Chapter 10
The TV in the ward was playing a news report: "Jiang Group founder Jiang Jide and his wife Zhao Shuying tragically passed away in a car accident in Kowloon, Hong Kong on June 29, 2000. Their eldest son, Jiang Pingnan, was rescued..."
"Yueyue, look, this is a handsome brother." Kang Xingxing sat next to Zhou Yue, pointing at the TV and smiling at her ingratiatingly, carefully observing her expression.
The young boy on TV was wearing a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up, pushing a wheelchair. The man in the wheelchair was curled up like a shrimp, with a badge pinned to his black suit and a red tie subtly printed with a five-pointed star. His face and hands were as pale as wax, his head was tilted dully, and saliva flowed from the corners of his lips if he hadn't wiped it for a while. It was hard to associate him with the young entrepreneur who was elegant, as muscular as a cheetah, and whose white teeth were revealed when he smiled.
The young man pushing him was clearly far from the image of an entrepreneur. His features were as slender as a willow leaf, and his oval face was still chubby. The camera seemed to use soft focus on his face, and it was inappropriate to call him a student. He looked like a young man singing Kunqu opera. He was also very cramped. He tightly grasped the wheelchair armrests, staring blankly at the microphones that were about to poke his face. He listened to the reporters' sharp questions and whispered in standard Mandarin, "I will take good care of my brother."
Having encountered such a misfortune, one can't help but worry about the Jiang family who had just returned to the mainland.
But Zhou Yue didn't understand these "adult things" and no longer had the heart to look at her handsome brother. She sat on the sofa, looked down at the yellow and wilted apple in her hand, and only took a small bite.
"Don't listen to your mother's nonsense." The man on the hospital bed far away was lying on his side with his hands under his head, looking at the two children. The TV volume in the ward was turned down to the minimum, and only his voice could be barely heard.
He looked better now, but he had shaved his head. There was a basin under the bed, and he vomited every once in a while. He vomited until he had no strength left, so he just lay on the edge of the bed.
"If your mother could say something nice, how could I be so annoying to her?" He smiled, and Zhou Yue also smiled, but she still kept looking at her hands with her eyes downcast.
The man looked at her, was silent for a moment, and called out "Xingxing". Kang Xingxing raised her head, and he said softly: "Take your sister out to play, don't go too far, and come back before dinner."
"good!"
The man waited until the two children walked away, then changed his position and lay down with his back to the door. After a while, the woman appeared at the door, picked up the basin and went out. After a while, she came back and put the clean basin on the ground. She went to the sink by the wall to wash her hands. Without even looking at the mirror, she dried her hands and sat down on the bed to peel an apple. She didn't even look at the oxidized apple on the table with only a small hole bitten out of it.
"Eat it." She peeled the apple and handed it to him. After pausing for two or three seconds, she took it back and placed it on the table, waiting for it to oxidize with the other apple. She relaxed her body as if she had completed a task, placed her hands on her knees, leaned back in her chair, and looked out the window calmly.
"Why would you say that in front of the children?"
The man spoke with his back to her, but she acted as if she didn't hear him and just looked up at the leaves blown by the wind.
The ward was silent. It was getting dark. The sunlight was as weak and withered as his voice: "I know I am a short-lived ghost, so I have already figured out how to live my life to the fullest. No one should control me, especially my dad, a useless old man. When my mom died, he rolled around in the hospital corridor, banged his head against the wall, and kept chanting that he couldn't do it, he couldn't do it..." He laughed with his back to her and coughed a few times, but she didn't even blink.
He coughed enough and stared out the window absentmindedly, a smile still lingering on his lips. "I wanted to laugh too. Whoever is dead is useless. But seeing the old man so sad, I kindly went to help him and tried to give him some advice. But he just pounced on me and slapped me twice. The first thing he said was, 'Why wasn't you the one who died?'"
His smile turned contemptuous. "He fought for so many years, and this is all he does for a woman. No matter how beautiful a woman is, she's just like that. Just smile at them, give them a few clothes and a few bags, and they'll come over eagerly. It would be a waste not to play with them. Anyway, I, Zhou Tiancheng, have the ability to make sure my wife has everything she wants, so what's wrong with having some fun outside?"
He turned around and looked at her. "I never thought I was wrong. I was rotten, but I have a scale in my heart. I can tell who is my wife. I..." He opened his mouth for a long time, and finally said: "I am true to you."
Dai Yan moved, and she smiled softly, "Your sincerity is cheap enough."
