“Zaan1, your elder sister is sick. It seems like she’s starting to grow feathers. Your younger sister asked me to pass this box to you.” Dayin sat across from Zaan, speaking to him soothingly. Yesterday, he went to Zaan’s hometown because of the pepper tree.
“I will.” Zaan spoke slowly. He opened the box, revealing a feather exuding a rich, sweet fragrance and several camphor balls placed inside to prevent insect damage. The feather resembled a photographic film or a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez glasses—its contours were distinct and gleaming. Its shaft was filled with solemn thoughts, while its barbs seemed intoxicated in spring, humming softly in a buzzing melody, colored like mercury and brightening agents. The down feathers growing beneath the main feather were fresh and pristine, neatly aligned like asbestos pipes. The feather was incredibly sweet, emitting its scent even with the box tightly shut.
“Dayin, have you seen my sister Zandan2?”
“No, I haven’t. I only saw all of your younger sisters.”
“Did they say anything else?”
“Well... I don’t remember. Wait, what is the feather?” Dayin scratched his head, squinting at the sweet feather inside the box. Due to cerebral arteriosclerosis, his memory had been deteriorating year by year. He couldn’t retain things for long and forgot quickly.
“Will Sister Zandan take her feather back?” Zaan cut in, asking anxiously.
“Of course, you know her. She was just frightened. After a while, she’ll start to miss it—after all, it’s her first feather. She’ll come to you and take back her feath—” Dayin couldn’t continue speaking because Zaan’s face flushed and started crying with soft, childlike sobs, as if he had been sweetly humiliated. A vague uneasiness surfaced on his bashful face.
“Aren’t you happy?” asked Dayin in confusion.
Of course not! The poor Zaan was overjoyed!
Sister Zandan had an intense familial emotion and always protected her fourteen younger sisters from falling into the idle and disrespectful gazes of the lecherous men in the town. But she was totally indifferent to her younger brother. To her, he was nothing more than a bird hidden among dead branches, or a shadow cast on the corridor floor. She would kiss her sisters on their necks, bellies, cheeks, and even the soles of their feet—but she would never kiss her younger brother. She said touching him felt like rough ferns, which scratched her lips.
When Zaan was a child, he was short and unpleasant-smelling, resembling a short-handled tin ladle. He had a long and oval-shaped face and lips as square as a tombstone. Desperate for his elder sister’s affection, he would always follow her around humbly, longing for her focused and gentle gaze. However, his tall sister’s disregard for him was so blatant that it was hardly worth discussing. He obsessively and tirelessly observed and interpreted her every glance and movement. Even if Sister Zandan sank to the bottom of a river, camouflaging herself as a fallen leaf, Zaan would undoubtedly be the first to find her.
Because Zaan always bullied his younger sisters, Zandan threw him out of home when he was twenty-nine. By then their parents had passed away, and she had become the head of the family. Exceptionally intelligent, Sister Zandan immersed herself in her work in the most direct way. Her erudition and insight astounded those around her, to the point where people even began considering writing a biography about her. The woman who decided the family’s fate stood at the door, holding their youngest sister in her arms, and watched her younger brother who was about to leave.
She spoke just one line, “To control the situation, first, learn to slow down its rhythm.”
Zaan couldn’t refuse. Though the moment he heard Sister Zandan’s decision, his face twisted into a cunning and reckless expression. However, it was nothing more than a pitiful bluff and he left in silence in the end.
After leaving home, Zaan relied on his remarkable twenty-nine years of failure experience to open a dental clinic, which was built in a place known as “Honest Town.” It had only 670 residents, all as honest as little irises—incapable of telling a single lie. However, honesty wasn’t the reason that Zaan chose to set up his clinic here. He picked this place because adults in the town were addicted to sweet Filipino bananas and sugar-coated butter cassava sticks, while children licked caramel fingers—until their teeth rotted away. Their teeth were so riddled with cavities that wind could pass freely through them. Every day, Zaan’s disinfected decayed teeth with light brown iodine solution and filled the gaping holes with twisted copper wires, a low-cost but high-profit business.
With the box in his hands, Zaan felt a sense of joy—because Sister Zandan was to visit him. He also felt uneasy—because the sweet feather might very well be eaten by the townspeople. His longing for his elder sister had become so refined that even he himself could no longer bear it. Dayin, who did not understand Zaan, found his almost-crying expression puzzling.
