"Dad, Mom, look at this! I got into Polytechnic University!"
Liam came running into the house waving his admission letter, ready to show it off to his parents, but the looks on their faces were nothing like the ones he had pictured. Something was wrong. He faltered, then asked hesitantly:
"What is it? Did I do something wrong?"
Mr. Smith’s expression darkened. He tossed a document folder onto the table and said flatly, "See for yourself."
Liam set the admission letter aside, sat down on the sofa, picked up the folder, and read it through carefully. The further he read, the more the color drained from his face.
"How is this possible? How can I not be your son?"
Mrs. Smith buried her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. "The hospital switched the babies. You’ve been living in luxury here all this time, while our own son suffered every hardship down in the countryside. He had to drop out of school and go to work just to feed that family. How could they have the heart to treat him that way?"
Liam had no words. The world was collapsing around him, and it would not even give him time to catch hold of something. His face went ghastly pale, his hands trembled until they could no longer hold the papers, and the pages slipped free and scattered across the floor.
Mr. Smith was a businessman through and through; even at a moment like this he betrayed almost nothing, saying only, in an indifferent voice:
"We have given you enough, and we won’t mistreat you now. Go upstairs, pack your things, and leave this house today. My son will be home soon, and I don’t want him walking in to find a stranger here."
Liam’s whole life was settled the way Mr. Smith would settle a clause in a business contract, cold and merciless. They did not, however, send him away empty-handed. The savings book he had filled little by little out of the pocket money he never spent was his to take. Mr. and Mrs. Smith also handed him another three hundred thousand dollars, as though buying out eighteen years of affection.
Liam dragged his suitcase out of the villa and got into the car that would carry him away from the Smith household. At the corner, the car taking him away and the car bringing home the Smiths’ true young master passed each other. Two puzzle pieces, set in the wrong places for so long, were at last returning where they belonged.
The little car carried Liam back to the countryside. The paddy fields had come into season, every heavy ear of rice bowing its head low. A cool breeze swept past, and the stalks knocked against one another, rolling and rippling like a golden wave.
"Young master, this is your house. I can only see you this far. As for the life ahead of you... please take care of yourself from now on." The driver bowed to Liam, then climbed back in and drove off, in as much of a hurry as if someone were chasing him from behind.
Liam kept his eyes on the car until it vanished at the end of the road, and only then did he turn to look at the house in front of him. The old iron gate had rusted through, and the brick wall had sunk by a third. Behind it stood a squat, single-story house with a low roof.
"Is anyone home?" Liam called out, but no one answered from inside. He banged on the iron gate with his hand and called twice more. A middle-aged man came strutting out, short and fat, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, cursing the whole way:
"What the hell are you shouting for? Are you calling up a ghost?"
The iron gate was yanked open with a harsh clang that made Liam flinch back a step. The man threw it wide and bellowed, "Who the hell are you? What are you shouting about?"
Liam shrank his shoulders a little. "I’m Liam. Liam Smith..."
The man frowned and had to think for a long moment before he could remember who Liam Smith was. Then he said in irritation, "What the hell did you come back here for? We just got rid of one useless freeloader, and now another one turns up. Get lost, this house isn’t taking you in."
The iron gate slammed shut without a shred of pity, leaving Liam standing outside in a daze. A few more people came out of the house, but they only took one look at him and went back inside, as though it made no difference to them whether he was a child of their family or not.
By now the neighbors had heard the commotion and were poking their heads out to see.
"Who’s that? I don’t recognize him at all."
"Ah, now I remember. Didn’t Thomas’s family have their baby swapped with somebody else’s? This boy must be the real son of that family, mustn’t he?"
"That’ll be it. Look how much he takes after Susan."
A kind-hearted auntie waved Liam over. "Come here, child, let auntie tell you something."
Liam obediently dragged his suitcase across and greeted them timidly, his voice low. "Hello, aunties, uncles."
