That day, I walked down a narrow dirt path along the mountain. The ground was warm beneath my feet, and in the distance, the wind rustled through the treetops, with a tall tree standing at the end of the slope.
A friend caught up with me from behind, laughing, and said, "The game has begun." He picked something fruit-like from the tree and jumped into the pond below, splashing bright water droplets.
I stood under the tree and suddenly noticed a ripe peach on the ground—one of those tropical fruits I had only seen in Guangxi. It was astonishingly red, as if it had fallen from another world. I thought to myself, "This place shouldn't have such a thing."
At that moment, someone nearby quietly explained that it was a seedling brought by the neighbor from Guangxi, secretly planted by the mountainside. This peach tree had grown tall, its branches stretching over and intertwining with another fruit tree—possibly a loquat, or maybe some hybrid plant—bearing many peaches and small fruits like blueberries. The ground was covered with fallen red fruits, as if painted with color.
I picked up the largest one and took it home.
At home, the light was dim, and my brother was staring at a black-and-white television watching a program. The image looked like an old movie: a man (my dad) was cooking in the wild, making rice, as if it were some kind of "lifestyle documentary." My brother sat still, letting the images change.
"Why don't you change the channel or connect my computer monitor?" I asked.
Without turning his head, he replied, "It's a hassle to disconnect the VGA cable."
I looked at the peach in my hand; it had turned into a green banana, growing oddly and unripe. I said nothing, placed it on the table, and quietly watched the television.
At that moment, my dad seemed to speak to me from the TV: "About that girl upstairs, I’m sorry to trouble you."
I went upstairs to an empty room, where a young girl lay flat in the center. She had just died. I crouched down to wipe her body and change her into clean clothes. As I bent to pick up the folded clothes, she moved slightly and then coughed.
I immediately helped her sit up and realized she had truly come back to life.
I took her out of that room and into a bright hospital corridor. Her hand was warm, and her eyes were somewhat confused. She told me she was actually still sick—there were many red spots all over her body, but no one noticed. If it weren't for me, she might have been taken away as a corpse, with no chance of survival.
We sat down, and she said a lot of things while I listened quietly.
What happened afterward, I don't remember.
When I woke up, I still remembered that ripe peach, that black-and-white television, and the first breath she coughed out from the edge of death.
It felt as if everything had truly happened.