Volume 1: Chapter 2

 Chapter II

When Xiaobao was eleven months old, still a little ball in open-crotch pants, and had just learned to walk a few steps with her hands tied to her chest, her father died. His death was quite brutal, in a car accident – he was walking home after finishing his night shift in the dark. On the way, he thought of taking a shortcut when no one was around, so he rode his two-wheeled bicycle onto the motorway. As soon as he got on, he was hit by a truck and thrown several meters away.

He and the truck were flattened together and could never be recovered. Wei Qian’s family once again became an orphan with a widow. This is actually nothing, there are so many orphans and widows in the world – for example, the family of Ma Zi who sells fried dough sticks every morning.

Others also wiped their tears, straightened their backs, and lived like human beings. But Wei Qian soon discovered with horror that his beautiful and kind “mother” had turned into a fucking evil woman overnight.

In addition to being sad, she seemed to have decided that her life was more bitter than the bitter herbs and she didn’t want to live anymore, so she became more and more desperate. She was gifted in this area and had rich experience, so she was really good at dying. Wei Qian lived in fear every day – he had to go to school, find ways to get money, take care of his little sister who couldn’t even speak, and be on guard against the crazy woman who could explode at any moment.

Later, Wei Qian didn’t even dare to leave Song Xiao Bao alone at home. Every day when he went to school, he would send Xiao Bao to San Pang’s house upstairs or Ma Zi’s house, who ran a small restaurant, and ask San Pang’s mother or Ma Zi’s mother to take care of Xiao Bao for a day, and then pick Xiao Bao up after school in the evening.

Wei Qian was exhausted, and the pressure of life made him unable to lift his head. Even an adult couldn’t bear it, let alone a child.

For a while, Wei Qian secretly hid a knife. Every night when he went to bed, he held the knife in one hand and held Xiao Bao in the other. When he saw the knife, he wanted to rush out and kill his mother. When he saw Xiao Bao, he had to calm down, lie back on the bed, pat her back gently, and coax the little girl who was about to wake up to sleep again.

He also had a little sister, who was a living thing, a person, and had the same miserable life as him. Born in such a family, he was the eldest brother and had to raise her.

Hamlet struggled with a long question, “To be or not to be”, and Wei Qian also struggled with an even longer question in his childhood – “To kill his mother or not to kill her”.

He lived like a dog, but he still had the mood to struggle with such a philosophical question. He might be destined to be a great man in the future.

During this period, San Pang’s mother and Ma Zi’s mother helped him a lot. San Pang and Ma Zi were both his childhood friends. San Pang’s family was urbane and vulgar, and Ma Zi and his mother were cowards who couldn’t even fart – there were no high-end people in society living next to them – but the neighbours who were urbane and vulgar were kind-hearted, and the cowardly and silent little people were willing to help him as long as he asked.

San Pang’s mother was not as angry as Ma Zi’s mother, but she couldn’t stand it sometimes. She was so indignant that she almost wanted to spit on Wei Qian’s mother’s face, but she didn’t do it after all.

This is nothing. Wei Qian knew she wouldn’t dare to do that, because although San Pang’s mother was poor and tyrannical, she was a decent woman after all, and decent women wouldn’t dare to easily provoke whores, just like decent people wouldn’t easily provoke hooligans.

Later, Wei Qian’s mother finally died as expected.

Wei Qian calmly accepted this fact, he knew that she had not wanted to live for a long time. Wei Qian’s mother was awakened from the happiest life in her life. The depression in her heart was incomprehensible to others. She could not get over it and could not adapt to it. So naturally she fell into depravity again and returned to her old ways.

Later, it became worse – she took drugs. She first accompanied the guests to smoke white powder, and then had sex with them in a hazy way. When the guests were happy, they would put tips in her bra and underwear. She also relied on this moment to escape the reality that she could not resist.

Later, her drug addiction could not be restrained and she began to inject herself with trembling muscles.

