Recently, Lin Guo-yi has been waking up around 4:00 am. Initially, he tried to force himself back to sleep, but when he couldn't, it felt as if he was lying on a bed of needles. Eventually, he gave up on sleep and gently rose from his bed, changed his clothes, locked the security door, and stepped out of his apartment.

Lin Guo-yi lived in one of the 50-year-old apartment complexes. After living here for a year, he had finally grown accustomed to the feeling of the hot morning sun searing into his skin and the moisture inside his body evaporating.

The heat was the reason for his early awakenings.

During his thirty years in Taipei, it was always cold, damp, and stuffy. In the third year after the family settled down, water began seeping through the walls during the rainy season in fall and winter. Despite consulting a leakage prevention expert, the room still resembled a stalactite cave, dripping with excess water. To prevent the apartment from turning into a pool, they used all sorts of dehumidifying appliances, and the almost 24-hour noise became a constant backdrop in the house. After over a decade of exposure to humidity, his joints became increasingly fragile, reacting to even the slightest change in temperature and humidity, causing discomfort when he walked, climbed stairs, or hiked mountains.

Since moving to this area, the issue of joint soreness and weakness had gradually improved. When the sun shone, Lin Guo-yi felt the stagnant and damp humidity vanish, making his limbs more flexible and stable.

During his early morning walks, the incandescent light from street lamps illuminated the ground. Coupled with the heat emanating from the nearby alleyways, even though the sky hadn't yet brightened, his back was already damp. Usually, he walked to the abandoned tin shacks nestled among the row of homes, crouched down, and placed the pre-prepared feed in a bowl, while the tabby cats hid behind the motorcycle wheels. Once, he observed a tabby cat taking only a portion of the food and sneaking into the adjacent fire lane. As he passed by, a group of unsteady kittens called out in hushed tones to the tabby cat.

“This cat was a mother,” he thought.

Feeding the cats early in the morning and going to the market to buy groceries, habits he didn't have in the past, have become Lin Guo-yi's joy. The market here has a unique charm for him that is quite different from that of the north, even if he doesn't speak much Taiwanese. "A catty of hind leg meat, come on, Boss, what else do you need?" The owner of the meat stall slices the meat quickly and asks customers what they want. Lin Guo-yi carried a piece of sea bass, a block of tofu, cabbage, water bamboo shoots, and green onions given by other stalls in a single hand and took the shredded meat in a plastic bag from the meat stall, thanked him, and walked over to the deli section.

Insomnia was only one of the reasons why he went to the market every day; it was also aided by the funny talking lady at one of the stalls. She was tall and had a loud voice. The first time he passed by her, he stopped because she was wearing a plain white top and jeans that only a young woman could wear, and of course, she had the same figure. She smiled at him and greeted him in a voice that was not too low, but not at all harsh, "I'll wrap it up for you, two each of Red Bean Paste Cake and Shandong Pancake. Would you like some more soy milk? It was just made this morning." It was hard to refuse, so he nodded. When he got home and took out the pies, he chewed on the crust and red bean puree, and the thick, unsweetened soymilk was just the thing to make him happy. From then on, Ani's Paste Cake Booth was his morning pick-me-up, but it wasn't special, he said to himself; it was just a taste he got used to.

While taking out the garbage one time, he accidentally overheard his neighbor across the street mentioning that Ani had a quadriplegic son, saying it was caused by a brain injury at birth. As if she didn't know this subterfuge, Mrs. Chang on the first floor added, "I see Ani pushing her son on a wheelchair for a walk in the park every evening." Lin Guo-yi, who knew about the incident, didn't respond to anything, except that he was extra careful to time his visits to the paste cake booth. Sometimes he gave them to neighbors who were also residents, and he was once strangely mistaken for being interested in a widow. 

Lin Guo-yi's mind remained unruffled, and he woke up early as usual.

Living in the south, the course of sleep easily pulled him toward wakefulness; with so much time on his hands, the days seemed endless, and even after a quick trip to the market, it wasn't even seven o'clock yet. Back in his prime, he used to sleep on the commuter bus because of his job. His job was on one of the floors of a high-rise concrete jungle, and his regular nightly overtime work made him so tired that he would walk up to the large, brightly polished windows and stare down to ease his mind. Standing at a certain height and looking down, the imagery of marbles cluttered his mind. In Taipei City, the nightly crowds were supported by the lights, and they flocked to the stalls, night markets, restaurants, and stores, where small businesses were conducted intensively throughout the night, making it a very busy place. Because of the hustle and bustle, after buying one thing, people would gather to form the next booth, like marbles rolling out of the darkness into neon splendor, converging into irregular shapes until some force made them disperse in all directions.

