90: Chapter 91 A Hot Bite

Su Yun did not take Grandpa to Tiananmen.

He did not go to the Aircraft Carrier Port.

He did not go to the Aerospace City.

He took him to a Vegetable Market.

It was just after four in the afternoon, the noisiest time.

The fluorescent lights on the ceiling of the market shed cast a warm white glow, making the vegetable leaves on the ground shimmer.

The electronic scale at the entrance beeped incessantly; a woman weighing green beans was haggling back and forth with the stall owner over twenty cents.

Half a side of ribs hung from an iron hook at the butcher shop, the fat and lean clearly defined, with the light making the marbling glisten.

Apples were piled like small mountains at the fruit stall, oranges were stacked three layers high, and watermelons rested on red paper mats, with a nearby cardboard sign reading "Special: Two-Fifty."

The Baked Wheat Cake stall was located slightly to the left in the middle of the market; the owner, a man in his fifties wearing a grimy white apron, was bringing out a fresh batch of cakes from the oven.

They were golden-yellow, with sesame seeds bubbling in hot oil; the dough had puffed up into a thin crust, and the steam from the oven was visibly rising, warping the light in the air.

Su Zhenbang stood at the market entrance, his straw sandals seemingly nailed to the ground.

He stood bolt upright, like he had received an order he didn't understand in the middle of a snowy field.

His eyes swept across the vegetable stalls.

Tomatoes, red.

Cucumbers, green.

Eggplants, purple.

Apples were stacked crate upon crate, each one larger than the biggest potato he had ever seen.

Boxes of eggs, white and yellow mixed in straw, with at least thirty in a single box.

Whole sides of pork hung from iron hooks, the lean meat dark red and the fat snowy white, each side weighing dozens of pounds.

He saw a middle school student in uniform pull change from his pocket, buy a grilled sausage, take a bite, and run off.

The oil from the sausage dripped down the bamboo skewer.

He saw a middle-aged woman carrying two bags of rice out; they were so heavy that she frowned and asked the owner to help hoist them onto the back seat of her electric scooter.

Two bags.

Each bag was at least twenty pounds.

Su Zhenbang's Adam's apple began to bob violently up and down.

He slowly walked inside.

His straw sandals stepped onto the damp concrete floor of the market, each step light as if he were afraid of crushing something.

He passed a tofu stall where firm tofu was cut into squares and soaked in water basins, white and tender; the owner was wrapping a piece in cheesecloth to hand it over.

He passed a deli stall with braised pig trotters, marinated chicken feet, and beef in chili oil; a row of stainless steel basins emitted steam and the aroma of meat.

He passed a grain and oil shop where fifty-pound bags of flour and rice were stacked halfway up the wall in a sea of white.

His pace grew slower and slower.

When he reached the Baked Wheat Cake stall, he stopped.

The cakes had just come out of the oven, stacked in a pile; the sesame seeds on the top one glistened in the oil as steam billowed upward.

Su Zhenbang stared at the stack of cakes.

He leaned forward slightly, his nostrils twitching once, then again.

Then, he slowly raised his hand.

His right hand.

His five fingers spread out, marked with old scars from frostbite and the indelible stain of gunpowder under his nails, the skin at his fingertips ashen and rough.

His hand reached toward the stack of cakes.

Su Yun's heart skipped a beat.

According to the system rules, NPCs could not touch objects in a real-World scene; the entire market, the cakes, the steam, and the lights were all just illusions.

His hand would pass right through.

Just like Brother Bao reaching for the roasted sweet potato in the night market, it would pass through.

Su Zhenbang's fingertips touched the topmost cake.

He touched it.

A real sensation of touch.

The golden crust yielded slightly under his fingertip, and sesame seeds brushed into the gaps between his fingers.

It was hot.

Su Yun's breath hitched.

A line of text popped up on the system interface, visible only to him.

[Emotional Total Value Realized: 99.97% of the 8.97 billion emotional data points from players worldwide have been consumed. The remaining value is insufficient to support a second physical interaction.]

[This is the last time.]

Su Yun understood.

Billions of instances of anger, sadness, shock, tears, resentment, and admiration—emotions collected from hundreds of millions of players around the World over three months—had all been cashed in at this very second.

What they bought was very small.

A Baked Wheat Cake.

A hot bite.

For a young man from seventy years ago who had frozen and starved to death at forty degrees below zero.

Su Zhenbang picked up the cake and held it in his hands.

The cake was very hot; he shifted it from hand to hand, left to right, right to left, his fingertips flinching from the heat before pressing back against it.

He couldn't bear to let go.

An expression appeared on his face.

Su Yun spent a long time trying to describe that expression, and later could only think of one word.

Ironed out.

All the wrinkles—the cold, the hunger, the pain, the fear—were all ironed out by the steam of this cake.

Su Zhenbang took a bite.

The crust crunched between his teeth, and the aroma of sesame mixed with the sweetness of hot dough diffused into the air; his cheeks puffed out and then sank as he chewed very, very slowly.

Tears welled up and spilled from his eyes.

But he kept smiling.

Chewing, smiling, and weeping all at once.

He chewed for a long time.

