Senior Sister Wen's profile remained gentle, but her gaze was a little vacant. "The day they left, they stuffed the last half of a flatbread mixed with bran into my hands… They told me to go to my aunt's house in the neighboring county and wait. They said they'd come for me once they were settled and had earned some money."
"I waited for three months. There were no letters. No one came."
"Life at my aunt's house was hard, too. I could only help with odd jobs, and every day I would stand under the old locust tree at the village entrance, watching."
"Later, a fellow villager returned from the south, limping on one leg and muttering to himself. He secretly told me there was no great benefactor. It was… human traffickers."
"Of the people they recruited, the sick and weak were abandoned on the way. Of the rest, the able-bodied were sold to the mines for hard labor, and the good-looking ones… were sold to unsavory places."
