“Hurry, hurry, it’s green.” The words had barely left his lips when the pedestrian light turned red.
Lin Song had a good, long sleep, a full ten hours of it. It was only after waking that he felt a chill on his back; the blanket had been bunched up under his stomach at some point. The air conditioner had been running all night, which let him sleep soundly—perhaps because he had been so exhausted the day before. He ran a hand through his thinning hair and comforted himself that sleeping an extra two hours once in a while wasn’t an extravagance. He was at an age where sleep was supposed to get shorter, so sleeping in this late felt more satisfying than eating a plate of braised pork ribs.
Wuhan’s rainy season had ended as hoped. From now on, a long, brutal summer would set in. The moisture in the air would soon be evaporated completely, replaced by ever-present waves of scorching heat that rushed at you day and night, whether you were hurrying under the blazing sun or toiling in the shade of a tree.
For breakfast, he only had a bowl of cold noodles; he couldn’t manage another bite. The curry-mixed wontons he ate before bed last night seemed to be stuck in his stomach, undigested. Even though it was a small portion of just eight, it left Lin Song with no appetite at all.
For a week now, Lin Song had been washing his face with a bar of soap—his facial cleanser had run out last week. He would only remember he needed to buy more at the supermarket across the street right when he was about to wash his face. A moment later, the thought would vanish from his mind.
As he lathered the soap on his face, a string of bubbles would form at his nostrils. Even though the soap was full of disingenuous industrial fragrance, it couldn’t mask the smell of glycerin that unabashedly drilled its way into his nose. It reminded Lin Song of his childhood, when his mother would always make him use cheap soap powder to scrub the black stains off the bottom of their pots.
Under the blazing sun, the best place to go was the supermarket to buy face wash.
Lin Song pushed the largest shopping cart. Business at the Dafuyuan supermarket was not what it used to be; several of the storefronts in the outer area had closed down. To cater to the grannies and grandpas who came for the morning market, Dafuyuan had placed a row of electric shopping carts at the entrance, usable by scanning a QR code. However, Lin Song had never seen any of the elderly use them. Perhaps they were more afraid of falling.
The yellow electric carts had instead become toys for children. One cart cruised through the store with two kids, one in the front and one in the back. They could grab their favorite snacks as they went, which was way more fun than the coin-operated kiddie rides at the mall entrance.
The supermarket had ribbonfish and crayfish. Lin Song had once put a sea bass in his cart on the supermarket’s app. When he later saw that the “live” sea bass was out of stock, while the “chilled” sea bass was on clearance, he knew that fish was dead.
Lin Song didn’t like eating fish; he found it too fishy. If his wife was really set on eating thick ribbonfish, he had to pan-fry it until it was thoroughly cooked and crispy, with not a trace of fishiness left. This was how his father used to do it.
Lin Song couldn’t find the brand of face wash he used to use on the shelf, which annoyed him. He was a creature of habit. If he found a shampoo he liked, he would buy the same brand again and again, as if he could use it for ten thousand years.
What perplexed him about modern supermarkets was that the moisturizer he was used to would often be discontinued by the time he went to buy it again, forcing him to choose a new one. Lin Song disliked wasting energy on such trivial matters.
This time, after checking the expiration date on the bottom of the cleanser bottle, he placed four large bottles into his cart all at once. They would probably last him more than two years. For him, this counted as getting a major task done, and he felt a sense of relief.
Every time he went to Dafuyuan, Lin Song would buy some bread. He always had a knack for spotting the discount tags. Whether it was baguettes, pineapple buns, egg tarts, croissants, sweet European-style bread, or low-sugar multigrain loaves, he liked them all. He would always rotate his purchases, take them home, reheat them in the air fryer for five minutes, and pair them with a small bowl of yogurt. It was a perfect meal, anytime.
Summer vacation was here, and children were chattering everywhere.
A mischievous boy was pulling on his grandfather’s hand, refusing to walk. He started to slide onto the shiny floor, whining, “There’s one more, one more we didn’t do…” He was reminding his grandfather about the capsule toy he had been promised from the vending machine.
An adorable little girl in a pretty seersucker dress, its white fabric making her cherubic face look even more rosy, pulled her hand free from her grandmother’s grasp. She stood by a bench in the mall’s atrium and refused to move. An older girl in a blue dress was sitting on the bench, scrolling through her phone with one hand and holding an ice cream cone in the other. She would scroll for a bit, then take a lick of ice cream. The little girl watched her silently, and nearby, her grandmother watched her granddaughter, an involuntary smile spreading across her face.
The first day of July was the day to pay the parking fee, a twice-a-year event. Lin Song parked his car in the underground garage of an office building outside his residential complex, not in his own. The garage under his building was damp and dimly lit year-round. After the heavy rains a few days ago, it would even flood, making it very inconvenient. Although the parking fee in his own complex was over a hundred yuan cheaper per month, Lin Song disliked that dilapidated garage. Perhaps with enough age, all things begin to emit an air of decay.
Chirrrrrp—summer’s purest roar.