Heat Returning to the Lane

Only then did she remember she had come home without her work gear, carrying only an old voice recorder. She laughed at herself under her breath. At thirty, even instinct had become a professional reflex. Her first thought upon returning home was not to find her family’s door, but to find material. Hawthorn Street had not changed much. It had only become more specifically old. The syrup stall had shifted two meters inward. A line of repaired electric scooters now stood in front of the repair shop. New banners hung from the facades of two-story buildings, red background, white letters: Pilot District for Urban Renewal. Xu Zhixia stared at the words and one sharper word rose in her mind before any other: demolition. "Zhixia?"