During that period, Wei Qian’s house had a lot of needles. Usually, she was afraid that Xiao Bao would see her putting needles in her mouth, so Wei Qian had to clean the house three or four times a day and collect and destroy the needles when he saw them.

After his mother died, Wei Qian burned all her things in a fire – she died of AIDS, which was transmitted by needles. You will pay for what you have done. This is the motto that the gangsters use to show off, and it is also the last words that the woman left for Wei Qian and his sister.

When Wei Qian’s mother was dying, she looked like a monster. She was as thin as a skeleton, her hair was almost gone, her face was severely deformed, her eyes, which were originally larger than others, bulged out, and her skin was ulcerated in large areas. There was no trace of youth and beauty. She was just a dirty and smelly toad. The toad was a dying person, and her words were kind.

She looked at her two children with almost tender eyes and said frankly: “Alas, you will pay for what you have done. I knew this day would come.”

Wei Qian sneered, thinking she was talking nonsense. If she had known that this day would come, she should not have gone out to fool around, take drugs, and even more so, she should not have dressed up as a demon and worked as a hostess in a nightclub for a few dollars and curiosity.

She should have been like countless crane-like girls, wearing a school uniform that might not fit her well, with a row of silly bangs on her forehead, sitting upright in the classroom listening to the teacher’s lecture on analytic geometry, and then getting into a university, working, getting married or being single... no matter what, she should live like a decent person.

Even if she was particularly stupid and could not learn anything, at least she could still work as a nanny, do odd jobs, sell breakfast... Then she might live to be ninety years old and see her grandson get married and have children. But she didn’t want to do that. She chose to be a lazy crazy woman, and had that flower-like appearance for nothing.

Wei Qian realized that he had finally gotten rid of this crazy woman and would never see her again. He felt uncontrollably sad, as if he saw a lot of life and time running past him at lightning speed, and he didn’t even have time to smell the exhaust gas before everything disappeared. But he didn’t want to show any emotion.

He thought that he deserved to hate this woman, and all his feelings for her were weak and cheap, so Wei Qian forced himself to think like this – she deserved it.

Wei Qian ordered himself to recall his five years of hellish life, and asked her with his deepest indifference: “Bitch, why did you give birth to us?”

The woman thought for a long time with a confused look, and replied: “Who knows?”

Wei Qian was extremely angry. If it weren’t for her “who knows”, maybe he would have been reincarnated as a rich second-generation or official second-generation in this life, and now he might be a decent person!

So he gently pushed her on the shoulder and cursed, “Fuck you.”

It was really just a gentle push – who knew that she would die the next second. She twitched all over, her eyes opened as big as ping-pong balls, and then she gasped for a full five minutes, gasping like a shrunken bellows, and finally succeeded in dying after a bloody crime.

That year, Wei Qian was less than thirteen years old, still a green boy, just in the second year of junior high school, with a little sister with two lines of snot – Xiao Bao was five years old, didn’t know shit, and could only stare at her big brother and mother blankly.

Wei Qian let the woman’s body be exhibited at home for two days, and it even stank, and he didn’t think about how to deal with it. The place where the dead sleep is more expensive than the living, and even if they sold their brother and sister, they couldn’t afford a cemetery plot – not to mention that Wei Qian didn’t even plan to pay for the crematorium – his mother was already dead, and the dead could be made do with anything, but he had to live, he had to pay tuition, and he had to support his sister.

Finally, Wei Qian decided to find an auspicious day, wrap the body with a broken mat, and throw it directly into the garbage dump, letting it decompose and return to nature. But before he could do it, Wei Qian’s mother’s sisters found their family and proved that even Qin Hui had some friends.

They pooled money to handle her funeral and sent her away. One of the women told Wei Qian that she was born in an unpresentable way, so she shouldn’t die in such an unpresentable way.

