Chapter 25

After leaving the hospital that day, Zhou Yue walked a very long way. Shenzhen is so big, with green trees and spotlessly clean. There are more skyscrapers and nightclubs and bars than in Guangzhou.

The place in her hometown was called Golden Leopard. It was very rustic and small, but everyone could go there to have fun, and most of the people who went there knew each other. It was actually a modified version of a disco.

Most of the brothels here are called Kerry, Jinzun, Shengshi Haoting and other names that are daunting. The drunken bosses at the door are supported by beautiful women with beautiful faces and walk towards a Mercedes-Benz or BMW. As they walk, they rub and pinch the waists and legs of the women.

An old bald man who looked like a Shar Pei dog turned around and saw Zhou Yue. His bloodshot eyes widened, and he threw off the people around him and stumbled towards her, speaking incoherently. Zhou Yue was so scared that she ran away and hid under a tree at the entrance of a food stall, gasping for air. When someone called her "pretty girl", she was frightened again. She turned around and saw that it was the food stall owner who asked her in clumsy Mandarin: "Pretty girl! What do you want to eat?"

In 2009, Zhou Yue was 19 years old and Kang Xingxing was 20 years old.

Kang Xingxing came that day and looked at her with a smile on his face on the road opposite the school. The asphalt was softened by the sun and the afternoon sun made people drowsy. They just looked at each other and smiled across the road.

The next day after she left the hospital, she called him and said, "Brother, can you come to school? I have something to tell you."

She took him to the cheap hotel they often stayed in. Sitting on the bed, he brought a lot of things with him. He squatted on the floor and took them out one by one, listing them like treasures:

"Drink chrysanthemum tea. The heat in Guangzhou is strong, so you should drink more water. Eat your favorite sticky rice dumplings as soon as possible, but don't eat too much at a time. You have a weak stomach and it won't digest..."

He was wearing a white short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans that were washed white. Zhou Yue looked down at his head. He was twenty years old and already had white hair.

Young lovers downstairs in the hotel were laughing and talking happily, expressing their endless love. Outside the window, the neon lights of Guangzhou were a hundred times brighter than those of that deserted northern city, as bright as daylight.

The bedside was too small to hold the things he brought, so they had to be piled on the floor. He sat on the train for a day and a night, holding these things in the crowded green carriage where it was impossible to tell whose seat was whose, enduring every minute and every second. He was so smart, how could he not know what she was going to say.

"Guangzhou is so big," she said, smiling. "It's so beautiful! This is my first time eating McDonald's. We only have KFC where I live."

"Yeah." He lowered his head and rubbed the ticket whose words could no longer be seen.

"I also went to Shenzhen, which is even more beautiful than Guangzhou. I didn't realize there are so many beautiful places in the world. There are tall buildings everywhere. The diamonds and jewelry in the shopping malls dazzled me. And the clothes they wore and the bags they carried were all so beautiful, more beautiful than I've ever seen."

She smiled and shook her head, turning the ring on her ring finger in circles. It was oxidized and stained with blood, and was dotted with black spots.

"Unlike this ring, it's all black."

She finally looked up at him. His face was wooden and expressionless. He crumpled up the sweat-soaked ticket and then unfolded it again. The words on it were completely worn away. She didn't know what he was looking at.

"But in Guangzhou, no one is as pretty as me."

This time he also laughed, "Yes, no one is as beautiful as Yueyue."

"I feel like I deserve these things more than they do."

"You deserve the best in the world."

That night Zhou Yue did not mention a word about his mother. He returned to school alone without taking any of those things. When he left, he looked back and saw that he was still sitting at the head of the bed, looking at the train ticket with no words on it under the grease lamp, holding the bag he carried back from the mine. He carried that bag from the mine to Lin Peng's barbecue stall, and then from the barbecue stall to the construction site. The bag was already full of holes and could not be washed clean, just like the dirt in the cracks of his round fingernails.

When Zhou Yue went to see him the next day, he was gone. The quilt was folded into square blocks of tofu. There were hot sticky rice dumplings and a cup of brewed chrysanthemum tea on the table.

A week later, I received another call from Kang Xingxing, but the person who called was not him. It was Lin Peng, who howled like a pig on the other end of the phone: "Yueyue, come back to see your brother! I don't know what happened, he fell off the scaffolding! What happened in broad daylight? We are trying to raise money for him! Damn bastard hospital, damn it! If there is no money..."

