Jiang Wu never got sick.
When various flu viruses swept through kindergarten and elementary school as a child, he alone remained uninfected.
“Huh, you don’t get sick?”
Jiang Wu obediently nodded. “Nope!”
Afterward, no children came to play with him anymore.
“My dad said Jiang Wu doesn’t get sick, he’s a Monster! He’s the one spreading the virus to us! Let’s none of us play with him!”
“My grandpa said Jiang Wu doesn’t have a mom or dad. So was he born from a Monster? How scary!”
“Monsters are all frightening and ugly. No wonder Jiang Wu is so ugly!”
…
Later, Jiang Wu learned to fake sickness—coughing, dizziness—and queue up with everyone to get medicine from the teacher.
Even so, everyone still disliked him. Jiang Wu was too smart; anyone next to him seemed dull by comparison.
So Jiang Wu pretended he couldn’t learn. He was always the first to arrive for self-study and the last to leave every day, taking problems he understood at a glance to ask the teacher.
His classmates began complaining that Jiang Wu was pretending to be diligent, saying he was deliberately showing off, causing them to be scolded by the teacher for not working hard enough.
Jiang Wu touched his burning forehead again and finally confirmed it: he had indeed caught a cold!
There was no medicine at home. He dug out all the old ginger he had. He used half of it to boil water for a foot bath and the other half to brew ginger soup. He drank a large, full cup of it, then turned off the lights and went back to the attic.
The attic ceiling was only 1.9 meters high, and the area was small. There was barely any space after a 1.2-meter-wide bed was placed inside. The spot in front of the bed leading to the staircase was covered with a small rug, piled entirely with Jiang Wu’s books. He took off his slippers at the stairs and, barefoot, took a few steps before collapsing onto the bed.
There was no heating or air conditioning. The bed was made with coral fleece sheets and a duvet cover, also coral fleece. There was also a blanket woven by Granny Jiang. Jiang Wu burrowed into the blanket with a grunt, curling up. One side of his body was cold, the other burning hot, an indescribable discomfort. But he had worked the night shift yesterday and hadn’t slept. The moment his head hit the pillow, despite the discomfort, an unstoppable wave of drowsiness overcame him. He quickly fell asleep.
He dreamed intermittently all night, events from his childhood—
In the earliest years, he was smaller and thinner than other children his age. All his clothes were hand-me-downs given by employers when Granny Jiang worked at other people’s houses.
Granny Jiang washed every piece of clothing spotlessly clean. When he wore them, they still smelled of soap. But the sizes were usually too large. Other children pointed at him, holding their noses—
“Hahaha, look, Little Quail looks so ridiculous!”
Little Quail was the nickname they gave Jiang Wu. The Jiang Wu others saw was very dark, like a burnt stick of firewood.
“Little Quail rents my family’s house! He wears other people’s old clothes! His grandma is a Junk Lady who picks up trash!”
“Trash pickers are so dirty and smelly!”
Tiny Jiang Wu was furious. He pushed one of the kids. “Don’t you say bad things about my grandma!”
He swore, he only wanted to teach the kid a small lesson. But the kid flew backward a great distance, falling to the ground clutching his chin. Blood streamed through his fingers, dripping onto the cement floor. The kid held his chin and wailed loudly, “It hurts, hurts! Wuwuwu… Mom, Dad…”
The other children also screamed and ran away, “He hit someone! Little Quail bullied Shan Zicheng! He made Shan Zicheng bleed!”
Adults rushed over. Jiang Wu was slapped hard several times by someone unknown. “Beat you to death, you parentless bastard!”
He didn’t feel pain. Only a mottled, bright red obscured his vision. He couldn’t see anything clearly. By the time his grandma rushed over after receiving word and carried him to the hospital, he realized his eyelid was bleeding.
That evening, he and Grandma were chased away again. They couldn’t find a place to stay. Grandma walked and scolded, “What sin did I commit in a past life! To end up with a little wretch like you who brings only trouble! Two months’ earnings are all gone! And now you’ve learned to hit people, gone bad…”
He opened his mouth to defend himself. “Shan Zicheng called you a Junk Lady first!”
He hadn’t hit Shan Zicheng either, just pushed him. Shan Zicheng was a head taller than him and twice as wide. He didn’t understand how Shan Zicheng had flown through the air.
Winter nights were especially cold. The snow on the road had turned to ice, making it a bit slippery. Grandma didn’t look back but stopped walking. She paused, then said, “If he scolds you, scold him back. Throwing the first punch is always wrong.”