After Dayin left, Zaan began to rack his brain: how to protect the feather of Sister Zandan? It must never fall into the hands of the townspeople. Finally, he placed the box on the desk by the window and stuck a piece of paper on it, which read: “Do not touch the feather of Sister Zandan.” Zaan felt relieved because he knew that the honest townspeople would never steal the feather. They would never, ever disobey the note’s command.
Supporting the box was a small, short, and sturdy Qagaanhuu desk, a common brand. On top sat a green metal tin containing sunscreen. Zaan’s diary was also there—its pristine white cover starkly contrasted with its dreadful contents, making it look like a giant white fly perched on the desk. Inside was a lonely nest, filled with his belief—Sister Zandan. No sign of nervous breakdowns could be traced from Zaan’s worn-out desk lamp; it sat there, as calm as a black cow. In the corner of the desk, a black-blue plate held a few pieces of aaruul3, which had grown mold in the water and air, emitting a misty green glow that lured insects. Yet, the clutter on the desk could no longer hold Zaan’s attention. He was captivated by the box containing the feather. He gazed at it with a wide smile. But as he smiled, a wave of sorrow washed over him—he suddenly realized that nearly all his joy came from Sister Zandan. He could not create happiness on his own.
Pessimistically, Zaan believed that the fastest thing in the world was rushing toward suffering. He was the complete opposite of Sister Zandan, who was cheerful and optimistic, deeply responsible, and effortlessly navigating between reality and fantasy. She seemed to possess the innate power of amphibians—creatures that could live in both water and on land, adapting seamlessly to two worlds.
He braced his hands against the table, exerting great effort to creakily push open the rusty iron window. It was rough, the paint clipped and worn. The smell from outside hit him all at once, and Zaan felt as though opening the window was a torment to his own breath. How could he experience the continuity of nature with his fragmented breaths?
Looking out into the distance, he could see the solemn rows of towering black locust trees stretching endlessly along the path leading here. Though the tall and straight trees belonged to the same species, their lush and gracefully curved leaves gave each tree its own unique identity. The birds, as large as wild boar hide wine pouches, hovered between the trees, while herds of cherry-colored horses passed through the forest, their chaotic hoofbeats scratching the herdsman’s shoulders. The trees had been stripped of their bark by the pincers of peach-red-necked longhorn beetles, leaving them bare—yet unashamed of their raw sensuality. Life overflowed and thickened, signaling the quiet ripening of a mysterious season. Zaan stared through the window. Everything he saw conveyed a single message in a continuous or alternating rhythm—children cherished by their elders grew plump, effortlessly loved by all. But no matter how swollen he had been as an infant, even if he had grown to the size of a muskmelon, no one would have loved him. He pinched his flat bones, narrow and filled with trivialities, forever confining him within the range of others—Zaan had no domain of his own, no space to create or control. What he would become in the next moment, and whether he even possessed life, were unpredictable and changing with time.
Zaan propped a book against the window to keep the wind from shutting it. Resting his arms on the desk, he gently stroked a box that hid the feather within. His gaze stretched far beyond the horizon, tracing every path leading here.
The first resident drawn in by sweetness arrived on a Sunday morning.
That morning, Zaan was in the kitchen, slicing steaming lamb blood sausage into even strips when he heard a strange noise from the bedroom. He hesitantly set the knife down, and pushed open the kitchen door, craning his neck toward the bedroom. His eyes were wide open, and his heart pounding violently.
A figure emerged from the bedroom, striding to the dining table. He placed a wind-worn, smoothly-feathered hen that he had been carrying onto the surface. The stranger was thin and elongated, his head already brushing against the ceiling—with his neck bent, he wore a melancholy air. It was undeniable that all biological species undergo slow and steady change—but what happened to the man? He had turned the long-standing formula of evolution into a vague and unsettling imagination. “This kind of person would never possess any sense of social etiquette,” Zaan thought. The stranger’s face, suspended like a lightbulb, was so narrow that there was hardly any space for facial features. Zaan’s fear nearly robbed him of his sense of smell. Why was he so silent? His entire presence exuded an air of unfulfilled longing.
“Get out! Are you a thief?” shouted Zaan.
“Have breakfast,” the stranger said.
“Did you eat Sister Zandan’s feather? You villain!”
“No.”
