Summer in Rong City was notorious for its oppressive, venomous heat.
During the day, Lin Yansheng went to Lockhart Road. Foreigners filled the ground from one end of the street to the other and he searched from shop to shop, asking at every door.
A woman stood outside a bar, smoking.
He hesitated, shuffling his feet before stepping forward to ask whether Qin Shun was there. The woman asked, “Who?”
He answered, “Qin Shun,” and took out a photograph. It had been taken the previous year, A’Shun at thirteen, his face still carrying a trace of childish softness.
The woman said she didn’t know. She took the photo, glanced at it again, then asked, “This kid is your younger brother? Quite handsome.” She cast him a sideways look and smiled teasingly. “Doesn’t look like you.”
“He’s my child,” Lin Yansheng said, his face reddening. “I’m his uncle.”
Standing so close, Lin Yansheng caught the scent of the woman’s cosmetics, powder and rouge. His ears flushed crimson, almost translucent with heat.
So there really were men in this world with skin this thin, the woman thought.
And a thin skinned man like him still dared to come to a place like this.
Lin Yansheng would not have dared under normal circumstances but he had thrown caution aside.
Someone had told him they might have seen Qin Shun nearby. He hadn’t fully believed it yet he rushed over in anxious haste all the same.
Holding onto a sliver of hope, he spoke earnestly. “If you see him, could you tell him to come home? Just say… his uncle has been waiting for him.”
In the end, Lin Yansheng returned home, dusty and dispirited.
To save money, he did not take the bus and walked instead.
On the way, he saw a group of children prying open car doors. When the police appeared, they scattered like startled birds and beasts.
After turning three streets, he encountered them again.
The children looked pitiful, crouched by the roadside like stray dogs.
Lin Yansheng turned back and gave each of them a bun, a bottle of soda and one dollar.
“Why are you running around the streets like little hoodlums?” he asked.
The children accepted his food without hesitation, their sharp teeth flashing. “Crazy guy, mind your own business!” one snapped.
They cursed and ran off.
Ah. He hadn’t even had the chance to ask properly. For all he knew, his A’Shun might be somewhere out there too, living like one of those street kids.
A’Shun, A’Shun… where was A’Shun now?
Was he hungry? Was he being bullied?
A’Shun had vanished as if he had evaporated from the world.
Rong City was a sprawling metropolis, with a floating population of five or six million. Finding Qin Shun was no different from searching for a needle in the sea.
And besides, this was a major transportation hub, roads stretching in all directions.
He truly feared that A’Shun might be deceived, sold overseas like livestock. At that point, even forced labor would be fortunate, he dreaded the thought of organs carved out and priced like commodities.
Lin Yansheng had no choice but to go home.
In just a few days, the place had fallen into complete disorder. Clutter piled up to the ceiling, dust settling over everything, the house resembling a dog’s nest.
He went to sleep.
All night long, his dreams were strange and fragmented, dazzling yet leaving no trace behind.
Close to noon, he was awakened by the sound of knocking.
A postman had delivered a letter. Inside was a money order for two hundred dollars.
There was no sender’s name, only a vague, indistinct address.
“I heard the government is really going to demolish the Walled City this time.”
“Impossible.”
“There’s nothing impossible in this world.”
“The Walled City has been here for two hundred years. Even the Japanese only tore down its wall bricks to pave the airport. What year was that again? Hey, kid, you know, don’t you? Aren’t you supposed to be a top student?”
Qin Shun pondered for a moment before answering, “1943. It was originally completed during the Qing dynasty, in 1846, proposed for construction by Governor General Qiying of Liangguang.”
The others immediately regarded him with newfound respect, clicking their tongues in admiration.
In the reflection of the rearview mirror,
Qin Shun sat quietly. No one asked him anything and he did not speak. He did nothing in particular yet there was a striking handsomeness about him, a composed presence that seemed almost intimidating.
The boss gave him some money and told him to wear new clothes today. He even took him to a barber shop to tidy up his appearance.
Though the outfit was clearly from a street stall, he wore it as if it were designer. The gray shirt hung open with three buttons undone at the chest and the black suit jacket, even without shoulder padding, sat broad and flat across his frame.
Qin Shun got out of the car with the others, turning through twisting alleys as they entered a part of the Walled City he had never known before.
He recalled an old memory.
Two years earlier, when he had mentioned moving, a close classmate had widened his eyes in disbelief. “Qin Shun, why are you moving to Kowloon Walled City? I heard it’s full of criminals!”
Within this cramped territory, it was said that twenty or thirty thousand people lived there yet in reality, the number seemed easily double that.
A notorious lawless zone.
Cats and rats scavenged garbage together.
Streetlights flickered in broken intervals, the concrete ground pitted and uneven and the air was perpetually thick with a stifling dampness, heavy and foul.
Dilapidated, mottled walls stood everywhere, bearing illegal balconies, iron cages, clotheslines and air conditioning units of all shapes and sizes, clinging like swollen tumors.
Only the central areas received sunlight. Elsewhere, everything lay in a damp, shadowed darkness, like a chaotic labyrinth.
