Chapter 36

That time, when Wen Fu went back, he didn't get caught. But he didn't steal anything either. He handed all fifty yuan in his pocket to his adoptive father.

It was like he'd really died once and come back a different person. He spread the fifty yuan out in his hand and spoke before his adoptive father could. 'I want to go to school.'

A Yuxi cigarette from a cheap three-yuan pack hung between his adoptive father's fingers. He lounged against the headboard, lazy as ever, one elbow braced on a cabinet buried in ash. He narrowed his eyes, took a drag, then blew a cloud of white smoke right into Wen Fu's face. 'What'd you say?'

Wen Fu said, 'I want to go to school.'

His adoptive father's eyes opened a little wider. 'What?!'

Wen Fu said, 'I'll steal for you, and you let me study. If you won't let me study, then I won't steal.'

His adoptive father stared at him for a while, then suddenly got up from the bed and kicked him in the stomach. 'You've got some nerve, you little bastard!'

Wen Fu dropped to the floor. By reflex, he curled up tight, covered his head with both hands, and got ready for the punches and kicks that were about to come down on him.

This time, he was dead set on getting what he wanted. Even as the plastic slippers on his adoptive father's feet, their edges gnawed away by rats, came down on him like rain, it still didn't stop his words. 'I don't care! I want to study! No matter what, I'm going to study! If you won't let me, then beat me to death!'

His adoptive father hit him so hard the slipper flew out of his hand. He grabbed another pair and kept going.

Dust rolled through the damp, dark old house. The shouting slowly faded, until all that was left was the irregular thud of soles and fists landing on his body.

No one knew how long it took. His adoptive father finally got tired, tossed the slipper to the floor, slid one foot back into it, planted his hands on his hips, and asked, 'Still going or not?'

Wen Fu didn't speak. The only thing moving was his body, curled up like a shrimp, breathing quietly.

A long time passed. Still clutching his head with both hands, he finally let out a hoarse, thread-thin voice through the gap in his arms. '...I'm going.'

'Fuck's sake!'

His adoptive father made like he was going to hit him again, but then he thought better of it. He couldn't actually beat the boy to death. A body would be trouble. And if he wound up in prison, throwing his own life away over a kid like this wasn't worth it.

But what if he let Wen Fu go? The kid was sharp. Hard to say whether he'd run straight to the police, but letting him loose would mean trouble either way. Wen Fu was smart enough that he might've already figured out his whole routine. If he really did go to the police, then with the boy helping them, there was no way he'd get away. Before this, Wen Fu had stayed with him because at least he had food and a place to sleep. If he went to the cops, who knew where they'd send him. Better to stick with this child trafficker and behave.

And if he threw Wen Fu out himself? The kid still wouldn't get to study, and he'd already taken that many beatings. If revenge got into his head, then even if he didn't get caught right away, he'd still be looking over his shoulder for years.

Wen Fu couldn't hear any of the calculations running through his adoptive father's head. All he saw out of the corner of his eye was that raised hand. He flinched on instinct, arms tightening around his head. But in the end, the punch never came down.

He heard his adoptive father spit on him. 'Let's see what kind of top scholar you become.'

The bed frame behind him creaked. His adoptive father sat back down and pulled money from the drawer. It was time to go play cards.

Wen Fu sprang up off the floor with practiced speed and shot out like a rabbit. At the tap by the door, he splashed cold water over himself and roughly rinsed the blood off his head and face.

He knew he'd won the right to study.

Child traffickers had their own network. Before long, Wen Fu got enrolled in a primary school in a nearby town.

He went to school during the day. At night and on weekends, under his adoptive father's orders, he slipped into all kinds of public places and committed small, easy-to-miss thefts. There were always bruised fingerprints around Wen Fu's wrists. That was where people grabbed first, every time they caught him by accident.

Sometimes there were bruises on his nose and face too. Those came from his adoptive father taking it out on him after drinking or losing money at cards.

They moved all the time. Whenever Wen Fu got caught stealing money, there were always a few times he couldn't avoid being taken to the police station. Once it happened often enough, the police started getting suspicious. What used to be a little verbal scolding for Wen Fu turned into watchful scrutiny of the adoptive father who came to pick him up.

Every time his adoptive father caught that look from the police, they packed up and left overnight.

Study. Steal. Get caught. Transfer schools.

Study. Steal. Get caught. Transfer schools.

Study. Steal. Get caught. Transfer schools.

Little by little, Wen Fu went numb to that kind of life.

The only thing that kept getting sharper was how fast he could run. Only by running faster and faster could he avoid getting caught. Then he wouldn't have to endure worse, crueler beatings when he was found out, just because people pitied him less and less as he got older. And he wouldn't have to keep getting hauled to the station, staring at those familiar police uniforms and listening to all that earnest advice he'd long since learned not to hear.