He lowered his head, feeling very wronged. Touching the gauze on his eyelid, he murmured softly, “Oh.”
Then he heard Grandma say, “What are you doing standing so far away? Keep up with me! If some bad person steals you away, I won’t come looking for you.”
He immediately cheered up and trotted forward to take the luggage. “Grandma, let me carry it!”
Grandma gave him the smaller bag. “If you hit someone again, I’ll spank your bottom! You’re starting first grade soon; we need to save money for the sponsorship fee.”
After he started elementary school, Grandma no longer brought old clothes home. She bought him new clothes.
But even with new clothes, no one liked him.
…
The bizarre, fragmented past flashed by like a revolving lantern. Jiang Wu tiredly opened his eyes, dazedly staring at the bright white light overhead.
It took him a while to realize it was the skylight.
It was morning.
He lifted his hand and peeled back the band-aid to check. The wound had already scabbed over. He pressed the gauze on his forehead; there was a slight, stinging pain.
He lazed in bed a little longer before finally getting up to go to school.
~
At school, Jiang Wu took another pill. He spent all four morning classes slumped over his desk, sleeping, not listening to a word.
So this is what having a fever feels like.
At the noon break, after the other students had left, Jiang Wu slowly got up, organized his books, picked up his backpack, and headed to the cafeteria.
Jiang Wu went to his usual spot, Cafeteria No. 2. The Cafeteria No. 2’s Small-Pot Bean Jelly [Liangfen] had meat and vegetables and was especially cheap—only six yuan a serving, with an extra fried egg costing fifty cents.
He timed it well. When he reached the Small-Pot Bean Jelly [Liangfen] window in Cafeteria No. 2, there was no queue. He added a fried egg. Soon, the cafeteria lady slid a steaming hot Small-Pot Bean Jelly [Liangfen] across the counter.
Jiang Wu took the tray. The cafeteria was moderately crowded—not full, but not empty either. He made a full circle before finding a relatively empty spot.
Just as he picked up his spoon to drink some hot soup, a tray with a balanced meal of meat and vegetables, plus fruit and soup, landed across from him.
A male student sat down.
The boy’s features were beautiful and refined, especially his eyes. The arc of his double eyelids was smooth and natural, his dark pupils clear and bright. His long eyelashes possessed an innocent softness.
His name was Xie Qingyuan.
Unlike Jiang Wu, whom everyone looked down upon, Xie Qingyuan was the most popular person in school.
The top scorer in the national college entrance exam, from an illustrious family, with beautiful looks. In the school forum’s campus heartthrob vote, Xie Qingyuan had beaten the second-place candidate by over a thousand votes. Girls liked Xie Qingyuan, and boys also liked Xie Qingyuan.
This universally popular male god Xie Qingyuan had once sat next to Jiang Wu in an elective class.
“Classmate, is this seat taken?” he politely asked Jiang Wu.
Jiang Wu’s left and right seats were always empty.
It wasn’t just because of his ugly appearance—no matter how ugly a person was, it wouldn’t cause people to avoid him like a plague. Another reason was that he had offended the school’s Princeling Clique. The person who had splashed him by driving through a puddle yesterday was one of them.
Jiang Wu shook his head. “No.”
Xie Qingyuan sat down next to him. Afterward, Jiang Wu became completely and thoroughly resented.
Xie Qingyuan was a model of virtue and grace, yet he was inexplicably close to the ugly Jiang Wu. People harboring open or secret crushes on Xie Qingyuan in school all grew even more annoyed with Jiang Wu.
Sometime ago, someone had taken a sneaky photo of Jiang Wu and Xie Qingyuan’s backs in class and posted it on the school forum— “Extreme versus Extreme!”
Jiang Wu was the extreme of ugliness; Xie Qingyuan was the extreme of beauty.
That anonymous thread set a record, as if a grand carnival. It mocked Jiang Wu through tens of thousands of replies overnight and was still a hot thread on the forum, eternally floating on the front page.
Xie Qingyuan stared at the gauze on Jiang Wu’s forehead, looking quite curious. “Injured your forehead?”
Jiang Wu drank his soup. Warm, it soothed his stomach. His eyes curved contentedly, like two crescent moons. “Accidentally bumped it. It’s nothing serious.”
Xie Qingyuan nodded, picked up his spoon, scooped up some rice, and ate it slowly, chewing carefully. Jiang Wu also devoted himself wholeheartedly to eating. The last bite was the fried egg, which had soaked up the broth. He took a large bite, but before he could bite it off, he suddenly heard Xie Qingyuan say, “Near your place last night, an Agricultural Relief Train derailed.”
