Wei Qian wasn't afraid of a dog ghost, nor was he afraid of death. He was only afraid of suffering. So, he swung the brick with relentless, visceral force, smashing it down again and again until the dog's head was a broken, gasping mess. Only then did he drop the blood-slicked stone, wiping the gore from his palms onto the rough brick wall.
He finally had a chance to look up and survey the Little Cub that had driven him to such a reckless outburst.
But the little thankless bastard had actually snatched the bucket of canned food while Wei Qian was busy beating the animal. Cradling it tightly in his arms, the brat was shoveling the food into his mouth.
Perhaps Wei Qian's gaze was too murderous; the Little Cub visibly shivered, staring back with a pair of oversized, ebony eyes. A stream of canned soup escaped the corner of his mouth; terrified, the boy immediately caught it with his hand and licked his skin clean.
A nameless fire in Wei Qian's chest flared hotter. He wanted nothing more than to stomp this Little Brat’s head into the dirt and make him lick his shoes for a while.
Catching the teenager's ghastly expression, the little fellow assumed Wei Qian was going to steal his food. He instantly went on guard, clutching the cans to his chest as he backed into a corner, adopting a fierce, desperate posture to defend his meager territory to the death.
Wei Qian was immediately deflated. What is the point of picking a fight with a tiny thing like this?
He spat on the ground in boredom and turned on his heel.
While waiting for his exam results over the next few days, Wei Qian didn't let his precious vacation go to waste. During the day, he shot pool with Fatty San and helped pedal bootleg porn tapes.
At night, he hung around the video stall to look for shifts, eventually earning ten bucks a day just to watch the venue.
He soon realized that the Little Cub he had crossed paths with that day seemed to have made a home in the garbage-choked alleys. Every time Wei Qian went out, he would spot the boy picking through the refuse for his supper. If Wei Qian passed by in a decent mood, he would occasionally toss the brat a leftover bun.
Wei Qian had always harbored a deep-seated hatred toward his biological parents. A child first learns how to interact with the world through their parents, and with them, it was hard for him not to hate society at large. His capacity for love was scarcer than spring rain in the northern plains.
The only reason he spared the little guy a second glance was because he had been observing him.
He noticed the boy's limbs were intact, his body free of disabilities. His intelligence wasn't just functional; it was likely sharper than that of ordinary children. Though his face was caked in grime, his eyes were striking—dark and exceptionally bright—suggesting he wasn't bad-looking underneath the dirt. If he truly were an orphan with no one to look after him, he should have been sent to a social welfare institution. At his age and with those traits, he would have been snapped up for adoption in a heartbeat.
Since the boy was wandering the streets, Wei Qian figured he had either run away from an abusive guardian or had escaped the clutches of human traffickers. Either way, it was a flight for survival; others had treated him like garbage, and he simply couldn't survive there anymore. That raw instinct to flee was something Wei Qian understood intimately. It even stirred a faint, reluctant trace of sympathy in him.
Of course, even if they were drowning in the same river, Wei Qian only felt sorry for the little creature when the mood struck him. For the most part, he kept his cold, acerbic heart perfectly intact.
Yet, it was precisely these sporadic acts of kindness that invited trouble.
That day, the high school entrance exam results were posted. Wei Qian had excelled—scoring twenty points above the admission line for the city's top high school, placing him squarely in the district's top ten. For any other kid, their parents would be throwing a banquet to celebrate. Wei Qian had no guests to invite, so he skipped the usual steamed bread and bought a bag of meat buns instead. It was his version of a celebration.
Wei Qian thought he should feel happy, but he didn't. His chest felt constricted, choked by two massive boulders. One was the crushing weight of high school tuition; the other was the bitter realization that his excellence mattered to no one. There was no one to share the hardship with. He tried so hard to suppress the feeling that his whole being entered a bizarre, volatile state—his brain burned hot with fury, while his heart remained ice-cold.
As he walked past the alley, he tossed a meat bun toward the Little Cub sitting by the garbage pile, mocking himself internally: A meat bun thrown at a dog—never to return.
Who could have guessed the little thing wouldn't let him go? The boy bolted down the bun in two or three massive bites and then, with his entire ragged being, relentlessly trailed behind him. He was exactly like a stray kitten that refuses to leave after being thrown a single scrap of sausage.
Wei Qian glanced back, thoroughly exasperated. "Son of a bitch, a buy-one-get-one-free deal?"
Already suffocating under his own dark mood, being stalked only shortened his fuse. He spun around several times to viciously curse the boy, even shoving him backward until the little guy tumbled onto his backside. Wei Qian raised a fist, threatening to strike, but the child persevered, shadowing his footsteps all the way to his front door.
Wei Qian's house had originally belonged to his maternal grandfather—the father of his deadbeat mother. The old man had been so thoroughly enraged by his daughter during his lifetime that he bypassed her, leaving the property directly to Wei Qian. Now that she was dead too, the title had officially passed into the teenager's hands for the foreseeable future.