Zhou Tiancheng looked at her in surprise, then smiled and lowered his eyes after a while, "Yes, but Yueyue is not cheap." He raised his eyes, "She didn't come here out of hatred."
Dai Yan finally lowered her head and looked at him silently.
"Yueyue is my only child."
She remained silent, but her eyes became sharp, even her breathing stopped, and she narrowed her eyes and stared at his face.
"That day I ran into a group of people," he said, looking up at the ceiling, lost in memory. "For the first time, I was glad I never took you and Yueyue over there. It turns out everything on TV is fake. You'll never imagine the feeling those people gave you. It was like when we were kids, we tied grasshoppers together, lit them on fire, and let them crackle. We laughed as we burned, and we didn't feel cruel because they were just grasshoppers. But in the eyes of those people, we were just like grasshoppers."
"The leading man," he turned his head and reached out to gently touch Dai Yan's forehead, "there is an eye here too."
But after a while, he denied his statement, closed his eyes and muttered: "It's hard to say, it might be a scar. No one saw it clearly. The man with me looked up...
I still remember the laughter of those people when they burned him with fire. The more miserable he howled, the happier they laughed, like crazy.
"I've never been so scared in my life," he opened his eyes, his lips pale. "It's so scary now that I'm not afraid anymore. I just think it's ridiculous. People are so mean. They don't know what they miss the most until they die once. There was nothing in my mind at that time, not even my dad. There was only you and Yueyue. I kept thinking about what to do with you and Yueyue. I knew I would never be able to go home, but if I could go home..."
He struggled to move closer to Dai Yan, his eyes shining, "I'll come back and live a good life with you, and never touch those women outside again."
"Then I was really saved." His dry tear glands actually secreted tears, and his palm covered the back of her hand. "It was a female police officer who saved us."
"That's Xingxing's mother."
"Police." Dai Yan was already frightened and repeated it blankly with her lips stammering.
"Yes, those people probably didn't expect to run into the police in the deep mountains and forests, so they panicked. She told us to run and not look back.
We ran for our lives, the gunfire continued, and then there was silence. I don't know what possessed me, I just wanted to go back and take a look. I found a place to hide until dawn, and only came out when I heard the Burmese-speaking people running south. When I got back and found her, she was already dead, her neck broken in half, and there was not a single piece of good flesh on her body. I asked her if she had anything to tell me, and I, Zhou Tiancheng, would do it for her even if I had to go through fire and water.
"She took only two breaths, uttered two words, 'Stars,' and handed me a photo before she died."
"When I found Xingxing, he and his grandmother were the only ones at home. They were as dirty as wild people, eating rotten food, and their bodies were covered with scars from being bullied and beaten by other children. When the old lady heard that her daughter had died, she died that night. I discussed it with them and brought the child back."
"Oh," he laughed, "you little brat is stubborn. First he refused to go with me, and then he refused to call me dad." He finished laughing and turned to look at Dai Yan, "It's right not to call your mom. You know how you treat others."
He smiled and stroked the back of her hand, then held her hand in his palm and rubbed it. "If I wasn't leaving, I would have taken this matter to my grave, but Xingxing is too young, and I can't let him go. His father died a long time ago, and his mother died to save me..."
"Swallow," he looked at her with a pleading smile, "He has no relation to our family at all. We can't owe him such a big favor. When I'm gone, be nice to Xingxing. He's a good kid, smart, and he'll have a great future. I'm not wrong about people. Don't worry about leaving Yueyue to him. He'll starve to death rather than let Yueyue skip a meal."
"Women look for a man for stability; everything else is empty talk," he said, then laughed. "Please don't let Yueyue find someone like me; she'll suffer endlessly for the rest of her life."
"And you..." His eyes dimmed, and he lowered his gaze to gently rub her calloused palm. "If you're looking for someone else, don't look for someone like me."
"But you have a bad eye for men," he chuckled again, closing his eyes helplessly, "Who would follow me if they had any brains?"
"Your pretty boy," he looked up at her face, smiling playfully, "do you think he really loves you? Don't be silly, you're already thirty-three, who else would care about you besides me? He's only after our money."
"Take care of the wealth and take good care of the two children." He raised his hand with difficulty and brushed the hair from her temples behind her ears. "I can close my eyes even when I die."
After he finished speaking, he pulled out a small notebook from under his pillow. It was filled with densely written numbers. Those were the stock codes.