Zhou Yue didn't hear a word of what was said afterwards. She didn't think about anything and went to Jinzun again.

She couldn't quite remember what had happened, but she seemed to have arrived in a magnificent room. Above the bed was a gorgeous painting of a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix. She counted the little blue birds one by one. They were so beautiful, each feather so lifelike, as if they would take flight at any moment. But there were so few that she couldn't even count them. The shaking was so severe that she wanted to vomit. She kept her hand under the pillow, tightly gripping the tip of the knife, but she didn't feel any pain at all. She just felt a sticky sensation on her hand and under her shoulder. After a while, she heard a man's shrill howl, "Fuck your mother, you crazy woman!"

In this life, the next, or the next, she could never understand those women who felt comfortable doing this for money. She held onto the money tightly, never even counting it. She only remembered that each bill turned into a poisonous snake biting her chest, leaving her covered in ulcers and rotten from the inside out...

"Are you okay, miss? Do you want me to call the police? Can we bandage you up?"

She still remembered that several men and women in suits surrounded her in a circle, including men in security uniforms. She stared at them for a long time before she realized that it was a bank. The money was stained with blood and piled up in a mess on the marble counter, dirtying the white counter. The woman behind the bulletproof glass looked at her in horror, staying away from her even through the thick bulletproof glass.

She suddenly imagined everything about this strange sister. She imagined her carrying an insulated lunch box to work every day, chatting and laughing with colleagues at lunch, discussing what new restaurants had opened nearby and whether they should try them on the weekend. After work, she took the subway home, changed into pajamas, took a shower, and put on a facial mask. She sat with her husband watching TV, laughing so hard that the mask was about to fall off. As she thought about it, that sister became herself, and the husband on the sofa became Kang Xingxing...

She had no idea how much money she made that night when she sold herself. The money was withdrawn from her bank card almost the moment it was deposited into it.

She was very grateful to Lin Peng for this matter. If he had taken the money that night but failed to save Kang Xingxing's life, she would have been powerless to turn the situation around.

She stood by the Pearl River, calling Lin Peng every half hour and deciding whether to jump every half hour.

That night she finally saw Shenzhen, which was brightly lit at night.

The next morning, Lin Peng said that Kang Xingxing had been rescued.

She returned to her hometown. It was also her first time to take a plane. She vomited all the way. The picture of Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix swayed more and more violently in front of her eyes with the turbulence of the air flow. She changed the vomit bag one after another. The man in a suit next to her sighed, frowned and murmured, "Are you kidding me..." Then he waved to the flight attendant to change seats.

That evening she sat beside the hospital bed. It turned out that with money, traveling from one place to another was just a matter of raising a leg. She and Kang Xingxing were on the green train, their heads pressed together, their butts squeezed under each other, being squeezed around and used as human stools day and night. She felt so sad when she thought about it.

Kang Xingxing was wrapped up like a mummy, with only her eyes, nose, mouth, and a few fingers exposed. Her legs were hanging in the air, with blood seeping through the gauze.

He noticed her coming, opened his eyes, looked at her, turned his head and rubbed towards her, rubbing his fingertips against her ring finger and the ring on it.

"When I get better," he said quietly, "I'll follow my dad's example and start doing business in Guangzhou or Shenzhen. I'll make tons of money."

He swallowed hard, as if swallowing a needle, "Please don't leave me."

Zhou Yue suddenly understood why people said that people who were eaten alive by bears would not feel any pain in the end. Now she did not feel any pain at all. Her heart felt empty, as if she did not have this organ.

She stroked his bandaged hand and said, "But I want to live an easy life, right now, right now. Life is only a few decades long, and I don't want to wait any longer."

She smiled, stroking his narrow eyes and fluffy eyelashes, not yet realizing that it was the last time. She thought she still had a chance, when her mother died, or woke up. If he hadn't married and had children by then, she could still hug him, act coquettishly with him, and apologize to him, just like when she was a child, every time she bullied him, she would roar with confidence: "Alright, alright! I was wrong, isn't that enough?"

He wouldn't be angry for long, he never blamed her once.

"But you can't die. I won't feel at ease if you die. I want you to live. Just think of this as the last thing you do for me."

After saying that, she took off the ring and placed it in his palm, then stood up and walked out of the ward.

She returned to Shenzhen instead of Guangzhou. The procedures for taking a leave of absence were very difficult. The counselor contacted her three times, but it was no different. She was very grateful to this chance acquaintance for doing this for her.

