In the blink of an eye, it was late July, and Feng City had entered the height of summer.
The Lin family’s top-floor apartment baked like a steamer; during the day, it was simply too hot for anyone to stay there for long.
The massage parlor had air conditioning. Lin Zhixia would walk Lin Anwen to work, bringing his schoolwork along; in between studying, he would help out at the shop for free.
People always feel a special fondness for a child who studies hard, and Aunt Liu, the proprietress, generously allowed Lin Zhixia to hang out there and enjoy the cool air.
Next door to the massage parlor was a small internet café. Lin Zhixia picked up odd jobs there—running errands like buying cigarettes or meals for customers—to earn a few tips.
By the end of the month, Lin Zhixia received his pay for the milk delivery route: a full five hundred yuan. With the tips from his errands added in, the total came to over six hundred yuan!
For an impoverished twelve-year-old, this was a small fortune.
Lin Zhixia saved most of the money, spending just thirty yuan to buy a gently used bicycle from Sun Mingzhu’s cousin.
From then on, whenever he had free time, Lin Zhixia would ride his bike with Sun Mingzhu and the others, racing and playing through the web-like network of streets in Yong’an.
After playing until dusk, they would spend fifty cents on popsicles and sit on a rooftop overlooking the river, gazing at the high-rises of the New City on the opposite bank.
The setting sun reduced the skyscrapers and construction cranes to mere black silhouettes. To the children of Yong’an, that skyline held an air of mystery and an irresistible allure. “Tell me, don’t the people living in those super-tall buildings get dizzy when they open their windows and look down?”
“You couldn’t afford to live there even if you wanted to,” a companion scoffed. “My dad says that if we sold our place here in Yong’an, the money would only be enough to buy a single toilet in the New District.”
“The apartments in the New District are huge,” Sun Mingzhu said. “My mom works as a nanny for a family there, and they have an entire room just for clothes—it’s bigger than our living room. The lady of the house has a whole cabinet filled with nothing but high heels!”
“Is that lady an octopus? How many feet does she have?”
The children burst into laughter, shoving and jostling one another.
“I’ll get to live in the New District in a few years!” The speaker was a chubby boy; he was slurping on a popsicle while simultaneously sniffling back snot. It was a disgusting sight to everyone else, but he was enjoying it immensely.
“My mom says that once I finish junior high, she’ll send me to apprentice under my second uncle. He works at a big hotel in the New District, cooking Western food for foreigners. Steaks, pizzas—I’ll be able to eat as much as I want!”
This chubby boy was the son of Aunt Liu, who ran the massage parlor; he had a grand-sounding name: Wang Gaocai.
Wang Gaocai was a huge disappointment regarding his parents’ high hopes; his intelligence left much to be desired. If he managed to pass even three out of his eight subjects, Aunt Liu would feel compelled to burn incense and kowtow in gratitude to her late ex-husband.
Ordinary folks didn’t insist on their children going to university; scraping through junior high and then learning a trade to make a living—that was what really mattered.
“Xiao Xia, you’re definitely going to live in a big house and drive a luxury car in the New District someday,” Sun Mingzhu said, nudging Lin Zhixia with her elbow. “With grades like yours, you could even go abroad for college. You’ll absolutely outshine that ‘common sparrow trying to be a phoenix’ from No. 3 Middle School in the South District!”
“Who knows what the future holds?” Lin Zhixia replied. “We’ve all studied the story of Zhong Yong, haven’t we? Being smart now doesn’t guarantee anything later. I’ll just focus on finishing middle school properly for now.”
He liked to crunch down on his popsicle; with a large chunk of ice held in his mouth, his cheeks bulged, and his lips looked red and glossy from the cold—much like strawberry jelly.
“You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met,” Sun Mingzhu said, looking at Lin Zhixia with genuine admiration and respect. “You were the only one who could solve that final, difficult problem on the summer homework. And the business with Sheng Lang—you were the only one who knew how to put him in his place. Oh, by the way, Sheng Lang’s family is in big trouble!”
Lin Zhixia crunched off another large piece of ice and blinked.
