"How can you just eat that coming to snack street!" the girl exclaimed. "You have to eat all kinds of snacks!"
Ding Sha responded in understanding. "Then..."
"Do you want to eat potato sticks? Wolf Fang Potato!" The girl's sharp eyes spotted the potato stand run by an old woman at the roadside, and she dragged Ding Sha over.
"Granny! One serving of sweet, sour and spicy, please!"
The old woman nimbly prepared a serving of potato sticks, the portion quite big. Ding Sha picked up a skewer and took a bite.
The potato skin wasn't crispy enough, the inside wasn't soft enough, the seasoning was too strong, too much soy sauce...
As Ding Sha ate, she was startled.
How did she know...
She tentatively took another bite, and these issues naturally surfaced in her mind again.
But she didn't even know how to cook...
"What's wrong, Sha Sha?" The girl shook her strangely. "You're really weird today..."
"It's nothing..." Though the bizarre feeling in Ding Sha's heart grew stronger.
"Do you want red bean cake?" The girl pointed at a nearby cart.
"Sure." Ding Sha said this, but her eyes were looking at the chestnut cakes beside it.
"I feel like...I've made chestnut cake before..." Ding Sha murmured hesitantly.
"Don't be silly! When have you ever cooked, Sha Sha? We grew up together and I don't know anything about it!" The girl said with a laugh.
"I..." Ding Sha looked around at the crowds.
The strange sense of displacement grew stronger. Ding Sha glanced at the reflective glass to the side, which showed an ordinary face.
Did she look like this?
It seemed so unfamiliar...
Ding Sha turned to the girl beside her. What was her name...?
Was this really her college?
Where was this street?
And where was the snack street in her memories...?
Egg soup...assorted hot pot...shredded potatoes...braised mutton...rocking chair...crib...camphor tree...
In Ding Sha's mind, countless images and memories intertwined. She started sprinting towards that first left road...
Her instincts told her what she wanted was there...
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What she wanted to know was there...
The shadows of people and vendors' shouts behind her froze and glitched out in an instant. Jagged black shadows pixelated out at the edges.
The world stopped rotating like a card slideshow, all the people frozen thin and false like paper cutouts.
Panting, Ding Sha stopped where she felt she should.
It was a small, antique-looking shop.
The signboard was blurred by cobwebs and hard to make out. The entrance was set slightly more inward than the other shops, with a tall, aged camphor tree next to it, towering and swaying unsteadily as it dropped leaves.
Without hesitation, Ding Sha reached out and pushed open the door.
It opened.
She went inside.
The furniture within was disordered and dilapidated, covered in thick layers of dust without any signs of life.
Yet Ding Sha felt she'd seen it in another state before.
Alive and vibrant.
In the blur, she heard someone speaking.
"...Doctor Liu! The mother's heart has stopped!"
"Keep going! Don't stop!"
Who was talking?
Ding Sha couldn't make it out clearly.
The voices faded away as Ding Sha pushed open the back door.
A stretch of lush green hills. A shabbily dressed but bright-eyed little boy was burying his head in his lap, weeping sorrowfully. Ding Sha couldn't help but go over.
"What's wrong?"
The little boy lifted his tear-stained face. "Sha Sha, where are you?"
Seeing that familiar face, Ding Sha's eyes widened in an instant as if struck in the heart.
He was...
Xiao Jun...
Xiao Jun...
Ding Sha clutched her head and crouched down, memories flashing nonstop through her mind like a movie on fast forward. She seemed to be watching many chaotic scenes.
The little boy continued wailing loudly.
"Sha Sha...don't leave me!"
Ding Sha clutched her chest and looked up.
In the delivery room, the monitor showed the patient's vitals slowly climbing back up. The nurse cried out joyfully, "She's back, Doctor Liu! She's back!"
She hurriedly continued her work, while sneaking a glance at the patient's face.
On the operating table, the barely conscious Ding Sha cracked open her eyes.