Not only is it more real than Young and Dangerous, its educational value is also several worlds higher than Young and Dangerous.
My highest respect to its author !!!
I posted this before. Reposting it now.
Please bump it after reading. Otherwise it will forever be Loading ...
-------------------------------------------------------
The ending is:
Xiaowei was hacked to death by the Northeast gang.
Ayuan was arrested and executed by gunshot.
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<>
NO1
Xiaowei asked Liuzi, “Yesterday I heard you came to my house looking for me. What was it?” After a pause, he said, “You brat skipped class again yesterday?”
“Brother Xiaowei, I’m not studying anymore. Our principal is a damn idiot…” Before he could finish, Liuzi got a hard rap on the head from Xiaowei. “Does your dad know? If he knew, wouldn’t he beat you to death!” Xiaowei’s family and Liuzi’s family were neighbors, very close. Liji was Xiaowei’s sworn brother, not much of a talker. He walked over and kicked the guy next to me. “Go buy me a pack of cigarettes. I’ll play for a while.”
I didn’t want to play anyway, so I said to Liji, “I’ll go buy them. You take my place.” I stood up and walked toward the cigarette stand nearby. I heard Xiaowei behind me say, “Another one of your little brothers? Haven’t seen him before. Where’s he from? Bring him over to my place to hang out sometime.”
Before Liuzi could answer, two yellow vans screeched to a stop beside the group playing cards. The doors slid open all at once, and more than ten people got out, about my age. Several of them had newspaper-wrapped bundles slung across their shoulders. They moved extremely fast. Before the card players even reacted, they were already surrounded from all sides.
Liuzi’s face went pale green, and he looked around in panic.
By then I was already outside the encirclement. I saw one of the guys from the vans speak up: “Who’s Liuzi?”
I looked carefully at him. Big head, very yellow hair, short, lots of freckles on his face. I knew him. We had been in the same class in elementary school in the western suburbs. His nickname was “Big Head.” I had no idea why he was here today.
Liuzi didn’t dare say a word.
Big Head asked again, “Who’s called Xiaowei?”
Xiaowei didn’t say anything. He slowly stood up and looked at him.
“Brother Wei, I’m…” As he said this, he stretched out a hand. (I figured he wanted to shake hands.) Just as Xiaowei was hesitating, Big Head “stretched out” another thing—a foot—straight into Xiaowei’s left ribs with a brutal kick!
The sudden heavy blow gave everyone no time to react. Everyone on our side was stunned in an instant. Xiaowei staggered backward several steps until he retreated right in front of me. The panic in his eyes flashed only for a moment before disappearing. Before he could even steady himself, two gleaming long knives had already chopped into his shoulder! So that was what had been inside those newspaper bundles—long knives! Xiaowei fell backward, flailing both hands to keep his balance. His right hand tore a long rip in my shirt, then with a bang he fell beside me. Right after that, countless long knives and leather shoes rained down on his body and face…
The few guys playing cards over there had already been hacked into scattering in all directions. Only Liuzi was left, surrounded by three people. One short guy grabbed Liuzi by the hair with one hand and yanked his head down hard while kicking his face over and over. The other two kicked him all over. Liuzi bent over, covering his face with both hands, howling. Before long, the short guy’s sneakers were covered in blood, and he got mad. “***, I just bought these shoes today.” Then he kicked Liuzi onto the bench by the street.
Xiaowei didn’t make a sound. He just kept using his arms to block the slashing knives and the rain of punches and kicks, trying to get back up. I wanted to help him up, but my hands and feet were so weak they wouldn’t obey me. All I could do was tremble and shuffle one step forward.
Big Head noticed I was moving and looked up at me warily. He hesitated a bit. I think he recognized me too. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.”
“If it’s nothing then get the hell out. What the fuck are you staring at, looking to die?”
I suddenly got mad. *** I originally wasn’t planning to help either side, and Big Head pretending not to know me suited me just fine. But this guy who used to be my classmate was actually cursing me—back then how many times hadn’t he copied my homework and exams?
So right away I answered, “Yeah, yeah, I’m leaving,” while looking around for something I could hand Xiaowei as a weapon. But the area was bare. There wasn’t even a brick.
By now Big Head and his bunch had already stopped beating Xiaowei, but the short guy’s side was still going. Liuzi had curled up under the bench, letting out miserable screams nonstop. It was an old-fashioned bench, made of several long wooden slats lined up one by one, painted dark green. Liuzi was balled up underneath it, trembling all over. There wasn’t much anyone could do to him there.
Big Head put away his knife and said to Xiaowei, “Today we came for Liuzi. But we heard Brother Wei was here too, so we stopped by to say hello. You’re so damn tough, I’ve wanted to come meet you for a long time. We’re all from the western suburbs. I just started mixing in this life, nowhere near your level. Brother Wei, you don’t know me. If you want to find me, just ask around for Big Head!”
Xiaowei was covered in blood. His left arm looked like it was nearly broken, hanging limp, the flesh flipped outward. The wound was about as big as a child’s mouth, exposing a section of white bone. His shoulder and leg were covered in long cuts. Xiaowei wiped the blood off his face with his right hand and smiled. “Sure.”
Big Head brandished his knife and walked toward Liuzi’s bench. Liuzi wasn’t getting beaten at that moment, but suddenly he screamed even louder than before, with terror trembling in his voice.
“Liuzi, Yanzi from the western suburbs sent us. You know what this is about, right?”
Liuzi didn’t answer, only making muffled sobbing sounds.
“Bastard, I’m asking you a question!” Big Head got impatient after asking several times.
