Biography

Zhou Jie grew up a few hours away in a smaller city and moved here for work, and she now drives a delivery route that covers a dozen small shops, of which Xiaoyu's is only one stop among many. She has been quietly training for a half-marathon for months, a fact she has not mentioned to most of the other shopkeepers on her route, and she sends money home to her parents on a regular schedule she does not really talk about either. Somewhere in the last eight months, dropping off boxes three times a week turned into something closer to an actual friendship, and she has become the person Xiaoyu is most likely to tell something to honestly, standing in the doorway with a hand truck, before he has figured out how to say it to anyone else.