Chapter 16: Crocodile Tears

There’s a card game where two players hold their cards, taking turns guessing the suits in each other’s hands. Guess right, and they reveal it; guess wrong, and they keep it hidden. This continues until one side has all their cards exposed, and the other wins.

Gan Ling and I were playing an invisible version of that card game. I’d throw out probes with questions, uncovering errors; she’d probe back, hitting truths. I kept revealing my cards one by one, my secrets dwindling, peeking timidly through my fingers but too scared to emerge. Gan Ling, though, was winning step by step, her hand still fully covered.

Finally, I lost my patience and slammed down my cards. “I’m done playing.”

Gan Ling had me all figured out. In that soft, coaxing voice, she casually revealed an unimportant card.

She had a place to go. She didn’t really have to sleep on a sofa on the roadside.

She practically sweet-talked me back to the table, luring me into continuing the game—seeing who could pry the other’s secrets out first.

I was starting to get antsy.

My seven years had passed in calm serenity, like a balanced bowl of ginger tea. Gan Ling’s arrival had thrown everything into chaos, leaving me irritable and anxious with no outlet. It wasn’t anger, exactly—just this weird sense of disorder. Irregular periods were one symptom.

The first time my period came, my mom freaked out: “How is it so early already?!” She spent the whole day in a frenzy beyond her control. She tore through a pack of sanitary pads, forgot to feed the dog, and overwatered a pot of flowers to the point of disaster. Amid the dog’s hungry barking and our desperate rescue of that wilting plant, I sat in the corner, utterly lost. My sudden period had upended her life. Later, I learned it heralded the start of my turbulent puberty—a portent.

To keep from getting too worked up, I scheduled a mall trip for myself that Saturday, letting the zit sticker on my chin serve as a perfect target.

I parked the e-bike outside Jiaxing Supermarket. Rows of colorful e-bikes were lined up, a jumble of brands and plastic windshields. The lame-legged old man guarding them hit me up for a buck. I’d just fished the money from my pocket when an arm shot out from behind and yanked me back.

Gan Ling had materialized out of nowhere beside me. The moment she stood there, the old man waved me off.

I said if I didn’t pay, he’d slash my tires—but then I remembered Gan Ling had slashed my tires too, so I shut up.

Gan Ling pocketed her phone, then reeled in the arm that had grabbed me.

“No need. I know him,” she said.

“Oh, so I get free parking here from now on?”

“You here to shop?”

“Yeah.”

That Q&A wrapped up, and suddenly it felt weirdly off. How had Gan Ling and I fallen into casual chit-chat? Like we were neighbors bumping into each other on the street, ready to link arms and stroll… It was bizarre. I edged away a bit. Gan Ling said it was perfect—she’d just follow me. Everywhere I went was guaranteed murderer-free, saving her extra snaps and scans.

I thought, what nonsense, but since the dogskin plaster wouldn’t peel off, I didn’t bother arguing. I grabbed my canvas bag and headed into Jiaxing Supermarket. Glancing down, I saw our shadows stretched long—mine topped by hers, like some circus act. Her shadow on my head pissed me off, so I darted behind her and stomped on hers a couple times.

Gan Ling’s cold face stayed expressionless, but I figured she was calling me childish in her head.

She pursed her lips and headed for the supermarket doors, casually grabbing a shopping cart for show. Her eyes scanned like spotlights, lingering extra on men in their thirties or forties, all while keeping tabs on me.

I grabbed hawthorn slices, assorted candies, a puzzle box, half a bunch of bananas, two packs of yogurt, a box of finger biscuits, and a ballpoint pen with a bunny eraser cap. Press the bunny’s head to switch from black to red ink, press again for blue. I clicked it back and forth, doodling a bunny head on a scrap of paper by the shelves, switching to red to add eyes.

Stress relieved.

Past the fruit and veggie sections, soon the grains and oils. I stared at a bin of white rice for ages, resisting the urge to stick my fingers in. It was Saturday, after all—I’d taught kids not to poke into rice piles at the supermarket. What if someone saw me and pegged me as the perp.

I bet Gan Ling caught that hesitant rice-staring moment. We both wore masks, faces screaming “peaceful lives, untouched by worldly woes.” I left loaded up; she had empty hands. We wandered from the basement level through the whole mall. When we exited, I stashed my stuff in the e-bike basket. Gan Ling finally stopped, our shadows shifting—now mine naturally trampling hers.

On a whim, I swung the bike around to face her.

Gan Ling wasn’t even looking at me, though. The lame old man shuffled over, deep step shallow step. Gan Ling barked an unceremonious “Hey!” and he turned away, muttering something low.

Her voice came through clear—maybe no phlegm in her throat, or just her crisp enunciation: “Nah, I still gotta keep looking.”

The old man said, “Then I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

“You even know who you’re looking for?”

“I spot thieves dead-on. Good guys from bad, I can tell.”

Gan Ling snorted dismissively—zero manners—and thumped the old man’s shoulder before turning back to me.

