Crunch. Fu Yucheng took a big bite out of the apple in his hand with his eyes half closed in satisfaction. His dark eyes, in the warm afterglow of the setting sun, seemed to be a strange, almost green color.
The apple was fresh, crisp, sweet and juicy.
Being able to enjoy such a delicious fruit after dinner seemed like something from times past.
He closed his eyes and sighed with satisfaction. “This apple is great.”
Then he seemed to realize something and muttered to himself, puzzled. “Proprietress, every time I’ve asked for food I only ever get potatoes. Why did you suddenly become so generous today as to give me two apples?”
Fu Yucheng glanced at the boy.
At this time, the boy had already put aside the pile of pots and pans from dinner. He placed the cardboard box with the food on the countertop. Taking out the remaining potatoes and yams one by one, he carefully wiped off the soil covering their surface.
The sunlight, like the gauze from a cicada’s delicate wings, spilled quietly through the glass window, falling onto the counter.
Under the warm light, the boy’s black hair glowed with a hazy, pale sheen, almost turning it a soft light brown. His skin seemed as white as snow, and his body was thin.
All in all, he was a well behaved, pitiful and delicate kid that was easy to feel affection for. He was just the sort of child that made women feel the urge to take care of them.
Fu Yucheng looked at him, rubbing his lips thoughtfully. “Ahem, brat.”
The boy turned his head slightly. “What’s wrong?”
“From now on, you will be responsible for dealing with the proprietress.”
“…” The boy glanced at him speechlessly and leaned down to place the potatoes one by one into a rattan basket under the sink.
Fu Yucheng chewed on the apple while muttering, “Five catties of potatoes, five catties of yams, five catties of corn flour for the two of us. You brat eat so much, so it’s not going to last us long no matter what. Ah, forget it, we can think about not starving to death when the time comes.”
“You,” the boy’s hand movement paused imperceptibly, “are you poor?”
Fu Yucheng couldn’t help but give him a blank look. “Do I look like a rich man?”
“Oh.” The boy hesitated for a while, but then opened his mouth again. “Then what are your plans for the future?”
“I’ll manage, what else can I do?” Fu Yucheng shrugged.
What the boy really wanted to ask was what did Fu Yucheng plan to do with the burden he picked along the way.
But the other didn’t seem to understand what he meant.
Having received no answer, the boy stopped asking. Lowering his head, he sliced the tape holding the bottom of the box together with a knife, carefully folded the cardboard up, and placed it into the gap between the counter and the wall. “When I was on my way back, I heard the auntie across the street say that you can take the cardboard to the waste station for recycling.”
“That’s too much trouble.” Fu Yucheng raised his hand nonchalantly, and with a ‘pop’, the apple core hit the boy’s calf, then fell next to the trash can.
“Sorry, that was an accident.” He scratched his head with an innocent expression. “I was actually a sharpshooter in the past. I haven’t touched a gun for a long time, I’m out of practice.”
The boy glanced at the apple core on the ground. Without a word, he leaned over to pick it up and put it in the trash can.
Fu Yucheng leaned on the sofa boredly, watching the child busy with tidying up, and couldn’t hold in a yawn. “Brat, I’m telling you, just leave all that mess alone. Even if you clean up now, tomorrow it’ll get messy again, why bother cleaning?”
“If I eat something today, I will be hungry again tomorrow. Why bother to eat then?” The boy replied without looking up while wiping down the counter.
Life at the laboratory was extremely rigorous, and everything the boy would have been exposed to must have been kept in a pristine, immaculate condition, be it firearms, blades or anything else. His entire education would have drilled into him that the smallest flaw could have fatal consequences.
The boy’s unexpected retort made Fu Yucheng choke.
He was silent for a moment, repeatedly telling himself that, as the adult, he had to be magnanimous and not get bothered by a little kid. “Okay, stop wiping, it’s almost done. I want to change my bandage, come over and help me.”
“Ok.” The boy nodded.
He carefully washed the mud off his hands before walking over to look down at the man on the sofa. “How do I do it?”
“Carefully, or do you fucking want to kill me?” Fu Yucheng grumbled bitterly. With the help of the boy, he slowly removed the gauze from around his waist and abdomen. The skin and flesh on the edge of the wound had gotten stuck to the cotton pad. When it was torn off, his mouth felt an extremely sour taste.
