Life is halfway over ‘SEE YOU MORNING' 112 Wandering in Hardship

The rear-engine diesel bus pulled away in front of him, the mechanical rattle and explosive exhaust reverberating from the engine compartment as if shaking Lin Yuhui’s chest. After the bus passed, the street lay empty again, raindrops illuminated by streetlights pattering against the ground. Only under the bus stop’s rain shelter could one find slight refuge from the wind and rain, but his pant legs were already soaked by the splashed water. In the rainy night, the lights of distant office buildings had mostly gone dark—in this steel-and-concrete forest of the metropolis, there was never a home for migrant workers. Far off to the side, a young woman was also waiting for the bus, white skinny jeans, holding an umbrella. Lin Yuhui even felt she was more distant than the apartment buildings behind that curtain of rain.
Amid the squealing of brakes and the swaying of the carriage, a dim orange light came into view—the platform lighting. The incandescent bulbs in the platform corridor were blazing bright, and as the station announcement played, passengers began boarding in a bustling crowd.
Oh, so he had just been dreaming. Lin Yuhui looked out from his train sleeper berth window and realized this was an overnight stop at some station. But thinking back on the scene from his dream, after half a lifetime of wandering, sometimes he could no longer tell whether what he saw in his dreams was actually a dream or a real experience from his life.
This trip to Changxing County in Huzhou required a transfer in Nanjing, and Lin Yuhui preferred taking overnight sleeper trains so he could leave more daylight hours for local transit connections.
Before dawn, he dozed fitfully a few more times, and the journey—a full night and half a day—passed quickly. Nanjing Station was crowded, but fortunately the COVID protocols were simple: no health code or travel code required, just a temperature check. Lin Yuhui didn’t have any codes at all, because he had deliberately kept himself code-free. Without a health code, there could be no yellow or red code, and he had no intention of being hauled off to quarantine on a whim—he’d rather risk nothing than get infected in a quarantine center. For his heart condition, that could be fatal.
Lin Yuhui had years of travel experience, but even so, following the station signs and the map he’d prepared in advance, he still couldn’t find the subway entrance he needed. When all else failed, he asked a staff member. It turned out the entrance was inside a shopping mall—someone had clearly done the math on that one.
Walking through the mall corridor, he spotted a fast-food place on the food court that looked decent, all home-style dishes that smelled delicious. Lin Yuhui didn’t like junk food—he just wanted normal food, the kind you’d get at home. But time was tight: he needed to catch a train, then a long bus ride, and this was another journey where he had to reach his destination before dark.
Once on the subway from Nanjing Station to Nanjing South Station, Lin Yuhui finally felt he could relax a little. This was the crucial link between two trains, and although the map showed the subway ride would only take 42 minutes, he still had to factor in walking time at both ends and queuing time to get in, so it was still somewhat tight. But sitting on the subway seat, there was nothing to do for the moment.
Lin Yuhui wore his backpack on his chest, his suitcase wedged between his legs, glancing at the station announcements and at the passengers coming and going. It was May, already summer here, and he found it strange that there weren’t many people on the subway at midday, though there were plenty of young women dressed fashionably, looking like students. It was Thursday noon—weren’t they all supposed to be in school?
The subway ride was long, going from underground all the way up to the surface, and the scenery shifted from towering buildings to leafy neighborhoods with old residential compounds. Lin Yuhui loved those aged residential areas—trees thick and lush, life still bustling, as if they belonged to some distant era that had nothing to do with this frantic modern age.
When he arrived at Nanjing South Station, Lin Yuhui finally exhaled. There was still plenty of time to queue for the temperature check and get through the ticket gate. He bought a quick meal on the second-floor escalator platform—he chose a McDonald’s burger over KFC. Even with fast food, he wanted to pick what he liked, since he was paying for it himself. One advantage of this kind of food for him was that it never gave him an upset stomach.
Standing on the second-floor platform with his back to the crowd, looking out through the tinted glass, the weather had shifted without him noticing—dark clouds rolling in, gusts of wind whipping the willow branches back and forth. But he was already inside the station building, so he bit into his burger, leaving teeth marks in the butter layer in the middle. He loved the taste of that butter and the fullness it gave him. Huge raindrops splattered against the glass outside, carrying mud, and from a slightly cracked vent nearby came the smell of rain mingling with the earth. Lin Yuhui enjoyed his food while watching nature put on its show on this screen of glass.
On the high-speed train from Nanjing South to Changxing, there were only a few stops along the way, but it was already three in the afternoon. The scenery was much the same the whole ride—tunnels and green mountains. Lin Yuhui hadn’t expected to find such hilly terrain in the water towns of the south, but after staring at it for so long, even he was getting tired.
Lin Yuhui closed his eyes to rest, listening carefully for the arrival announcements. Suddenly there was a clang—he opened his eyes to see a water bottle had fallen to the floor across the aisle. The girl who’d dropped it had been asleep.
He couldn’t help but find it amusing. She looked about college age, but as a young woman traveling alone, she had no sense of caution at all—she’d actually fallen asleep. Maybe domestic security had spoiled them too well. He remembered when he’d first graduated and entered the workforce, taking trains meant watching out for pickpockets and druggers. Whether they were real or not, he’d always stayed alert. Caution never hurt anyone—that much was certain.
Changxing Station was approaching, with only a one-minute stop. Lin Yuhui didn’t want to miss it, so he pulled his suitcase to the door in advance, studying the tracks to figure out which side the doors would open on. When he turned around, the girl from the water bottle incident was right in front of him, looking up at him. So she was getting off here too.
Lin Yuhui didn’t look away from her gaze. Round face, fair skin, lively and bright eyes. Her graceful figure and thick black hair all radiated youth.
He wondered if it was just that he’d never seen a Jiangsu-Zhejiang girl before, or if it was the security of finally settling into a stable life after so many years of being single. For a moment, Lin Yuhui actually wanted to ask for her contact information. But it was just a fleeting thought—he was already in his forties, and his heart wasn’t good. How could he hold back a young woman’s future? He knew he’d been staring into her eyes for a long time. He steeled himself and looked away.