4. Have you seen my bear?
Twenty years ago.
Tang Sizhuo sat in her bedroom practicing the piano. Her hand ached, from the blow Xiao Tong had just inflicted. Xiao Tong was taking her to a gathering at her current husband's friend's house this weekend. There was a sister there, a year older than Tang Sizhuo, who had started ballet at three and had won numerous awards. Xiao Tong had forced her to practice a piece beyond her level, and fortunately, she performed well that day.
They had just moved into the villa a month earlier. Tang Sizhuo was initially thrilled because it had an internal staircase, a large bedroom all to herself, and no longer had to deal with her parents' endless bickering. She didn't really have much affection for her biological father, Tang Jiahua. The few memories she had of him were of him and Xiao Tong arguing. So when Xiao Tong told her to call Sun Changming "Dad," she immediately changed her tune.
Xiao Tong's high heels clattered in the hallway, and Tang Sizhuo quickly focused on her fingers, stumbling along. Xiao Tong paused at the bedroom door, her heart in her throat. Fortunately, the piano seemed to sound quite good. After a moment's pause, Xiao Tong clattered downstairs again.
Tang Sizhu pricked up his ears and after hearing the slam of the security door, his hands gradually slowed down and finally stopped completely.
She stood up from the piano stool and crouched behind the window, peeking out. Xiao Tong had driven away today in a bright red car. He hadn't told her to wait for her aunt to cook dinner, so he should be back in two or three hours.
The July sun blazed down, but the children were undimmed. Downstairs, in the shade of a tree, a few children were playing with wooden figures. Tang Sizhuo watched eagerly, listening to their laughter and playfulness. She wanted to go down and play, but Xiao Tong wouldn't let her, fearing she'd get a tan or a fall and get a scar. Xiao Tong dressed her like a doll, and she, like a doll, was left at home.
After playing for a while, a child suggested going to buy some popsicles, so a group of people ran away. Tang Sizhuo tried his best to tiptoe, but gradually he could no longer see any of them. He could only vaguely hear a few laughs in the distance.
She looked away in frustration, and was about to sit back down to practice when she heard a rustling noise. She turned and saw a boy climbing over the wall and landing in the bushes. He was wearing a dirty short-sleeved shirt and carrying a dark green snakeskin bag. He squatted behind the bushes, observing what was happening outside.
Tang Sizhuo had seen him many times, and at first she was even envious, envious of the boy's ability to go out in dirty clothes. She had greasy spots on her school uniform while eating breakfast and forgot to change. When Xiao Tong found her at home, he beat her up, scolding her for not cleaning herself up and saying that others would think she was uneducated.
It was lunchtime, and the boy looked around quickly, making sure no one was around, then pushed aside the bushes and walked out. His pants were ill-fitting and hung on the ground, and the heels of his shoes were worn raw.
As long as I don't practice the piano, everything is interesting.
Tang Sizhuo crouched on the windowsill, watching him walk into the nearest villa and lean over to rummage through the trash can. He would empty the cans he found, throw them on the ground, and neatly crush them. Then, with a hook of his right foot, he would kick them into his snakeskin bag while reaching for another one. Tang Sizhuo thought he was amazing. Unlike other children, he was as capable as an adult, playing a more advanced game.
After searching one house, he moved on to the next.
The family next door had done a big cleanup that morning, unearthing a ton of discarded items. The trash can couldn't hold them all, so they were left in a messy heap around the house, waiting for the sanitation workers to collect them that evening. Tang Sizhuo watched as the boy fished a wooden stick from among a pile of broken toys, gestured with it a few times, and then dropped it into his snakeskin bag. He searched for so long that he ended up squatting on the ground, completely lost in the shadows of the pile, picking up and examining everything. He'd picked up quite a bit, and his bag was gradually bulging.
Tang Sizhu suspected that his little bear had been picked up by him in this way.
Xiao Tong had bought it for her when she was one month old. For as long as she could remember, it had been there to accompany her to sleep, or to listen to her anxieties and sadness when her parents argued. But on the first day after moving in, Sun Changming saw the teddy bear in her arms and casually said to Xiao Tong, "Buy the child a new one." Xiao Tong threw it away that same night.
She scolded Tang Sizhuo for bringing junk with him when he moved, deliberately making a fool of himself. So Tang Sizhuo didn't dare to cry loudly, and could only curl up in the quilt and shed tears silently.
Xiao Tong bought her a new teddy bear, saying it was imported and very expensive.
But that wasn't her friend, she didn't like it.
As Tang Sizhu looked at it, he thought of his little bear and gradually became sad.
The boy seemed to sense someone was looking at him, and he looked up and around, and happened to meet her gaze. Tang Sizhuo hurriedly squatted down, her heart pounding with fear. After a long time, she dared to look up again, but the boy had disappeared.
There was nothing more to see downstairs, so she sighed, sat back on the piano stool, and played the piano distractedly.
Not long after she started playing, she suddenly heard a quarrel, which came from far away and gradually got closer, until it reached her downstairs.
