27

Fei Bolin had almost forgotten about that.

Sure enough, the second he handed the milk to Wen Fu, Wen Fu turned right around and headed back in, not caring at all whether he came inside or not.

Following Wen Fu to the door, Fei Bolin happened to catch sight of a smashed window in the outer wall.

He stepped inside and gave the place a quick once-over. Calling it a home was a stretch.

The place was old. Paint had peeled off the walls in patches. The floor only barely had tile laid down. The TV was covered with a yellowing lace cloth. Cobwebs crowded around the bare lightbulb. Pretty much every piece of furniture left out in the open had a layer of dust on it. One look said nobody had cleaned in a long time.

Wen Fu went straight to the kitchen.

Fei Bolin leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched in silence as Wen Fu pulled out a pot and an induction cooker from under the counter. He filled the pot with tap water and set it on the cooker, then cranked it to full power. While he waited for the water to boil, Wen Fu sat on a little wooden stool nearby, stuck a straw into the bottle, and drank the milk one sip at a time.

Fei Bolin said flatly, 'This isn't your home.'

The sound of Wen Fu drinking paused for a second, then resumed.

He neither admitted it nor denied it.

Fei Bolin asked, 'You broke the window to get in?'

So that was why the door stayed open. Not because he meant to leave it open. Wen Fu just didn't have a key.

And the dust wasn't there because he couldn't be bothered to clean. It was because if he cleaned, the owner might notice something was off whenever they came back.

The place had probably been empty for a long time. A lot of old houses in the Urban Village were like that: couldn't be sold, couldn't be renovated. If the owners could rent them out, they did. If not, most of them went off to work elsewhere and only came back to stay a few days during New Year.

Wen Fu had most likely watched the place for a while, realized it'd make a good temporary shelter, then one night smashed the outer window, climbed in, and took over the nest before the owner came back.

Wen Fu kept sucking on the straw without a word.

The water boiled fast. With practiced ease, Wen Fu grabbed a handful of dried noodles from the cabinet and dropped them into the pot, then picked up a plain, unremarkable bowl and tossed in some seasonings at random.

Soy sauce. Vinegar. Salt. MSG.

Thin as dishwater.

Watching how he added the seasonings, Fei Bolin figured this bowl of noodles probably wasn't going to taste great.

'Why not eat instant noodles?' he asked.

To his surprise, Wen Fu answered this time. 'Too expensive.'

A pack of instant noodles cost two yuan thirty. It wasn't like he could afford that every day.

Dried noodles were the practical choice. Cheap and easy.

The kitchen light was dim. Wen Fu faced the stove, so all Fei Bolin could see was his profile, his lowered eyes, the thin wrist sticking out from his sleeve. His clothes were thin. He was thin too.

After mixing the seasonings, Wen Fu went back to the induction cooker and sat there watching the pot, waiting for the noodles to cook.

Fei Bolin thought he was waiting a little too long.

Sure enough, by the time Wen Fu fished them out, he'd ended up with a whole bowl of noodle mush.

But judging from his expression, he was used to it. Wen Fu stirred the noodles around in the bowl a couple times, mixed them with the not-very-good seasoning, then sat back down on the little stool and slurped them down.

The more Fei Bolin watched, the more interesting it got. Arms folded, he asked, 'You like your noodles mushy?'

Wen Fu ignored him and kept eating with his head down.

A few seconds later, Fei Bolin asked again, 'You don't know how to cook noodles?'

Slurp.

Fei Bolin kept it up like he was having fun. 'Too little soy sauce. Too much vinegar.'

Slurp, slurp.

Fei Bolin smiled to himself.

Wen Fu finished the noodles in a few big mouthfuls, then used the noodle water to rinse the bowl clean with a few quick swishes.

There wasn't any oil in the bowl, so washing it with noodle water was fine, but Fei Bolin seriously doubted Wen Fu even knew dish soap was supposed to be part of the process.

Fei Bolin turned to glance at the balcony. Hanging from a high bamboo pole were two thin pieces of clothing and some underwear, swaying unsteadily. That was probably all Wen Fu owned.

'If you want milk, come find me.'

He didn't ask where Wen Fu's real home was, and he didn't ask where Wen Fu's parents had gone. He just left him with that one line.

Wen Fu still didn't answer. He just kept busy cleaning up the pot and bowl. By the time he put away the induction cooker and turned back around, the spot where Fei Bolin had been standing was already empty.