Zaan let out a sigh of relief. He returned to the kitchen, plated the lamb blood sausage, and carried it to the dining table. The stranger’s hands, as thin as a strip of paper, rested on the table. Zaan tried to tug at it but found it wouldn’t budge—the stranger was like a horse tethered to a post. Zaan slipped under the stranger’s arm and reached out to pinch the hen he had brought—astonishingly, it was alive, radiating warmth, its feathers coated in an almost imperceptible layer of dust. He returned to the kitchen and brought out fried rice, butter, sugar, and milk tea, setting them on the table before sitting down across from the stranger.
Obviously, the hen had no appetite, standing on the table like a round roly-poly toy. Its gaze was intriguing, somewhere between indifference and sinister intent. It had unknowingly swallowed something, causing a small bulge in its neck—perhaps a glass marble. The man slowly lifted a scar on his chin. Using this open wound, he ate a large bowl of fried rice mixed with butter and sugar, drank a bowl of milk tea with soaked aaruul, and devoured seven pieces of lamb blood sausage.
The “guest” crunched away relentlessly. Zaan could hear the eerie and monotonous sound coming from deep within the man’s long, thin body. He watched as the man’s thin belly swelled. His eyes never strayed from the stranger’s terrifying, ever-changing physique. Zaan couldn’t even swallow a single spoonful of fried rice, staring in agony at the man across from him.
“Do you need me to wash the dishes?” the stranger asked after finishing breakfast. Zaan was too distressed to respond. The stranger patted his stomach, picked up his hen, and retraced his steps. He was so tall that it took an excruciatingly long time for his entire body to pass through the window. Zaan finished clearing the table and washing the dishes, yet when he came back out, the man had only just managed to move his thigh through the frame. His thin feet pushed against the windowsill as he struggled. “His skills are inconsistent,” Zaan thought. “Right now, he should push the door.”
The stranger finally squeezed out through the window, leaving greasy fingerprints all over the glass. The table was filthy as well. His rudeness, selfishness, and bizarre presence had already broken Zaan’s heart—but the worst was yet to come. Zaan soon discovered that his diary was also covered in fingerprints. The Mr. lanky, who had crawled in through the window, hadn’t just peeked at Zaan’s diary—he had meticulously corrected every single typo, grammatical error, punctuation mistake, and even the incorrect weather records.
“He only did it to mock me,” Zaan said to himself. On the last page of the diary, the stranger had written one line: “I encourage you to suffer.”
Besides that, he had also described Zaan as: “A servant of the new century,” “a horrifying love,” and “the black sticky clay brought back by a boot.” He even drew a long vertical line next to Zaan’s entry about “Zandan’s thick black hair,” adding a comment: “An excess of outdated lines.” Next to “I bought a new belt for Sister Zandan,” he noted “Riddled with traces of materialism.” There is a kind of labor in this world that is more exhausting than moving objects—it is the labor of manipulating people. All Zaan could do was cry silently and curse the deeply prejudiced stranger. His longing for Sister Zandan had been misdiagnosed as filthy desire—an utterly absurd conclusion! We use words to express our emotions, only to find ourselves betrayed by them—They are nonsense, straying far from the writer’s intended path.
After hiding the diary in his cabinet, he wiped the window and table. Holding onto the box, Zaan gazed out the window, momentarily overjoyed after mistaking a red toad for the hem of Sister Zandan’s skirt.
As the saying goes, “Once a mouse spots a grain sack, you know it will come back.”
It was yet another morning destined to be anything but ordinary. The tranquility of life had no chance of survival. Zaan was jolted awake by a thunderous noise. He leapt out of bed, shouting. The book on dental sterilization that had been resting beside his pillow was knocked to the floor by the impact. It had remained unmoved for an entire year, as firmly fixed as a seashell welded to a rock—utterly immobile. Yet now, the book had been startled into flight, proof that the sound had been perfectly tuned to a level that no object could ignore.
Zaan’s heart pounded wildly. He hastily picked up his book from the floor and found a dark brown tea-winged stink bug crushed against its back cover.
“Isn’t it only summer?” he muttered, flicking the bug off with the zipper pull of his jacket. He wiped away the sticky yellow fluid with his thumb before placing the book back beside his pillow. His bed had already been claimed by a swarm of feathery, triangular moths. Their fragrant, curled proboscises were embedded in his pillow—no one but Zaan could have found the pillow hidden beneath them.
