“I need to go to market before work.”

Mama downs her bowl of soybean milk, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and rises to her feet. Then, for the first time in months, she looks at me. Her gaze is gentler than I would’ve dared imagine, more tired than angry. “You coming or no?”

It’s been years since I last visited the local grocery store with Mama. After I moved into the dorms at Airington, I was simply too far away to visit home on a regular basis. But even during the summer holidays, I’d turn down Mama’s offers to go shopping—if trying to find the biggest possible cabbage for the cheapest price can even be called that—choosing instead to get a head start on coursework for the next year or polish up my holiday homework.

But not a lot has changed around here since I was twelve or thirteen.

There are still the same clustered shelves of ripe fruit: round nashi pears wrapped in white foam netting, sliced watermelon quarters and whole dragon fruits; the same overflowing trays of recognizable candy usually distributed at weddings: sticky peanut sweets wrapped in shiny red foil, tiny plastic cups of translucent jelly, thick marshmallows with strawberry swirls; the same glass displays at the Asian bakery, showcasing the freshly made sausage rolls and glazed egg tarts and purple taro buns stuffed with whipped cream.

Even the people seem the same: the little girl staring longingly at the row of fruit cakes, the old nainais squinting at the different brands of soy sauce.

And as I drift from aisle to aisle like a fish in freshwater, trailing behind Mama as she slaps a watermelon to check if it’s sweet, weighs out a bag of roasted sunflower seeds with expert precision, a strange feeling washes over me.

Peace.

Because it hasn’t just been years since I last visited the grocery store. It’s been years since I did anything that wasn’t for school, or, more recently, for Beijing Ghost. Years since I wasn’t so busy—always hustling, always striving to get further, do better—I could barely breathe.

The sudden freedom is dizzying. It makes me feel...well, human again.

All this time, I’d thought the nickname Study Machine was a compliment of sorts. That it meant productivity, above-human levels of discipline, that I was programmed for success.

Now I wonder if it describes someone devoted to doing at the expense of feeling. Something barely alive.

Mr. Chen’s words resurface in my mind—

What is it that you want?

The answer had seemed so obvious to me then: I want whatever other people want, whatever they assign the most worth to. But standing here in the middle of a crowded supermarket, like some scene from a childhood dream, the first thing I think of is the English program Mr. Chen recommended to me. Well, not so much that specific program, but the idea of just getting to write for two whole months, or even longer, of having that be what I’m best at...