“That really wasn’t me!” Liuzi hurriedly stammered in defense.
“*** it wasn’t you!” The short guy suddenly snatched the long knife from Big Head’s hand and viciously stabbed it down through the gap in the bench. Liuzi’s blood splashed out at once, and several more knives stabbed down right after it.
At that moment I was beside Xiaowei. When he saw Liuzi being stabbed, the corner of his eye twitched. He turned his head and looked at me. I seemed to understand what he meant… Suddenly I felt my keychain—a metal chain about one centimeter wide and half a meter long. I didn’t know if it was sturdy, but there was no time to think. I quietly tossed him this only metal object, barely enough to count as a weapon.
Most of them were gathered around the bench then. Xiaowei suddenly sprang over like a swift wildcat, even though his left arm was still dangling and swaying. (Today I really saw what an old-school hardcase was!)
There was a stone pedestal on the right, slightly raised above the ground. Xiaowei first stepped onto it, used it for leverage, and launched himself into the air, pouncing down toward the short guy in the crowd.
I had thought Xiaowei would definitely swing the chain in a wide arc and lash out, but instead he threw his whole body at him. I sighed to myself. That would put him at such a disadvantage—wasn’t that basically like going in barehanded?
By the time the short guy noticed, Xiaowei was already above him. No one could tell what happened. They only saw Xiaowei pin the short guy underneath him, and then the short guy let out a scream. I still remember that scream to this day—very low, full of despair.
The people around them pulled Xiaowei away and slammed him hard onto the ground. The short guy staggered back up and fell to his knees. My family’s security door key was stuck in his left eye socket.
Everyone was dumbfounded, including both sides and myself. I never in my dreams imagined Xiaowei would use my “key” like that. I stared blankly as my keychain swung back and forth on the short guy’s face, my mind completely blank.
No one on either side said a word. Only the short guy’s low moans and the crying of Liuzi, who was curled under the bench not knowing what had happened, echoed around.
Some of the other side were so frightened they slowly crouched down while backing away. Everyone’s eyes kept darting between Xiaowei and the short guy. Two people went over and dragged the short guy backward by his shirt. As he moved, the key came loose from the wound, blood flowing like a little stream. The wound was a bloody mess, impossible to tell what it looked like. With a clatter, a ring of keys dropped onto the concrete. The short guy screamed in pain, slapped the person dragging him hard across the face, and at the same time cursed in Xiaowei’s direction: “Bastard, I ***, I’m gonna kill you.”
“Carry him into the van!” Big Head said, forcing himself to stay calm, keeping his voice even. Then he picked up his knife and walked toward Xiaowei….
“Liuzi, run! The area cops are coming!” In a flash of inspiration, I rushed over, yanked Liuzi out from under the bench, and dragged him running in the opposite direction. Liuzi had been stabbed three times, all in the back. His T-shirt was soaked through with blood over a huge patch.
It was dusk then, evening falling. A group of people were rushing toward us in the distance, too far away to see who they were. Big Head may really have thought the police were coming. Or even if he didn’t believe me, maybe he didn’t want to drag things out anymore. He ran with his knife to the driver’s seat of one van, and the others all scrambled aboard too.
Liuzi and I ran dozens of meters, then looked back and saw the other side already starting to flee, so we stopped. Liuzi sat down right where he was, gasping heavily. There was a wheezing sound in his breathing—maybe his lung was injured. By then the group running from afar had already rushed up close. It turned out Liji had brought a whole bunch of people. Only then did I realize I hadn’t seen Liji the whole time.
The other side was scrambling into the van in panic. In the end, two people were left helping the short guy aboard—one pulling from inside, one pushing from below. Just as the short guy got in, before the guy below could climb up, Liji and his people had already charged to the back of the van. Bricks and wooden clubs smashed the rear windshield. Big Head had already started the van and sped off in a flash. Only the pale-faced boy who had been helping the short guy into the van was left behind, still standing there, looking in panic as more than ten people and more than ten knives closed in on him. He was so scared he couldn’t make a sound.
The boy looked a little thin and weak, with beautiful big eyes like a girl’s, thick eyebrows, lips pressed tightly together, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with nervousness. Wasn’t this—Ayuan!
Liji raised his watermelon knife high. Under the streetlight it flashed brightly. I was so shocked my hair seemed to stand on end, and I blurted out: “Don’t, don’t…”
“Liji.” At the same time, I heard Xiaowei’s voice. “He never made a move.”
Only then did Liji remember Xiaowei was still leaning by the wall. Liji put away the knife and grabbed Ayuan by the hair. The others also grabbed his collar and arms and dragged him over to Xiaowei. By then people had already helped Xiaowei onto the bench. I also helped Liuzi sit down on the bench.
“You know him?” Liji’s gloomy blade-like face slowly turned toward me. He pointed at Ayuan, cocked his head slightly, and looked at me with interest.
“Yeah.” He made my skin crawl. I answered quietly.
Smack—a loud slap exploded against my right ear, followed by burning pain and a sharp ringing. Liji really hit hard as hell.
I lowered my head to the side and looked away without saying a word.
“Hey, come here. What’s your name?” Xiaowei called to me from a distance then.
“Xiao Zhe.” I walked over to him as I answered.
“You know that Big Head?” Xiaowei’s eyes suddenly became extremely bright. It wasn’t exactly murderous, but it still made me shiver. I had no idea how he could tell.
“Yeah.” I had no choice but to tell the truth.