Later, she followed Jiang Huai. When she went back to see the counselor, he just glanced at her, stood up, pushed her out, and slammed the office door without saying a word from beginning to end.

But that's all in the past. That year, Zhou Yue, who was 19 years old, was almost penniless. There was no Lianjia or Wo Ai Wo Jia at that time. She was the only one running around in the suffocatingly hot streets of Shenzhen under the sun. The most torturous thing about the heat in the south is that you feel like you can't sweat, and your pores seem to be blocked by sticky moisture, but when you lower your head, your body is already soaked with sweat.

Finally, she lived in a tube-shaped building on Shahe Street. However, the tube-shaped buildings in Shenzhen were different from the three- or four-story tube-shaped buildings in her hometown. The tube-shaped building on Shahe Street was towering into the clouds, surrounded by buildings on all sides, with a square skylight in the middle. Standing downstairs and looking up, she felt like a frog in a well.

There are more than a dozen households on each floor, and there are no independent bathrooms, but she likes it here very much. It is lively and has a sense of home. However, sometimes too many people are not good, because there are gossips and some "dirty hands", and you don't even know whose hands these dirty hands are.

One time, Zhou Yue washed her hair in a public washroom for convenience. Since her hair was short, she just rubbed it a few times. But when she was bending over to wash the foam off her hair, someone touched her hard from behind. She screamed and turned around, but there was no one there.

There were many children in the tube-shaped building, of all ages, playing together, running upstairs and downstairs. She bought some salt water popsicles and the children ran past her. She smiled and looked at them. It turned out that Kang Xingxing had very Guangdong and Guangxi characteristics when she was a child. She was dark-skinned, had thick lips, and a round head. There was a child who looked especially like her, about five or six years old. She heard the children call him Little Copper Bean, so she called him Little Copper Bean too. When Little Copper Bean heard her call him, he stopped and stood in the sun looking at her, his expressionless face also looking like hers. She took out a popsicle from the plastic bag, tore it open, and handed it to him, "Eat snow sticks." He didn't respond. She thought maybe her Cantonese was too poor, so she smiled and said, "Eat ice." Little Copper Bean understood, slapped the popsicle in her hand to the ground, and shouted, "Baoqi! Zhou Baoqi!"

Little Copper Bean ran away. Zhou Yue watched the popsicle melt away on the ground. She thought about how Shenzhen was so big, yet so small. The owner of the "Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix" painting kept saying to everyone, "That mainland product, wow... a treasure!"

How did this news reach Shahe Street and the ears of a six-year-old child? Zhou Yue looked up at the densely packed windows and doors on all sides, not knowing.

Children speak without restraint, but adults still tolerate it. The landlord is called Aunt Lou. I don’t know her real name, but her lifelong dream is to buy this building.

She also loves two things. One is a silk shawl. Every time I see her Zhou Yue, the shawl on her shoulders is different. The patterns are complicated and exquisite, mainly Bohemian and South American styles, and occasionally ethnic style.

Another is Cantonese opera. It is said that she was a famous Cantonese opera performer when she was young. Now she is old, but she still stands in the public corridor of the tube building every morning to warm up her voice. In the open door, a crackling old radio plays classic Cantonese operas such as "The Purple Hairpin" and "Snow in June".

During the day when Zhou Yue is not at work, she would chat with her. She said she had no children and was not married. She said she met Leon Lai once in Hong Kong in 1996, and since then she had been ruined for life and no other man was attractive to her.

But apart from Aunt Lou, there are only a few decent people with temperament and good manners here. Among them is a very annoying neighbor, an old man. No one knows his name, and he never greets people. His face looks like a goat. He probably has chronic pharyngitis. Every morning when he brushes his teeth, he has to vomit with a hoarse voice. The noise is as loud as an earthquake, and Zhou Yue feels like vomiting when she hears it.

Then there is Aunt Mei upstairs, who is openly engaged in that kind of business. She is fierce and often fights with customers over prostitution fees, and she has never lost.

Zhou Yue's work happened to happen. On the night she returned from her hometown, she walked aimlessly in Shenzhen. It was from that time that she developed this problem. She felt like she was in a semi-sleepwalking state. She didn't know where she was or where she was going. She just walked desperately, as if she wanted to get rid of something, but she couldn't get rid of it no matter how hard she walked.

