We left the house a few minutes later.
I took the passenger seat and didn't say anything while Chenghai started the engine. Lingyun tried to explain the route for the first few minutes, but once we were actually moving, he stopped talking and started watching instead.
Yuche and Zhenlan sat in the farthest row of the SUV, their silence screaming at the rest of us.
No one bothered to fill the silence and that worked just fine for me. I had no idea why the two were like oil and water, but as long as their cold war didn't get the rest of us killed, it was fine.
I stared out the window, taking in the city around us. The morning sun did not help the way things looked.
The city was trashed, like someone didn't clean up from a party before the parents got home.
Seriously.
Car doors were still open, garbage tumbled in the wind, building doors slammed in the breeze.
It wasn't as bad as it would get in a few years, but the change from what it was to what it is now was.... a lot.