He rolled that single bite around in his mouth, grinding it as if trying to memorize the taste of every single grain of flour.

He couldn't speak.

Su Yun stood two paces away from him.

His hands were in his pockets, all ten fingernails digging deep into the flesh of his palms.

All his willpower was focused on one thing.

Not calling out "Grandpa."

The clamor of the market became a distant white noise at that moment; the sounds of haggling, the clinking of scale weights against iron pans, and the rustling of plastic bags all receded a hundred meters away.

In Su Yun's World, only the person in front of him remained.

A twenty-one-year-old soldier in straw sandals with a faint scar on his forehead, holding a fresh, hot wheat cake, stood in a Vegetable Market in April 2024, smiling and crying.

Su Zhenbang finished the last bite.

He wiped his hands on his trouser legs, rubbing his five fingers against the cotton fabric three times to clean off the oil and sesame fragments from his palms.

Then he looked up at Su Yun.

"It's delicious."

Su Yun's lips moved, but no sound came out.

He nodded.

They walked out of the Vegetable Market.

They stood on the street at dusk.

The Sun was setting, dyeing the entire street golden-red; the glass curtain walls of the distant skyscrapers reflected the sunset, shattering it into ten thousand spots of light.

Su Zhenbang stood on the curb, looking up at those spots of light.

It was quiet for a while.

Then he turned to look at Su Yun.

He looked for a few seconds.

Watching very quietly.

It wasn't an appraisal or a scrutiny, but a peaceful and gentle gaze.

His gaze moved from Su Yun's brow bone to the bridge of his nose, and from there to the contour of his chin.

He paused.

As if trying to recognize something.

Then he spoke, his tone as casual as someone asking for directions on the street.

"Comrade, is your family doing well?"

Su Yun's breath hitched.

Something surged up in his chest and blocked his throat—something sour and burning that had been suppressed for the length of the entire street now boiled over at those words.

It took him three seconds.

A full three seconds to force his voice out from under that lump.

"They are all doing well."

Su Zhenbang nodded.

"That's good then."

He looked down at his feet.

The straw ropes of his sandals began to turn transparent.

Starting from the soles, like morning mist being evaporated layer by layer by the Sun, the knots vanished, revealing the toes beneath; the frostbite scars on his toes were also fading.

Then the tops of his feet.

His ankles.

The patched cotton trousers on his calves.

Su Zhenbang looked down for a few seconds, showing no panic.

He raised his head and looked into Su Yun's eyes.

Those eyes were very similar to his own.

The height of the brow bone, the color of the pupils, the curve of the corners.

They were very similar.

If the system had given him three more seconds, perhaps he would have recognized him.

But he just smiled.

Twenty-one years old.

His most brilliant smile.

The spots of light from the setting Sun happened to pass through his becoming-transparent body; golden-red light shone through the gaps in his cotton coat, as if he were slowly melting into this dusk.

Melting into this dusk that he had traded his life for, where there would never be another war.

He said the last three words to Su Yun.

"Watch it for me."

He vanished.

Su Yun stood on the empty street.

The sunset shone on his face, casting a long shadow from his feet to the base of a wall over ten meters behind him.

He crouched down.

Then he knelt down.

He pressed his forehead against the floor tile where Grandpa had just stood.

The tile, having soaked up the Sun all day, still held a lingering warmth.

Middle-aged women emerging from the automatic doors with bags full of groceries hurried past him, assuming the young man was crouching on the ground looking for something.

No one knew.

In this illusion of a prosperous age that he had created with his own hands, a grandson had just seen off his Grandpa.

Su Yun knelt on the ground.

He made no sound.

But his shoulders were shaking uncontrollably.

The VR Helmet transmitted this scene precisely back to reality.

On the screens of all viewers around the World, there was only the silhouette of a young man kneeling in the sunset.

Thirty seconds later.

From Tokyo to New York.

From London to Sydney.

Commuters on subways took off their headphones, office workers turned off their phones, and students in their bedrooms late at night covered their screens.

In their respective lives, they wept quietly for a long time.

There were no scrolling comments.

No reviews.

The entire World fell silent at this moment.

No one knew how much time had passed.

Su Yun raised his head.

His knees were rubbed red, and his forehead was stained with dust from the floor tiles.

He stood up and reached out to touch the edge of the VR Helmet.

It was time to log out.

He took off the helmet.

He sat at the computer desk in the old house.

Nothing in the room had changed.

Grandpa's Funeral Portrait sat on the corner of the desk, a black-and-white photo in a metal frame; the person in the photo wore a military uniform, looking young with a high brow bone.

The Medals were tucked under the frame, their red ribbons faded, and the characters on the bronze faces polished bright.

The old cotton shoes were placed next to the portrait, the cotton fabric stiff and yellowed, the stitching on the soles dense and tight.

Everything was still there.

Su Yun stared at the cotton shoes for a long time.

Then he noticed something.

On the desk next to the cotton shoes, there was something new.

A small piece of Baked Wheat Cake.

It was golden-yellow.

Sesame seeds were still stuck to the crust.

Su Yun reached out his hand.

His fingertips touched the surface of the cake.

It still held a lingering warmth.