More importantly, only by running faster and seeing the police less could he slow down how often his adoptive father moved them, and stretch out how long he got to stay in one school and keep learning.

He was used to making himself go silent in every crowd, like a shadow. So silent anyone could turn away and forget he existed. With theft techniques he'd practiced to the point of instinct, he came and went beside his victims without a trace, ghostlike, and vanished the second he had the money. To keep anyone from remembering him, Wen Fu didn't talk to people. He didn't meet their eyes either. His eyes were too easy to remember.

His voice, his face, his personality—every place he'd ever stayed, his classmates and teachers all remembered him only vaguely.

Except for his grades.

In every gap between stealing and getting beaten, Wen Fu grabbed whatever time he could to study. In every school he'd ever attended, the only proof he'd been there at all was the top-ranking scores he left behind.

He never forgot what his mother had drilled into him when he was little.

By now, Wen Fu had already grown so numb to pain of every kind that he'd gone dull with it. He didn't know what the point of studying was anymore. But he still lived by that one line his mother had left in his memory like a final instruction—rigidly, mechanically: Study. Study like your life depends on it.

In that endless drifting, every image of his mother had withered and receded in Wen Fu's mind. He and the childhood he had before age four looked at each other as if through frosted glass, separated by fire and water—impossible to see clearly, only something he could sense by instinct.

Wen Fu couldn't remember his mother's face. Couldn't remember if she was slim or heavy, beautiful or plain. He couldn't even remember her name. It was too far away. He'd lost her before he learned to write, and before he ever saw her gravestone, he'd gone and lost himself too.

But there was no doubt his mother loved him. Even with the memory so distant, Wen Fu was sure of that. Back when his understanding of the world was still a blank, the only thing that ever taught him what love felt like was her.

Faint, but certain. Like instinct. The same way the first time he saw Fei Bolin's eyes, he knew there'd come a day when he could knock on his door. Stray animals are uncannily accurate when it comes to love and danger. He knew Fei Bolin wouldn't hurt him, just like he knew his mother had loved him.

On countless nights spent running for his life, he clawed his way through by leaning on that dim little feeling.

All the constant moving left even his adoptive father, who never cared much about his schooling to begin with, muddled about what grade he should be in. Between primary and middle school, Wen Fu skipped two grades. They moved from Yunnan Province to Sichuan. He'd been nearly seven when he started first grade, but by eleven he'd already finished primary school, and when he graduated ninth grade, Wen Fu still wasn't fifteen.

After compulsory education, Wen Fu was going to high school.

His entrance exam scores were still excellent. Wen Fu didn't really care what kind of high school he went to. As long as he could get in, that was enough.

He always applied to the town high school closest to wherever they were living at the time. Better schools charged tuition in the hundreds. No matter what, a town school was at least a little cheaper.

His adoptive father had developed a gambling addiction and was always carrying debt. In just one semester, Wen Fu transferred schools twice again.

At the end of the first semester of tenth grade, it was time to choose between arts and science. Wen Fu picked science without hesitation.

Arts wasn't just memorization. Without a teacher's timely explanation in class, there was no way to accurately understand the questions on an exam, let alone give the kind of answers that scored high.

Science was different. Even if he missed some classes, as long as he worked through problem sets in a systematic way, he could still master the material by checking the answers and explanations. For someone like him, always on the verge of moving and changing schools, it was the best way to keep up no matter how differently each school paced its lessons.

Halfway through the second semester of tenth grade, they moved again, this time to a small county town in Rongzhou.

This time they stayed a few months, long enough for Wen Fu to move up to eleventh grade.

The day before school started, Wen Fu went back to where they were staying. Sure enough, his adoptive father was sitting under the lean-to in front of the self-built house, playing cards. Cigarette butts were scattered all over the ground beside a coil of mosquito incense. The bare lightbulb overhead hung from three wires strung to a pillar. Puddles of who-knew-what sat in the pitted cement floor.

His adoptive father had a cigarette in his mouth and was joking around with the others, cursing whole family lines as he did, but his expression didn't look good. He'd probably just lost money.

Wen Fu stood beside him and, in the small, light voice he'd trained over the years, asked him for money. Tuition and registration fees.

His adoptive father kept shuffling the cards, then snapped his head around and shot him a quick look. 'What?!'

Wen Fu repeated himself.

His adoptive father gave a short laugh, took the cigarette from his mouth and held it between two fingers. His other hand rested on the mahjong tile pinning down the betting money. Then he crooked a finger at Wen Fu. 'Come here.'

Wen Fu stepped forward.