The sound had probably come from the kitchen—but Zaan didn’t yet have the courage to go there. Instead, he got up and walked over to the table, where he noticed clear footprints on a box—right in plain sight. Whenever they deliberately appeared before him, whether covered in paper scraps or smeared with horse dung, they were always a cause for distress. Why did they follow the scent of sweetness? No hypothesis in the world could rationalize such behavior, just like the materials of black bed sheets or nameless fruits—things people deemed unnatural hybrids, met with a deep sense of incomprehension.
“It must have been a child,” Zaan thought. “Because the footprints are only as long as my palm.” It is terrifying that only footprints leading in were found—none going out. Had the intruder left through the door? Or was he still inside the house? Zaan wiped the tears welling at the corners of his eyes, his heart heavy with unease. Trembling, he traced the footprints toward the kitchen. When he pushed open the kitchen door, he found his refrigerator smashed to pieces.
The white fridge had shattered like a block of ice, scattering glittering shards across the floor. Lemon-yellow wires jutted toward the ceiling. The once-frozen meat lay sprawled on the ground, now thawed, like red snails crawling out of their shattered white shells. A swarm of black flies had gathered on his beloved dairy products, filling the air with a rancid stench that mingled with the decay of blackened carrots. Every single leek was swollen and inflamed, burning hot to the touch. The floor was a chaotic mess of multicolored food remnants. The cigarettes Zaan had stored in the fridge had been soaked by melting ice, their despairing remains reflected deep within his lungs. Whoever had done this was evidently a performer at heart—sincere, yet full of deceit. For amid the wreckage of the refrigerator lay a radical note with words brimming with unwavering belief in a violent revolution:
“Damn sissy. You’ve imprisoned winter in a box!”
What kind of harsh environment had bred such an extreme creature in this area? This had almost become a missing link in the field of biology. Had the vandal grown weary of the endless summer? Had he mistakenly believed Zaan had trapped winter itself? Even in a land overflowing with candy, the children were still unsatisfied. Since childhood, Zaan had been terrified of trivialities. He didn’t clean up the kitchen. Instead, he placed his hopes in the fungi to erase everything for him. He summoned the cunning, rotting agents from the plate, set them atop the limp flesh, and shut the door tightly.
“They all got the season and location wrong,” Zaan thought. But soon, he realized something was amiss. When he entered the kitchen, the ice cubes were almost completely melted, indicating the fridge had been broken for some time. But when he heard the loud noise, Zaan had woken up. The sound he had heard wasn’t the fridge being smashed. And there were footprints... “Damn it!” Zaan’s face went pale. He quickly turned around, pushed the door open, and rushed into the kitchen, diving into the fridge debris and food, frantically searching. Sure enough, Zaan found a little boy dressed in a dark brown down jacket under the compressor and insulation panels of the fridge. His head had been crushed. The sound might have been the last whimper the child made before dying. Zaan didn’t know what life was, but when the opposite appeared in front of him, he instantly understood what life was.
“Have you eaten up the feather of Sister Zandan, kid?"
The child obviously couldn’t answer; he had no head. Zaan had no choice but to cut open his cold stomach and examine it, and indeed, there was no feather of Sister Zandan. The boy’s hand was tightly clenched, not sure what he was holding. The feather couldn’t possibly fit in his little fist. Zaan exhaled. He ran to the living room to call the doctor, but in his haste, he forgot to put away his germs. By the time the doctor and the boy’s parents arrived, the child had already been devoured by the germs, leaving only thin bones and the down jacket.
Zaan stood frozen in fear, while the doctor and the child’s family, who had already been stunned, started spreading their stunned expressions everywhere.
The sweet-toothed residents kept coming endlessly.
When Zaan woke up at night, he found a young woman lying beside him. She might have just come of age, calmly lying on her back, chewing on the crisp and delicious strawberry stems and leaves. She wore a nightdress, with her muscular thighs tightly pressed together. Sometimes she crossed her hands over her chest, and sometimes she clenched her fists by her sides. Perhaps the strength of the power she held depended on the position or posture of her hands which were constantly under threat yet continuously restored. The girl’s hair was bravely contemplating the limits of humanity, with each strand having a different texture. Even if strands with the same texture touched each other in a particular three-dimensional space, they would not result in stagnant stillness, only leaving behind a long, intermittent pause.
