This was supposed to be a typical small talk, but the agent sharply grasped the difference: Aunt Kane said "hot water" instead of "hot tea" or "hot coffee." This was really strange.
Of course, in Eastern culture, it's better for patients not to drink tea and coffee. Traditional Chinese medicine believes tea can neutralize medication, and milk should also be avoided as it is considered an "inflammatory." It is best to drink only hot water.
But it's not like this in Western culture. Westerners don't have a tradition of drinking hot water. This is due to historical reasons: both Eastern and Western people faced the problem of how to sterilize water. They knew that drinking raw water directly would cause problems, so they came up with different ways to make water safe to drink.
Eastern people chose the simplest method, which is to boil the water. However, this is also due to the earlier development of pottery and metalwork in the East, allowing them to cook more effectively.
Westerners turned water into mild beer. This fermentation process kills most harmful bacteria and viruses. People in the Middle Ages mostly drank mild beer, leading to their long-standing beer culture.
Because of this, they didn't have the habit of drinking just hot water. In their eyes, heating water was to brew something like tea or coffee. Moreover, they believed invigorating substances like these were beneficial for treating illness.
So when someone is sick, people often say, "Have a cup of hot tea," or "Have a cup of hot coffee," instead of saying "Drink more hot water," like Eastern people do.
The agent didn't observe any other Eastern characteristics on Aunt Kane, not a single bit. It's important to know that the cultural differences between the East and the West are significant, and it's hard to avoid being influenced if exposed to the other culture. But Aunt Kane showed no such traces, suggesting that her preference for hot water wasn't due to her understanding of Eastern culture.
Could it be due to poverty? The agent thought it was unlikely. This brings up another part of Western culture, specifically, American culture. In layman's terms, it's "face-saving."
The two most misunderstood points are "America has no culture of kinship" and "America has no culture of face." In fact, quite the opposite, America is the area with the most severe kinship and face culture, without exception.
Due to class segregation policies, people of the same class live in the same areas and must maintain good relations with everyone in these areas, such as neighbors, the police, city government officials, etc., to ensure survival in the community.
And to maintain good relationships, you must make them feel you are one of them. Your attire, speech, house, car, lifestyle must all be the same as others.
If you live in a middle-class neighborhood, you absolutely cannot be caught shopping in a cheap neighborhood; if you live in a wealthy area, you must drive a good car. This behavior infiltrates every aspect, including hospitality.
In middle-class communities, the tea and coffee served at parties can't be poor, and the red wine must be of a certain quality. Once seen as impoverished, you're done for; you might even be kicked out of the community and forced to live in the slums.
So, over time, Americans developed a habit of spending large sums to maintain face. Only by doing so can they preserve their current class; otherwise, they face a terrible fall in class.
In Eastern culture, people are delighted to buy quality goods at low prices; but not in American culture. At least on the surface, they can't pursue good value, but rather "don't want the best, just the most expensive." They must spend enough money, even if wastefully, to show they are worthy of their current class. This is also why Americans lack savings, as the face project is too costly, and it's a percentage cut — even Bill Gates would lose half his blood.
What's more alarming is that America's middle-class standard is frighteningly low; yes, low, not high. As long as you have a fixed residence, regardless of how dilapidated or old it is, you're middle class and have to spend large sums to maintain face.
And although Aunt Kane's house is a bit old, it is obvious it was in a good location before; her attire is decent, further indicating she comes from a wealthy family. Such a person understands America's unwritten rules well, and her long life experience makes her instinctively comply with these rules, so she couldn't be ignorant of hospitality. She should understand that under these rules, serving only hot water to guests is highly discourteous.
Even if there was no tea and coffee, it's not difficult to serve some milk, right? Dairy products in Europe and America are relatively cheap, even more so if you don't insist on organic options. Hot milk is almost the baseline.
The agent suspected Aunt Kane misspoke. But they had just gone upstairs, and Aunt Kane came knocking with a cup of hot water. The agent had a bit of an existential crisis while accepting the hot water; it was his first time receiving hot water from the host's house in America, and it gave him a sense of home.
He quickly shook his head, exchanged a few pleasantries with Aunt Kane, and closed the door. However, the agent also noticed another detail: Aunt Kane seemed completely unconcerned about her daughter.
America is not a particularly open country. Especially in these inland states, some places are more conservative than the East, no less than strict gender division, at the very least. The stereotype of an open attitude is mostly limited to a few coastal cities, with conservatism being the norm.