The boy paused slightly, and tried to soften his movements as much as possible. He really didn’t understand. The man in front of him didn’t say a word while he was injured, and now he was afraid of the pain from simply changing the bandages.
After a while, the gauze was finally removed. There was a wound of seven or eight centimeters across the abdomen. It still looked rather hideous, but there were no signs of infection.
“It seems okay.” Fu Yucheng sighed in relief. He threw the dirty bandages on the ground, and took a clean pad of cotton to cover the wound again.
The boy took out a new roll of gauze from the medicine box and helped him wrap it up. After a while, with sweat dripping from their foreheads, they finally finished.
Fu Yucheng took a towel from the armrest of the sofa, wiped the fine sweat on his forehead absentmindedly, and looked up at the clock on the wall. “How can it be almost ten o’clock? So late.”
He rubbed his eyes and let out a long yawn. “Hey, brat, since I took two pills after dinner now I’m a little sleepy. If you still don’t feel like sleeping, you can read something on your bed. There’s a few comic books.”
Before the boy could answer, he pulled up the blanket, wrapped himself in it, and closed his eyes.
The boy squatted on the floor without a word, getting rid of the bloody gauze that the man threw onto the floor.
He took the gauze outside the vehicle, throwing it into the trash can there. He stood at the door for a long time before getting back to the RV.
On the sofa, Fu Yucheng’s breathing had slowed and deepened, and he seemed to be asleep.
The boy stared at him for a long time, making sure that he was asleep, and then tiptoed to the counter. He picked up a few potatoes from the basket and put them into a bag he’d prepared in advance. He hesitated a bit, added a couple more, and slung a leather canteen onto his back.
After doing all this, the boy walked to the door and gently pushed it open.
He looked back at the sleeping man and silently said in his heart: “Thank you. I’ll get going now.”
With a soft click, the vehicle’s door closed.
On the sofa, Fu Yucheng slowly opened his eyes and couldn’t suppress a quiet sigh.
To be honest, whether the boy stayed or left, either was a problem for him.
Might as well let it be. Either way, it was too much trouble, and Fu Yucheng wasn’t the sort of person who could take care of a kid. On the other hand, letting him go was also an issue. After all, he had picked the kid up, so he had some responsibility towards him.
Besides, if this kid left, where would he go?
Life was difficult for everyone in the current world, and people would fight for even a single ration. Fu Yucheng was worried no family would take that skinny kid in.
At least, since the boy had taken the initiative to leave, it had solved Fu Yucheng’s problem, so that was good.
Fu Yucheng insisted on comforting himself with those thoughts, but he kept feeling uncomfortable when looking at the empty space in the vehicle.
He just laid down for a short while, but he kept feeling as if a cat were scratching his heart. He was so uncomfortable that he couldn’t help but cover his entire head with the blanket.
The blanket that he’d grabbed was very old and had always smelled musty. Fu Yucheng had never bothered to take care of it. However, now the blanket was fluffy and soft and smelled faintly of sunlight. Its corner was stained with a speck of blood. The kid had washed it carefully in the morning, and hung it on the car window to dry through the day.
“Fuck.” Fu Yucheng grumbled carelessly. Then he suddenly pushed the blanket aside and sat up.
After a frozen moment, he reached out and turned on the old-fashioned radio on the workbench.
A harsh noise came from the radio speakers.
He spent a long time adjusting the knob patiently until the noise finally turned into a muffled singing voice. The singer’s hoarse voice reminded him of a girl next door from his past.
Before the song was finished, the music was suddenly interrupted.
“Abnormal weather forecast, abnormal weather forecast. Strong convective weather will appear on the Twilight Belt tonight. A large scale, level 5 sandstorm is expected. Please prepare for strong winds at Parking Lots 3 and 4. To all owners, please get your vehicles ready in time to avoid unnecessary losses.”
Fu Yucheng was taken aback for a moment, and reached out to raise the volume a bit.
The sweet female voice repeated the disaster prevention weather forecast over and over again. He listened carefully with his brows furrowed.
