Buying clothes at the market]
After Bai Songzhe fell asleep, Bai Qingxia went to the door, shut it tightly, and locked it from the inside.
She switched off the main light, leaving only the little lamp on the table beside her father's bed on.
She went behind the curtain, opened the wardrobe, and took a wooden box from the bottom. Though the wardrobe held clothes for all four seasons, there was still plenty of empty space inside.
The wooden box was small, but its contents were a jumble.
There was a Doraemon roly-poly toy with peeling paint, a pen with a broken casing, a fragment of a hair clip sealed in a little plastic sleeve, and a slip of paper that read, "Hey, it's so hot. Could you please open the window?"... and so on, and so on.
Bai Qingxia rested the wooden box across her thighs and took out a stack of red banknotes. Adding the five hundred from earlier, she counted it, even though she already knew the total. Exactly one thousand yuan.
After a moment's thought, she reached into her trouser pocket to check its depth. Only then did she feel reassured enough to put the thousand yuan under her pillow, ready to take all the money with her when she went out to buy clothes tomorrow.
The next day, Saturday, at nine in the morning.
Lu Yuanqiu rode his bicycle to the entrance of Osmanthus Lane. When he saw the girl appear in her blue-and-white school uniform, he immediately turned his bike around and patted the back seat.
"Hop on."
After Bai Qingxia sat sideways on the back, Lu Yuanqiu said, "It's going to get cold soon. How can you not buy some more clothes?"
The girl answered quietly, "I have clothes. It just hasn't gotten