Tang Sizhuo jumped up excitedly and ran to the window in a few steps. As soon as he looked out, he saw the boy who had just picked up the trash being pushed to the ground by a boy who was a head taller than him. They wanted to search his snakeskin bag, but he refused. So some people hit him, and some people tried to pull it. In the end, the bag slipped out of their hands, and the rags inside fell out with a clang and scattered everywhere.
The stick rolled the farthest and was picked up by the tall boy. He held it up to the light, a little confused, and then suddenly shouted, "Where did you steal it?"
The boy was stunned by his scolding and instinctively retorted, "I didn't steal it!"
"This is Fettik's bow. It costs tens of thousands. If you didn't steal it, where did you get it from?"
When they heard that it would cost tens of thousands, everyone was stunned.
"I didn't steal it!" the boy shouted. "I found it there!"
The boy pointed to the pile of garbage he had just turned over, and the others immediately looked at a girl in the crowd. That was her home.
Perhaps it was peer pressure or the fear of her parents discovering her carelessness in throwing away the expensive bow among the broken toys, but Tang Sizhu only heard the girl's shrill voice, "Impossible! You're lying!"
The boy seemed to want to stop talking, and as if the bow had been taken back by them, he snatched back the snakeskin bag and began to pick up the scattered waste on the ground. However, the other children were at an age where they could clearly distinguish right from wrong, and they were unyielding to the suspicion of theft. Several of them pushed and shoved, and soon a fight broke out.
The noise grew louder and louder, and two security guards came running and pulled the children apart.
This was Jiangming City's most exclusive residential area, accessible only to residents. If the boy had simply come in to pick up trash, it would indicate lax supervision. But if he had ulterior motives, deliberately exploiting a loophole to steal, the situation was completely different, and impossible to prevent. So the two security guards didn't question him further. They simply grabbed the boy and led him out, saying they'd go to his school and home to see if they knew he was stealing.
Tang Sizhu was terrified. It was the first time she had seen such a scene. When the security guard yelled at the boy, her legs were shaking with fear.
But he really did find the bow from the trash, she saw it.
The teacher said that people should not be wrongly accused, so she had to speak out.
She was so scared that she nearly fell down the stairs. Before she could say a word, tears welled up in her eyes. If only the little bear was here, if she could hold the little bear, she would be braver. Tang Sizhuo mentally encouraged herself, stumbling to the first floor, and called out to the security guard who was leaving through the balcony security net.
“Uncle…Uncle!”
Hearing the sound, everyone turned to look at her, including the boy.
His eyes were vicious, as if he would bite a piece of flesh off someone else's body if the hand holding him loosened.
Tang Sizhuo's voice was tearful and he was so nervous that his voice was shaking, but he tried his best to speak clearly.
"I saw it. He didn't steal it. He picked it up from the garbage that family threw out." She added sobbingly, fearing the adults wouldn't believe her. "It was thrown in with those toys... I saw him take it out, play with it for a few times, and then throw it back in the bag. He took it because they didn't want it anymore."
The residents of this complex were all either wealthy or prominent, and the security guards didn't want to offend any of them. Tang Sizhuo's presence as a witness put them in a difficult position. If it were a hundred or so yuan, it would be fine, but this bow was worth twenty or thirty thousand yuan, and it wasn't known if it was damaged. If the owner pursued the matter, it could become a major incident.
This was the scene Xiao Tong saw when she drove back. A group of people, big and small, were blocking her door, making her think something had happened at home.
After this incident, Tang Sizhuo didn't finish practicing the piano at all. When he saw Xiao Tong coming back, he was so scared that his face turned pale and he hurried to the bedroom.
Xiao Tong naturally didn't want to care about the life and death of the ragpicker, but since she had just moved in and hadn't fully integrated into the community yet, this was a chance for her to make a good impression as a kind person. So she played peacemaker, contacting a friend who taught her violin. After carefully inspecting the bow and confirming that there was no obvious damage, she returned it to its owner, took a few hundred yuan from her wallet, stuffed it into the boy's pocket, and told him to "learn a lesson."
She had a good idea. If the boy stole, it was called tolerant education. If the boy did not steal, it was called material care.
However, the boy did not take her money. He just snatched his snakeskin bag from the security guard, put the scattered waste back into it, and left in front of everyone.
Xiao Tong had a kind smile on her face and said it was okay, it was okay, the child would be sensible when he grew up. However, after returning home, her expression changed as soon as the door was closed. She grabbed Tang Sizhuo's ear and asked her why she didn't practice the piano and why she was involved in such things. She scolded her for being confused and speaking for the country people, and she didn't know what others would say about her behind her back.
Tang Sizhu was beaten again as expected, but he was surprisingly calm in his heart and secretly felt that he had done a good thing.
The boy avoided it for a while, and more than half a month later, Tang Sizhu heard rustling sounds downstairs again one afternoon.
For some reason, she was in an extremely excited mood. Xiao Tong was not at home, so she ran downstairs in a few steps and looked at him through the balcony window.
The boy's clothes were much cleaner, but after washing away the dirt, they looked even more worn. He heard the noise, turned around, and met Tang Sizhu's eyes.
Tang Sizhuo didn't know what to say. He leaned against the window for a long time before finally saying:
"Have you seen my little bear?"
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