Points of light did not intermingle with each other, he thought. Nevertheless, he chose to live in the island's capital, get married, and have children.

When he was young, everyone aspired to make it in Taipei.

But not long after his retirement, his family was surprised to hear that Lin Guo-yi had announced his decision to move to the south.

"What for? It's so nice here. Dad, look, the MRT extension will pass by a park nearby, so it'll be easier to get around, so what's the point of going to the south?” said disapprovingly the youngest daughter, Jiexin, who was born and raised in Taipei and had never really left the city until she graduated from graduate school. "Dad, why don't I ask my coworkers to inquire about the current housing prices? Although it's not a good time to buy a house… Dad, if you planned to buy a house after retirement, you should have discussed it with me earlier!” said Jie Min, the eldest daughter. Lin Guo-yi spread out the newspaper and deliberately buried himself in the front-page headlines of the presidential election and the trade war between China and the United States. As he scrolled back, there were celebrities he didn't know. Some had won awards, some had had affairs, and some were suspected of suffering from mental illnesses due to stress. The youthful faces were placed in brightly colored costumes and backgrounds, supporting a fashionable posture, and they all looked so much alike that he forgot one after seeing another. Earlier, he had asked for the names of a few people and was met with blank stares from his daughters. Did this mean his memory was failing him? He secretly suspected that it was similar to the headaches he had a few years ago, which unfortunately turned into insomnia. He hadn't told his daughters or his wife about this, but if he had, they would have subjected him to another round of what sounded like advice but was, in fact, a lot of nagging. Both of his daughters were like his wife. They were very articulate, and sometimes they even appeared to be tough.

He closed the newspaper and said, "I don't need you to worry about me; just go about your business.”

The youngest daughter pouted and didn't say a word, so she switched to a variety show. The eldest daughter went to the kitchen, saying she wanted to help her mom prepare dinner.

The two daughters failed to persuade him, and the sound of chopping boards kept coming from the other end of the kitchen.

He couldn't be bothered to read the newspaper, so he turned back to the front page.

Back then, Lin Guo-yi had no intention of marrying, but after he turned thirty, he was introduced to a subordinate from his military service. It had been a few years since he was discharged from the army, but he met him on the road and after exchanging pleasantries, his subordinate was surprised that he hadn't had any children, so he said that he wanted to be his matchmaker. His subordinate, who later became a lieutenant colonel, was just as enthusiastic as before. He couldn't refuse, so he went to the appointment.

The short-haired woman was sitting on a wooden chair across from him, and she looked at least six or seven years younger than him, but he wasn't entirely sure. He tried not to go out in public, but for the first time, he went into this cafe, which was said to be quite famous, and ordered black coffee from the waiter, which was brought to him, and he almost spat it out after taking a sip. The woman in the goose-yellow shoulder-length dress across the table smiled, took his cup, added milk balls and sugar packets, "Try it, it tastes much better, doesn't it?"

A strange, sweet-bitter flavor melted on the tip of his tongue, much better than the first sip he'd tried. After a few more sips, he looked around and realized that there were still a lot of customers, and he wondered if so many people wanted to come to such an expensive place, as he would rather go to the end of the alley to eat a bowl of iced soybean pudding.

Of course, he didn't say it out. He said little, the coffee was consumed too early, in order to eliminate tension, he stared at the woman's eyebrows. The pupils of the woman's eyes had a brownish tint, and the light from the lamplight dangling between them made the nuances of light fragile. Her eyebrows were thick and spreading, arched down as she spoke, but slightly furrowed as she sipped her coffee.

"What kind of work do you do?"

The woman was not a standard beauty, neither a melon face nor a goose-egg face, but with her clothes, she appeared moist and vibrant, as if she were a freshly sprayed fruit on a stand.

He stared at her for so long without being drenched with a glass of water. He had a feeling it was her.

The aroma of stir-frying, the elements of rice, garlic, chili peppers, celery, green onions, garlic cloves, with dried beans and dried squid. His wife, who is from a Hakka mountain town, is a master of her craft, and he tends to eat the most.

His daughter and his wife eventually served the four dishes and one soup, and set out the chopsticks. Putting down the newspaper, Lin Guo-yi took his own seat and was the first to eat the Hakka stir-fry, then brought in a mouthful of rice and chewed on the dry squid, realizing that the dish was less salty and less dryly impactful than it had been before.

(to be continued. )

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