Liji kicked me in the stomach, and I dropped onto the ground on my ass, cursing the eighteen generations of Liji’s ancestors in my heart.
“How did they know Xiaowei was here?” Liji asked.
“How the fuck would I know!” I got angry too. So they thought I had colluded with Big Head? Then I’d be beaten to death right away.
“Enough, let’s go. Don’t really bring the cops over,” Xiaowei said. “I don’t think Liuzi’s doing well. Hospital first.”
Then he said to me, “Your buddy here never made a move today, and I won’t touch him. In a bit, you and him go back first. Help me ask around why the western suburbs bunch came today. I’ll come find you at school tomorrow. Thanks. Are you and Liuzi in the same class?”
I told Xiaowei which class I was in, all the while beating a drum in my heart: tomorrow was when I’d really be dead. They all thought I had colluded with the western suburbs crowd.
When I turned my head, I saw Liji smiling happily at me. My heart turned even colder.
“Hey, what was your name again? Xiao Zhe, right?” Xiaowei said. “Liji, from now on Xiao Zhe is my little brother. Look after him more.”
Liji looked at Xiaowei in confusion. Xiaowei smiled. Liji turned his head back, but the look in his eyes at me was still cold.
On the way home, I rode my bike with Ayuan on the back. The joy of meeting again after so long had been replaced by the lingering terror after the shock. Neither of us said much. By the time we got home, it was already 8 at night, and we were both starving. My dad had gone to a construction site, so only my mom was home. The moment I came in I started shouting, “Mom, I’m starving to death! Look who’s here!”
“Late every day, late every day. All you know is basketball. Let’s see what rank you get at finals! Why don’t you dare act like this when your dad’s home?” Mom nagged as she came out of the kitchen carrying a glass of water. “Oh my, Xiaoyuan. How come you came today?”
My parents and Ayuan’s parents were coworkers. My mom had always liked Ayuan and his little sister ever since they were young. I think maybe because she didn’t have a daughter herself. She was quite envious of people who had both a son and a daughter.
Mom pulled Ayuan onto the sofa to sit down and then started a whole string of questions: “How are your dad and mom? What did you take here? What grade is your little sister in now? Have you eaten dinner? Is your family moving here next month? … Huh? You came all the way to the southern suburbs to play this late—aren’t you going to class tomorrow?”—my teacher mother had finally sharply noticed the problem.
“Ah, A-auntie, it’s like this, tomorrow our school’s teachers get comp time for Teachers’ Day.” Ayuan, always clever and good at pleasing adults, had finally returned to normal (his years of lying hadn’t gone to waste). He answered the sensitive question and shifted the topic perfectly at the same time.
Sure enough, Mom followed the line of thought I expected: “See, schools in the western suburbs really do treat teachers well. They get comp time for Teachers’ Day. Here we have graduating classes and we work overtime every day organizing review sessions. On Sunday I still have to go to Auntie Zhang’s place to get exam papers. How could I have time to rest?” Auntie Zhang was Mom’s classmate and taught at a key city middle school. Mom often went to get exam questions from the key school to tutor her students.
“Exactly, it’s just unfair now. Our teachers even got a bunch of stuff too!…” Ayuan was getting a little carried away, and I gave him a look. Only then did he stop.
“Mom, hurry up, we’re starving to death! Every day it’s either exams or your students.”
Before long, the food was on the table. Ayuan and I wolfed it down, occasionally looking at each other and grinning stupidly. Yeah—just making it back safe was good enough.
Mom had already eaten, so she happily sat nearby watching us eat. She kept putting food in Ayuan’s bowl while criticizing me. My mom had a special talent: she could spot every good point in each of my classmates who came to our house, then compare them to my shortcomings. Today was no exception. Even though she hadn’t seen Ayuan in years, she still had things to say:
“Look how clean Xiaoyuan dresses. You’re this old already and still don’t wash your own clothes. Every day you’re like a mud monkey, not careful at all. You want me to keep washing for you until you’re thirty?…”
I looked at Ayuan. This guy really was clean. He was even wearing a pair of white pants. I thought to myself: how could I not be dirty? I got kicked to the ground—if you looked closely there was probably still blood smeared on me! The moment I thought of the blood on me, I lost my appetite—I had to wash the blood out of my clothes fast, or if Mom found out I’d never be able to explain it. Right, and there was also that blood-soaked key.
I hurried back to my room, changed into another pair of pants as fast as possible, quickly washed the bloody part of the dirty pants, then tossed them into the washing machine. “Mom, I put my pants in the washer. Help me wash them.”
“You’ve improved today, at least you know to put your clothes in the washing machine yourself,” Mom answered from outside.
That night Ayuan stayed in my little room, and we talked until very late. We chatted wildly about everything under the sun, and I finally understood the cause of what had happened that day. The whole thing was because of a girl named Yanzi. (Why are most fights because of girls?)
Yanzi was pretty famous in the western suburbs back then. She was one grade above me, so she should have been in ninth grade now. I had seen her before when I was in the western suburbs, but never spoken to her. Still, there were a lot of rumors about her, so I knew a little about her too.
A girl like Yanzi was usually called a “big mouth,” though that term mostly referred to those naturally promiscuous sluts. But for a junior high girl like Yanzi, it really just meant she had had a few boyfriends and dressed more fashionably. By today’s standards, they should have been considered beautiful, stylish girls who dared to love and hate. It’s just that people back then didn’t know how to appreciate them. Yanzi seemed to have developed much earlier than the other girls. She had a pretty oval face, eyes that curved when she smiled, a slightly budding chest, very long legs, and two red strings tied around one ankle. Yanzi also seemed pretty good at fighting—I once saw her beat up an older girl.
