Chapter 48: Chapter 47: Prelude, "New Year’s Eve
Date: February 6, 1997
Winter,
Prologue:
[Night of the Soul’s Return]
February 6th, New Year’s Eve.
The North.
Heavy snow, like goose feathers, fell from the sky, swept along by a biting wind as sharp as a knife. It lashed at people’s faces, only to be deflected by their padded cotton jackets.
The world was a vast expanse of white. There was no sound, only the whistling of the wind in one’s ears.
The ground was covered in a thick blanket of snow. On the roads, a few solitary figures walked silently through the snowy day, their footsteps making crunching sounds on the surface.
Today was New Year’s Eve.
The streets were lined with red couplets, but the atmosphere didn’t match. Instead, a strange silence hung in the air, as if everyone had lost their soul.
SCREECH~
Seventeen-year-old Zhang Hai stopped in his tracks and let out a breath. The warm exhalation turned into a white mist before being quickly scattered by the wind.
He pulled his padded jacket tighter, raised his head, and looked at the sky.
The sky in the North was a hazy gray.
The grayer the sky, the richer the people.
Over the past two years, the sky had gradually cleared, as if the smog had been driven from the air and into people’s hearts.
The clearer the sky became, the darker people’s hearts grew. Zhang Hai had lost count of how many years it had been like this.
He said nothing. Head down, he pushed his bicycle, melting into the snowy night to become an inconspicuous dark silhouette, slowly moving against the wind.
The warm greetings of previous years were gone from the roads. Most people’s faces were numb, their eyes clouded.
Zhang Hai wasn’t just wandering aimlessly.
He was pushing his bike, slowly heading toward a specific place.
He had traveled this road before.
When he was little, on his way to school, Zhang Hai would sit on the back of the bike while his father pushed him, leaving crooked tire tracks in the snow.
Later, when he dropped out of school, his father still pushed the bike, and the tracks remained.
But the tracks had taken on a different meaning.
Later still, his father was hit by a car while looking for work and was left paralyzed in bed. From then on, it was Zhang Hai who left these tracks in the snow.
SCREECH~
Zhang Hai stopped. He looked up at the magnificent building.
It was a bathhouse, a club where countless men came and went every day. The women inside were scorned by the people in the neighborhood.
Zhang Hai didn’t go in. He parked his bicycle, squatted by the corner of the wall, and tucked his hands into his sleeves, hugging his arms to his chest to ward off the cold wind.
His breath mingled with the freezing wind, which stole the warmth from his face, leaving his skin ice-cold.
CREAK~
The back door opened, and a young woman about his age came out.
She was buttoning up her clothes in silence, her head lowered, when she happened to see Zhang Hai.
Zhang Hai instinctively glanced over. Their eyes met for a moment before they both quickly looked away. He watched until she disappeared around a corner and was gone.
He knew her. She was a childhood friend. The difference was, she was still earning money to take the college entrance exams, while he had already dropped out.
Zhang Hai reminisced about the past as the cold wind swept his thoughts away, carrying them far into the distance.
Until...
CREAK~
The door opened again, and a middle-aged woman walked out. She was buttoning her clothes as she approached him.
Zhang Hai stood up, righted the bike that was leaning against the wall, and brushed the ice from the back seat.
The middle-aged woman said nothing, silently taking her seat on the back of the bike.
Zhang Hai pushed the bicycle, walking along the street.
The snow-covered road was marked with a single line of tire tracks, just like the ones left on his way to school years ago.
Neither of them spoke on the way.
On both sides of the road, many people watched the two of them leave.
Zhang Hai tried to bury his face in his chest, but the road was rough, forcing him to look up again.
After a long while, the bicycle came to a stop.
A thatched-roof house appeared before them.
On the door hung a crude piece of red paper, found from who knows where, with a few characters written on it in brush strokes.
They pushed open the door and went inside.
On the kang in the main room, a middle-aged man lay with his back to them, utterly silent.
There was also a small child. He had a sickly complexion, pale and weak, and a timid, withdrawn personality. He didn’t speak either, just sat obediently in a chair, watching TV.
The Spring Festival Gala was on TV—the single most popular program of the year, bar none.
Sounds blared from the television’s speakers.
"I immediately made my position clear..."
The impassioned voice brought not a shred of warmth to the family. The long-paralyzed middle-aged man rolled over to glance at the TV. The woman who had just returned home froze, watching silently.