Zaan saw her at the clinic. The girl’s teeth always seemed on the verge of falling out, but the owner of the teeth was incredibly strong. Her father’s face was covered in white spots, with invisible magic filling his tongue, but his only daughter paid no attention to his words. She was self-aware, thorough, and beautiful, ignoring her father. She was like one of the fourteen younger sisters dearly loved by Sister Zandan. They possessed magical powers, able to produce clear and adorable vowels from childhood. They always wore thick clothes, small and doll-like, like an unsolvable riddle. Sister Zandan was like a large tree, carefully arranging her leaf-like sisters to minimize their overlapping spaces—ensuring each sister received the same amount of love, but in different forms.
“You must be the fifteenth.”
“What nonsense are you talking about?” she looked extremely calm, yet her mouth was scolding her cat furiously.
“How I envy you,” wide awake, Zaan stared at her greedily.
“Shut up.”
“But why did you come in?”
“Why did you leave the window open?!” The girl raised her voice.
“The feather of Sister Zandan needs to be kept in a ventilated place; the box is stuffy.” The word “feather” sounded particularly deep and secretive coming from Zaan, as though it were the safeguard for his own survival.
“You idiot! You should be more patient—think carefully before making decisions.”
“Did you eat the feather of Sister Zandan?”
“Hmph, of course not.”
The girl’s body exuded a dense fragrance, and the strawberry stems and leaves in her mouth were reduced to mere crumbs, their juices swallowed entirely. She was deeply cherished and couldn’t comprehend Zaan’s pain and obsession. Her cuteness would eventually be tangled in her white hair and dentures—yes, it lasts forever.
Zaan envied her, and couldn’t help but gaze at her with admiration. She tilted her head back arrogantly, her hands continuously shifting in position and posture. Modernism prioritizes the visual, suppressing other human senses such as smell. Zaan couldn’t smell anything except the bitter scent of the strawberry stems and leaves; he longed for the girl’s body scent, her stench, everything about her, because only these things could attract Sister Zandan. He approached her, foolishly attempting to absorb some of the scent that drew Sister Zandan. Little did he know that this was an impolite gesture, and the girl, seemingly unaware, didn’t realize how dangerous it was to be lying in her pajamas on a strange man’s bed—Zaan’s frailness made her relax. In any case, they collided.
The collision of their skin sparked—the girl’s eyes remained still, and she puffed out her stomach, as if sulking or venting her frustration. She tightened her muscles, her strong thighs full of power. For a moment, Zaan was timid, but his desire to win Sister Zandan’s affection overcame everything.
“Give it to me,” said Zaan.
“Give you what?”
“Your magic.”
“What magic?”
Zaan didn’t respond. He carefully and thoughtfully expressed his loyalty to Sister Zandan in his mind, and this endless loyalty was the inevitable condition of its end—but clearly, Zaan, not being very clever, didn’t realize this.
Zaan thought that they had just had a sweet philosophical conversation.
She turned over, facing Zaan’s face. Her eyelids were heavy, but her gaze was sharp. The Zaan in front of her was almost entirely naked, his ears filled with the beaks of moths. He stunk, his small features filled with torment. The girl stared at his face, immersed in the miracle of ugliness. Perhaps she only wanted to smell the sweetness of the feather, while scolding her cat in another spot. Little did she know how the master here reeked.
The girl spat the chewed-up strawberry stems and leaves onto his face.
“I’ve seen you in your clinic, but you’re even more terrifying at night,” she said. “Feel what it is that makes you so useless.” She seemed to be asking Zaan for self-reflection, but if reflection is meant to supplement the original longing, Zaan clearly couldn’t perform this task—his longing had already been fully satisfied, and nothing more could be added. “You misunderstood,” Zaan thought to himself. Perhaps Zaan wanted to gain a certain degree of autonomy through this silence, or perhaps he was just too anxious to speak.
The girl couldn’t hear Zaan’s inner voice, so she jumped up from the bed and forcefully kneeled into Zaan’s abdomen. He let out a dry retching sound, and almost as soon as she jumped up, he began to cry. He tried to get up, but the heavy girl was pressing him down firmly. She expected his pain to be as raw and natural as possible. Zaan screamed, struggling to roll off the bed, and the girl was pulled down with him. She let out a startled cry. Zaan, with tears streaming down, rolled on the floor, his face covered in mud. She was wild and unreasonable, reaching out to grab him, using her bones to strike his bones.