At the time, neither of them could've guessed Wen Fu would come looking for Fei Bolin so soon.

It was the following Saturday. Rain drizzled lazily over Rongzhou all day long. After school, Fei Bolin didn't stay in the classroom. He spent the whole day at Lin's Convenience Store watching the shop.

Rainy days meant fewer customers, and it was getting colder and colder. That night he didn't stay open till late. Around ten-thirty, he shut Lin's Convenience Store and headed upstairs to his place.

He lived in an old Residential Complex too. Compared to Wen Fu's place, the shared facilities were a little better, but things like elevators still hadn't made it there.

The motion-sensor lights in the stairwell lit up one floor at a time as Fei Bolin climbed to the sixth floor. Once home, he set his umbrella out on the balcony to dry, then went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out the leftover bunch of greens from daytime, and got ready to cook himself a bowl of noodles.

The rain outside grew heavier. Standing by the trash can picking vegetables, he turned up the volume on the English listening practice on his phone a little.

When the first knock came, he didn't pay it any mind. He figured the neighbors across the hall had a visitor.

Five minutes later, someone knocked on his door a second time, harder this time.

Fei Bolin paused the listening track and listened carefully toward the door.

Not long after that, a third round of knocking came. It was practically pounding.

He put down the vegetables. On his way out of the kitchen, he glanced at the time on his phone. It was exactly eleven at night.

Who'd suddenly come looking for him this late?

Frowning, Fei Bolin leaned in to the peephole and found that the person outside looked eighty percent like Wen Fu.

Eighty percent, because the guy was soaked like a drowned rat, water dripping from his hair, with blood smeared across half his face. He was bruised and swollen all over.

Fei Bolin opened the door and looked down at him.

Wen Fu was looking down too. He didn't say a word or raise his eyes to meet Fei Bolin's.

A few seconds later, it clicked for Fei Bolin. He frowned. 'You followed me?'

If he hadn't, how else would Wen Fu know he lived here?

Wen Fu still said nothing.

Fei Bolin made a show of closing the door.

Five pale fingers pressed against it, stopping him.

With one hand bracing the door, Wen Fu lifted the other to wipe away the fresh blood running from his nose, then admitted in a very soft voice, 'The night you went to the hospital.'

Fei Bolin: ?

He'd actually started following him that early?

And followed him all the way home from the hospital?

Which meant that after Wen Fu had bumped into him that day, he'd silently tailed him until four in the morning, and Fei Bolin hadn't noticed a thing.

Honestly, what a waste not becoming a spy.

The whole creepy privacy-violation angle put Fei Bolin in a bad mood, and his tone lost any trace of politeness. 'What do you want from me?'

The corner of Wen Fu's mouth was split. Half his face beside it had gone dark with bruising, and his left eye and forehead were swollen high.

At last he raised his face to look at Fei Bolin. The movement probably tugged at his swollen eyelid, because he dropped his gaze again almost at once. 'I've got nowhere to go.'

Fei Bolin was so annoyed he laughed. 'So you come to me just because you've got nowhere to go?'

Wen Fu didn't answer. He just lifted a hand and wiped at his nosebleed again.

Fei Bolin couldn't stand looking at it. He yanked Wen Fu inside, sat him down on a stool, pulled out two tissues and twisted them into cords. Just as he was about to tell Wen Fu to lift his head so he could stuff them into his nose, Wen Fu kept dodging off to the side.

Fei Bolin got impatient. 'What are you dodging for?'

Wen Fu took one of the tissues from his hand, unfolded it, tore it in half, twisted both halves separately, tipped his head back, and silently stuffed them into his nose.

That way, he only needed one tissue.

Fei Bolin had nothing to say to that. He put the other one in Wen Fu's hand. 'Change it when it's soaked through.'

He went to the bathroom for a washcloth, soaked it with cold water, then stood in front of Wen Fu and slowly wiped the blood and dirt from his cuts.

Looking closer at Wen Fu's swollen forehead and eye, the skin was stretched shiny.

Fei Bolin asked, 'What happened to you?'

'...'

Silence again.

'If you came to me, then answer my questions.'

'...'

A few seconds later, Wen Fu finally said, 'They found out.'

'Found out what?'

'About the money-snatching.'

Fei Bolin tried to make sense of it. 'Those older guys?'

Wen Fu nodded.

'How'd they find out?'