Zhang Hai turned off the television. He didn’t say a word, didn’t make a sound, as he sat on the kang.
Tonight was New Year’s Eve.
And on New Year’s Eve, you had to eat dumplings.
Meat-filled dumplings, at that.
And so, a bowl of "special" dumplings was served. They were stuffed with fragrant meat, and the steaming aroma wafted into their nostrils. The little boy’s eyes lit up, shining with gluttonous delight as his mouth began to water.
"Eat up, get your fill."
That night, the old father cast off his usual sullenness, a smile on his face. He dragged his paralyzed body to place a dumpling into his youngest son’s bowl.
"From now on, you have to..."
The mother was no longer the walking corpse she usually was.
After eating the dumplings, it was as if she had come back to life. She pulled Zhang Hai close, talking on and on, reminding him of so many things.
It was as if several years’ worth of words were all crammed into this one night.
There weren’t many dumplings, exactly seventy-three in total.
Zhang Hai didn’t eat a single one.
Soon, the rambling chatter by his ear gradually faded away.
The sounds of struggling grew quieter and quieter.
His father, mother, and younger brother—the three of them went silent, slumped over the table, foaming at the mouth.
The warm house was now devoid of life. The three of them were like statues, sprawled on the table.
No one was talking, and no one would ever talk again.
Zhang Hai turned the television back on, silently watching the lively Spring Festival Gala.
The jarring sounds from the TV echoed through the silent house, ringing in his ears.
Zhang Hai watched the comedy skits, flipped through a few channels, and stared at the brightly dressed people on the screen. His gaze grew deathly still.
Inside his heart, a wildfire began to burn.
...
「The next day.」
Zhang Hai’s figure appeared on the street outside.
His silhouette was shrouded by the swirling snow, like a distinct black dot in an ink wash painting.
The heavy, feather-like snow covered everything. It was cold, but as it melted, it wicked away even more heat.
The wind was cold, but not as cold as the dumplings.
The weather was freezing, but not as freezing as a person’s heart.
This was the North, during the Spring Festival of 1997.
The cold and repression could not extinguish his restless agitation; on the contrary, they fanned the flames within him...
...making them burn ever fiercer.
In a daze, the firelight seemed to cast a hideous, twisted human figure, like... a devil.
[Night of the Soul’s Return]
(Case Closed)
...
...
「October 3, 2003.」
Xu Huo opened his eyes.
He rubbed his head, a stunned expression on his face, his eyes filled with complex emotions.
After returning home from the municipal bureau last night, he had performed a routine dream entry.
However...
Extreme, repressed emotions can easily disrupt a person’s thoughts and drive them to extremes.
Xu Huo had seen two extremes in his dream.
One was the later Zhang Hai.
The other was Chen Li.
"I didn’t expect Chen Li to be sick, too..."
After a long moment of sorting through the memories in his head, Xu Huo gently rubbed the bridge of his nose. His eyes were slightly bloodshot.
"And she’s severely ill..."
That’s right, Chen Li was sick, too.
Zhang Hai had gone to the extreme of madness, while Chen Li had fallen into another extreme.
"Smiling depression..."
Xu Huo murmured, uttering a psychological term. It was also known as sunny-side depression.
As the name implies, a person suffering from it would have a smile on their face, appearing bright and sunny—even happier and sunnier than a normal person, looking as healthy as could be.
But inwardly, they are severely ill!
’Right, I should have investigated more carefully.’
’Orphaned, with two elderly family members at home, she was already extremely poor even before this "wave" hit, let alone five or six years ago. For a girl to survive, save money for college, and pay tuition... ’
Recalling the scene from the dream, Xu Huo couldn’t help but shake his head.
The experience of selling her body would haunt Chen Li for the rest of her life.
Zhang Hai would want to trample over others, while Chen Li would act like a slave, serving them.
This was why Xu Huo said they were two extremes.
Unsurprisingly, even if the two of them never met again, Zhang Hai would eventually be arrested for his crimes.
And Chen Li...
...would most likely commit suicide abruptly one morning, with no one around her ever suspecting she was sick.
Xu Huo sighed, suppressing the intense emotions in his mind and letting his own consciousness take control.
He had just gotten out of bed and washed up, preparing to write something, when a sound reached his ears.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK~