A notification chimed on his phone. Walking along the red-brick path between two skyscrapers, Ming Zhifei stopped and took it out to check. It was a credit alert from his bank; the payment for the car sale had arrived.
180,000 yuan. How long could this money stay in the bank? The court date was coming up soon; a judgment would likely be made this time. Although he believed he had done nothing wrong, throughout the long legal proceedings, he had realized one thing: what he considered fair was not necessarily what society considered fair; the evil he defined might not be recognized by the law. It was more likely that a shrill, hysterical performance could obscure the truth, inciting the judgment of outsiders and slaughtering the innocent.
At first, he felt as if his entire body was in shackles, sealed off from anything he wanted to say or do; but now, he felt bound in every spot, yet he had gone limp, allowing himself to float in an endless darkness.
Yang Jianzhen’s words crawled back into his mind, throwing him into confusion. That man clearly looked like a thug who hadn’t studied much, full of rough, unrefined energy—how could he say something like that?
The golden slanting sun came from the end of the second road, blanketing the dark grey road. The vehicles traveling over it were all plated in a bright gold that didn’t belong to their original colors. Ming Zhifei followed the slope up onto a pedestrian overpass. The sunset was falling right between two mountains at the end of the road, half-submerged, and the scattered golden light was gradually becoming a restrained red.
A late summer evening breeze blew from the opposite direction of the light, lifting the hem of his clothes—which had been criticized as horribly ugly—and slipping under his glasses, making the corners of his eyes sting. The branches on both sides of the road began to sway, not of their own accord, nor with any sense of ease—what could a tree decide in the face of the wind?
The supermarket was in the basement of the mall. Since it was a weekday evening, the mall wasn’t very crowded. He had never been to this mall—but he had seen its shopping bags in his former home. His ex-wife had told him it was her favorite mall, but he had never come once. In the nearly ten years he had worked in this city, except for the occasional two or three days off during Lunar New Year to visit his parents in the neighboring province, he had almost never taken a holiday. All his weekends and holidays were spent working overtime.
Before he got married, he lived in the hospital’s single-staff dormitory. For those six or seven years, he ate at the hospital cafeteria and bought his daily necessities at a small supermarket outside the hospital.
It was a shop catering to inpatients, so the essentials were all there. His life was so simple it could only be described as sparse. During his time as a Chief Resident, because he could be called for emergency surgery at any moment, he spent all day and night walking around the hospital in green scrubs. He didn’t even need to change when he went back to the dorm; he’d just lie down on the bed to sleep and put on a new set in the OR the next morning.
But at the time, he hadn’t felt the slightest bit of inconvenience. He delighted in his work and had extremely low material needs. He loved performing surgery, and he was very good at it—of course, saying this now was meaningless. Even when the lawsuit ended, he didn’t think he would go to any hospital to find another job performing gynecological surgery.
And later, except for the period when they were buying appliances after the house was renovated and he went with his then-girlfriend, now ex-wife, he hadn’t really visited large supermarkets. Because of this, as he walked into the massive supermarket he hadn’t visited in ages, he felt a flicker of anxiety. The neat, seemingly endless rows of shelves meant he would have to spend more time finding what he wanted, and perhaps even ask for help if necessary.
“Don’t ask others for help with things you can do yourself,” his mother had told him when he was young. “Being in the habit of relying on others shows that you are weak. Right now you have parents to help, but when you grow up, who will help you? Remember, rely on yourself for everything.”
No matter what he asked his mother for help with, he would receive a similar answer. Even when he had a high fever in his senior year of high school, he originally wanted to call her but chose silence instead—and the scar left by the suppurative appendicitis that nearly killed him became another piece of evidence of his “weakness.”
“Why didn’t you tell your teacher you had a fever?” His mother, however, criticized him ruthlessly from another angle. “You can’t even open your mouth for a small thing like this; you waited until it turned into a disaster to trouble your teacher. How are you going to communicate with others in your work in the future?”
Ah, Yang Jianzhen was right. In his life, it seemed whatever he did was wrong, never perfect enough. As he realized he was standing in the home textiles section, staring at a straw mat and desperately checking it for any flaws—just as he usually inspected his own work—the thought suddenly struck him.
A surge of anger made him wrap up the mat with a forced air of casualness, intending to take it to the checkout, only to be stopped by a sales assistant rushing over: “Wait, sir! That one is a display sample. If you want it, I’ll get you a new one. Is it for a 1.5-meter bed?”
