach was all he needed.
How could someone like that possibly produce twenty thousand yuan at once?
Everything he had brushed aside back then came back to him now.
And-
He remembered video calling Pu Yu that night. Smiling, she had said she had received two thousand yuan for her writing, that she had saved up lots of scholarship money, that she was "super, super rich." Her eyes had shone as she spoke, like a little squirrel showing off its stash.
He leaned back and closed his eyes.
Images flashed through his