That morning, Wei Qian dragged himself out of bed far later than usual. He had been trapped in a web of vague, fragmented dreams all night. Though the details dissolved the instant he opened his eyes, a heavy, suffocating weight remained pressed against his chest.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress for a few seconds, he suddenly remembered the two cubs still had school and breakfast wasn't made. He scrambled up and rushed into the kitchen, only to find Wei Zhi Yuan standing before the stove with a deadly serious expression, carefully stirring a pot of boiling water and frozen dumplings with a large metal spoon.
Leaning against the doorframe, Wei Qian asked softly, "Why didn't you wake me?"
Wei Zhi Yuan turned, baring his teeth in a wide grin that revealed two tiny, flash-white tiger fangs.
Wei Qian patted the boy's head and turned into the bathroom. As he scrubbed his face, his right eyelid began to twitch violently and uncontrollably. He rubbed it hard, mildly irritated—he had originally planned to ask Pocky to fry a couple of deep-fried dough sticks for him this morning.
Having meticulously cooked the dumplings like a delicate chemistry experiment, Wei Zhi Yuan served them up. The three of them had barely taken their seats at the table when a deafening CRASH echoed from the street below, as if something massive had been violently overturned. A second later, a scream so sharp it scraped the eardrums shattered the morning air, followed by utter chaos.
Wei Qian pushed the window open, bowl in hand, and peeked down. His face went instantly pale. Dropping his meal, he grabbed his wallet and bolted downstairs like a man with his tail on fire.
He had time for only a single, barked command over his shoulder: "You two head to school on your own. Watch how you go!"
Within minutes, Fatty San charged downstairs as well. By then, a dense crowd had already blocked the alley.
The accident had occurred right at Pocky's family breakfast stand.
Pocky usually finished his predawn cleaning shift at the nightclub, came home to help his mother set up the street-side cart, fried dough sticks, and sold fresh soy milk until nine-thirty. It was a crude, open-air setup: a few rickety wooden tables and stools, a vat of soy milk, and a massive iron cauldron of boiling lard.
The catalyst was a lost taxi driver. The alley was far too narrow for cars, barely wide enough for a single chassis, but the driver had mistakenly turned in anyway. As the taxi carefully crawled forward, an electric motorized tricycle suddenly whipped around the blind corner.
The tricycle vendor was driving far too fast. By the time he saw the taxi blocking the narrow path, it was too late to brake.
Panicking, the vendor yanked the handlebars. Driven by raw inertia, the heavy tricycle mounted the curb and plowed straight into the breakfast stand without slowing down. Pocky's mother was standing directly behind the cauldron, frying dough sticks.
The collision flipped the entire pot of roaring, boiling oil directly onto her.
The scalding lard drenched her upper body, and before she could even scream, the momentum of the heavy tricycle pinned the cauldron—and her—dragging her over a meter across the concrete ground.
Wei Qian brutally shoved his way through the crowd, his scalp turning cold. Because of the summer heat, the woman had been wearing only a thin short-sleeved shirt and cropped pants. The massive area of exposed skin drenched in boiling oil was instantly ruined beyond recognition.
For a terrifying second, Wei Qian felt as though she had been cooked alive.
A nauseating, fleshy smell hovered sickeningly in the morning air.
Pocky stood frozen beside the wreck. His eyes were stretched so wide they looked ready to pop from their sockets, his face utterly blank, standing as rigid as a stone statue.
Wei Qian slapped him hard across the face, roaring directly into his ear, "What the fuck are you staring at?! Your mom is cooked alive! Go call an ambulance!"
Turning to the bystanders, Wei Qian snarled, "Move the damn tricycle! Lift it off her!"
A few passersby snapped out of their shock, rushing forward to haul the wrecked tricycle away. Seeing the horrific scene, the tricycle vendor instinctively tried to slip into the alley, but Wei Qian caught him by the collar, yanked him back, and delivered a brutal kick to the back of his knee, slamming the man face-first into the dirt.
Fatty San bellowed from behind, "Qian'er! Leave that grandson alone! I'm calling the cops! The fucking iron pot is stuck to her melted skin—what do we do?!"