Linda, a young girl, went out with the agent for a whole day, and Aunt Kane didn't even ask about it. That could be explained as Aunt Kane trying to pair them up; but now, with the agent and Hunting, two adult men, sharing a room with Linda, such an odd setup should warrant more concern from Aunt Kane, right?
Moreover, the agent vaguely felt that Aunt Kane seemed quite pleased with this arrangement, and pairing them up shouldn't be like this, should it?
As suspicions grew thicker, the agent felt he was getting closer to the thread leading to the truth. But the main task at hand was still to appease Linda.
Perhaps there's a strange attraction between morbid souls, as Linda seemed more interested in Hunting. She walked to the chair by the window and sat down, staring intently at Hunting.
Hunting slowly sat up from the bed. He moved to the bed's edge, slightly lowered his head, looked up at Linda, sniffed lightly, and asked, "Did you go fishing?"
Linda nodded. She tightly pressed her lips together, constantly fiddling with her clothes, seeming to be nervous yet with a hint of anger.
"How were the fish doing?"
"No." Linda suddenly said coldly, "They're not good at all."
"No, I think they're quite good." The Hunter's tone was very slow, with long pauses between each sentence, as if he was struggling for air.
"What's good about them?" Linda raised her voice, "They can only stay in the water, they can't come out at all. I killed one today; I speared it with a harpoon! I even stomped on all the fish eggs!"
"You're becoming a lot like them." The Hunter said after several deep breaths, "Doing to the fish what they once did to you, does that make you happy?"
Linda seemed to suddenly turn to stone. The agent could visibly see her soul start to withdraw, as if she had fallen into some terrible nightmare. After a long pause, she awoke as if she had lost a part of her memory.
"I should have brought that fish back, then we could have had fish soup."
"You know you can't." The Hunter said again, "Your mother wouldn't allow it. You know why."
Linda began withdrawing again, then after a long while she returned to her senses, ready to speak further, but the Hunter continued: "You know that wasn't a dream, or fake, it happened for real. His body and tombstone are still there..."
"No!!!" Linda let out a scream. She was like a machine suddenly activated but broken, starting to operate in a chaotic manner.
She stood up abruptly, then reached out and knocked over the candlestick on the nearby table, immediately rushing to attack the Hunter.
The agent was stunned, it was the first time he'd seen someone so brave. But of course, he couldn't let Linda do that; even an injured Hunter wasn't someone this girl could mess with, if the plot characters died, they'd all soon follow.
He quickly rushed over to pin Linda down, only to find Linda stronger than he had imagined, and he struggled to hold her down.
The agent cursed in his heart: You won't let me lift muscle restrictions, yet you lift them for plot characters! Just because plot characters are allowed to be mentally ill, doesn't mean I'm not! Restriction system, are you sick?!
After much effort, he finally pinned her down. Linda again turned into something like a corpse. But at that moment the Hunter turned around and looked at him saying, "What is human, what is fish, can you tell?"
Linda, like a robot, stiffly turned her head to look at him. The Hunter turned his head back and said, "There's always someone in this world who can't tell, isn't there?"
In just a few seconds, this girl suddenly shifted from an angry berserker state to a state of sadness. When the agent got up, Linda turned over, lying on the other side of the bed, silently shedding tears.
She kept wiping her tears with her hands, but couldn't wipe them away. It seemed to make her angry, so she sat up and began to frantically wipe her face with her sundress, rubbing her face into a mess before quietly sitting there, letting tears flow down.
"Yeah... why can't they tell?" Linda stiffly moved her head, each word causing a shake, but her neck was stiff, increasingly like a broken robot.
"Why can't they tell? Why?!" From initial muttering, it turned into a roar, "How can they not tell the difference between humans and fish?! How can they..."
"You can too." The Hunter suddenly said.
Linda's roar came to an abrupt stop. It was as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over her head, leaving her stunned.
"I..."
"You did well today, didn't you?"
Linda became more bewildered.
"Your mother doesn't let you kill fish, so you went out and killed fish, as if to retaliate against her, as if to retaliate against them. But you know that's not a good solution."
"Yes, that's not a good solution." Linda suddenly spoke out, "It doesn't work, my mom still wants to hit me. It doesn't work... What should I do?"
She suddenly went mad, rushing at the Hunter saying, "What should I do? Tell me, what should I do!!!"
"I told you, you did well today."
Linda slowly stood up straight. After a long silence, she raised her head, staring straight at the sky, where there was nothing. But it seemed as though she really saw something, and then, that chilling smile appeared on her face again.