His adoptive father pulled out a crumpled stack of red and green bills. 'How much?'

Wen Fu lifted his hand to take the money and didn't overstate it by even a cent. 'One eighty.'

His adoptive father gave a low, mocking laugh. With the cigarette still between his fingers, he slowly counted out the money, raising his brows as he joked with his card buddies. 'Kid's all grown up now. Doesn't make money to support me, just comes asking me for it every day.'

The other men humored him with a couple laughs.

Wen Fu said nothing.

'One eighty...'

As he counted, his adoptive father kept muttering the number under his breath. 'One eighty...'

Then his face changed. He slapped the money onto the table, grabbed Wen Fu by the arm, and pressed the glowing red cigarette tip straight into his wrist. 'I'll show you what looks like one eighty!'

Wen Fu didn't move. If he dodged, what came next would only be a more vicious beating.

It felt like the cigarette had burned right through his skin. Wisps of pale smoke rose from his wrist, and in the haze he thought he could hear the wound sizzling.

The cigarette went out. The flesh on Wen Fu's wrist was burned raw. His adoptive father stood up, grabbed the plastic stool from under him, and started smashing it down at Wen Fu's head and face. The card players rushed in to pull him back, while abuse he'd spent years repeating poured nonstop from his mouth.

He'd lost money and was taking it out on Wen Fu. Wen Fu was used to that. Once the beating was over, he might still hand over the money.

This time his adoptive father kept jabbing a finger at him and ranting. 'I've been sick of looking at you for ages! You don't work, you don't make money! I feed you for nothing, all out and nothing in! Every damn day you stand there mute as a corpse, hugging that book, studying your useless ass off! Where do you think all that studying's gonna get you? A dragon sires dragons, a phoenix sires phoenixes, and a rat's son digs holes. You'll be a bastard your whole life! And you've got the nerve to ask me for money? Get out! Get out tomorrow! No, get out tonight!'

Last semester, his adoptive father had been playing a gambling game and ended up more than ten thousand yuan in debt. What Wen Fu could steal at night wasn't enough anymore, so his adoptive father set his sights on Wen Fu's classmates and told him to steal money from the boys' dorm.

Wen Fu went. He targeted the older students, and every cent he stole was taken by his adoptive father and lost at the gambling table.

Middle schoolers weren't idiots. And Wen Fu's looks drew attention. An unfamiliar face kept showing up in the boys' dorm, and on top of that money had started going missing. Of course people got suspicious.

Once they asked around, it was easy enough to find out which class the day student Wen Fu belonged to.

Later, that group of students quietly cornered him in a surveillance blind spot behind the dorms and beat the hell out of him. Wen Fu's nose bled nonstop, and he puked up sour fluid from his stomach. Someone stood off to the side filming the whole thing.

Only after they'd had enough and taken full shots of his swollen, bruised face from every angle did they warn him, 'Try stealing here one more time and just wait for a disciplinary mark.'

The next day, photos of Wen Fu after the beating were posted on the confession wall for that rural town school. There was less than a month left before final exams, and rumors about him getting caught stealing money spread all over campus.

For that whole month, no matter where he went, there were whispers, pointing fingers, and strange looks around him. Wen Fu was already numb to it. He'd always been on his own anyway. So he took his exams with that wrecked face of his and finished them.

But after that beating, he refused from then on to agree to stealing money at school for his adoptive father. And with finals taking up all his time, by the time winter break came around, he'd been stealing less and less for him. The money he brought back was barely enough to keep one person fed. With no cash to take into the gambling den, his adoptive father could only stay in the little yard and scratch the itch with a few rounds of mahjong.

As for Wen Fu, things stayed the same as always. When his adoptive father remembered, Wen Fu got a boxed meal bought on the way home. When he didn't, Wen Fu ate the leftovers.

As for pride, self-respect, shame—those were things he'd never had to begin with. At some point, beneath that shell of beauty that was gradually growing striking, there was only a pale, hollow soul left inside him. For someone who'd gone cold to nearly everything around him, it didn't matter whether other people thought he was pretty or ugly, or where exactly his classmates had posted his face online.

By the time Wen Fu grew up this way to sixteen, he was numb to an extreme, and beautiful to an extreme.

The rough plastic edge on the stool leg sliced the corner of his eye. Muddy water streaked his face. The burn on his wrist was reddening and swelling fast, already breaking down. When his adoptive father finally finished cursing him out, Wen Fu stayed where he was, eyes lowered in his usual silence, and held out his hand. 'One eighty.'

The dim yellow bulb overhead was swinging hard from all the commotion, and his adoptive father's shouting filled the tiny lean-to all over again.