“His dad owes a huge amount of money from playing mahjong and can’t pay it back; debt collectors have been showing up and making a scene for days,” Sun Mingzhu said. “My second aunt told me he owes hundreds of thousands! It’s terrifying.”
Lin Zhixia swallowed the sweet, melted ice water and asked, “Isn’t his family pretty well-off? How could they not afford to pay it?”
“His dad is a hopeless gambler; even if he owned a bank, he’d gamble it all away.” Sun Mingzhu finished her popsicle and pulled out a bag of spiced sunflower seeds to crack open. “My grandma was right—people from the South District just aren’t as hardworking and down-to-earth as us folks in the North District.”
Two days later, Lin Zhixia ran an errand for a customer at the internet café, heading to a long-established braised-food shop in the South District to buy sweet-skin duck.
The shop had just finished cooking its afternoon batch of braised meats, and a line of about a dozen customers had formed outside.
As Lin Zhixia shuffled slowly along with the queue, he spotted Sheng Guangquan sitting under the eaves of the mahjong parlor next door, his head hanging low, alongside a man dressed like an office worker. Lin Zhixia politely swapped places with the elderly woman standing behind him and moved to the corner against the wall; with one ear, he listened to the old lady’s praise, while the other caught the conversation between Sheng Guangquan and the others.
“I’ve already paid back everything I could… but this last two hundred thousand… Old Ma, we’ve known each other for so many years—please, just give me a little more time…”
The bespectacled man sighed heavily. “Old Sheng, it’s not that I’m pressuring you; it’s Brother Yang who wants the money back. If I hadn’t pleaded with him, the person coming to collect wouldn’t be me—it would be the thugs working under him. I don’t know exactly what methods they use, but they certainly wouldn’t sit down and have a civil conversation with you like I am, right?”
“But I really can’t scrape together another cent…” Sheng Guangquan rubbed his hands together; he looked like a slab of fatty meat roasting over a fire, sweating grease all over. “I gave you all my savings, and I even emptied out my old woman’s secret stash. You couldn’t even find three catties of scrap metal in my inn, and those women there aren’t even mine…”
“You’ve got a son, though.” The man in glasses adjusted his frames.
This man is nervous. Lin Zhixia sensed it instinctively.
Sheng Guangquan stared fixedly at Old Ma, remaining silent.
Old Ma decided to stop beating around the bush and smiled. “I’ve always treated Xiao Lang like my own son; I want to look after him and groom him. He’d only need to stay with me for a year or two. That way, you wouldn’t have to keep supporting this ‘bonus’ son of yours. Isn’t that a win-win?”
Sheng Guangquan knew he was no saint, but he had never imagined a day would come when he’d sell his son to pay off a debt.
Even if the boy wasn’t his biological son, he was still just a kid on the verge of adulthood. But if he didn’t do this, that two-hundred-thousand-yuan debt would snowball with compound interest, growing larger by the day. Given Brother Yang’s methods, there was no guarantee his little inn wouldn’t be swallowed up.
When that happened, he wouldn’t just be unable to support his son—he wouldn’t even be able to support himself!
“Ma Fusheng, you’re a piece of trash!” Sheng Guangquan hissed, lowering his voice. “Don’t give me that ‘helping to raise my son’ nonsense—you just want to use my son as a plaything!”
Being cursed at like that only made Old Ma more certain of his plan.
“I’m no good? If you agree to this, what does that make you?” He took a sip of tea. “Old Sheng, we’re all just scraping by in the cracks of society; if you don’t act like an animal, you can’t survive in a place like this. How do you know Xiao Lang wouldn’t want to go? I can send him to school, I won’t beat him, and I’ll even buy him gifts. He’d have a much better life with me than with you. I’m actually worried he might not want to leave when the time comes.”
A torrent of vile profanity spewed from Sheng Guangquan’s mouth.
Yet, for all his cursing, he stopped short of explicitly refusing.
Old Ma’s smile grew even broader.
Lin Zhixia, having bought the roast duck, cast a long, searching look at the bespectacled man before pedaling away on her bicycle.