For a hundred miles around the river valley, the cover against strong convective weather was good. With the shelter provided by the hills on both sides, framed with the belt of windmills spinning like hurricanes, storms didn’t pose that much danger for the Parking Lot.
But outside the river valley, if anyone were to encounter a big sandstorm caused by strong convective weather, their death was practically certain.1
That stupid brat, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave the Zambe Valley, would he?
After sitting there for a while, Fu Yucheng suddenly pulled at his hair irritably while cursing up a storm. “Fucking hell, I must have owed him a big debt in a previous life.”
Not hesitating any longer, he got off the sofa and ran to the vehicle’s cab.
***
The boy was sitting on the sand with his knees pulled in front of him, in a daze.
To his back was a huge Twilight Boundary Monument, and in front of him was the endless desert, with golden sand dunes that rose and fell under the sky.
On the horizon, far in the distance, was a never-ending sunset, sprinkling a blood red glow over a hopeless land.
In fact, when he left the parking lot, the boy was already feeling regretful. However, he did not have enough of a reason to stay.
Of course he could see that the man’s food was very scarce, and he didn’t have even the slightest surplus for himself. Looking at it from a logical point of view, or simply by looking at the reality, there was just no reason to continue depending on the man.
The boy hugged his knees and stared blankly at the boundless desert. Where could he go after leaving the parking lot?
He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there. Perhaps one hour, perhaps five. In this eternal twilight zone, even the sky wasn’t a reliable way to tell the time.
Gradually, the wind rose.
The sky went dark without warning. Dry gusts of wind rolled and whistled, pushing around yellow gravel and producing a creepy sound, not unlike a demon’s howl.
It seemed as if a misty yellow veil appeared between the sky and the earth, making it impossible to see anything clearly. The strong wind, mixed with coarse gravel, hit the boundary marker, cracking against it and hurting the boy’s cheeks.
The boy bit his lip, leaned on the boundary monument, and stood up with difficulty.
He regretted leaving.
He didn’t want to die here, completely alone.
The sandstorm kept getting worse and worse, and the boundary between the sky and the earth became blurry. It was almost impossible to distinguish the north, south, east or west. There was only the gale mixed with sand and gravel, striking ferociously over and over. 2
With difficulty the boy kept moving ahead.
He didn’t know how long he had been walking. Suddenly, his foot slipped, and he fell on the sand heavily, not even knowing what he had tripped on. He sucked in a breath, and rough sand covered his nose and mouth.
Was he to die in this desert after all?
This time, no one would reach out to him.
In a trance, the boy’s consciousness constantly switched between clear and blurry for an unknown period of time, and he thought he saw a hazy figure walking towards him in the distance.
He wondered blankly if it might be Death.
However, the person who showed up was not a graceful and reserved death god wrapped in a black robe.
Fu Yucheng had been searching for five hours in the extremely strong winds of the sandstorm.
The injury on his lower abdomen hadn’t healed yet, and the visibility in the sandstorm was extremely poor. It was almost impossible to see anything past ten meters. After spending several hours doing the same thing over and over, he was exhausted.
At first, Fu Yucheng was irritated, but at this point he felt extremely anxious, and his wound began to faintly ache again, as if an ant was gnawing at his flesh.
He gritted his teeth, in a terrible mood, and he felt aimless, like he had nothing better to do. Making an impulsive decision, he left the parking lot despite the bad weather and ran out to find the damn brat.
Even if the brat was actually dead, it didn’t have anything to do with him.
But despite saying that, when he spotted the thin figure among the sand in the distance, his heart suddenly relaxed, even though he’d never admit to it.
Fu Yucheng hurriedly got out of the car, enduring the pain from the wound, and walked quickly up to the boy. He stared down at the embarrassed brat.
The boy raised his head and stared at him with pitch-black eyes.
Their gazes met across the cloud of dust.
No one spoke for a while; there was only the wind howling, like spectres and wolves, far in the distance.
After an indefinite amount of time, Fu Yucheng took the initiative to break the silence. He grabbed the boy by the back of his collar and rudely lifted him out of the sand.
“Come back home with me.”
Thank you everyone for reading, and special thanks to my editor Wintery! (☆^∀^☆)
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