I think the earliest source of the rumors about Yanzi came from the mother of one of our classmates. Back then our parents often rode the company shuttle to and from work. There were two shuttle buses, and one of them had mostly female passengers, so those two ladies’ buses became the birthplace of most gossip. The legend of Yanzi was first seriously and secretly revealed by the mother of one girl to the mother of another girl, then solemnly used by that mother as a negative example while educating her daughter, and then in turn solemnly and secretly passed on by that daughter to others, thus becoming a secret known to everyone:
It was said that when Yanzi was in fourth grade, she caught the eye of a man in his thirties. He promised her 20 yuan every time they met, and they fooled around for a while. What exactly happened, no one knew, but coming from the mouth of that middle-aged mother of our classmate, who was famous for “having a broken mouth,” it must have been very “exciting.”
This fight happened because Liuzi had bullied one of Yanzi’s sisters, so Yanzi stood up for her and got Big Head and the short guy to come teach Liuzi a lesson. It seemed the short guy had been chasing Yanzi for a long time (no wonder he was trying so hard). Supposedly Liuzi bragged to this girl that he was the boss of the southern city, a great fighter, and his family was rich too, so he was very famous. He said he wanted to be friends with her, and said he’d take her to Shanghai. The girl saw that he was young and talented, so she gave him her heart—and then Liuzi “did” her. I don’t know why Ayuan used the word “did”; it made the exact meaning hard for me to understand. At the time Ayuan sounded very experienced, with a bit of contempt mixed in, so I was too embarrassed to keep asking and make myself seem childish.
So exactly how Liuzi had “done” that girl became an eternal mystery.
“Then what does any of this have to do with you? Why were you getting involved for no reason?” I asked, very puzzled.
“For a while before, Yanzi was my girlfriend.”
“G-g-girlfriend?!” I was both shocked and impressed, and hugely interested. I had to get the full story. Ayuan hemmed and hawed and refused to say, but he couldn’t withstand my endless pestering, and finally unwillingly confessed a few fragments. After I pieced them together, I now present them as follows:
Ayuan and Yanzi were both on the school track team—Ayuan was very fast in the 100 meters, outstanding both in the school and in the district; Yanzi, with her long beautiful legs and graceful waist, was a good high jumper. Regular training gave them chances to be together. Two weeks after they met, Yanzi gradually developed feelings for Ayuan, while he was still completely clueless. Finally one day, after practice, a few of them sat resting on the high-jump mats in the school gym. Yanzi sat pressed tightly against Ayuan, drinking water, panting softly with sweet breath. The soft foam mat and the scent of a girl immediately made Ayuan dizzy with excitement. The other students, like Ayuan, were still clueless chicks who understood nothing. A bunch of them were messing around wildly on the mats, cursing nonstop.
Just as Ayuan was trying to keep his head clear and move a little to the side, Yanzi suddenly said: “Ayuan, if I said I wanted to ‘reverse-chase’ you, would you believe me?” (“Reverse-chase” was a popular term then. “Chase” meant a boy pursuing a girl, while “reverse-chase” meant a girl pursuing a boy.)
Ayuan was so shocked by this “earthy” confession that his hands and feet went cold. Not knowing how to answer, he thought a bit and then, in a thoroughly unromantic move, said: “I’d believe you.”
But that answer already satisfied Yanzi. She smiled sweetly, and Ayuan gave a stiff smile too. They were speechless for quite a while.
After that, one afternoon when there were no classes, they arranged to go to the railway and “flatten coins.” That meant placing 1-fen, 2-fen, and 5-fen coins on the train tracks, then picking them up after the train rolled over them, by which point the coins had been pressed into thin aluminum sheets. It was actually an incredibly boring game.
That day the sun was blazing. After they played by the tracks for a while, they found it boring, and Yanzi suggested they walk around. The two of them were like young men and women in 1980s movies who had just been introduced to each other—awkward, mechanical, but trying hard to stay composed as they walked forward along the path by the tracks.
“Did you hold hands yet? Did you hold hands yet?” I got a little impatient and urged Ayuan to hurry up.
“Just listen, why the hell are you getting excited?”
That day was incredibly hot. Sand got into Ayuan’s plastic sandals, and mixed with his sweat into mud. The more he walked, the more uncomfortable he got, and Yanzi also felt none of the romance she had imagined. Finally a small stream appeared ahead (damn, what a coincidence, but it really happened), with water just covering the ankles. The two happily stepped into the water. The cool feeling restored a bit of Yanzi’s faith in romance. Above them was the steel bridge where trains passed; under their feet was the babbling stream, with little tadpoles bumping against their feet now and then. Around them the vines, water plants, and shrubs on the bank were lush and green, and there was also a beautiful… blazing sun.
Suddenly Yanzi said something to Ayuan: “I want to…” At that exact moment a train roared directly overhead, drowning out all sound.
They shouted a few more things to each other, but of course neither could hear anything.
Then Yanzi suddenly pounced on him, put her hands on Ayuan’s shoulders, and gave him a solid kiss right on the mouth. Ayuan’s head went “boom,” then blank, and just like that he confusedly gave away his first kiss. Later Yanzi even actively asked Ayuan to touch her legs. Ayuan tremblingly touched them a couple times—through her pants, of course—but back then that already counted as very badass.
“Hey, did it feel good? Was it good? Damn, you’re amazing. It felt super soft, right?” I was insanely envious of Ayuan’s romantic adventures.