He realized they had to stop some kind of suspicion, but the young girl, filled with brute strength, turned her doubts about the “magic” he mentioned into violence. She believed the atmosphere of faith was right for her to actively begin rebuilding anything that was disharmonious. Thus, her fists were incredibly powerful, her feet as heavy as marble, her bones clattering, and she created a beautiful yet incomprehensible violence—Zaan was in excruciating pain, near death.
It wasn’t surprising, he thought, after all, even swan wings could break a person’s arm.
“Admit it, you’re just a selfish bastard, a greedy coward… the bees devouring the honey on a woman’s hips,” she cursed, supporting her hand on his chest and biting his nose. Zaan hugged her tightly, vaguely seeing something inside her ear. He wanted to get closer to look, but the girl struggled to rise and ran away. The strawberry-leafed girl seemed to be followed closely by the night, because when she left, the summer sunlight easily pierced through something. He wanted to get closer to look, but the girl struggled to rise and ran away. The strawberry-leafed girl seemed to be followed closely by the night, because when she left, the summer sunlight easily pierced through his tanned feet and the tears made of flesh, slowly and patiently separating Zaan from his smile. Zaan’s sadness would not grow due to the sunlight’s mistake. He didn’t get the magic he desired, only fourteen broken bones.
If the heart had bones, he thought, then it would be the fifteenth.
Due to the broken bones, Zaan felt helpless, and no one came to help him.
Eventually, a doctor came in. To his dismay, the doctor turned out to be the same line of shoving copper wires into a decaying tooth. Zaan was in pain all over, and he felt that it wasn’t worth it—if only the strawberry-leafed girl had revealed even a little bit of the magic formula after beating him, he wouldn’t have been so heartbroken. He had gained nothing.
The helplessness at that moment forced Zaan to think back to the painful past. Zaan, who once lived in a different place, encountered his pain. He realized that no matter what, he couldn’t exit this farce early. Those attracted by the sweetness had obtained ownership of his suffering in all kinds of ways, forms, and shapes. The spore-like outsiders had taken root here, lingering, showing vibrant vitality. The corgi sheepdog, bred to be closer to the ground, had the heel of backward livestock. Zaan felt that his small body must have some special purpose. Perhaps nature longed for him to bite the heel of some creature, though more often, it was others who came to bite his heel. Even Sister Zandan, couldn’t see him due to his small size.
“No, it’s not true. Sister Zandan doesn’t always fail to see me,” Zaan suddenly recalled something from the past.
It was one winter.
Zaan believed that his smile in winter was infectious, so he grinned and stuck close to sister Zandan. Sister Zandan went across the river to her uncle’s house to borrow some oil. It was so cold that no younger sister followed her. It was a great opportunity. Zaan followed closely behind his elder sister as she crossed the bridge and borrowed the oil. Sister Zandan kept walking ahead, as if Zaan didn’t exist at all. On the way back home, they found that the bridge was broken, but the river had not frozen, swirling and steaming with cold air. Sister Zandan stood by the river, staring straight at their home across the river. All she had to do was shout so that her mother or some other elder would come out to help. Or, she could return to her uncle’s house. But Sister Zandan didn’t do that.
She tied the oil around her waist, turned around, and picked up Zaan. Sister Zandan held her younger brother tightly. Her arm was placed under his bottom, while the other arm wrapped tightly around him. She hugged her brother with all her strength, fearing that he might fall. Sister Zandan stepped into the river without hesitation. The icy river water rose to her waist, and she gritted her teeth, tensing her muscles as she lifted her younger brother up and placed him on her shoulders. Zaan sensed his sister’s loneliness, as if she were an antelope separated from the herd. He didn’t understand why—everyone loved her, after all.
When they got home, Sister Zandan was drenched, her hands and feet nearly frostbitten, and the oil she borrowed had spilt. But Zaan was completely intact, not even the hem of his pants was wet. Zaan still didn’t understand why his sister did this. Was it because of his smile? That strange winter, Sister Zandan had picked up her ugly and stinky younger brother, whom she had never cared for, and waded through the freezing river to return home. Along the way, she silently poured out her loneliness to him.
