Liu Mingde recently took on a job with a generous salary and easy work – "playing" a detainee.

小李醒来的时候，鼻子里插着氧气管，身上裹得像个刚出土的木乃伊。他动了动手指，钻心的疼，像有一万根针在扎。他想喊，嗓子眼却像被什么东西堵住了，只能发出“嗬嗬”的怪声。

Li Ming was jolted awake by his alarm clock early in the morning. He struggled to get out of bed, his eyes not fully open, and instinctively reached for his phone on the nightstand.

"Three minutes left!" he mumbled, his voice full of anxiety.

王德福捏着那张被撕成两半的登机牌，站在丽江机场的寒风里，像一尊刚出土的兵马俑，脸上的颜色比兵马俑还丰富几分。

Xiaofang recently felt that something was a little off.

Zhang Qiang sat blankly in front of his computer for an entire day. On the screen was his father's WeChat profile picture - a gray, empty space.

Three months ago, his father passed away. A sudden cerebral hemorrhage took away the quiet old man, and also took away one of the few sources of warmth in Zhang Qiang's life.

Ao Bing looked at the words "Dragon Palace" on the stick and fell into deep thought. It was an ordinary wooden stick painted with cheap red paint, originally used to support the Dragon Palace's crumbling coral reef walls. Now, it was casually discarded in the corner of the Dragon Palace Property Management office, covered in the fishy smell of seaweed and the dust of time.

He had to face a reality: he was likely to inherit his family's property management company.

Xiaoming, clutching a thick stack of New Year's money, excitedly arrived at the bank entrance. Today was the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, a day of good luck for starting work, and also the day he could "liberate" his New Year's money from his parents' "safekeeping."

There was a long queue in front of the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), mostly children like him, all holding bulging red envelopes. Xiaoming stood on his tiptoes, watching the adults skillfully operate the ATM, his heart filled with anticipation.

Old Liu's grocery store was located in the east end of town and had been open for decades. It wasn't a big store, selling things like needles and thread, soy sauce and vinegar, and also collecting utility bills. His most prominent trait was being stingy; he wouldn't turn on the lights if he could avoid it, saying he could save a little money.

Li Mei is a careless person. This problem, from childhood to adulthood, has never changed.

During the Spring Festival, she returned to her hometown, and her relatives gave her a lot of snacks, such as candies, cookies, and melon seeds, which filled her backpack. On the day she returned to the city, she was waiting at the train station and felt a little bland in her mouth, so she casually took out a "milk candy" from her bag, peeled off the wrapper, and threw it into her mouth.