“It was whatever,” Ayuan said contemptuously.
Loading ...
My highest respect to its author !!!
I posted this before. Reposting it now.
Please bump it after reading. Otherwise it will forever be Loading ...
-------------------------------------------------------
The ending is:
Xiaowei was hacked to death by the Northeast gang.
Ayuan was arrested and executed by gunshot.
-------------------------------------------------------
<>
NO1
Xiaowei asked Liuzi, “Yesterday I heard you came to my house looking for me. What was it?” After a pause, he said, “You brat skipped class again yesterday?”
“Brother Xiaowei, I’m not studying anymore. Our principal is a damn idiot…” Before he could finish, Liuzi got a hard rap on the head from Xiaowei. “Does your dad know? If he knew, wouldn’t he beat you to death!” Xiaowei’s family and Liuzi’s family were neighbors, very close. Liji was Xiaowei’s sworn brother, not much of a talker. He walked over and kicked the guy next to me. “Go buy me a pack of cigarettes. I’ll play for a while.”
I didn’t want to play anyway, so I said to Liji, “I’ll go buy them. You take my place.” I stood up and walked toward the cigarette stand nearby. I heard Xiaowei behind me say, “Another one of your little brothers? Haven’t seen him before. Where’s he from? Bring him over to my place to hang out sometime.”
Before Liuzi could answer, two yellow vans screeched to a stop beside the group playing cards. The doors slid open all at once, and more than ten people got out, about my age. Several of them had newspaper-wrapped bundles slung across their shoulders. They moved extremely fast. Before the card players even reacted, they were already surrounded from all sides.
Liuzi’s face went pale green, and he looked around in panic.
By then I was already outside the encirclement. I saw one of the guys from the vans speak up: “Who’s Liuzi?”
I looked carefully at him. Big head, very yellow hair, short, lots of freckles on his face. I knew him. We had been in the same class in elementary school in the western suburbs. His nickname was “Big Head.” I had no idea why he was here today.
Liuzi didn’t dare say a word.
Big Head asked again, “Who’s called Xiaowei?”
Xiaowei didn’t say anything. He slowly stood up and looked at him.
“Brother Wei, I’m…” As he said this, he stretched out a hand. (I figured he wanted to shake hands.) Just as Xiaowei was hesitating, Big Head “stretched out” another thing—a foot—straight into Xiaowei’s left ribs with a brutal kick!
The sudden heavy blow gave everyone no time to react. Everyone on our side was stunned in an instant. Xiaowei staggered backward several steps until he retreated right in front of me. The panic in his eyes flashed only for a moment before disappearing. Before he could even steady himself, two gleaming long knives had already chopped into his shoulder! So that was what had been inside those newspaper bundles—long knives! Xiaowei fell backward, flailing both hands to keep his balance. His right hand tore a long rip in my shirt, then with a bang he fell beside me. Right after that, countless long knives and leather shoes rained down on his body and face…
The few guys playing cards over there had already been hacked into scattering in all directions. Only Liuzi was left, surrounded by three people. One short guy grabbed Liuzi by the hair with one hand and yanked his head down hard while kicking his face over and over. The other two kicked him all over. Liuzi bent over, covering his face with both hands, howling. Before long, the short guy’s sneakers were covered in blood, and he got mad. “***, I just bought these shoes today.” Then he kicked Liuzi onto the bench by the street.
Xiaowei didn’t make a sound. He just kept using his arms to block the slashing knives and the rain of punches and kicks, trying to get back up. I wanted to help him up, but my hands and feet were so weak they wouldn’t obey me. All I could do was tremble and shuffle one step forward.
Big Head noticed I was moving and looked up at me warily. He hesitated a bit. I think he recognized me too. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.”
“If it’s nothing then get the hell out. What the fuck are you staring at, looking to die?”
I suddenly got mad. *** I originally wasn’t planning to help either side, and Big Head pretending not to know me suited me just fine. But this guy who used to be my classmate was actually cursing me—back then how many times hadn’t he copied my homework and exams?
So right away I answered, “Yeah, yeah, I’m leaving,” while looking around for something I could hand Xiaowei as a weapon. But the area was bare. There wasn’t even a brick.
By now Big Head and his bunch had already stopped beating Xiaowei, but the short guy’s side was still going. Liuzi had curled up under the bench, letting out miserable screams nonstop. It was an old-fashioned bench, made of several long wooden slats lined up one by one, painted dark green. Liuzi was balled up underneath it, trembling all over. There wasn’t much anyone could do to him there.
Big Head put away his knife and said to Xiaowei, “Today we came for Liuzi. But we heard Brother Wei was here too, so we stopped by to say hello. You’re so damn tough, I’ve wanted to come meet you for a long time. We’re all from the western suburbs. I just started mixing in this life, nowhere near your level. Brother Wei, you don’t know me. If you want to find me, just ask around for Big Head!”
Xiaowei was covered in blood. His left arm looked like it was nearly broken, hanging limp, the flesh flipped outward. The wound was about as big as a child’s mouth, exposing a section of white bone. His shoulder and leg were covered in long cuts. Xiaowei wiped the blood off his face with his right hand and smiled. “Sure.”
Big Head brandished his knife and walked toward Liuzi’s bench. Liuzi wasn’t getting beaten at that moment, but suddenly he screamed even louder than before, with terror trembling in his voice.
“Liuzi, Yanzi from the western suburbs sent us. You know what this is about, right?”
Liuzi didn’t answer, only making muffled sobbing sounds.
“Bastard, I’m asking you a question!” Big Head got impatient after asking several times.
