The nurse pulls back the curtain: “Bed 17, time for your blood pressure.”
She answers.
It is the last name she will ever answer to.
Before this, she had many names.
The Zhang family’s girl. Little Zhang. Old Li’s wife. Duoduo’s mom. The grandma in 301.
She answered to them all, one after another, for more than sixty years.
So long that on her first day in hospital she stared at the front page of her medical record for a while. The three characters of her name were printed clearly, yet they felt a little strange to her, like someone she hadn’t been in touch with for years.
Let’s call her Ms. N.
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N, as in NPC.
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In a game, an NPC is a character controlled by the system’s default program.
The script is an assembly line. School, work, marriage, children, grandchildren, retirement. Every step is laid out; the conveyor belt moves on its own, and all you have to do is stand on it.
But the assembly line isn’t sealed shut. Every now and then, side roads and doors appear.
Most NPCs just never pay them any attention.
In her whole life, Ms. N saw five exits.
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「01 · The Zhang family’s girl」
The first exit appeared when she was seventeen.
Her family’s expectations were simple: be good, be sensible, be obedient, don’t cause trouble.
Everyone for miles around knew the Zhang family’s girl was no trouble at all.
There was only one thing out of line. She wanted to study painting.
She painted a great deal, and kept the paintings tucked inside her math textbook, because it was the thickest.
The day her mother found them, she didn’t scold her. She only sighed.
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“Can painting put food on the table? How many painters have you ever seen who made a living from it?”
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For a girl, stability matters most.
She was already used to being an obedient daughter.
She put the paintings away and told herself: later. When I grow up, I can do whatever I want.
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「02 · Little Zhang」
The second exit came at twenty-two.
Choosing her university major, she put down the safest option everyone around her recommended.
At university she liked someone.
After graduation he was going to a city far away in the south, and he asked her once: do you want to come with me?
She lay awake for many nights. She even sounded out her parents.
Her father was firm: what’s a girl going to run off that far for?
When he left, she didn’t go to see him off.
After graduating she got into the work unit nearest home, and became “Little Zhang.”
Her parents threw a dinner for the occasion and were especially happy at the table: now she’s settled.
Everyone praised her parents for raising her well. She sat beside them, sweet and dutiful, feeling she had finally repaid them.
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After twenty-five, the system popped up a mandatory quest: time to get married.
At first she was picky. She told her best friend: you only marry once in your life; better none than the wrong one.
But the marriage market has its going rates.
After twenty-six, her family started paying more attention. After twenty-eight, the talk around her grew sharper and sharper.
Don’t be so picky. A woman your age. Wait any longer and it’ll be hard to find anyone.
At blind dates she could feel the eyes of the men with good prospects resting on her a little less each year.
Everything around her pressed in, fine and dense. She began to panic a little.
In the end she thought: let me just get married first.
He wasn’t someone who made her heart race, but his circumstances were suitable. Her parents approved of him too.
On her wedding day she was dressed just right and smiled beautifully.
Toasting the third table, she suddenly thought of that city in the south. Just for a second.
She pushed the thought down and raised her glass again.
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That was the third exit. When it closed, she was smiling.
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「03 · Old Li’s wife」
The script after marriage ran step by step.
Her husband had a good job and brought in most of the household income. That’s normal; everyone’s like that.
So while he was out there fighting, someone had to look after things at home a bit more.
It sounds perfectly reasonable.
And the one who had to give way could only be her.
Her time after work went first to housework. Her weekends went first to the whole family, young and old.
The fourth exit came at thirty-four. Her unit had an opportunity for further study abroad, and she qualified.
She was tempted, and mentioned it at home.
Her husband didn’t object. He only asked: then who’ll look after the kid?
She didn’t sleep all night. The next day, she never brought it up again.
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Over the next few years her husband was promoted; there were more business dinners, and his business card changed several times.
She was still at the same desk. One crop of young people after another came and went.
A girl more than ten years younger became her boss.
In meetings the girl politely called her “Sister Zhang” and gave her the least important work.
She knew what people said behind her back: just coasting, her husband earns the money anyway.
She couldn’t be bothered to explain. Explain what? Where would she even begin?
