Chapter 45

[Ah, it's still looking at me.]

The thought was the first to squeeze its way up from the depths of his body.

Perhaps because it felt so utterly devoid of reality, Yang Siguang cradled the eyeball in his palm and examined it for a very, very long time, yet felt none of the horror and revulsion one ought to experience when facing a human organ.

His mind was shrouded in fog, his thoughts unusually scattered, and thinking itself had become immensely difficult.

Why was Li Chen’s eyeball inside his own schoolbag?

After a long while, Yang Siguang belatedly wondered.

Perhaps this was merely a dream? That was his first thought.

Yet the tactile sensation of the eyeball was far too vivid, and the tearing marks on the muscle and nerve bundles at the back were distinctly clear...

Bits and pieces of his classmate's chatter over the phone resurfaced in his mind. The classmate had said the speeding car was moving fast (perhaps it really was fast? Yet Yang Siguang found he could no longer recall), to the extent that when Li Chen met his disaster, his internal organs were utterly shattered and his body severely damaged.

Yang Siguang recalled more fragmented images.

He remembered Li Chen's shoes. One of them had flown off during the impact, landing much farther away than the corpse itself, which was why when the paramedics transferred him to the stretcher, one of Li Chen's feet was bare.

The white cloth covered only Li Chen's head, leaving his feet exposed.

As the stretcher was wheeled past Yang Siguang's field of vision, he had caught sight of Li Chen's completely twisted ankle.

Like an action figure whose foot had been accidentally assembled backwards, the corpse was clearly lying flat on its back, yet the toes pointed straight down at the floor.

Ah, Li Chen had already been reduced to a mess...

A voice murmured deep within his heart.

So what about the eyeball?

Had the eyeball flown out just like that shoe?

And then accidentally tumbled into his own bag?

Yang Siguang thought in a daze.

When he finally snapped back to reality, he found that he had already fetched a clean glass.

Ice cubes rested inside the glass.

He had carefully wrapped the eyeball in plastic wrap and laid it atop the ice.

Yang Siguang no longer remembered where he had seen this method of preservation, recalling only that the article had stated this approach better maintained organ viability and increased the success rate of replantation into the body—

The very instant that thought crossed his mind, Yang Siguang’s train of thought broke off.

He suddenly realized that he didn't actually need to be so careful.

Because Li Chen no longer had to worry about organ replantation; after all, Li Chen was already dead.

...

A thin layer of mist had formed on the outer surface of the glass.

Through the glass, Yang Siguang stared fixedly at Li Chen's eyeball.

The eyeball remained so vibrant, so moist, and at that moment, it seemed to be gazing back at him as well.

It was as if it had merely left that person's body temporarily, staying by Yang Siguang's side for just a little while.

Once tomorrow came and the nightmare faded, it would return once more to Li Chen's eye socket, sweeping over him with that cold and disgusted look.

At the mere thought, an invisible, icy hand seemed to reach directly into Yang Siguang's abdominal cavity, mercilessly kneading his internal organs.

A wave of intense nausea washed over him.

He stumbled to his feet and ran toward the bathroom, but the moment he rushed to the doorway, his legs turned to jelly and he collapsed onto his knees.

*

Yang Siguang threw up.

*

That night, Yang Siguang ran a high fever.

Perhaps because before he fell asleep, his mother had been cursing and screaming at him, leaving the woman's high-pitched, fierce shrieks echoing in Yang Siguang's ears even within his dreams.

"...How many times do I have to tell you? Are your ears broken? Stay away from that whore's spawn! Far away, do you hear me?!"

"Other people's children at least know how to care for their mothers, but what about you? Is your brain broken? Have you forgotten what that whore did? She stole your father, do you realize that from now on you're a fatherless child? You've become a bastard!"

"And you actually still play with that whore's child?! Are you heartless or brainless?! Dammit, you even have the nerve to cry! I'm not even crying, what are you crying for? What face do you have to cry!"

...

The dream, too, was a turbid, scorching afternoon.

The searing sun was about to set, its bloody red glow painting the entire world in glaring hues.

In the narrow, cramped stairwell, his mother’s broom relentlessly lashed against Yang Siguang's body amidst a stream of curses, her once-smiling face twisted and overflowing with grotesque hatred.

Yang Siguang remembered that he was crying.

It seemed that ever since he was little, whenever he cried, he never made a sound, only weeping silently.

In truth, he simply didn't dare to make a sound, yet for some reason, that only seemed to drive his mother into an even greater frenzy of rage.

The woman's fingernails had dug deep into his flesh, leaving a patch of skin that would remain a terrifying purple-black for a long time to come.

Yet this clearly failed to vent the woman's anger.

"Cry, cry, all you know is crying, you have the exact same disgusting nature as your good-for-nothing father—let me ask you, Yang Siguang, are you still going to mess around with that stinking whore's spawn from now on?"

Yang Siguang gave a pained sob and slowly nodded.

The woman's blood-red eyes seemed to burn within their sockets.

Her hand gripped Yang Siguang's neck, clammy and slick with sweat.