At once everyone showered him with praise. "Oh my, what a well-mannered boy, and so handsome and good-looking too."
The auntie who had called him over said, "Child, your birth mother passed away more than ten years ago. Your father took a new wife. The husband gambles and the wife drinks; that house is ruined beyond saving. You should go to the next village over, your mother’s family lives there. Only the other day your second uncle came by asking after you."
Liam hesitated a moment, then said in a small voice, "That doesn’t seem quite proper..."
Another auntie chimed in. "The boy’s right, it isn’t proper at all. Whoever heard of a child turning his back on his father’s family and going to his mother’s instead? People would curse him to death for it."
"Then what are we supposed to do? We can’t just leave the boy with no home to go back to, can we?"
A young man who seemed to have only just joined the gossiping crowd heard this, raised his hand, and said:
"I’ve got his uncle’s phone number right here. Call his mother’s family over and let them talk it out properly. If the father’s family won’t have him, then it’s only right and reasonable for the mother’s family to take him in, isn’t it?"
"Yes, that’s it, that’s it, why didn’t I think of that. You call his uncle. Child, hurry up and come inside where it’s cool and sit down. What did you say your name was again?"
Liam followed the aunties and uncles obediently into the courtyard of the auntie next door. Hearing her question, he answered softly, "My name is Liam."
"Liam, that’s a good name. Here, sit down and have some water. The rest of you, find somewhere to sit as well. When his uncle gets here, we’ll all go over and lend a hand."
Everyone found a clean spot to settle on and began trading stories about the family of Liam’s birth father. Liam’s birth mother, Susan, had once been the beauty of the neighboring village. Who knew what evil spirit had possessed her, that she ended up defiled by that fellow Thomas and forced to marry him. That year, not long after Susan came into the family, she was beaten until she miscarried. It cost her a great deal of trouble to conceive again, and then, worn down by too much hard labor, she gave birth prematurely.
That same year, Mrs. Smith happened to be in the area with Mr. Smith while he surveyed the terrain. As luck would have it, she slipped and fell, and had to be rushed to a nearby medical center. Both mothers were delivering prematurely, and the center was in complete chaos at the time, which was how each family came to be handed the other’s baby.
"After all that, Susan’s health was in ruins, but the family still wouldn’t let her rest. They worked her like a beast of burden. And when she finally couldn’t take any more and died all of a sudden, they just rolled her body up in a mat and dumped it in front of her parents’ house. Susan’s father took such a shock that his heart gave out, and he followed her a moment later."
"Truly, the bad karma in that house never ends. That boy Tony (the Smith family’s true young master) was spoiled rotten as well. Young as he was, he’d already dropped out of school to run with a bad crowd, drinking, gambling, whoring, not one vice left out."
"Oh my. Looks to me like his birth parents’ family is headed for a run of very bad luck."
The neighbors went on picking over Thomas’s family, one remark after another. Liam listened in silence, and his heart hardened further in its resolve to cut himself away from that family for good. He still had university ahead of him. If he went back in there now, there was no telling whether he would ever set foot in a lecture hall, and his savings, along with the three hundred thousand dollars the Smiths had given him, might not stay safe for long either.
They had not been sitting and waiting long when Liam’s uncle and the rest of his mother’s family arrived. One glance into the yard and Lucas knew his nephew at once, partly because Liam stood out most in the crowd, and partly because he looked so much like the older sister Lucas had lost so young. Lucas’s eyes turned hot in spite of himself.
Liam looked at the young man who bore a certain resemblance to him and guessed that this must be the second uncle everyone had mentioned. He stepped forward quickly and bowed to them all. "Hello, uncle. Hello, aunties, uncles. I’m Liam, mother Susan’s own son."
Lucas sniffled and patted Liam’s arms, his voice thick with emotion. "Yes, yes, I’m your uncle Lucas. This is your aunt Lucy, and these are the uncles and aunts of our family. Set your mind at ease, we won’t let you have to go back to that wolf’s den."