The little money left from the funeral was left to Wei Qian and his sister Xiao Bao. Wei Qian also rummaged through the boxes and sold some jewellery left by the woman. It turned out that these things were the woman’s life... no, more precious than life. Her precious son had long disliked them, and as soon as she closed her eyes, he immediately shook them out and sold them.

With this meagre savings, Wei Qian lived a life of supporting a little burden. After more than a year of hardship, he graduated from junior high school. The high school entrance examination lasted three days.

On the last day, Wei Qian handed in his test paper and rode home. He was very serious about studying. Even working odd jobs and being a gangster did not affect his grades, because school was his only connection with the words “future”, “hope”, and “decent life”, and he tried his best to grasp them.

Along the way, Wei Qian bought a few steamed buns and parked his car in a simple bicycle shed built in a large area of tube buildings. He walked home with his things and saw the little kid. The little kid had thin hands and feet and was skinny, which made his head look big. He was a little taller than Xiao Bao, but not much taller. Maybe he was about the same age as her.

He was wearing an adult’s “two-bar” vest, naked underneath, without shoes, and his vest was full of soup and all kinds of things, looking like a beautiful motherland, picking up garbage to eat next to a garbage dump in a small alley.

Such a small thing, no one knows how it survived, even wild dogs bullied it.

When Wei Qian passed by, the cub was confronting a dog in a small alley – for half a can of beef can thrown away by others.

The wild dog was skinny, but big, with red eyes. I don’t know if it had rabies,

But it was able to survive when the dog-beating campaign in the city was in full swing, probably a hero among dogs.

Originally, Wei Qian didn’t intend to pay attention to it. Such a cub can be seen every month or so. If it is accidentally born, it will survive without both parents, and it will almost die after a while. But when Wei Qian glanced over there, the cub who was still in love with the dog happened to look up at him.

The wild dog seized the opportunity at this moment. Seeing that its opponent was distracted, it immediately pounced on him. The kid was probably being chased and blocked for a long time, so he reacted very quickly and jumped to the side to avoid it. So the wild dog fell at the feet of the young Wei Qian.

The beast had red eyes and a wheezing sound came from its nostrils. It seemed to be in a hurry and could not distinguish between friend and foe. It barked at an innocent crowd and barked its big yellow teeth. Wei Qian was thinking about how to solve the tuition problem if he passed the high school entrance examination. He didn’t intend to pay attention to it and raised his legs to leave.

As a result, I don’t know what the beast was thinking. It actually lowered its head and bit his ankle. Wei Qian quickly retracted his foot and missed. Wei Qian was thirteen or fourteen years old at the time. His father and mother were dead and he had a sister who could only runny nose.

Although he performed well in the exam, he was not sure if he would pass the exam. His situation was miserable. If a child who grew up like this doesn’t have a cynical temperament, it’s not normal – because that means he’s too good at acting and will probably become a highly intelligent antisocial person in the future.

So the middle school boy, who was full of worries, got anxious on the spot and kicked the wild dog with his leg.

He grew up with gangsters and was used to fighting. The kick was heavy and kicked the big dog directly against the wall. The wild dog still refused to give in and bit Wei Qian’s shoes again – fortunately, the shoes were plastic shoes he picked up. Although they were hard and airtight, they were strong and didn’t bite through.

Wei Qian shook it off, but he couldn’t shake off the dead dog, so he stepped on the wild dog’s belly with his foot, picked up a brick from the side, and smashed it on the head of this dog hero. After one hit, the hero let go. After two hits, the hero’s head was broken and bleeding, and he completely became a ghost hero.

People and dogs, at this time and place, are actually the same – just like some people wear suits and have nice houses and cars, and some dogs have regular grooming to keep their skin shiny and smooth. And some people and dogs are destined to fight for their lives and bleed and sweat on such a garbage-filled path for some ridiculous and pathetic reasons.

The same person has different fates, and the same dog also has different fates.