“That really wasn’t me!” Liuzi hurriedly stammered in defense.
“*** it wasn’t you!” The short guy suddenly snatched the long knife from Big Head’s hand and viciously stabbed it down through the gap in the bench. Liuzi’s blood splashed out at once, and several more knives stabbed down right after it.
At that moment I was beside Xiaowei. When he saw Liuzi being stabbed, the corner of his eye twitched. He turned his head and looked at me. I seemed to understand what he meant… Suddenly I felt my keychain—a metal chain about one centimeter wide and half a meter long. I didn’t know if it was sturdy, but there was no time to think. I quietly tossed him this only metal object, barely enough to count as a weapon.
Most of them were gathered around the bench then. Xiaowei suddenly sprang over like a swift wildcat, even though his left arm was still dangling and swaying. (Today I really saw what an old-school hardcase was!)
There was a stone pedestal on the right, slightly raised above the ground. Xiaowei first stepped onto it, used it for leverage, and launched himself into the air, pouncing down toward the short guy in the crowd.
I had thought Xiaowei would definitely swing the chain in a wide arc and lash out, but instead he threw his whole body at him. I sighed to myself. That would put him at such a disadvantage—wasn’t that basically like going in barehanded?
By the time the short guy noticed, Xiaowei was already above him. No one could tell what happened. They only saw Xiaowei pin the short guy underneath him, and then the short guy let out a scream. I still remember that scream to this day—very low, full of despair.
The people around them pulled Xiaowei away and slammed him hard onto the ground. The short guy staggered back up and fell to his knees. My family’s security door key was stuck in his left eye socket.
Everyone was dumbfounded, including both sides and myself. I never in my dreams imagined Xiaowei would use my “key” like that. I stared blankly as my keychain swung back and forth on the short guy’s face, my mind completely blank.
No one on either side said a word. Only the short guy’s low moans and the crying of Liuzi, who was curled under the bench not knowing what had happened, echoed around.
Some of the other side were so frightened they slowly crouched down while backing away. Everyone’s eyes kept darting between Xiaowei and the short guy. Two people went over and dragged the short guy backward by his shirt. As he moved, the key came loose from the wound, blood flowing like a little stream. The wound was a bloody mess, impossible to tell what it looked like. With a clatter, a ring of keys dropped onto the concrete. The short guy screamed in pain, slapped the person dragging him hard across the face, and at the same time cursed in Xiaowei’s direction: “Bastard, I ***, I’m gonna kill you.”
“Carry him into the van!” Big Head said, forcing himself to stay calm, keeping his voice even. Then he picked up his knife and walked toward Xiaowei….
“Liuzi, run! The area cops are coming!” In a flash of inspiration, I rushed over, yanked Liuzi out from under the bench, and dragged him running in the opposite direction. Liuzi had been stabbed three times, all in the back. His T-shirt was soaked through with blood over a huge patch.
It was dusk then, evening falling. A group of people were rushing toward us in the distance, too far away to see who they were. Big Head may really have thought the police were coming. Or even if he didn’t believe me, maybe he didn’t want to drag things out anymore. He ran with his knife to the driver’s seat of one van, and the others all scrambled aboard too.
Liuzi and I ran dozens of meters, then looked back and saw the other side already starting to flee, so we stopped. Liuzi sat down right where he was, gasping heavily. There was a wheezing sound in his breathing—maybe his lung was injured. By then the group running from afar had already rushed up close. It turned out Liji had brought a whole bunch of people. Only then did I realize I hadn’t seen Liji the whole time.
The other side was scrambling into the van in panic. In the end, two people were left helping the short guy aboard—one pulling from inside, one pushing from below. Just as the short guy got in, before the guy below could climb up, Liji and his people had already charged to the back of the van. Bricks and wooden clubs smashed the rear windshield. Big Head had already started the van and sped off in a flash. Only the pale-faced boy who had been helping the short guy into the van was left behind, still standing there, looking in panic as more than ten people and more than ten knives closed in on him. He was so scared he couldn’t make a sound.
The boy looked a little thin and weak, with beautiful big eyes like a girl’s, thick eyebrows, lips pressed tightly together, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with nervousness. Wasn’t this—Ayuan!
Liji raised his watermelon knife high. Under the streetlight it flashed brightly. I was so shocked my hair seemed to stand on end, and I blurted out: “Don’t, don’t…”
“Liji.” At the same time, I heard Xiaowei’s voice. “He never made a move.”
Only then did Liji remember Xiaowei was still leaning by the wall. Liji put away the knife and grabbed Ayuan by the hair. The others also grabbed his collar and arms and dragged him over to Xiaowei. By then people had already helped Xiaowei onto the bench. I also helped Liuzi sit down on the bench.
“You know him?” Liji’s gloomy blade-like face slowly turned toward me. He pointed at Ayuan, cocked his head slightly, and looked at me with interest.
“Yeah.” He made my skin crawl. I answered quietly.
Smack—a loud slap exploded against my right ear, followed by burning pain and a sharp ringing. Liji really hit hard as hell.
I lowered my head to the side and looked away without saying a word.
“Hey, come here. What’s your name?” Xiaowei called to me from a distance then.
“Xiao Zhe.” I walked over to him as I answered.
“You know that Big Head?” Xiaowei’s eyes suddenly became extremely bright. It wasn’t exactly murderous, but it still made me shiver. I had no idea how he could tell.
“Yeah.” I had no choice but to tell the truth.
Liji kicked me in the stomach, and I dropped onto the ground on my ass, cursing the eighteen generations of Liji’s ancestors in my heart.
