At this very moment, her auntie came out to welcome them with a piercing voice. “There you are! Lunch is ready! Come to eat!”
That voice immediately shut the woman off. She soon turned away with a lingering smile that deepened the awareness of nearing death. Mei silently walked away from the gloom. But the gloom had already walked into her soul.
She was tremendously upset in a way that the excitement of coming home seemed to have vanished. Her rare happiness in childhood gave way to her overwhelming grief for the old, the sick, the dying, the rapid fall in population, the lack of young faces, the sorrowful desolation, and the thoughts of death.