“Tian Yu Yang, is that you?”

Yang knew that voice anywhere. It was his Ling ayi. His mother’s cousin. He turned around and there she was in the flesh – or rather, missing a large chunk of it. She was clad in loose robes – a washed out drab colour – and her skin seemed to hang off her face. She looked as though she had aged a decade; pale, looking rather sickly but her eyes were shinning. Yang’s heart warmed.

“Ling ayi,” Yang breathed, disbelievingly. “You’re alive.”

Yang wasn’t sure what he expected. Everyone was dead or gone – his mother, his father, Ah Na, Na Yi – everyone who vaguely resembled ‘home’. The fact that Ling ayi was still alive…well, that gave him the slightest glimmer of hope – even though it was merely a spark.

A smile curled her chapped lips. “I am,” she said, coming forward and cupping Yang’s face in her hands. She studied him with a maternal gaze. “What happened to your hair?”

Yang’s happiness plummeted. He pulled away and raked his hand through his sheared hair. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, decidedly.

Yang’s aunt nodded, accepting the reason – or lack thereof – without much reluctance. Yang became wary.

“It is good to know you are fine,” she said. She did not ask after his absence. Not where he had been or what he had been doing or more poignantly, why he wasn’t where he was supposed to be – by his parents’ side. The sheer relief etched on her aging face was enough to tug Yang’s heartstrings.

Ling ayi finally took note of Qian Qiao Bo, who stood patiently beside Yang, awaiting acknowledgement. Her smile wilted. “Please don’t,” she begged, sunlight glinting off the pain in her dark almond eyes.

The farmer audibly exhaled; ignoring the woman’s strange pleadings. “Yang has agreed to see the farm turned over to goodwill,” Qiao Bo said, clapping Yang on the back. Yang bit back the protest on his tongue; he hadn’t agreed quite yet. He had just assented to coming here to assess the situation.

Ling Rui Ying eyed the farmer, still on the qui vive.

Yang was seemingly unaware of the silent tension. “Where is Xue Da?” asked Yang, referring to Ling Rui Ying’s only child – her son, turning eleven this year if Yang’s memory was to be trusted. He remembered the young cousin with startling, heart-warming clarity – a pudgy, round boy with spikey hair and an obsession with an old rag doll he took with him everywhere.

Ling Rui Ying avoided eye contact. She focused on the curdling smoke of a fire in the distance, her lower lip quivering.

The farmer cleared his throat. “The poor boy met with an…accident.”

Tears welled in Rui Ying’s eyes.

“An accident,” echoed Yang. “Like Ah Na?”

Rui Ying’s fist clenched the folds of her discoloured skirt.

“Like Ah Na,” the farmer confirmed, uncomfortably.

The conversation arrived at a standstill. Yang hesitated, taking in the activity around him: the running children; the wary mothers; the sombre atmosphere; his aunt’s stilted expression; the farmer’s twitching.

Qiao Bo placed a hand on Yang’s shoulder. “We hope you’ll be able to join us for the feast tonight,” he said to Ling ayi, and the crow’s feet at the ends of Rui Ying’s eyes tightened. “Yang will, of course, be there.”

“A feast?” repeated Yang. “Na Na ayi made it seem as though a famine was passing through.”

The farmer regarded Yang coolly. “We ran into good bit of flesh. Hence the feast. It will serve to lift the spirits of the townsmen and restore some well needed morale. Leftovers can be dried for the preserves.”

“I doubt our preserves will run low,” Rui Ying said.

Qiao Bo’s eyes darkened. “We can never be too careful,” he said with what was perhaps a menacing undertone.

“No, we can’t,” said Rui Ying, quietly, thoughtfully.

Yang felt the outsider once more. Reminded once again that where he was, as much as it was once home, was no longer home. He cast a last, lingering glance at his old home, the gently curving roof, the rain-dulled tiles, and when his eyes descended, he once drank in the changes that had been undergone. Acceptance was not going to be easy.

It’s for a good cause, Yang reminded himself.

But no matter how many times he said it, it never quite felt like enough.