This unique memory seemed to raise more questions than it did emotions, full of contradictions, yet it made Zaan’s heart feel warm, deeply appreciating the pleasant bond of family. Even though the thousands of branches on the great tree stretched in all directions, they were all interconnected. All the questions would eventually be connected, and sometimes the truth didn’t matter. Zaan felt that this precious memory didn’t deserve a simple answer; it should be kept like a cherished family photograph. He couldn’t predict where his life would go, but Sister Zandan always moved forward—she was free, and her heroic actions had immersed Zaan since the moment he was born.
If Sister Zandan had come in and seen her only brother lying on the ground with broken bones, what would she have done? Would she kiss my forehead like a robe? Maybe the feather was just an excuse, and Sister Zandan wanted to see me. Zaan stopped staring out the window. It didn’t matter who came through, taking something or leaving something—he no longer cared. Zaan hadn’t thrown the disturbances and harms brought by the residents into a forgiving oblivion. He was just tired of their “coming and going game” and no longer wanted to build any pretentious relationships with them. Now, he only closed his eyes, waiting for Sister Zandan’s knock on the door.
It had become a belief, so vast that Zaan, standing before it, felt incredibly small.
The last ones to enter his home were two brothers. Both were smart and capable, their clean t-shirts carrying the tangerine-like scent from crested auklets. Especially the younger brother—who showed an admirable moral seriousness and a proper sense of self-sacrifice throughout. His ears seemed a bit problematic, always tilting his head when listening to his elder brother. The elder brother, on the other hand, seemed charming and generous, confidently walking through the room despite his poor eyesight, never stepping on Zaan’s fingers. They looked around Zaan’s house, examining it. The brothers liked to solve problems with a lot of self-awareness and clues. They curiously looked at the white box, intelligently noticing the stubborn lack and deadlock in the room, as well as the self-destructive awareness of the house’s owner, all stemming from the box. They opened it and peeked inside, whispering to each other.
“So much?”
“Half is left…”
“Alas, leave it alone.”
The younger brother took a piece of paper from Zaan’s desk, dipped his fingertip in the mud from the footprints on the desk, and drew an ear and an eye on the paper. He showed it to his older brother and pointed at Zaan who lay on the floor like scales on a fish. When his brother indicated understanding, he emphasized that the task must be done with love and care. In the end, sharing brought the brothers closer—they embraced after reaching agreement.
The brothers did their work in the mornings to avoid disturbing Zaan’s sleep.
They carefully cleaned Zaan’s house—the messy kitchen, the dusty living room, the sad bedroom. They found that most of the furniture was gone, some destroyed, some stolen. So they spent their own money to buy brand-new furniture. They took the photos off the wall and burned them in the woods. They thought the color of the walls was too dull, so they brought a small can of yellow paint and repainted the walls. The walls emitted a lemon light, cracking in the summer, showing an untamable power, without flaws of human works. The brothers looked at the newly refreshed house, their faces showing satisfaction. Cleaning a room is often a scattered and passive task for children, but the brothers always had smiles, filled with gratitude.
Zaan lay on the floor, looking at his shimmering walls—that could be walls or just a vague space—with a puzzled expression. Is space just where things happen? If a time comes when a space and a fairy tale story truly matter, it’s now—once again, the brothers were cleaning the house. Their efforts were enough to scare away the boldest imagination. They strived for perfection, spending most of the time in silence.
Two days later, the brothers began to check the house’s plumbing and wiring. After confirming everything was fine, they returned to Zaan, adjusting his limbs.
“What are you going to do?” asked Zaan.
“We want to help you stand up, sir. Stand up and see your new house,” said the younger brother.
“Be brave,” added the older one.
But how could Zaan, with fourteen broken bones, possibly stand? He breathed weakly and shook his head.
“You can’t stand up?” The younger brother reached out to pull him up, and Zaan cried out in pain.
“So your bones are broken,” the brothers realized, “We thought you were just lying down lazily.”
In the distance, the barking of dogs fell on the window frame’s corners, and the window trembled slightly. Flying insects fluttered in and out of the sunlight, their figures swaying in the bedroom—almost as if they filled the whole Earth at the same time. Zaan stared at them while the brothers smiled. Facing these two hardworking uninvited guests, Zaan was already very calm. Besides, the brothers seemed harmless, and Zaan found them endearing.