'Didn't change clothes.'

Fei Bolin lowered his eyes to look at what Wen Fu was wearing.

It really was the same windbreaker he'd had on when he was snatching money.

Every time Wen Fu robbed the high school division kids, he wore that same pitch-black windbreaker. When he was actually in class, he changed out of it.

Wen Fu had washed both his jacket and his School Uniform. With nothing else to wear, he'd taken the risk and put on that windbreaker. Fei Bolin remembered it clearly. He'd had it on since Friday and never changed out of it.

Who would've thought those thugs would spot him so fast. The minute school let out today, the group of them had planned to block Wen Fu outside the School Gate.

But Wen Fu never came out. He stayed in the classroom doing self-study until ten-thirty before finally packing up to go home. Those older guys camped there forever, and the second Wen Fu stepped out, they grabbed him and hauled him toward an alley.

Luckily, Wen Fu was quick. Those older guys were all brawn and no brains, and the second they slipped up, he wriggled free. They chased him for two streets. Just when it looked like he was about to shake them off, Wen Fu suddenly took a spill.

Not only did he hit the ground hard enough to set his nose gushing, he got dragged back and beaten too.

They really went at him. Those older guys were getting revenge for all the times he'd robbed them before. The more they thought about getting played by a nobody like him, and wasting half their weekend because of it, the madder they got. And the madder they got, the harder they hit. They aimed for the stomach, where there weren't any bones, and for the head, where the injuries wouldn't show as easily.

Wen Fu protected his stomach and the back of his head, curled up on the ground like a shrimp, and stared through his elbows at everything around him. The second there was a gap between them, he shot out like a rabbit and ran.

When he got back, he spotted the lights on in the house from far away. Wen Fu crept up to the door and listened. An agent was showing the place to someone. They'd probably only just arrived. He heard the people inside calling the owner to say the glass was broken and asking whether they should call the police.

Wen Fu didn't dare stick around, and he didn't dare run around out on the street either. If he ran into those older guys again, he'd just get another brutal beating.

For some reason, he ended up at Fei Bolin's door.

Fei Bolin barely managed to piece it all together through Wen Fu's not-very-clear way of talking and the way he spoke fast and softly. The first thing he asked was, 'Where's your knife?'

Wen Fu tipped his neck back to look at him, then slowly pulled that folding knife out of his pocket.

Fei Bolin set down the washcloth and took it. The second he opened it, he knew something was off.

He jabbed the tip against the table. With one jab, the blade slid right back in.

He jabbed it again. Back in it went.

Fei Bolin: ...

Fei Bolin was speechless. 'A toy knife?'

The thing Wen Fu had been using to threaten him all this time, even to rob people, was a toy knife.

Wen Fu blinked his swollen-bun eyes at him once, like he was checking his expression.

With a feeling he couldn't quite put into words, Fei Bolin tossed the knife onto the table and turned to the kitchen to get an egg from the fridge.

He dropped the egg into a pot and boiled it in the water he'd been about to use for noodles.

Wen Fu's injuries needed medicine, something to spray on them, but the hospital was too far and the nearby pharmacies were all closed. There were only bandages at home, so the best Fei Bolin could do for now was boil an egg and have Wen Fu roll it over the swelling to see if it helped.

When the egg was done, he wrapped it in two pieces of toilet paper so it wouldn't burn to hold, then handed it to Wen Fu. 'Roll it yourself.'

After that, he changed his shoes and went out, planning to grab a clean towel and some toiletries for Wen Fu from Lin's Convenience Store.

From the look of it, Wen Fu was at least staying the night, and there weren't any spare toiletries ready at home.

Good thing he had Lin's Convenience Store.

He was back soon. The moment he came in, he saw Wen Fu sitting on a plastic stool, holding the egg that was supposed to be for his bruises and eating it in silence.

The egg that was supposed to bring down the swelling was hot enough to burn his hand, but that didn't seem to affect Wen Fu's appetite in the slightest.

No clue whether he hadn't understood Fei Bolin or was just too hungry. Wen Fu faced the front door, eating with his head down while spacing out, his cheeks moving as he chewed. With his face all bruised and swollen, it wasn't exactly a pretty sight.

If Fei Bolin had gotten back any later, the whole egg would've been halfway digested in his stomach.

Seeing the door open and Fei Bolin back, Wen Fu looked up at him and said evenly, 'I'll roll it after I finish eating.'