Chapter 23
The sparrows outside the window perched on the telephone pole and called without stopping. Even the cicadas would call themselves to death. The leaves of the banyan tree grew, then fell, and after falling, grew again.
Qin Yao packed up her things from school. Cao Manman leaned against the edge of her desk and asked if she wanted to go to her house to play after school. Qin Yao thought for a moment and said she still had something to do.
Cao Manman seemed rather disappointed and let out a long sigh. “How come you have something to do every single day? Last time, I wanted to go to your house to celebrate your birthday with you, and you said no then, too.”
“Next time.” Qin Yao patted the back of her hand and said with a smile, “When I have some free time, I’ll definitely go out with you guys.”
After leaving the school gates, the larger part of the crowd flowed toward the city center on the right, while a smaller portion turned left to wait for the bus. Qin Yao had to go straight, winding her way out through a small alley opposite the school before slipping into an even narrower lane.
The bricks and tiles of the walls had all been coated with gray cement. A section of the old road had been repaired some time ago, and after being covered with cement, it had become littered with footprints of all sizes. Once it dried, the surface turned uneven and pitted.
Qin Yao lived in the room at the far right on the first floor. There was a washbasin outside the door. She scrubbed away the ink marks on her hands, stood at her doorway for a few seconds, then looked up. Without hesitating for even two seconds, she ran up to the second floor, “thump thump thump,” and knocked on Old Man Sun’s door.
The old man moved very slowly, as though it took him a moment to react before he came to open the door. He picked at the lock, first pulling open a wooden door, then twisting open a green metal door.
After Qin Yao went inside, she first checked the entire house from front to back. The soles of her shoes thudded against the floorboards. Then she went to the drawer to check the passbook and asked Old Man Sun, “You didn’t bring anyone home today, did you?”
Sun Fusheng was like a child. “I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find Xiao Yao... Turns out you went to school. You didn’t even tell your grandpa when you went out, you child.”
Qin Yao was unfazed. “We don’t live together. You were still asleep when I went to school.”
Sun Fusheng lifted the mosquito cover from the table and shuffled unsteadily toward the cupboard to take out a bowl. “I saved some duck feet. Eat, eat.”
Qin Yao waved her hand. “I’m not eating. I still have to go to work at the shop. I just came over to take a look at you. Don’t go outside again and bring some Xiao Yao home or something. The ones you bring back are all thieves.”
Whether Sun Fusheng understood her or not, no one knew. He did not even nod, simply standing there blankly with a very large mosquito cover in his hands.
“You’re leaving just like that? Doesn’t Xiao Yao like eating duck feet?”
Standing in the doorway, Qin Yao turned back and looked at him again. After pondering for a few seconds, she smiled and said, “Just save one for me. I’ll come back and eat it tomorrow.”
After going downstairs, she first put her schoolbag in her room. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a little mouse gnawing on paper on the bookshelf. Qin Yao frowned, quietly took hold of the broom, and struck with perfect accuracy, then used a piece of cardboard to wrap up the little mouse and throw it outside. This was the third mouse she had killed this month.
Qin Yao suspected there was a mouse hole somewhere in this room and resolved to search properly for it tomorrow and seal it up. Otherwise, the few books her mother had left behind would all be gnawed to pieces.
The convenience store where she worked was on Mati Street. It was called Sanhe Convenience Store, a small business. Usually, only during the peak tourist season, when people happened to dig the place up from some obscure corner of their travel guides and make their way to the alleys of Shancheng, would they come by to look around, take pictures of the red walls and stairs, and check in. On ordinary days, there were very few people, especially at night, when there was hardly a soul in sight.
Qin Yao tied on her apron and stood behind the counter. A math unit test lay on the countertop. She was working the night shift until five in the morning, so she yawned as she used the barrel of her pen to press against her lower lip and think through the problems.
Although it was summer, the temperature still dropped considerably after night fell. The moment the shop curtain was pushed aside, the cool wind from the alley came creeping inside. Qin Yao shivered, gripped her pen, and continued plugging numbers into formulas. Without even looking up, she mechanically said, “Welcome.”
The person who came in was very thin, drifting inside as straight and stiff as a ghost. He pulled the hood of his black sweatshirt over his head and headed straight for the shelves at the back, making Qin Yao suspect he was a thief.
She craned her neck and kept looking toward the shelves. The person kept both hands tucked into the front pocket of his hoodie. Only after he had made his choice did he take them out. The sleeves were pulled so far down that only a few fingers could be seen.
He came to the counter to pay. Qin Yao scanned the barcode and put his purchase into a bag for him. When she looked up, she saw that his right eye beneath the brim of his hood was covered in a layer of bruising.
“Thank you... for your patronage.” His voice paused for a moment. He reached out to take the bag, and as his sleeve slipped downward, Qin Yao saw that his wrist bones were also mottled with blue and purple bruises.
She put down her pen, and in fragments, her mind recalled the day she had climbed out through the window at home. Sun Hongping had been covered in bruises like these, too.
