The space between the buildings in the “urban village” (poor neighborhood) was very narrow. There was a row of five-story buildings near the main road that were over forty years old. The outer walls were painted with the cement mortar popular in those days, and many of the corners were peeling off. The long row of buildings had seven stairwells. Each stairwell had two apartments on each side. The apartments in the first few stairwells had two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The apartment in the very last stairwell was a one-bedroom with a living room, bathroom, and kitchen.
Coming in through the large iron gate and looking up, thick and thin electric wires were bundled together in the air—old buildings didn’t have underground lines; everything was pulled through the sky. The rain had just stopped, and water droplets hung from the wires. As he looked up, a drop of water fell on his glasses.
His vision became blurry. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. His POLO shirt didn’t absorb water very well. After putting his glasses back on, his view was still distorted by the uneven layer of water on the lenses.
Gray buildings, black wires, and a row of low brown houses on the right separated the urban village from these buildings. Beyond the low houses were self-built homes, which were also old with fading tiles on the walls.
It was between one and two o’clock on a weekday afternoon, so not many people were walking around. The heavy rain from earlier made the area even quieter. Occasionally a car would drive by on the main road—but modern cars didn’t make much noise. The only source of noise was his suitcase. The plastic wheels made a sharp sound on the rough, wet sand road—because it was so loud, he picked up the suitcase and stopped trying to roll it.
The suitcase wasn’t heavy. Even though he was moving, he didn’t take much with him. When he left the place he called “home,” he found he only took a suitcase half-full of old clothes and bedding, a toothbrush and towel he had used for a year, a pair of leather shoes with worn soles, an electric shaver, a key for a car he was about to sell, a laptop, a few books, and a white lab coat he hadn’t had time to return to the hospital.
His ex-wife asked if he wanted to take his water cup. He saw the ceramic cup with a chip in it and shook his head. If he took it, it would probably just end up breaking inside the bumpy suitcase anyway.
When his ex-wife knelt down at the entrance to silently bring out his leather shoes, she suddenly cried. Before, she had never helped him get his shoes—perhaps because these shoes were the gift she bought him for his first birthday after they married. He had worn them for over two years and never replaced them.
She crouched at the entrance sobbing desperately, as if he were abandoning her. But in reality, she was the one who wanted to separate. He suddenly remembered their wedding vows. The officiant asked him: “Mr. Ming Zhifei, do you take Ms. Fan Wenya to be your wife, to love her, respect her, and protect her, in wealth or poverty, in health or sickness, in youth or old age, and stay with her forever until death do you part?”
At that time, he was nervous about the ceremony going right and acting properly in front of friends and family. He was stunned for a moment when he heard those words—back then, he was young and full of energy. To him, “forever” meant “wealth,” “health,” and “youth.” As for the opposites of those things, did he ever think they could really appear in his life?
He answered seriously, “I do,” and saw the lady across from him give the same answer through tears.
Now she was crying too, much harder than back then—she wasn’t usually someone who cried easily, only at touching parts of movies. Ming Zhifei wanted to wipe her tears away, but in the end, he didn’t move. He just straightened the old leather shoes, quietly put his feet in, and after putting them on, dragged his luggage and left the house that was no longer “home.”
The new “home” was a rented room of less than 40 square meters in the old building by the road near the urban village. It was a one-bedroom with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom for 500 yuan a month. The car he was waiting to sell was parked in the lot in front of a food stall; the parking fee was 24 yuan a day, or 300 yuan a month if rented by the month. Luckily he only needed to park it for a few days. By the weekend, he would drive it to the used car dealer he had contacted.
The car was a BMW 3 Series he had bought two years ago. It had less than 50,000 kilometers on it. It cost over 300,000 yuan new, but the resale price was cut in half, only 180,000 yuan. But he was already satisfied. To him now, this car was just a burden. He couldn’t afford the insurance, the gas, or even the parking fee. It was better to trade it for some living money.
Standing at the door of his “new home” on the second floor, Ming Zhifei noticed the door across from him was wide open. From outside, he could see the living room filled with half-unpacked cardboard boxes. They were quite large, looking like someone had just moved in. The voices of two men came from inside. They weren’t controlling their volume. One voice sounded very angry and was much louder than normal, but the other voice was answering at a normal level. Perhaps they weren’t in the living room, because he couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying.
Two weeks ago when he looked at the place, the landlord showed him the apartment across the hall at the same time. The rent across the hall was lower, only 400 yuan a month, but it didn’t have as much furniture or appliances as the one he rented. He would have had to buy many things himself. He had no energy and no extra money for such a hassle, so he chose this one. Now it seemed the one across the hall had been rented out.