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to move up. It was that her time and energy had long ago been spooned out, spoonful by spoonful, to feed this family.
Outside the home, her name became “Old Li’s wife,” or “Mr. Li’s spouse.”
The things she did — laundry and cooking, school runs and homework help, running everything —
came with no KPIs, no year-end bonus, and no one ever saying: well done.
But isn’t everyone like this?
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「04 · Duoduo’s mom」
Her WeChat name was “Duoduo’s mom.” Her profile picture was a photo of her child at five.
Quietly, she pressed onto her child the blueprint she never got to live herself.
The paintings she never painted — the child would take the grading exams.
The far places she never went — the child would go there for her.
She signed up for classes, sat in on lessons, and was always the first in the parents’ group chat to reply “Received.”
She told herself it was all for the child.
But sometimes late at night, when the child was asleep and she sat alone in the living room,
a vague, nameless ache would suddenly rise up in her.
Somewhere in her heart there was a faint emptiness.
It had to be filled with something.
What she filled it with was family.
Quietly, she swapped her expectations of herself for expectations of them.
She hoped her husband would understand her a little more, hoped her child would do her proud and become what she wanted.
But expectations placed on other people are hard to fulfill to begin with.
The tender word she waited so long for never came.
The path she thought her child would take, the child didn’t take.
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The fifth exit came at forty.
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That year there was a class reunion.
A classmate whose grades had been worse than hers had later quit her job and started something small of her own.
Not rich or grand, but the whole person was lit up, alive and vivid.
As the party broke up, that classmate took her hand: you used to paint so well, I always remembered.
She pressed her lips together and smiled: I gave it up long ago.
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That night, lying in the dark under the covers, her heart was pounding.
She thought of the paintings tucked in her math book at seventeen, of the person she didn’t see off at twenty-two.
She thought: maybe I could have been someone else?
For one moment, she wanted to get up and do something. Even just paint one picture.
But it was almost dawn.
The child had school, her husband had to go out, breakfast had to be made.
She tied on her apron.
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That impulse was like a drop of water falling into a hot pan: a hiss, and gone.
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She told herself: too late. At my age, why bother.
That was the fifth exit. And the last.
After that, she never felt the impulse again.
Perhaps there were other exits along the line.
It was only that, when she passed them, she no longer looked that way.
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「05 · The grandma in 301」
After graduating, her child went to a city far away.
The day she saw them off at the station, the child went through the gate, turned, and waved once.
The young back walked away, quick and light.
She stood there for a while and told herself: it’s good that the child is doing well.
Later the child settled in the big city and had a little family of their own, and became even busier.
The child was very good to her. Replied to WeChat instantly, sent generous red envelopes at the holidays,
even bought her a smart speaker and taught her to say, “Xiao Ai, play some music.”
But rarely came home.
After the grandchild was born, her daughter-in-law brought her own parents over to help.
The neighbors all said she was lucky: no grandchildren to look after, a peaceful old age.
She always smiled back.
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In the family group chat, nobody opened the health articles she shared.
When she posted a photo of the sunset, the child would occasionally reply, “So pretty.”
She learned to send voice messages, then learned to unsend them.
Some messages she typed out at length, thought it over, deleted, and sent only: “Have you eaten?”
The child had their own life to be busy with. She understood. She didn’t blame them.
People in the neighborhood called her “the grandma in 301.” She answered to it quite naturally.
Countless ordinary evenings, she watched soap operas and waited for her husband to come home. Now and then she missed her child.
Because apart from that, there was nothing else for her to think about.
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「06 · Bed 17」
Many years later, she lay in bed, at the very end.
Her family and grandchildren had all rushed there.
She wasn’t in pain, only tired —
tired like someone who had run a very, very long road without ever seeing clearly where it ended.
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In the moment her mind went hazy, she heard someone call her. Not daughter, not Little Zhang, not Old Li’s wife, not Duoduo’s mom, not grandma, not a bed number. It was her own name.
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She had never heard that voice before, yet she knew it at once.
It was her own voice.
All her life, it turned out, “she” had been waiting for her to look back.
From the day at seventeen she put her paintings away in a textbook, all the way until now.
Waiting for her to turn around, even once, look at herself, and answer.
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She wanted to answer. But it was too late.
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