"Hold on to the shares highlighted with a red line for at least three years before selling them, especially the shares in the Jiang Group. That scoundrel, the second son of the Jiang family, is even more ruthless than his father. You'll see. The Jiang family won't collapse. Sell the rest, the sooner the better."
At this time, Zhou Yue and Kang Xingxing did not know that their father was making arrangements for his funeral. They only felt that their father's complexion had improved, he could speak a lot at a time, and he would be discharged from the hospital soon.
They sat on stone benches warmed by the sun, with large wisteria flowers hanging down and surrounding them, like a small castle made of wisteria.
Zhou Yue was still unhappy. She hugged the pillar of the corridor and turned around and around, with her head hanging like a donkey pulling a millstone.
Kang Xingxing mysteriously opened her small schoolbag and pulled out a rectangular box. She proudly held it in front of Zhou Yue, grinning. Two of her big white teeth had fallen out, leaving her mouth black and hollow, like a toothless old woman. "Look! This is my gift to Yueyue!"
It was a Barbie doll, a cheap imitation. The blue gauze skirt and red shawl were of poor quality, and the hair was rough and stiff. The only novel thing was that it was holding a microphone. It didn't look like Barbie, but rather a bit like Song Zuying at the Spring Festival Gala.
"Ah!" Zhou Yue rushed over. There were many genuine Barbie dolls, all brought back by Zhou Tiancheng from Guangzhou and Shanghai. But she still hugged the box tightly, her eyes shining with surprise. She looked left and right for a long time before she remembered and looked up at Kang Xingxing, "Where did you get the money to buy these?"
"I saved it." He half-knelt on the ground, lying on the stone bench. His two small fleshy hands were quite dexterous. After a while, he opened the box and took out the doll. He put the microphone into her prickly plastic hand and let her stand on the stone bench as if she was performing on stage.
"Mom didn't give you any pocket money..." Zhou Yue looked at him in confusion, and suddenly an idea flashed through her mind. "Oh! So this is why you skipped lunch!"
Since Zhou Tiancheng was hospitalized, Dai Yan has no time to serve meals to the two children. Based on the principle of not indulging children's extravagant habits, she only gives meal expenses to Kang Xingxing and two people every day, and asks them to find a place to eat a bowl of noodles after school at noon. When they arrive at the hospital in the evening, the family of four will eat together in the hospital cafeteria.
Kang Xingxing only bought one bowl of noodles for Zhou Yue every day, and he would eat the leftovers from her.
"I wasn't hungry anyway." He smiled, resting his chin on the back of his hand, kneeling on the ground and looking up at the doll. "I saw this at the school gate the other day and thought it looked like Yueyue. Yueyue will definitely be a big star in the future."
But Kang Xingxing's straight male aesthetic didn't seem to impress Zhou Yue. She frowned and looked at the doll carefully. The doll had a pointed chin like a cone, a big red mouth, a bright forehead, and ridiculously large eyes, so that the distance between the eyes was too narrow. Girls are naturally resistant to this kind of mean and sarcastic appearance. It was even scarier than the mother painted as a spider spirit!
"I don't want to look like this!"
She protested loudly, leaving Kang Xingxing, who was immersed in the doll's beauty, puzzled. "Isn't this beautiful?" He looked at the doll and then at Zhou Yue in confusion, not daring to say a word.
Zhou Yue folded her arms arrogantly, her little leather shoes tapping the ground, her nose almost raised to the sky. She glanced at the terrified Kang Xingxing, her heart softened, and she reluctantly said, "It's okay if she's younger than me!"
"Little?" Kang Xingxing could solve math problems, but couldn't understand a girl's heart. After thinking for a long time, he said, "Are you her mother?"
"Hmm..." Zhou Yue looked down at the doll again. She wiped off her lipstick and eyeshadow, and it looked like she would be a good baby. "That's fine!"
Kang Xingxing lowered her head and whispered, "Then I am her father."
"That won't do. You're my brother!" Zhou Yue had already held the doll in her arms and was combing her hair with the matching small plastic comb, but her eyes were stealing glances at Kang Xingxing. From the top of his head, she could see him smiling, his curled eyelashes fluttering.
"Then what are you going to name her?" Finally, she lost her patience, pursed her lips, and asked in a commanding tone.
"day by day."
"Hahaha, that's great," Zhou Yue held the doll away and looked at it in the sun, "Happy every day!"
Kang Xingxing also looked at the doll. The sunlight was so bright that it made the plastic doll shine brightly. He squinted his eyes, and the small hairs on his dark red cheeks were golden. He whispered, "It's Xingxing and Yueyue who are together every day."
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