The two apartments were separated by a hallway about two or three meters wide. Because it was an old style of building, the hallway was quite spacious. While he was unconsciously thinking about these things and feeling for the keys in his pocket, he heard a much louder argument from across the hall, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. It was a loud “thud,” and then everything went silent.
This unlucky sound made Ming Zhifei feel scared. After experiencing violence before, these kinds of sounds made him nervous instinctively. His left arm, which was still healing, began to throb with pain. He wanted to get his keys out quickly and go inside to hide from whatever might be happening across the hall. But for some reason, he couldn’t get his keys out. After finally pulling them out, he dropped them on the floor because his hands weren’t steady.
About dozens of seconds passed. As he picked up the keys with trembling hands, a medium-built man burst out of the apartment across the hall. He looked panicked. When he saw Ming Zhifei bending over, his expression turned to pure terror, and he sprinted down the stairs in a single bound.
Ming Zhifei finally picked up his keys and steadied his shaking hands. He tilted his ear toward the open door. The apartment the man had fled was dead silent—no sound at all came from the other person who had been speaking just moments ago.
Ming Zhifei didn’t like meddling in other people’s business. In his current state, he was terrified of inviting more trouble. How could he possibly have the energy to care for others? However, his professional ethics as a doctor overrode his bone-chilling fear. If someone inside was facing a life-threatening injury from violence, he couldn’t just watch them die. He had to check.
“Is anyone there?” Ming Zhifei called out at the doorway. No response.
“Is someone in there? I’m coming in.” After calling twice with no answer, he stepped into the room.
The living room was scattered with open and half-opened boxes. One box contained a huge, brand-new TV; another held a coffee table that needed assembly—the wood looked like expensive mahogany. There was also a box of high-end, fashionable men’s clothes. Ming Zhifei only caught a glimpse of these expensive items before heading toward the open bedroom door.
In the bright bedroom—which had no curtains and was two-thirds filled by a crookedly placed bed—a man was lying flat on his back. He was tall, slender, and dressed in bright, trendy clothes. He looked young and very handsome. His eyes were tightly shut, and blood was slowly seeping from the edges of his long, messy, golden-brown hair.
Ming Zhifei knew he should record a video on his phone first to preserve evidence, but there was no time. His first instinct was to check the man’s carotid pulse, pat his shoulder, and shout: “Hey! Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes!”
The pulse was there, though slow, and he was breathing. This meant he wasn’t dead yet, and the blood loss didn’t seem massive. He didn’t need CPR for now, but a head injury was serious. Seeing no reaction, Ming Zhifei immediately called 120 (ambulance) and then 110 (police).
The process was so familiar that he felt a ridiculous sense of déjà vu.
Three or four months ago, when the patient’s family had found him and attacked him with an iron bar, injuring his back and left arm, he had been the one to call the ambulance and police for himself while hiding.
Fortunately, the man on the floor began to wake up before the ambulance arrived. His memory was fuzzy, and he couldn’t explain what happened before the medical staff loaded him onto the stretcher. Ming Zhifei described the scene to the emergency doctor, then went to the police station to give a statement about what he had seen and heard.
By the time he returned home from the station, the landlord was coming out of the apartment across the hall. He looked upset and spoke to Ming Zhifei—or perhaps to himself—in a tired voice: “I never should have rented to a little punk like that.”
The landlord seemed to have no other choice. The economy had been bad for the last two years, and these two units had been empty for a long time. He had lowered the rent again and again. Once he finally found someone willing to sign a long-term lease, he didn’t have the heart to be picky.
Ming Zhifei nodded to the landlord. The landlord asked what happened, and Ming Zhifei gave a brief summary despite his exhaustion. He then made an excuse, opened his door, and went inside.
Two weeks ago, he had only glanced at the place before renting it. Now that he was living here, he looked at the interior more closely. He sat on an old fabric sofa left by a previous tenant. In front of him was a cheap, old plywood coffee table covered with a piece of glass. The glass was scratched. Under the glass was a tacky plastic tablecloth—a relic of a past era—printed with peonies and the phrase “Wealth and Prosperity.” The edges of the flowers were sharply cut, lacking any sense of beauty.
To get enough money to pay off the bank, they had sold their “home” along with all the solid wood furniture. Between renovations and buying appliances before the wedding, they had spent about 500,000 yuan. The coffee table and sofa alone had cost over 50,000. He didn’t really understand those things back then; his ex-wife liked them, so he agreed. Before marriage, his vision of the future was beautiful, and his expectation of a high income was naive. He thought he was invincible, that his rank would rise quickly, and the money spent would soon return.