Wei Qian turned and yelled back, "How the hell should I know?!"
In the end, Fatty San's parents dragged out a massive washbasin filled with cold water, carefully splashing it over the scalding iron pot to cool the metal. No one knew if it was the medically correct move, but soon after, the siren of an ambulance tore through the alley, and the woman was rushed away on a gurney.
Wei Qian didn't know why his first instinct during a crisis was to grab his wallet and sprint down the stairs. Perhaps he had been conditioned to believe that money was his only shield against absolute ruin.
Yet it was fortunate he had gone. Pocky, that absolute idiot, had a grand total of twelve yuan and fifty fen in his pockets. He was completely senseless, frozen in shock. Wei Qian spent the entire morning acting as a one-armed warrior, running up and down the hospital corridors, paying fees and filling out in-take forms.
By noon, Fatty San arrived with a police officer, bringing the two drivers involved in the crash.
It was a stroke of absolute, tragic ill-fate. The taxi driver's face was as gray as ash, while the tricycle vendor—whether from terror or from Wei Qian’s earlier kick—was shaking violently, trembling like a dead leaf trapped in a gale.
At the end of the day, traffic accidents were settled with blood money. If Pocky's mother died on the table, it would actually be easier—a one-time payout and it was over. But if she survived, severe burns like hers were an absolute wild card. There was no telling what horrific state she’d be left in, and whoever was at fault might end up saddled with her care for the rest of their natural life.
And as fate would have it, neither of the two drivers had a single cent to their names.
Standing in the sterile hospital hallway beneath the cold, predatory glares of the neighbors, no one could bring themselves to voice the terrible thought lingering in the air: It would be a mercy if she just died on the operating table.
Crushed by an overwhelming, inescapable terror, the tricycle vendor suddenly dropped to his knees with a loud PLOP, kowtowing against the linoleum tile as he wept hysterically.
The accompanying police officer turned to Fatty San. "What's your relation to the victim?"
"Neighbors," Fatty San grunted.
"I see," the officer sighed, looking toward Pocky. "The boy is her son? Is there anyone else in the family? Where's the father?"
"Dead," Fatty San said flatly. "Just the widow and her boy."
The officer looked visibly shaken, but faced with the grim reality, he knew no words of comfort could alter the situation. He let out a long, heavy sigh. "This is bad. The responsible party is entirely indigent and won't be able to pay a cent of compensation... Ah, you boys should tell the family to prepare for the worst."
Fatty San raised his eyes, asking blankly, "What do you mean 'won't pay'? They just get away with it?"
The officer pondered for a moment. "You can file a lawsuit—but to be blunt, save your energy. Winning a court order means nothing if the defendant has no assets. You can't squeeze blood from a stone."
As if validating the officer's words, the kneeling vendor began slamming his forehead against the floor with terrifying force, the heavy thuds vibrating through the corridor. Desperate to choose death over an inescapable debt, he wailed incoherently, "Let me pay with my life... Just take my life! I have a sick mother-in-law at home, and my kid is only five years old! What am I supposed to do?! Please, just let me pay with my life!"
Pocky, who had been standing silently like a ghost, suddenly snapped. With a primal, animalistic roar, he lunged forward, raining wild punches and kicks onto the kneeling vendor. The crowd rushed in to pull him back, Wei Qian straining with his single good arm to wrap around Pocky’s waist.
"Enough! Stop! What the fuck is beating him to death going to solve?!"
A hoarse, guttural howl erupted from Pocky’s throat, sounding like a wounded beast roaring out its final breath.
A second later, his strength completely gave out. Slipping from Wei Qian’s grip, he slid down against the wall, burying his face in his hands as his shoulders shook violently in silent, agonized sobs.
Inside the operating room, the mother was fighting for her life; outside, the perpetrator and the victim's son lay collapsed on the floor, weeping in shared, hopeless despair.