“Did you eat the feather of Sister Zandan?”
The older brother was amused by his question and slapped his thigh, laughing heartily. The younger brother covered his mouth, anxiously saying, “Of course not! It’s written on the paper that we shouldn’t even touch it. We just opened the box to have a look.”
“That’s right, we didn’t eat them,” the older brother nodded, still smiling.
“Such a beautiful sweet thing. Sister Zandan is a miracle,” the brothers kept talking, trying to fill the silence in the room with their words. As they praised Sister Zandan, they used the remaining plaster to set Zaan’s broken bones. Eight weeks later, when Zaan healed, they cheered and clapped as if they had accomplished something grand. The brothers checked Zaan’s house again—yellow walls, plumbing, and wiring—and then threw out the trash. They left behind a handwoven flower blanket before their departure.
When the pain disappeared, Zaan’s sense of smell returned. He realized that he couldn’t smell the feather of Sister Zandan anymore.
He walked over to the desk and picked up the box, now covered in various fingerprints. In a panic, he started digging at the grooves on the box. He was caught in a web of conspiracy, predicting a large, absurd, and meticulous public plot. The fragrance of the feather couldn’t be contained in the box. Zaan thought, could the feathers have been eaten? That was impossible—no matter how much the residents drowned in their own saliva, they wouldn’t touch the feather. Now, the note on the box seemed like a joke, held at gunpoint, its glorious career abruptly cut short, reduced to an impotent symbol. But its terrifying enemy—humans—who possessed the unique ability to separate their speech, actions, feelings, and expressions, were using symbols with incredible flexibility.
What on earth had really happened?
Just as Zaan hesitated over whether to open the box, a creaking sound came from inside, like a puppy running around. Zaan shook the box hard, his eyes wide. The next scene made his hair stand on end. He screamed in shock, nearly throwing the box away. His hands trembled, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead. Then, one after another, tiny woodworms crawled out from the cracks of the box, climbing up his arms. These dense brown bugs, smooth and rounded, with hammer-shaped antennae waving happily, and their small lumps like motionless faces, quickly scurried with their little legs, executing their monotonous duty. They seemed to scorn Zaan’s dry, rough skin, and eventually piled up in his sweaty armpit, jostling together, making it impossible for him to lower his arm. Zaan stared at the box, feeling the stinging in his armpit, his face contorted into a tragic, carefully crafted expression. His jaw slackened, and cold breaths escaped between his teeth.
Even the woodworms in Honest Town craved sweetness, Zaan thought. The earth cannot cast off its dead, and Zaan cannot cast off his pain. In this moment of despair, Zaan’s phone rang—it was from home. Zaan picked it up and called out, “Sister.” The woodworms in his armpit stirred at his movement, causing him pain, and he let out a whimper like a puppy.
“No, Zaan, it’s me, your little sister.”
“Ah, little sister. I’m so sorry… I messed up again. These thieves stole the camph…” Zaan began to speak incoherently as tears began to fall. He tried to pry the woodworms off his armpits, but they had teeth. A few were pulled off, wriggling, their tiny legs still clinging to his flesh, biting into his meat lumps. He tossed them to the ground, stomping them with his feet. Zaan couldn’t stop jumping. The fear and helplessness rendered him incapable of stopping. He reached up to touch his face, feeling it like the skin of an orange. The woodworms had already covered his face, swirling around his features like a tornado. Zaan’s eyelashes and the tip of his nose were scraped off, and he could see nothing. The sour, rancid smell of the worms surged into his nose, and he knew he was about to become their next meal.
Damn, twisted residents in Honest Town, who went mad for sweetness. Enraged by the order in the note inside the box, they took their revenge on Zaan—the one who wrote the order. They had stolen the camphor balls from the box.
“Zaan, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Anyway, hurry and bring Sister Zandan here. A famous doctor came to town recently, and they can treat this strange illness. It’s wonderful, we had given up hope!” Zaan’s younger sister’s voice was full of joy and expectation.
“Bring Sister Zandan back? What do you mean? Sister Zandan hasn’t come to see me…”
“Oh, Zaan. Sister Zandan is sick. Her muscles have atrophied terribly, and in the end, she turned into a feather. When she was sick, she kept saying—‘I miss Zaan, I miss my little brother…’ So, we asked Dayin to bring her to you. What, didn’t Dayin tell you?”