“How did they know Xiaowei was here?” Liji asked.
“How the fuck would I know!” I got angry too. So they thought I had colluded with Big Head? Then I’d be beaten to death right away.
“Enough, let’s go. Don’t really bring the cops over,” Xiaowei said. “I don’t think Liuzi’s doing well. Hospital first.”
Then he said to me, “Your buddy here never made a move today, and I won’t touch him. In a bit, you and him go back first. Help me ask around why the western suburbs bunch came today. I’ll come find you at school tomorrow. Thanks. Are you and Liuzi in the same class?”
I told Xiaowei which class I was in, all the while beating a drum in my heart: tomorrow was when I’d really be dead. They all thought I had colluded with the western suburbs crowd.
When I turned my head, I saw Liji smiling happily at me. My heart turned even colder.
“Hey, what was your name again? Xiao Zhe, right?” Xiaowei said. “Liji, from now on Xiao Zhe is my little brother. Look after him more.”
Liji looked at Xiaowei in confusion. Xiaowei smiled. Liji turned his head back, but the look in his eyes at me was still cold.
On the way home, I rode my bike with Ayuan on the back. The joy of meeting again after so long had been replaced by the lingering terror after the shock. Neither of us said much. By the time we got home, it was already 8 at night, and we were both starving. My dad had gone to a construction site, so only my mom was home. The moment I came in I started shouting, “Mom, I’m starving to death! Look who’s here!”
“Late every day, late every day. All you know is basketball. Let’s see what rank you get at finals! Why don’t you dare act like this when your dad’s home?” Mom nagged as she came out of the kitchen carrying a glass of water. “Oh my, Xiaoyuan. How come you came today?”
My parents and Ayuan’s parents were coworkers. My mom had always liked Ayuan and his little sister ever since they were young. I think maybe because she didn’t have a daughter herself. She was quite envious of people who had both a son and a daughter.
Mom pulled Ayuan onto the sofa to sit down and then started a whole string of questions: “How are your dad and mom? What did you take here? What grade is your little sister in now? Have you eaten dinner? Is your family moving here next month? … Huh? You came all the way to the southern suburbs to play this late—aren’t you going to class tomorrow?”—my teacher mother had finally sharply noticed the problem.
“Ah, A-auntie, it’s like this, tomorrow our school’s teachers get comp time for Teachers’ Day.” Ayuan, always clever and good at pleasing adults, had finally returned to normal (his years of lying hadn’t gone to waste). He answered the sensitive question and shifted the topic perfectly at the same time.
Sure enough, Mom followed the line of thought I expected: “See, schools in the western suburbs really do treat teachers well. They get comp time for Teachers’ Day. Here we have graduating classes and we work overtime every day organizing review sessions. On Sunday I still have to go to Auntie Zhang’s place to get exam papers. How could I have time to rest?” Auntie Zhang was Mom’s classmate and taught at a key city middle school. Mom often went to get exam questions from the key school to tutor her students.
“Exactly, it’s just unfair now. Our teachers even got a bunch of stuff too!…” Ayuan was getting a little carried away, and I gave him a look. Only then did he stop.
“Mom, hurry up, we’re starving to death! Every day it’s either exams or your students.”
Before long, the food was on the table. Ayuan and I wolfed it down, occasionally looking at each other and grinning stupidly. Yeah—just making it back safe was good enough.
Mom had already eaten, so she happily sat nearby watching us eat. She kept putting food in Ayuan’s bowl while criticizing me. My mom had a special talent: she could spot every good point in each of my classmates who came to our house, then compare them to my shortcomings. Today was no exception. Even though she hadn’t seen Ayuan in years, she still had things to say:
“Look how clean Xiaoyuan dresses. You’re this old already and still don’t wash your own clothes. Every day you’re like a mud monkey, not careful at all. You want me to keep washing for you until you’re thirty?…”
I looked at Ayuan. This guy really was clean. He was even wearing a pair of white pants. I thought to myself: how could I not be dirty? I got kicked to the ground—if you looked closely there was probably still blood smeared on me! The moment I thought of the blood on me, I lost my appetite—I had to wash the blood out of my clothes fast, or if Mom found out I’d never be able to explain it. Right, and there was also that blood-soaked key.
I hurried back to my room, changed into another pair of pants as fast as possible, quickly washed the bloody part of the dirty pants, then tossed them into the washing machine. “Mom, I put my pants in the washer. Help me wash them.”
“You’ve improved today, at least you know to put your clothes in the washing machine yourself,” Mom answered from outside.
That night Ayuan stayed in my little room, and we talked until very late. We chatted wildly about everything under the sun, and I finally understood the cause of what had happened that day. The whole thing was because of a girl named Yanzi. (Why are most fights because of girls?)
Yanzi was pretty famous in the western suburbs back then. She was one grade above me, so she should have been in ninth grade now. I had seen her before when I was in the western suburbs, but never spoken to her. Still, there were a lot of rumors about her, so I knew a little about her too.
A girl like Yanzi was usually called a “big mouth,” though that term mostly referred to those naturally promiscuous sluts. But for a junior high girl like Yanzi, it really just meant she had had a few boyfriends and dressed more fashionably. By today’s standards, they should have been considered beautiful, stylish girls who dared to love and hate. It’s just that people back then didn’t know how to appreciate them. Yanzi seemed to have developed much earlier than the other girls. She had a pretty oval face, eyes that curved when she smiled, a slightly budding chest, very long legs, and two red strings tied around one ankle. Yanzi also seemed pretty good at fighting—I once saw her beat up an older girl.
