After resting enough, Su Su sprang up, back to her usual energy. She grabbed Bai Su’s hand and jogged toward the pedestrian street ahead.
"Slow down, slow down!" Bai Su shouted, but he could only run with her.
They ran under the harsh summer sun. The heat wrapped around them, evaporating the moisture from their skin bit by bit.
"Hurry up!" Su Su looked back. "In this heat, let’s find an air‑conditioned place to get a cut. Better than baking outside and turning into jerky!"
Bai Su couldn’t argue, so he gave in. "Got it—then hurry and find a place with AC. This damned weather is killing me…"
Su Su nodded and dug through her memory of the street.
The siblings grew up in a community beside that strip. They passed it every day to and from school, so they knew every shop by heart.
Their parents even owned a tiny storefront on that street. In 2008, in a second‑tier city, rents hadn’t exploded yet. The income couldn’t support the two of them.
But Su Su often dropped by the tenants who rented their shop. In that still-warm 2008, she naturally got close to the shop uncles and aunties. She became everyone’s shared, beloved daughter.
Lately, though, with their parents’ passing and the brutal heat, she hadn’t come by for almost a month.
"Wait… didn’t Sister Yu say she was planning to install AC? No idea if it’s in yet," Su Su suddenly remembered.
Even if it wasn’t, they could sit there and sip some water, she thought.
She was pure action. If she thought it, she did it.
She turned to Bai Su. "Bro, let’s go to Sister Yu’s place. Last time she said she’d install AC."
Sister Yu?
Bai Su racked his brains for a while, then it clicked.
Wasn’t she the girl who rented their storefront?
Bai Su didn’t hang out there like Su Su did, so he wasn’t familiar with the street. His memory was stuck three or four years back, so the new stuff didn’t register.
Even so, he knew their tenants.
And Sister Yu had come twice to their parents’ funeral. She comforted Su Su and him. Bai Su wasn’t dumb. He saw real sadness and care in Sister Yu’s eyes. Not like those relatives, with fake wails and stiff, mask-like grief.
Even in 2008, strangers that genuine were rare. Each one was worth remembering.
And Sister Yu herself was a woman you could never forget.
The stirred-up thoughts made the thirty-year-old "uncle" in Su Su sigh.
What a woman.
She recalled the first time she saw her. Back then, Su Su’s vocabulary was small. She didn’t know how to describe that singular beauty.
Now, with a thirty-year-old man’s words and experience, she could finally put a little of it into words.
She made you think of Jiangnan water towns, misty rain lanes, and the lilac-like girl in Dai Wangshu’s poem.
She was like a wisp of fog from an ancient water town. Ethereal, elusive. To admire from afar, not to touch.
The siblings first saw her in their living room. She had just arrived, dragging a big suitcase. She wore a qipao with elegant blue-and-white motifs. Her ink-black hair was gathered with a teal ribbon. She looked not yet twenty, but her manners were thorough and seasoned, like a socialite who wrestled daily with sharks.
Only the look, though. Even if she seemed like a famed songstress stepping off an old Shanghai stage, they’d never take her for a butterfly flitting from man to man.
There was no hard proof. But everyone who met her had the same eerie gut feeling—someone like her would never do anything vulgar.
Though Sister Yu’s outfits looked odd to ordinary eyes, their parents never suspected her. After talking and trading details, they signed the lease. She settled in that small city and opened a tiny barbershop.
Because of her looks and slightly out-there style, plenty of little punks scampered in when she opened. They said haircut, but they wanted to take advantage. Each one got shaved bald and roughed up, then tossed out the door. They limped away howling and never dared come back.
The whole commercial street was shocked again by the gap between her looks and her combat power.
People love to make up stories about those they don’t understand. As if being different were a crime.
So rumors swarmed, sounding ironclad. Some said she was a mob boss’s daughter. Her dad was killed, so she hid in this no-name city. That’s why her aura crushed people, why her combat power was so high.
It even sounded convincing.
But she ignored it all. She just did what she should and lived how she should.
Rumors can’t last. Time proves what’s real.
Gradually, everyone on the street preferred her chair. Her voice was soft. Her skill was good. Her cuts were trendy. Most of all, she could almost fully grasp what a customer meant. Not like those barbers who never listen and only cut the hair they want.
Her little shop grew hotter and hotter.
With more people coming, the scattered impressions stitched into an almost complete her. Soothing. Gentle. Smart. As delicate as water. She knew how to make others comfortable. In short, she matched everyone’s best image of a Jiangnan girl.
So people started befriending her, and her social grace quickly made her the town’s center of attention.
The younger crowd treated her like a dream goddess.
Su Su let out another long breath. In both sets of her memories, she saw that elegant back. On lazy afternoons, she’d pull over a bamboo chair, brew a pot of tea, and watch the passersby with interest.
"What a woman…"
Sadly, in her last timeline, this extraordinary woman moved away not long after the college entrance exam, leaving only a legend.
To be continued.
