On that day in 946, when Liu Xian returned to the house with the sign "Zhang's Eatery" over the door, the ligh…
On that day in 946, when Liu Xian returned to the house with the sign "Zhang's Eatery" over the door, the lights were still on inside. She touched the scar on her arm. The skin there was wrinkled and puckered.
Her father had lost money gambling, come home drunk, and smashed a lamp on her. That's how she got the scar.
From the very first scar, she learned: if she came home from her odd jobs and saw the lamp still burning, it meant her father had been drinking and had already collapsed somewhere inside.
She was already skinny, and she'd scrunch herself up as small as possible when she walked in, looking as shriveled and fragile as the burn on her arm.
She would step as lightly as she could, lighter and lighter, until her footsteps were as weightless as her whole existence: barely there, easily overlooked.
She was always on guard, careful not to wake her father, and too scared to even look his way. So she would creep through the house, eyes locked on that lamp. If the flame so much as flickered, she'd freeze, bracing herself as if she'd been burned, not daring to move again until everything was completely silent. Then, she'd inch herself into the farthest, darkest corner from the lamp, praying for dawn, praying that when morning came, he still wouldn't wake.
She wasn't like her mother. Her mother had run away when she had only five scars; Liu Xian couldn't run.
She was just a seven-year-old girl. Inside the house or out, the world felt like a burning lamp she was terrified to touch.
She was still thinking about all this, pacing outside, when her footsteps must have caught someone's attention. The man she'd seen the day before, Zhang Ankang, came to the door with a lantern. She quickly hid the food she'd stolen and took a step back.
"Why don't you come inside?"
He looked like a good man, but she'd learned there were plenty of people who looked good, enough to make room for plenty of bad ones, too.
Inside, at the same old table under the same old lamp, was a bowl of steaming noodles.
She stared at it blankly. "What is this?"
Her confusion was reflected on his face. "Noodles, but there's just one bowl left. How about we share?"
For him, offering food to someone or waiting for someone to eat seemed as natural as breathing. For her, in this world, it felt as impossible as killing or being killed.
Liu Xian thought that, before this war, he must have lived a good life, to still be able to be a good person.