I think the earliest source of the rumors about Yanzi came from the mother of one of our classmates. Back then our parents often rode the company shuttle to and from work. There were two shuttle buses, and one of them had mostly female passengers, so those two ladies’ buses became the birthplace of most gossip. The legend of Yanzi was first seriously and secretly revealed by the mother of one girl to the mother of another girl, then solemnly used by that mother as a negative example while educating her daughter, and then in turn solemnly and secretly passed on by that daughter to others, thus becoming a secret known to everyone:
It was said that when Yanzi was in fourth grade, she caught the eye of a man in his thirties. He promised her 20 yuan every time they met, and they fooled around for a while. What exactly happened, no one knew, but coming from the mouth of that middle-aged mother of our classmate, who was famous for “having a broken mouth,” it must have been very “exciting.”
This fight happened because Liuzi had bullied one of Yanzi’s sisters, so Yanzi stood up for her and got Big Head and the short guy to come teach Liuzi a lesson. It seemed the short guy had been chasing Yanzi for a long time (no wonder he was trying so hard). Supposedly Liuzi bragged to this girl that he was the boss of the southern city, a great fighter, and his family was rich too, so he was very famous. He said he wanted to be friends with her, and said he’d take her to Shanghai. The girl saw that he was young and talented, so she gave him her heart—and then Liuzi “did” her. I don’t know why Ayuan used the word “did”; it made the exact meaning hard for me to understand. At the time Ayuan sounded very experienced, with a bit of contempt mixed in, so I was too embarrassed to keep asking and make myself seem childish.
So exactly how Liuzi had “done” that girl became an eternal mystery.
“Then what does any of this have to do with you? Why were you getting involved for no reason?” I asked, very puzzled.
“For a while before, Yanzi was my girlfriend.”
“G-g-girlfriend?!” I was both shocked and impressed, and hugely interested. I had to get the full story. Ayuan hemmed and hawed and refused to say, but he couldn’t withstand my endless pestering, and finally unwillingly confessed a few fragments. After I pieced them together, I now present them as follows:
Ayuan and Yanzi were both on the school track team—Ayuan was very fast in the 100 meters, outstanding both in the school and in the district; Yanzi, with her long beautiful legs and graceful waist, was a good high jumper. Regular training gave them chances to be together. Two weeks after they met, Yanzi gradually developed feelings for Ayuan, while he was still completely clueless. Finally one day, after practice, a few of them sat resting on the high-jump mats in the school gym. Yanzi sat pressed tightly against Ayuan, drinking water, panting softly with sweet breath. The soft foam mat and the scent of a girl immediately made Ayuan dizzy with excitement. The other students, like Ayuan, were still clueless chicks who understood nothing. A bunch of them were messing around wildly on the mats, cursing nonstop.
Just as Ayuan was trying to keep his head clear and move a little to the side, Yanzi suddenly said: “Ayuan, if I said I wanted to ‘reverse-chase’ you, would you believe me?” (“Reverse-chase” was a popular term then. “Chase” meant a boy pursuing a girl, while “reverse-chase” meant a girl pursuing a boy.)
Ayuan was so shocked by this “earthy” confession that his hands and feet went cold. Not knowing how to answer, he thought a bit and then, in a thoroughly unromantic move, said: “I’d believe you.”
But that answer already satisfied Yanzi. She smiled sweetly, and Ayuan gave a stiff smile too. They were speechless for quite a while.
After that, one afternoon when there were no classes, they arranged to go to the railway and “flatten coins.” That meant placing 1-fen, 2-fen, and 5-fen coins on the train tracks, then picking them up after the train rolled over them, by which point the coins had been pressed into thin aluminum sheets. It was actually an incredibly boring game.
That day the sun was blazing. After they played by the tracks for a while, they found it boring, and Yanzi suggested they walk around. The two of them were like young men and women in 1980s movies who had just been introduced to each other—awkward, mechanical, but trying hard to stay composed as they walked forward along the path by the tracks.
“Did you hold hands yet? Did you hold hands yet?” I got a little impatient and urged Ayuan to hurry up.
“Just listen, why the hell are you getting excited?”
That day was incredibly hot. Sand got into Ayuan’s plastic sandals, and mixed with his sweat into mud. The more he walked, the more uncomfortable he got, and Yanzi also felt none of the romance she had imagined. Finally a small stream appeared ahead (damn, what a coincidence, but it really happened), with water just covering the ankles. The two happily stepped into the water. The cool feeling restored a bit of Yanzi’s faith in romance. Above them was the steel bridge where trains passed; under their feet was the babbling stream, with little tadpoles bumping against their feet now and then. Around them the vines, water plants, and shrubs on the bank were lush and green, and there was also a beautiful… blazing sun.
Suddenly Yanzi said something to Ayuan: “I want to…” At that exact moment a train roared directly overhead, drowning out all sound.
They shouted a few more things to each other, but of course neither could hear anything.
Then Yanzi suddenly pounced on him, put her hands on Ayuan’s shoulders, and gave him a solid kiss right on the mouth. Ayuan’s head went “boom,” then blank, and just like that he confusedly gave away his first kiss. Later Yanzi even actively asked Ayuan to touch her legs. Ayuan tremblingly touched them a couple times—through her pants, of course—but back then that already counted as very badass.
“Hey, did it feel good? Was it good? Damn, you’re amazing. It felt super soft, right?” I was insanely envious of Ayuan’s romantic adventures.
“It was whatever,” Ayuan said contemptuously.
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