Chapter 21: The Lash

She had neither the desire nor the means to argue about justice or reason with Old Tian or the authorities; finding a new place to stay was the most urgent matter at hand. Though this was no trivial matter, it wasn’t so grave in Sui Yi’s eyes. When she left the orphanage years ago, she’d known she would never have a place to hide again, yet she had never given in to despair.

After tidying up a bit, making the place look less of a mess, she dampened a towel and gently wiped the dust from her face. Strangely enough, where once even the smallest effort would leave her weary, now she felt more spirited than ever.

Two days—today was already gone. If she had to move out tomorrow, she didn’t own much. A few clothes tossed into a bag would be enough, but the real question was: where could she go?

“I’ll have to ask Old Tang for help… though he’ll probably use it as an excuse to dock my wages,” Sui Yi leaned against the wall, gazing out the window, when suddenly a commotion erupted next door, punctuated by shrill cries.

She rushed out to find the chaos coming from Old Lady Wang’s apartment. Several cardboard boxes lay crumpled on the floor, Old Lady Wang herself had been knocked down, buried under a scatter of clothes and assorted junk. She was so frail she couldn’t rise, her sallow face suddenly ashen, one hand clutching her lower back as she wheezed, blood and thick phlegm staining the corners of her mouth. Her daughter-in-law stood over her, face twisted in rage, hurling abuse: “Useless old hag, you’re a curse! Why don’t you just die already? All you ever do is eat and make a mess…”

Her curses, laced with the harsh local dialect, flowed relentlessly, venomous as she reached for a feather duster and swung it down.

“I ought to beat you to death!”

The feather duster came down hard—

As Sui Yi stepped through the door, the first lash had already landed on Old Lady Wang’s head.

“Aiyo…” The old woman raised her hand to shield herself, but in an instant it bore a fresh, bloody welt, crimson trickling down.

The second blow was even heavier—

Thud!

A battered book sailed through the air, striking the daughter-in-law squarely on the head. In the next moment, Sui Yi seized her wrist, wrenching the duster free.

Crack!

The duster snapped down, this time across the daughter-in-law’s plump frame. Her thin autumn blouse ripped, leaving a bloody welt in its wake.

A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the apartment.

Inside, the middle-aged man of the house, legs crossed as he ate, startled at his wife’s shrieks, finally reacted, cursing as he raised a chair to swing at Sui Yi—

She moved like the wind: the feather duster lashed across his face.

“Yow!”

The chair slipped and landed with a crash on his foot.

“Ow! Ow!”

The crack of the duster sounded again and again, each blow crisp and sharp—

“Ah!”

“Ah—!”

The bloodcurdling screams from the seventh floor startled the entire building. My God, was someone about to jump to their death upstairs?

What a scene!

By the time Li Jingyan burst in from the hallway, everything had fallen silent. The once foul-mouthed Wang couple now stood cowering in the corner, their clothes in tatters, looking utterly wretched.

On the bed, Old Lady Wang lay barely breathing, while Sui Yi stood at her side, gently wiping the old woman’s face and hands with a towel.

It was a peculiar tableau.

Li Jingyan paused, then stepped closer. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Sui Yi replied coolly, letting out a long breath.

He said nothing, eyes dark and contemplative.

After tending to Old Lady Wang for a while, Sui Yi shot a cold glance at the couple.

They trembled uncontrollably.

“Sui… Sui Yi… Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of my mother…”

“I—I swear…”

Old Lady Wang could barely speak now, and Sui Yi herself had no words left. She simply flung the bloodstained towel aside.

Splash! The bloody water splattered, staining the already grimy walls.

“I’ll be moving out tomorrow. Whatever becomes of you after that, it’s none of my concern. Even if you die here, it has nothing to do with me…”

To speak of death so lightly, and yet she wasn’t even eighteen.

The couple found it all the more absurd.

But they were afraid.

Sui Yi had already walked out, Li Jingyan following.

Standing in the hallway, he lit another cigarette, drawing deeply. “Old Lady Wang probably won’t last the night.”

