“Cousin, where is Mia?” Gray blurted out.

“Look! Look!” cried the woman. “So he’s not shy at all! Oh, he wants to get to the truth! He’s just like my cousin Mia!”

Then the woman darted away by the fork in the road.

Father and son walked home in silence.

“Dad, what do you expect of me?” Gray said at last.

“Son, I’m not expecting anything in particular of you. How can you assume that about your father? You’re going your own way now, aren’t you? That makes me happy. Is this happiness a kind of expectation? Some people say I’ve cultivated you. That’s nonsense.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I can say it now, I want to say it now: I love you, Dad.”

“Okay, okay, I know you do. Did you think I didn’t know? You underestimated your father.”

“But I didn’t love you in the past.”

“No, you’ve always loved me. When you were three years old, I had a sore on my foot. You sobbed and sobbed when you saw it.”

Gray looked up: the scenery in front of their home had turned hazy. He wondered what his three-year-old self had looked like. How could he forget all about his childhood, but remember some other things so well?

Father and son entered their home. Gray noticed his mother putting something away in the drawer.

“Mom, are you working on something?”

“Yes, I’m using small sandbags to exercise my eyesight. I want to help you. Gray, when you were practicing acupuncture, I always watched you. I wanted to see those things inside the human body. I threw the small sandbags rapidly, and my eyesight improved a lot.” She was grinning.

“Thanks, Mom.”

The family of three sat down to dinner. When he was half-finished, Gray set his chopsticks down and said, “What’s the matter with the herbs Mia planted?”

“Are they different from Mrs. Yi’s?” asked his mother.

“Yeah, they’re very different, but I also feel they are so familiar. Just like, just like some exotic plants growing in the front yard. I think they may have feet.”

“You’re crazy!” Dad laughed and laughed.

Gray was embarrassed, but he went on talking. “Are herbs all over the world related?”

“Of course they are!” Mother responded warmly.

Lying in his bedroom, Gray was unable to sleep. He heard someone talking in the yard.

“You visited them, and they’re coming to visit you . . .”

“Who’s that?” Gray shouted.

“I come from Deserted Village . . .”

He got up and looked out the window.

He saw a face with the nose flattened against the windowpane.

“Do you want to speak to me?” asked Gray.

“Don’t talk. I’m watching you. I’m from Deserted Village.”

Gray felt uncomfortable. He wanted to duck, but would that seem too affected? If he stayed where he was, he had to stare the man in the face. He said to himself, “Fine, I can just as well observe this guy from Deserted Village.” Had he come to exchange ideas with Gray? Gray had met some people in Deserted Village but didn’t feel he could communicate with them. He could hardly understand their language. Living in Yun Village, which was not an isolated place, Gray had frequent contact with outsiders, yet he could not understand the people in Deserted Village. What about Mia? Hadn’t he become good friends with Mia? It never occurred to him that Mia had come from such a foreign village. If he saw her again, he would ask her a lot of questions.