“I’m sleeping alone. It’s for the floor.”
“We only have double sizes here, 1.5 or 1.8 meters. No single-meter ones.”
The various dimensions meant little to Ming Zhifei. The sales assistant, sensing his confusion, interjected, “Since it’s for the floor, the 1.5-meter one works just fine.” And so, she successfully talked him into the straw mat. Noticing this middle-aged man seemed to be perpetually drifting in thought and lacked any practical domestic sense, she then upsold him a four-centimeter-thick synthetic fiber mattress to put under it. Finally, she asked if he needed delivery.
“Yes.”
He left his address, and she promised it would arrive within two hours. Ming Zhifei considered that since he would be living with Yang Jianzhen for an indefinite period, his own monk-like diet would surely draw comments.
Besides, an injured person needs protein to recover, right? He seemed to have a fracture in the lower segment of his tibia and fibula—a difficult area to heal. Though, he’s young; maybe he’ll mend faster.
As he realized he was subconsciously treating Yang Jianzhen like a patient, Ming Zhifei snapped out of it. He was no longer a doctor.
He picked up some pork and beef in the fresh food section, vegetables in the produce aisle, and then grabbed some chicken bouillon and oyster sauce. At the checkout, he wondered if the seasonings were necessary; Yang Jianzhen might have some at his place. Next time, he thought, I should probably ask him what he needs before I go shopping.
Even after marriage, Ming Zhifei had spent most of his time eating at the hospital cafeteria. He and his ex-wife worked at different hospitals, and he often didn’t get home until midnight. The hospital provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner year-round.
Occasionally, on a Sunday afternoon, they would have dinner at his mother-in-law’s; on certain fixed dates, he’d finish work early to take her out to eat; and for Lunar New Year, they went to his parents’. In their final months together, he was home every day, but his wife ate out. Seeing him neither eating nor drinking, she would pack dinner from her hospital cafeteria for him.
Every weekend, she fled to her parents’ house as if escaping a disaster. In his memory, he had never once cooked a meal at home with his ex-wife.
They were less like a couple and more like roommates. Two people who had never been in love reaching marriageable age and coming together for reasons they didn’t quite understand. Once together, they lived separate lives, performing the “routines” of an average couple as if playing a game of Sims.
Thus, buying groceries with another person’s needs in mind was a first for Ming Zhifei.
Carrying his bags home, he received a call from an unfamiliar number—a delivery driver. The man was at his door. Ming Zhifei confirmed it was the bedding and told him to leave it outside.
Yang Jianzhen wouldn’t dare open the door, Ming Zhifei thought. The thin iron door of the rental unit rattled terrifyingly when knocked.
The sun had fully set, but the sky remained bright; night was still a while off. August was ending, and autumn had technically begun. The wind had started to blow, a welcome change from the oven-like heat of midsummer. Typhoons were rare here in summer, but they would arrive in succession now, bringing the year’s heaviest rainy season.
When Ming Zhifei reached his door, the packages were gone. Fearing a wrong delivery, he opened the door only to see the two large bags of bedding already sitting inside.
Yang Jianzhen seemed to be in the bathroom. Ming Zhifei heard the sound of something dropping followed by a string of curses. He intended to ignore it until Yang Jianzhen called out: “Fei-ge, can you come help me?”
Ming Zhifei walked to the bathroom. The door was wide open. Yang Jianzhen sat there unabashedly naked on a chair, his leg propped up on another. Neither chair belonged to Ming Zhifei—he must have gone back to his own place to get them. Isn’t he afraid of being caught? Wait, is that what I should be worrying about?
“Fei-ge, I dropped my soap. Can you pick it up for me?” Yang Jianzhen pointed to a bar of soap that had slid toward the door. It wasn’t Ming Zhifei’s, nor was it from the box he had packed earlier.
Trying his best to keep his eyes away from Yang Jianzhen’s body, Ming Zhifei still caught a glimpse of a physique that was firmer than he’d imagined, covered in lean, graceful muscle but filled with purple bruising on the abdomen and legs. Feeling an inexplicable awkwardness, Ming Zhifei leaned down, picked up the pink, rose-scented soap, handed it back, and then stepped out, closing the bathroom door behind him.