"Wow, beautiful girl, your shoes are torn!" She heard the voice and lowered her head. The shoes were really torn, the laces were trampled into tassels, the toes were exposed, and there was blood in the gaps between the nails.

Looking up again, I saw a woman sitting next to a plastic table, smoking. She was very young, about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, with her hair piled high. She was wearing a blue silk cheongsam and her eyeshadow was also blue, giving her a snake-like look. The huge signboard behind her was also blue, emitting a faint light in the dark night: a blue sea.

Later she found out her name was Aunt Liu. She had called many people "Auntie Liu" in Shenzhen, but Auntie Liu was the most awkward. How could she be called "Auntie" when she was so young? Calling her "Jie" was more appropriate.

"Old witch! Look at her ears, they're all pulled like Zhu Bajie!"

The singing Lao Hei later often accompanied Zhou Yue. He was very talented and could play many instruments, especially the saxophone. Whenever the saxophone sounded, Zhou Yue would think of dusk, sunset, and the Bridge of Sighs.

The first song Zhou Yue sang on stage was You Hongming's "Bridge of Sighs." Unfortunately, the response was mediocre. After the song was over, there was no applause. A drunken man stood up and laughed, "Pretty girl! Are you coming out on stage?"

"Sing Cantonese songs!" Aunt Liu said, squinting her eyes as she held a cigarette in her mouth, looking very disappointed. "Most of the people who come to our place are bigwigs from Hong Kong, and they don't understand Mandarin! You can sing Mandarin songs too, sing some Teresa Teng!"

"Besides..." Her eyes, as charming and venomous as those of an Egyptian snake, swept over Zhou Yue's face and body. She smiled inexpressibly and said, "You're so pretty, why don't you sell something that's easy to sell!"

But in this regard, Blue Ocean also has rules, with clear lines and division of labor. Those on the stage are on the stage, and those off the stage are off the stage. Those on the stage naturally don't earn as much as those off the stage, but if any customer touches someone on the stage, he will definitely be asked to leave.

In Aunt Liu's words, women have to be open-minded about this. Carina Lau is the one who can be open-minded, while Anita Mui is the one who can't. So what if she's the most beautiful woman in Mount Wutai? If she can't make money and turns off customers, it's not worth it.

"Isn't Mainland China's Fan Bingbing pretty enough? Aren't there some bigwigs who don't like this type? A beautiful woman is worthless..." She waved her hand majestically, her gold bracelets jingling. "I, Lan Hai, am only more beautiful, not the most beautiful!"

But Zhou Yue's schedule seemed similar to that of the sisters in the audience. They would start singing at around eight or nine o'clock all night and would not leave until dawn.

The show ended at around nine o'clock that day because there were no customers. This was the first time since she came to Blue Sea. Halfway through her song, Aunt Liu came in, clapped her hands, and said, "Stop singing, it's time to go." She looked calm, as if she was used to such scenes.

"What's wrong?" Zhou Yue asked Lao Hei quietly. He was putting his saxophone into his backpack and shook his head when he heard the sound. "Yueyue, go home. The weather is going to change!"

The weather has really changed. It started raining before Zhou Yue got home. The rain in Shenzhen is different from the rain in the north. In the north, every rain brings a chill, but the rain in Shenzhen is like boiling water pouring on you before it cools down. It’s not scalding, but just stuffy and hot.

The traffic was extremely congested, with the shrill honking of cars and the roar of engines coming one after another, but there was no sign of a car accident anywhere.

She walked home holding an oil-paper umbrella, turned one corner, then another, and turned into the alley. When she passed the garbage dump, she always felt that there was more garbage today than usual, so she took a closer look. When she saw the hand behind the black trash can, she actually felt her soul flying out from the top of her head for a moment.

It must be said that she was very brave. She walked over while thinking about the dismemberment case she had seen on TV, and even went around behind the trash can to take a look.

She held an umbrella, squatted on the ground and watched for a while, then stood up and left.

After walking for a long way, she heard a noise upstairs and saw Aunt Mei fighting with a customer in the public corridor on the third floor. She had someone wrap her hair around her several times and hold it in their hands, using it as a handle to smash it against the wall. "You agreed on 350, and now you're asking me for 400?" But she didn't admit defeat, and she kicked the man in the crotch with her high heels again and again.

Zhou Yue looked up and saw that the rain was getting heavier. She turned around and went back to drag the person behind the trash can back home.