"Fine then. Come on, tell me—Li Ailing is a bitch who gave birth to a beast named Li Chen, and you will never play with that beast's family ever again!"

...

Tears mixed with sweat like tiny insects, crawling in ripples down his skin.

A faint, stinging pain flared as they crossed the fine, dense scratches left on his skin by the broom.

The child, held in a death grip by his mother's hand, moved his lips laboriously, yet ultimately failed to repeat the venomous curse.

The woman grew even more unhinged and frantic than before.

"Good—good—so you're just like that dead dog, aren't you? You can't drag your feet away the moment you see the Li family's beast, is that it?! Will you say it or not? Are you going to say it—"

Howling, the woman abruptly spun around, snatched up a rusted black iron scissors from the doorway, and made a motion to shear the boy's cheek.

"Not going to say it, huh? Useless trash anyway, I might as well shred it right now!"

The icy tip of the blade poked straight against the child's gums. A heavy taste of rust rose in his throat, though it was hard to tell whether it was blood or simply the inherent metallic tang of the tool.

Amidst the extreme terror, Yang Siguang watched in horror as that thin, cowardly boy struggled beneath his mother's hands and finally forced out a sound.

[No, no, no, don't say it! Don't say it!]

An overwhelming terror, spreading from the deepest marrow of his bones, surged over Yang Siguang. He let out a hoarse roar within his own dream, yet just like countless nightmares before, he remained powerless to change what happened that afternoon.

"Li Ailing is a bitch... sob... gave birth to Li Chen..."

"Gave birth to that beast Li Chen!"

The woman corrected him aggressively and menacingly.

"Li Ailing is, is a bitch, gave birth to Li Chen... that beast Li Chen... I won't ever play with him again... sob..."

"Louder!"

The woman's blood-red eyes continued to glare viciously down at the boy.

And the boy could only raise his voice higher and higher, repeating that sentence over and over in a cracked, piercing scream.

Until the veins at his temples bulged, and his entire body was soaked through with cold sweat.

...

He couldn't even remember when his mother had shoved him aside, retreated straight into her room, and slammed the door shut with a bang.

Left behind, he could only stand numbly at his own doorstep, crying and shouting.

"Li Ailing... is... sob... sob..."

At that very moment, the boy suddenly felt a gaze, as tangible as physical weight, land upon him.

In his panicked and chaotic state, he ought not to have been so sensitive to the gaze of another, but this gaze was entirely different—far too sharp, far too heavy.

Weeping, he slowly turned his head, locking eyes with an equally thin and frail shadow on the stairs.

The blood-colored light fell from behind that shadow, piercing into the boy's eyes and making it utterly impossible for him to discern the other's expression.

Yet he remembered those eyes.

Once always overflowing with affection and gentleness, like flowing honey-colored eyes, they turned exceptionally cold starting from that very day.

*

Yang Siguang woke up in bed, drenched in cold sweat.

His pillow was completely soaked. No doubt because he had cried in his dream, his eyes were now burning and red. Even when he turned on his phone just to check the time, his eyeballs felt as though they were being pierced through by steel needles, sending a wave of agonizing pain.

Yang Siguang pressed a hand over his eyelids, taking quite a while to recover.

"Ah... really..."

He muttered, then simply sat there on the bed, watching the daylight filtering through the crack in the curtains slowly illuminate the entire room.

He could no longer remember how many times he had dreamed of the events of his childhood.

Come to think of it, it was merely a terribly cliché and mundane past.

Back then, Li Chen's mother, as a single parent, had moved into the apartment next door with Li Chen.

His father kept talking about how difficult it was for a lone mother and child, and would drop by from time to time to lend a helping hand. Then, helping here and helping there, the two of them struck a spark.

After that, Yang Siguang's father simply abandoned his own wife and child and ran off with the woman.

In those days of conservative social morals, this affair was considered major news, passionately and lengthily discussed by everyone.

Subjected to so much gossip and pointing fingers, his mother's already volatile temper became like adding fuel to fire, reaching an almost manic state at its worst. Even now, whenever she looked at Yang Siguang, she still found everything about him disagreeable, venting her displeasure at every turn.

And toward Yang Siguang back then, her temper had been even worse. Because of this, Yang Siguang had suffered endless beatings and scoldings over the smallest trifles as he grew up.

Yet no matter how miserable Yang Siguang's life was, compared to Li Chen at the time, he was actually considered fortunate. After all, abrasive and prone to violence as his mother was, she still cared enough to ensure her child was fed, clothed, and sent to school.

Li Chen had no such luck.

Everyone said his mother, Li Ailing, was beautiful, but everyone also had to admit that Li Ailing had something wrong with her mind. Back then, she refused to go to college, willing to die to sever ties with her family just to mess around with a notorious local punk, ultimately giving birth to Li Chen.

Not long after Li Chen was born, the punk was hacked to death by someone. Left with such a child, Li Ailing still acted like a pampered, clueless young miss, raising her child worse than an ordinary family would raise a dog, never once giving him a genuine thought.