He had seen too many people in their final moments.

Sui Yi braced her hands on the railing. “It’s just as well. She’ll be at peace.”

———

That very night, just an hour or two later, Old Lady Wang’s daughter-in-law came pounding on Sui Yi’s door in a panic.

The old woman couldn’t hold on any longer.

Sui Yi pressed a hand to her forehead and rose from bed.

The dying do not, as in television dramas, leave behind moving farewells; in the end, Old Lady Wang could only clutch Sui Yi’s hand, trembling, and utter a single phrase.

“Thank… you, girl… this… this is… for you…”

When all was done, Sui Yi’s gaze darkened. She gently folded the old woman’s now-cold hands at her side, and as she turned, she noticed an uncovered, rust-spotted tin box clutched beside her. Inside were a few tattered books stacked haphazardly.

On top was a primary school language textbook—dating from the seventies, by the look of it.

The Wang couple, after peering at it cautiously, finally relaxed, relief plain in their eyes.

The old woman must have lost her mind, giving away such worthless old books before dying. Who knows how many years old they were…

All that worry for nothing! They’d feared she might leave something valuable behind.

The couple felt at ease again, but dared not utter a word in Sui Yi’s presence—the image of that girl, silent and frowning as she lashed them, was too deeply etched into their minds.

“So what do we do now?” the man ventured meekly, not daring to look at his mother lying on the bed.

Sui Yi frowned. There was no point hoping for a proper funeral; she knew the Wang family was so poor they could barely feed themselves. According to local custom, people like them, when they died, were usually hauled off to the “paupers’ graveyard,” buried quickly and without ceremony.

And all of it needed to be done that very day.

Without money, you weren’t even allowed into the crematorium.

In the end, the man from the Wang family had no choice but to go door to door, begging for help.

The neighbors grumbled about the bad luck: not only were they moving, but now someone had died—what a blight on the building’s reputation!

Yet a few sturdy men still came to help bury Old Lady Wang.

Li Jingyan was there as well, along with a few young men who didn’t want to be mocked for staying behind; unsurprisingly, it was mostly the elderly who attended—perhaps out of a sense of kinship.

But what truly surprised everyone was that Sui Yi went along, too.

Li Jingyan thought it unfit for a girl to be involved in such things and tried to dissuade her, but she ignored him completely.

An old man glanced at the Wang family’s son, shrinking at the front of the group, then at Sui Yi, who walked calmly beside the old woman’s corpse. After a long silence, he finally said, “Old Lady Wang was lucky in the end…”

———

The mountain was bleak, the sky pitch-black, the wind biting cold, the earth soft beneath their feet, scattered with the crunch of decaying leaves.

They called it a cemetery, but it was really just a mass grave. In these modern times, people saw fewer deaths than before, so now, as they stood in a row, many in the group shivered uncontrollably, the crunching underfoot sending chills up their spines.

Good lord, were they stepping on human bones?

While they dug the grave, Sui Yi stood on the hillside, gazing at the distant town lights, twinkling beautifully in the darkness.

The wind was cold.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Li Jingyan asked, his voice cool as he stood with his back to the burial ground. Almost unconsciously, he felt the urge to light another cigarette.

“Afraid?” Sui Yi’s eyes swept over the shadowed landscape, the crooked signboards and gravestones scattered haphazardly across the hilltops.

Each mound of earth was like a giant steamed bun…

“When I was little, I lived in an orphanage. We were often made to stand all night on the playground as punishment. The orphanage was huge… At night, the stars would come out…”

And then?

It sounded almost beautiful.

More than a few people found themselves listening, captivated by the only girl among them.

She turned slightly, her breath misting in the cold. “The playground was once a mass grave, decades ago.”

“…”

If the orphanage was that large, so was its playground—which meant the mass grave had been enormous, too… and the stars had shone down…

A collective shudder swept through the group, punctuated by nervous coughs.

Li Jingyan thought he glimpsed a faint smile on the girl’s lips, and in her eyes, too, there was the glimmer of stars.