In the end, somewhere in the chaos, either someone shoved the money from the table into Wen Fu's hand or he grabbed it himself when no one was looking. With one hundred eighty yuan in tuition money tucked away, Wen Fu went to a public restroom, washed the blood off his face, rinsed the wound on his hand with tap water, then made do for the night on a random bench in the park.

Going back that same night was out of the question. If he did, his adoptive father would go into a rage. No matter what, he had to let at least a day pass.

When Wen Fu went back to the self-built house the next day, his adoptive father was gone.

The house was empty. He'd left nothing behind. Just like every other move, he could go at a moment's notice with cash in his pocket and one set of clothes on his back.

The burn on Wen Fu's wrist was getting infected. He'd never really been sick—or maybe it was more that every time before, he'd just endured it on his own. He'd never known what the proper steps for dealing with illness were supposed to be.

His body was hot and cold at once, and he was starving. He picked up the boxed meal his adoptive father had left in the corner the day before and forced down a few bites to deal with the worst of the hunger, then went into the room and collapsed straight into sleep.

His adoptive father never rented a place anywhere they went. He always asked around or worked some connection and mooched off old vacant houses for shelter. They'd stayed in unfinished cement shells, self-built village houses, even houses waiting for demolition. Whatever furniture was there, they used it. Whatever conditions there were, they lived with them.

Luckily, when Wen Fu woke up after that sleep, the fever had broken.

After the wound on his hand scabbed over, it left behind an irregular round cigarette scar that stayed on his wrist for a long time.

That was how Wen Fu began living in exile on his own.

He didn't have his adoptive father's slick mouth for talking and lying, so all he could do was survive by playing angles, staking out one temporary shelter after another. If he got lucky, he could find one or two empty old houses to stay in. But after the time he woke up in the middle of the night and ran into the owner coming home, Wen Fu always slept by the window, so he could jump out and run if he had to.

And when luck was bad, and he had nowhere to stay for three or five days, he slept wherever he could—under bridges, at the bus station entrance, even in abandoned half-built towers. The one thing that never changed was school. He had no connections to keep transferring around, so he stayed at the same town high school his adoptive father had left him in.

After paying tuition, he didn't have a cent left. Years of running around behind a gambling addict and child trafficker had left him with barely any life skills. Without money, and with no real abilities to rely on, the only thing he could do was steal. If he had to, he'd bundle himself up tight and use a toy knife at night to rob pocket money off students walking alone.

When things got really bad, he even tried calling his adoptive father from a public phone to ask for money. But because the man was hiding from debt collectors, his mobile never got through even once.

He lived like that for two months. Then, while trying to steal an electric scooter, he finally slipped up and got sent to the police station.

The police couldn't get any contact information for his family, so based on the School Uniform he was wearing and his class badge, they called the School's academic office and had his homeroom teacher come over.

She was a forty-year-old woman who taught in a rural town. Before this, because of the rumors from last semester, Wen Fu had already been called into the office once. When the teacher asked him about it, he didn't speak—just nodded, which counted as admitting he'd stolen money. They'd said to call his parents, but no one could be reached.

This time, with the police station involved and the academic office alerted first, once Wen Fu went back, getting expelled was inevitable.

He was the quiet type. No matter what the teacher asked, he wouldn't answer. It wasn't that he didn't want to. He just didn't know how to put things into words, so in the end he stayed silent.

In the end, the teacher told him he was going to be expelled.

She asked, 'Do you want to be expelled?'

Wen Fu shook his head.

Of course she knew he didn't. No matter what else, in this educationally underdeveloped town, Wen Fu had always been first in his year.

She couldn't guess exactly what had happened to this child, but there was no doubt she was looking at him with some pity. A child whose parents couldn't even be contacted—stealing money was wrong, but if he had no money, was that really his fault?

She asked again, 'Do you want to study?'

Naturally, Wen Fu nodded.

The teacher let out a sigh. 'You can't stay at this School anymore. Too many people know you stole money, and now you've ended up at the police station too. There's no way around that. I can talk to the School and get the disciplinary record wiped, but I can't keep you here.'

Wen Fu waited a bit. When she didn't go on, he got ready to leave.

Then the teacher suddenly said, 'I have an old classmate. He's the logistics director at No.1 High School in the city. I can ask if you can go study there.'

Wen Fu stared blankly. He still didn't know how to say thank you. He just followed the teacher's instructions, got on the bus to the city, and transferred to No.1 High School.

Before he left, the teacher pressed one thousand yuan into his hand for tuition and living expenses. 'Don't steal money anymore. Don't make things hard for the teachers there, or for me.'

Before enrolling, after paying tuition, book fees, and the School Uniform fee, Wen Fu had spent almost all the money in his hand.

On one night when he was truly at the end of the road, he met Fei Bolin.