I hunched over the handlebars, staring her down.

She stood there a bit, then clocked that I wasn’t budging. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m following you.”

Tracking had gone fully aboveboard. My address—Jiaxing Residential Area, Building 2, Unit 502—was no secret anymore. Gan Ling had to drop her mysterious veil and show me if she was human or ghost. Needed something beyond “not sleeping on a sofa.”

Gan Ling clearly hadn’t expected me to flip the script. Her brows shot up, she tugged at her mask, saw me planted firm on the e-bike, my bag of stuff in no danger of melting in the sun.

But this crazy woman finally approached and kicked my freshly patched plastic windshield. I heard the plastic crack—worse damage than last time, with tape and shards grinding together. That kick had real menace, nearly toppling the bike.

It didn’t scare me off, though. Gan Ling conceded defeat and swung her leg over the back seat. “Giddyup.”

“Where to?” I didn’t mind her treating me like a horse.

“South.”

“Straight south?”

“Turn when I say.”

I hopped on with Gan Ling aboard. From how the bike dipped under her weight, I pegged her as skinny but solid.

She directed from behind, heading south with barely any turns. We crossed a patch of wasteland to a courtyard.

I had zero clue where this was—no people around. If the Gan Ling behind me were a guy, I’d have good reason to think murder and dump.

Bike stopped at the courtyard gate. Gan Ling hopped off. A narrow wooden door with a dangling lock.

The lock was just for show—she yanked it open easy, dangled it from her wrist, and shouldered the door wide, revealing a yard overgrown with weeds.

Behind the weeds, two earthen huts, one half-collapsed.

In the surviving hut: a small inverted kang—not against the window—a long rosewood cabinet topped with Zheng Ningning’s portrait.

The window hadn’t been cleaned in ages, glass all foggy. Standing outside, I watched Gan Ling snatch a rusty sickle from somewhere and hack away—swish swish—clearing a patch of weeds, tossing them aside.

No running water in the yard, just a hand-pump well, rusted out, with a rubber bucket nearby, still damp.

Gan Ling scooped a ladle from the bucket onto the well, then pumped up two buckets with grunts. She splashed water on her hands and scrubbed her face roughly.

A plastic box by the well held a cheap bar of laundry soap—three-fifty kuai a pop. Gan Ling rubbed some on, soaped up haphazardly, smeared it on her sweaty neck, rinsed with a few more scoops. Her collar was soaked.

Not satisfied, she yanked up her hoodie hem. I spun around quick, shoved open the hut door, and ducked inside. A pile of crumbled adobe bricks crushed an old cabinet; another door led to the intact room. Inside: a super worn-out quilt folded neatly on the kang.

Glancing back through the hazy window, I saw Gan Ling had stripped off her hoodie, dumped it in the bucket to scrub, and hung it dripping on a flimsy wire.

That’s when I noticed—despite her slenderness, Gan Ling had defined muscles, like a gym rat. Smooth lines on her arms and abs.

Suddenly, she grabbed the bucket and splashed it over the glass, blurring my view.

Moments later, she pushed in and flipped Zheng Ningning’s portrait facedown on the cabinet.

I’d spotted the photo right away—from Zheng Ningning’s funeral, where I’d knelt before the casket displaying this exact one. Black-and-white, background unclear, freezing her youthful, innocent face.

“I lived here for a stretch before leaving Neng County. Seven years. Half collapsed, but this half’s still livable.”

The woman wore a sports bra up top, midriff half-exposed. I instinctively sucked in my gut to hide my little belly.

“You say I’m dead? No, I’m alive.” Gan Ling leaned sideways against the edge of the kang, stretching out her legs and looking down at the tips of her shoes. Her hands stayed stuffed in her pockets, wet hair draped over her shoulders.

“What else do you want to know?”

She raised an eyebrow at me, looking like I was some unreasonable troublemaker. One strap of her mask poked out from her pants pocket, and Gan Ling fiddled with it using her fingers. For some strange reason, it reminded me of Lu Jinshi.

When I decided to break up with my ex-boyfriend Lu Jinshi, he had that same slouchy attitude—digging his big toe into his second toe, hands jammed in his pockets like that would make him look like Flower Ze Lei or something.

Lu Jinshi said, “Nothing more to say, huh? Don’t you have anything you wanna ask me?”

I said no.

Facing Gan Ling, I nearly let that “no” slip out again, but I held it back in the end.

“I’ve never seen you pick up or drop off Zheng Ningning. I’ve been the one taking her for half a year now… Zheng Ningning enrolled at Hongzhi Elementary School with Grandma, and usually the kid goes by herself…”

I weighed my words carefully, but Gan Ling suddenly raised a hand to cut off my preamble. “You’re trying to say I’m this irresponsible mom who never takes care of the kid—maybe even ran off to shack up with someone else for her own pleasure, completely ignoring the child. Then seven years later, she finds out the kid’s dead and now comes putting on crocodile tears, hunting down the killer for revenge…”