Jiang Wu bit off a huge chunk of egg, his mouth instantly bursting with flavorful broth. He chewed it, swallowing before looking up and blinking. “Yeah, I heard about that. Why?”
Xie Qingyuan was drinking his soup. He was beautiful even when drinking soup. More than half the cafeteria was secretly watching him. He put down his soup spoon, leaned closer to Jiang Wu, and lowered his voice. “The reports say the engineer stopped the train by pulling the handbrake. Do you believe that?”
Jiang Wu took another bite of the fried egg. “Who else could it be?” he mumbled indistinctly.
Xie Qingyuan gave a faint smirk, sat back without confirming or denying, and changed the subject. “Are you working part-time next Saturday? It’s my birthday.”
This time, Jiang Wu quickly swallowed his food. He knew next Saturday was Xie Qingyuan’s birthday. He had a tutoring session for a family, but he had already requested leave in advance.
He shook his head. “No.”
Xie Qingyuan said, “My family is throwing me a birthday party. You just need to arrive by six.” He paused, then added, “Oh, speaking of birthdays, something very unusual happened today as well.” He fiddled with a fruit fork. “My Great-Grandfather, who has lived in secluded retirement for decades, actually left the house this morning. He went to personally invite an honored guest to my birthday banquet.”
Xie Qingyuan’s Great-Grandfather, Xie Peitang, was ninety-nine years old this year. Most of Xianjiang City’s dignitaries were his former students. For a guest to warrant such an esteemed figure personally extending an invitation—
Jiang Wu guessed, “A long-lost old friend of your Great-Grandfather’s?”
Xie Qingyuan speared a piece of watermelon. “Perhaps. His surname is Lu. I’ve never met him before. Must be someone quite elderly, from our grandfathers’ generation.” He smiled. “Could be even older than my Great-Grandfather, for all I know.”
At that very moment, inside a dimly lit study, Lu Sheng picked up a pair of spectacles and unfolded them.
They were a pair of pure gold, long-handled folding spectacles. Along the smooth, exquisite handle, two lifelike embossed dragons coiled. The left dragon’s eye was set with imperial green jade; the right dragon’s eye, with pigeon’s blood ruby. The frames were intertwined with red and yellow diamond accents depicting the sun and moon.
The man suspended the spectacles two centimeters above an open dossier.
Where the photo was attached, there was a red-background school admission photo. Beneath the lenses, the young man’s skin was swarthy, and his pupils were an extremely light brown.
Across the Ming-dynasty style, fragrant rosewood desk stood a man in his early sixties.
The elder had silver-white hair and wore a well-tailored three-piece suit. In his left hand, he held a tray. On the tray rested a blue-and-white porcelain teacup with an interlocking lotus design, the high, spiraling aroma of fine Rougui rock tea coiling upwards, and a gilded invitation card.
The elder reported to Lu Sheng, “Master, Xie Peitang has delivered an invitation, requesting your attendance at the birthday celebration of the twelfth-generation eldest grandson of the Xie Clan next week. He is currently waiting outside for a reply.”
Lu Sheng moved the spectacles down to the name column—
Jiang Wu.
Sex: Male.
Age: 18.
Place of Origin: Xianjiang City.
Currently studying at Xianjiang University, Mathematics Department.
The cold handle brushed past the Red Mole on his fingertip, then moved back to the ID photo. It was not the same face as the young man who could see him in the Rainy Alley yesterday.
The elder continued, “The twelfth-generation eldest grandson of the Xie Clan is named Xie Qingyuan, age 19, a student in the Management Department at Xianjiang University.”
Lu Sheng slightly lifted his left hand. The teacup on the tray instantly moved through the air into his palm. The tea’s liquor was bright orange-yellow. He tasted it; the flavor was sweet and mellow, with a salivation-inducing aftertaste.
The next second, the invitation card on the tray vanished.
“Yes, understood.” The elder put away the tray, bowed, and withdrew from the study.
The elder traversed the long corridor and returned to the front hall.
In the front hall, Xie Peitang had never dared to sit down. His eyes were deeply sunken, displaying anxiety and anticipation. His hands gripped his walking stick tightly. Spotting the elder, he quickly adjusted his attire, hurried forward, and stopped before him, asking respectfully, “Mr. Gongliang, what did Mr. Lu say?”
Gongliang Ye smiled courteously. “The invitation, the Master accepted.”