That scene was like moss gradually spreading across a stone slab, instantly taking over all her thoughts and emotions.
“Do you want an ice pack?” Qin Yao clenched her fingers, walked a few steps to the left, and pointed. “It’s in the far-left corner, in the freezer where they sell ice cream.”
“Thank you,” he said.
When he returned to the register carrying the ice pack, Qin Yao noticed that after paying, he had stopped there for a while. His gaze swept over her face before slowly coming to rest.
Qin Yao was puzzled and thought he still wanted to buy something. But he opened his mouth, then closed it again. After remaining silent for a few seconds, he finally said, “Nothing.”
He was the only customer that night. After he left, the shop fell quiet again. Qin Yao turned her attention back to the difficult math problems on the test paper. After writing a few lines, she made herself a cup of coffee to stay awake.
At five in the morning, another employee came to take over the shift. Qin Yao left with her bag on her back, taking several bags of day-old bread with her.
Zhongxin Road was close to this area. She walked along, stopping every now and then, her eyes shifting a few times. When she remembered something, she went to the complaint box outside the foot massage parlor where Sun Hongping had once worked and rummaged through it. She discovered that the letter she had mailed a few days earlier had already been collected.
The address that person had left for her was “No. 136, Mati Street,” but Qin Yao knew very well that no such place existed here. No. 136, Zhongxin Road was where her mother had once worked, but it had been shut down long ago, and there would be no such person as “Duanweiyu,” either.
With a piece of bread between her teeth, Qin Yao closed the lid of the mailbox and looked toward the end of the long street. All she could see were lush yellow-fruit trees disappearing into the morning mist. She did not know who had taken the letter that could never reach its destination.
/
To Broken-Tailed Fish:
Hello. I’m “A Melancholy Blue Corpse,” the person who wrote to you last time asking for help.
I asked the community workers, and they said you were only a volunteer who had come to help, and that you left after doing it for a week. I mailed this letter to the address you left, but I don’t know whether you’ll be able to receive it.
I read your letter from beginning to end, every word and every sentence. Thank you for talking me through it. Your views are different from those of many people, and they helped me a great deal. Because whenever other people hear that my mother worked in a place like that, they only use some vile words to judge her. To be honest, when I read your letter, I really wanted to cry.
You made me understand that it isn’t only people who stand at the peak, shining brightly, who have the right to be loved. For an ordinary person of mediocre ability, “loving yourself” is the greatest question of life.
My mother gave up so much for me. Apart from my grandfather back in our hometown, she was the only one who would call me “Xiao Yao.” But now she’s gone. My mother left me some money and told me to escape and rent a place somewhere outside. Because she always regretted never having had a proper education herself, she hoped that I could become a cultured, well-traveled girl, so that at the very least I would have the confidence to live on my own.
I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t be repeating all these things to you. I already poured out all my troubles to you in my previous letter. In your reply, you also told me about your own circumstances. It seems the two of us have suffered much the same kind of pain, as though neither of us has had it any better than the other. But you don’t need to cut open your own wounds to comfort me, because that must hurt, too. There really is no need for it. I could tell that you were very sad, and that you pressed down hard when you wrote.
You and I have both tasted the pain of losing someone closest to us. That pain is like rheumatism that flares up every rainy season. It rots in the gaps between your bones. Wanting to forget it is no different from having to cut away the rotting flesh clinging to your bones. So I don’t think you need to force yourself to forget. You don’t have to forget everything about you and your brother. I don’t want to forget everything about me and my mother, either.
If you can, perhaps you could escape, like I did, from that suffocating family and school. It seems your parents didn’t raise you like a normal child, either, so there’s no need to feel guilty about it. Of course, I don’t think you would feel guilty anyway.
Although everyone knows that you should fight back when you encounter difficulties, for people who are truly in the middle of hardship, it is difficult. Most people simply don’t have the ability to fight back. So if you can escape, then escape. Leave the people your age who bully you, leave your parents, and run to somewhere you can feel at ease.
I’ve already escaped. It’s just that sometimes I still feel a little lonely... There isn’t much I can talk about with my friends, either. The gaps between our lives are simply too wide.
But when I write letters to you, I feel a little more relaxed. Writing by hand seems to make it easier to express my troubles and what is in my heart than typing on a phone.
I don’t know whether these messy, rambling words can bring you even the slightest bit of comfort. Sorry, I’m not very good with words. Anyway, I hope you can live well.
One more thing, a little off topic. Recently, I found an old photograph of my mother at home. The moment I saw the photograph, I suddenly felt that a life like this really wasn’t such a big deal after all. Why had I thought, time and time again, that I couldn’t go on living?
It seems people are always very easy to knock down, and just as easily brought back to life by some tiny matter the size of a bean sprout.
...Although some of this may seem disjointed, what I actually want to argue is that people can also live by ruminating on those glittering memories.
A Melancholy Blue Corpse, awaiting Broken-Tailed Fish’s reply.
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