Yet it had not taken him long to memorize the route back to his uncle’s home.
He could find it even with his eyes closed.
They arrived at a shop.
The sanitation was dreadful.
The floor had not been swept. Cigarette butts, foil scraps and syringes littered the ground. Several people lay sleeping directly on the floor, motionless like corpses.
“We’re here,” someone said, giving him a shove.
“Go up to the second floor yourself. Top student.”
The staircase was dim and steep, rising upward step by step into darkness.
A small yellowed lamp hung at the doorway, coated in dust. Its tungsten filament glowed as if on the verge of melting yet it cast little light.
Upstairs, the room held a small shrine.
An image of Guan Gong was enshrined upon it, lit by a red bulb. In the cracked celadon tripod incense burner were several sticks of burnt incense, while fresh offerings lay arranged before the figure.
The table had been set up like an altar, covered with paper, brushes, red envelopes, candles, yellow talisman paper and a listless live rooster waiting to be slaughtered.
On a folding chair sat an old man in a white robe, a red cord tied around his head like a Maoshan Taoist priest, as if he could step straight into a horror film at any moment.
Before long, the boss arrived.
Just as the candles were being lit, the door was suddenly slammed open with a loud bang.
The newcomer swept his gaze around the room without courtesy. His eyes shot forward, sharp and piercing, instantly locking onto Qin Shun’s back.
“A’Shun!” he called.
Lin Yansheng felt as if he might faint. His cheeks tightened, fury surging through him as he clenched his teeth. “Come home with me!”
“Qin Shun!”
The boss came back to himself and looked Lin Yansheng up and down, a sneer tugging at his lips. “Who are you?”
Cold sweat broke out along Lin Yansheng’s back. “I’m sorry. Qin Shun is my child. He still needs to go to school. I’m taking him home…”
Before he could finish, laughter erupted around him.
“Did you hear that? He said ‘I’m sorry.’ So polite.”
“Hey, boiled chicken, you here to smash the place?”
Lin Yansheng’s face flushed crimson. Fear gripped him so tightly his teeth chattered uncontrollably. He grabbed hold of Qin Shun, determined to leave no matter what.
The room buzzed with noisy laughter.
Qin Shun watched Lin Yansheng in silence. Lin Yansheng’s entire body trembled.
Back then, his mother had told him that from now on they would live together with Uncle Lin.
He had thought for a long while before asking, “Do you love him?”
His mother had answered, “He’s a good person.”
A good person? In this day and age, that was almost the same as an insult.
Besides, whether he was truly good or only seemed so remained to be seen.
Still, Qin Shun had thought he couldn’t be worse than his mother’s previous boyfriend.
That man gambled, smoked, drank and lived in a filthy haze, taking pleasure in beating him. Qin Shun remembered kneeling on the floor, slapped again and again until his small teeth mixed with blood and fell from his mouth.
Back then, he had been too small.
There had been nothing he could do.
He had struggled desperately, longing to grow up.
Perhaps heaven had heard his prayer, granting him a tall and powerful body.
At some point, he realized that at school, no one dared to provoke him.
The moment he first saw Lin Yansheng at the amusement park, he felt reassured.
This fair, slender man would certainly never be able to overpower him.
The gift upon their first meeting had been a pair of new shoes.
When he returned home and tried them on, the size fit perfectly, neither too large nor too small.
It was the first time in his life he had worn shoes that fit so well.
…The feeling was strange.
On his first two days of secondary school, Lin Yansheng had asked him, “Has anyone at school given you trouble?” Then, more tactfully, he added, “When I was in school, because I lived in the Walled City, whenever anything happened, I was always the first suspect. If something happens, don’t be afraid to tell me. I won’t let you suffer injustice.”
And what about you, Uncle?
He could almost picture Lin Yansheng as a student.
He had once found an old photograph tucked inside a bookshelf, thin and small, the very image of someone easy to bully, someone who endured quietly without resistance.
Yet it was this timid, gentle Lin Yansheng who had come all the way here.
So even a worthless life like his was someone’s concern.
Someone reached out to shove Lin Yansheng.
The hand never landed. Qin Shun intercepted it.
The laughter stopped.
The room fell silent, an unsettling, heavy silence.
“What are you doing, Qin Shun?”
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Fleurveil
[Translator]
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← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · UncleChapter 2 · Ran AwayChapter 3 · TimidChapter 4 · DeceasedChapter 5 · Grow upChapter 6 · CharmChapter 7 · EndureChapter 8 · Biological FatherChapter 9 · ContestChapter 10 · MisunderstoodChapter 11 · BreakChapter 12 · ReunionChapter 13 · MeetChapter 14 · To clearChapter 15 · InstructionsChapter 16 · RegretChapter 17 · SecretChapter 18 · Subtle SophistryChapter 19 · GuestChapter 20 · KissingChapter 21 · Extra 1Chapter 22 · Extra 2Chapter 23 · Extra 3Chapter 24 · Extra 4Chapter 25 · Extra 5Chapter 26 · Extra 6Chapter 27 · Extra 7Chapter 28 · Extra 8