The young police officer, likely a rookie who hadn't yet grown immune to the brutal, unyielding misery of the world, looked deeply unnerved. Before leaving, he dug through his pockets, searching for anything of value. Finding nothing, he offered a self-deprecating smile to Fatty San. "I'm just a poor beat cop myself..."
He drew out his ID and cards, leaving his leather wallet on the bench. Inside was a total of two hundred and thirty yuan in crumpled bills, along with a handful of loose change.
Wei Qian and Fatty San stayed by Pocky’s side at the hospital all day. As evening approached, Wei Qian’s right eyelid began to beat wildly again.
Informing Fatty San, he stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Finishing a cigarette, he calculated that the two kids should have returned home from school by now. He walked over to the payphone booth outside the hospital, inserted his IC card, and dialed his home landline.
Mobile phones were already appearing on the market, but they were far beyond the reach of people in the shantytown. However, the surge of cellular tech had driven landline prices down significantly. Even so, Wei Qian’s home number was kept strictly confidential, known only to Brother Le and a few trusted brothers. He had established a ironclad rule at home: the phone was for emergencies only, as every call cost money.
The line rang. Once. Twice. No one answered.
Wei Qian frowned, hung up, waited a moment, and redialed. Still, only the rhythmic, hollow ringing echoed in his ear.
When the line went unanswered for the third time, Wei Qian’s heart began to pound against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Behind him, a man waiting in line spoke up irritably, "Hey, kid! Are you done or what? There's a queue here!"
Wei Qian turned, shooting the man a murderous, dark glare. The man instantly choked on his words, muttered a curse under his breath, and backed away to find another booth.
Refusing to give up, Wei Qian dialed the number over and over again. Silence. The tips of his fingers turned ice-cold and numb.
"Qian'er, what's wrong?" Fatty San walked out of the lobby, noticing his delay.
Wei Qian barely managed to hold his composure. Licking his dry, cracked lips, he forced his voice down, speaking unnaturally slow. "I... I don't know. No one's picking up at home. Those two little brats..."
He couldn't finish the sentence, realizing that if he uttered another word, he would start sobbing.
Fatty San slammed a heavy hand onto his shoulder. "Go back first! I'll hold the line here and grab a few brothers to help. The two cubs probably got distracted playing in the alley after school. Don't lose your head."
Wei Qian didn't wait. He threw his legs into a full sprint.
Fatty San yelled after him, "Slow the fuck down and watch for traffic!"
Fatty San had always considered himself a child of poverty, yet in all his years, he had rarely seen anyone as cursed as Wei Qian and Pocky. Especially Wei Qian—the boy had lived to his teenage years without a single day of peace. He was either drowning in anxiety or sprinting toward the next disaster. Fatty San frequently worried that one day, the universe would simply grind the boy to death alive.
Wei Qian sprinted blindly all the way back to the shantytown. From a distance, he spotted Lei Zi—one of Fatty San’s trusted neighborhood brothers—squatting near the entrance of his alley, likely dispatched by Fatty San to check the flat.
Seeing Lei Zi crouching down to speak with Song Lee Lee, Wei Qian finally slid to a halt. His back was entirely drenched in cold sweat. Bending over, he rested his good hand on his knee, gasping violently for air. A heavy drop of sweat rolled down his forehead, seeping through his thick eyelashes; unable to fall, it trailed down his cheek like a single, scalding tear.
Wiping his face with the back of his sleeve, Wei Qian composed his features and marched forward with large strides.
He offered a quick word of thanks to Lei Zi, then reached out with his good hand, grabbing Little Bao’s shoulder and pulling her roughly to the front. He scanned her up and down—finding no injuries other than a slight redness around her eyes—which allowed his heart to be reassued a little. Yet his expression remained terrifying as he interrogated her like a convict.
"What happened?! Why didn't you pick up the phone?! Why didn't you go inside?! Where's Wei Zhi Yuan?!"
Little Bao’s mouth crumpled, her eyes welling with tears the moment she saw her big brother.
Before she could let out a wail, Wei Qian’s booming voice cut her off: "No crying! Where the hell is Little Yuan?!"
Little Bao froze, forcefully choking her tears back into her throat.