It was an old, converted silo situated in a typical urban shantytown. A sprawling dump sat right downstairs, the layout chaotic, and the neighbors generally lacked both manners and means. Many of the residents were toxic and hostile. Righteousness and selfishness, warmth and malice—these traits coexisted without contradiction, blending in eerie harmony with the poverty and backwardness of the neighborhood.
For instance, the Old Hag who lived across the way was particularly venomous. Whenever she spotted Wei Qian from a distance, her eyes would roll back in disgust before she slammed her door shut as if she had looked upon something unclean. On bad days, she would intentionally dump her trash right in front of his doorstep.
Initially, Wei Qian hadn't bothered to retaliate. He was just a kid raising himself, burdened with enough exhausting worries without letting petty neighbor squabbles consume him. Besides, why should the poor make life miserable for the poor?
But later, Wei Qian came to realize a harsh truth: the poor only knew how to make life miserable for the poor. If they didn't take it out on each other, who else could they target? His mother had been a whore, and he was the son of a whore; strictly speaking, the old woman's whispered curses weren't entirely wrong.
But not today. Today, he had done everything right. He had beaten the odds and outperformed everyone else, yet why was he the only one suffocating? His stellar exam scores had dragged his upper body into a world of promise, while his legs remained mired in this squalid swamp. It cruelly opened his eyes to the vast potential of the world while simultaneously reminding him that he couldn't break free from his birthright and his class. Even if he were a purebred piece of street trash like Fatty San or Pocky, he wouldn't be suffering this specific brand of agony.
Wei Qian's overheated brain and freezing heart finally pushed him past the breaking point. He stared down at the rotting garbage dumped before his door, the veins in his forearms bulging against his skin. His brow resembled his mother's, though it lacked any of her fragile beauty. Instead, the lifelong shroud of hatred and gloom had become his natural aura—striking to look at, but dark enough to repel anyone who dared draw near.
The teenager silently squatted down. Bit by bit, he began picking up the discarded fruit peels and decayed leaves from his doorway to throw them away. The Little Cub who had followed him home stood to the side, watching silently, unable to comprehend the tension in the air.
Wei Qian took two steps carrying the refuse before the urge to clean suddenly vanished. With a violent jerk, he hurled the handful of garbage straight at the old woman's door across the hall. He whirled around, snarling at the boy, "What the fuck are you looking at?!"
The Little Cub flinched, instinctively taking a step back.
"Little bastard!" Wei Qian hissed, his voice dripping with venom.
The little bastard pressed his back against the corridor wall, watching him warily with wide, unblinking eyes.
Wei Qian inhaled deeply, fighting to suppress the wicked fire clawing at his chest. As the self-appointed "adult" of his household, he didn't want to lose his temper in front of a child. But in that moment, he found his restraint entirely shattered. One of his eyelids twitched violently. He wasn't truly an adult after all.
Without warning, Wei Qian spun around, snatched a heavy stone from the ground, and—smash—hurled it through the old woman's window. Broken glass cascaded inward with a sharp clatter, immediately followed by a shrill shriek from inside the flat.
"Listen up, old hag!" Wei Qian roared. "I didn't mess with you before because you’ve already got one foot in the grave. You touch my doorstep again, and I’ll slaughter your entire family!"
The old woman's shrill, combative cursing erupted from the ruined window. She clearly didn't take the threats of a half-grown punk seriously.
Without a word, Wei Qian turned, went inside, and emerged carrying a heavy kitchen knife. He lunged across the hall and kicked her door with shattering force, breaking the lock entirely until nothing but a flimsy security chain kept it attached to the frame. His face deathly pale and his eyes shot through with blood, the teenager hacked the blade repeatedly into the wooden door like a psychotic madman. The sheer, unhinged violence froze the old woman’s curses instantly, reducing her to silent tears of terror.
From that day on, the old woman avoided sharing the corridor with Wei Qian, whispering to the neighborhood that he was a literal murderer. But she never dared utter another curse in his presence, and she never dumped her trash by his door again.
It seemed that cruelty was simply the nature of the world. Yet, while the young master Wei’s demonic aura had frightened an old woman to tears, it utterly failed to faze the Little Cub. The boy remained, persistently lingering outside the threshold.
Having finished his intimidation display, Wei Qian slammed his door shut—bam—locking the Little Cub out in the cold.
The small boy wandered the dim corridor alone for a while. Finally, he bent down, gathered the remaining scattered pieces of garbage left by Wei Qian's door, and threw them away.
He even gathered a few discarded twigs from the hallway, bundling them together to sweep the floor clean. Once finished, he curled himself into a tight ball against the doorframe like an unwanted puppy, hunkering down to sleep through the rest of the bitter night.