The Healing Sunshine (一厘米的阳光)

Chapter 21.1 - The One Beyond those Past Dreams (1)

Jì Chengyang gazed at that envelope and was surprisingly quiet for a while before taking it from her.

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That entire period prior to the Lunar New Year of 2008, the news industry was very busy.

While everyone was doing a countdown to the Olympics that would be taking place in August, the southern parts of the country were faced with a rare, once-in-a-hundred-years snow disaster.

Prior to this, the southern areas had never experienced such large-scale snowfall. It was a snow disaster that had arisen extremely abruptly, without the slightest warning or time for preparation. From January 10 to the end of January, the number of people affected by this disaster had already exceeded eight million.

Jǐ Yi was merely a student intern and had not been sent out to do news gathering on site.

However, as this was a snow disaster, the roads and highways and transportation in the southern parts of China were practically crippled. Many of the reporters from her newspaper agency were stranded somewhere and unable to return to Beijing on time. At the beginning of February, Jǐ Yi, of her own accord, requested to go with He Feifei to the severe disaster area of Anhui province. Before Jǐ Yi left, her supervisor had suggested, "He Feifei is a southerner, so if she goes, she just might be able to go home for the Lunar New Year. Your home is in Beijing. It's nearly the Lunar New Year period. It'd be better to just stay here."

She persisted in her own view, though, and that night, she was on the train heading south.

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The calamity was already drawing to an end, but the transportation hubs were still greatly affected.

They had already lost count of just how many times they were stuck on the highway in the province of Anhui alone.

"The ice is really bad on the road up ahead. I'm guessing it's another traffic collision," He Feifei tiredly remarked, yawning.

The whole night, Jǐ Yi had not really gotten a good sleep, either. Pillowing her head on the hood of her down jacket, she looked at her with reddened eyes. "Want to get off the bus for a look?" He Feifei shook her head, then very soon fell asleep again.

Jǐ Yi gazed out the window. In that world of ice and snow, it was all vehicles, and also the people who were waiting anxiously inside those vehicles.

This particular period was the travel rush prior to the Spring Festival. Everyone was itching to get home...

Behind her, there was the sound of a crying child, who seemed to be exhausted from sitting and was pouting to his mother. She glanced at the time on her mobile phone, only to discover that there were several logs of missed calls, all from an identical phone number. There was no entry in her address book for it. It was an unfamiliar number.

She wanted to call the number back, but her mobile phone was already shutting off from lack of battery.

She could only drop the idea.

<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only.

The sky was already completely darkened when they finally reached Wuhu's urban district.

By the time they had completed check-in procedures and stepped into their hotel room, the two were already so drained that they simply collapsed on the beds. He Feifei soon showered and went to sleep. While charging her mobile phone, Jǐ Yi typed the draft write-up for today on her computer.