Before anyone realized it, the school semester drew to a close, and final examinations arrived.
The afternoon testing wrapped up, the student body swarmed through the gates in a roaring wave. Amidst the chaos, a shrieking boy barreled past Song Lee Lee, the zipper pull of his swinging bookbag catching cleanly in the hollow floral lace of her cotton skirt. Fabric yielded with a sharp tear, ripping open a long, jagged gash along the hem.
Little Bao scowled deeply, but the oblivious culprit had long since melted into the crowded street, leaving her with no one to hold accountable.
When Wei Zhi Yuan let himself into the flat, Old Mrs. Song had not yet returned from the market. Song Lee Lee sat curled on the wooden sofa with the family sewing box balanced precariously on her knees. She had painstakingly sheared off the frayed, ruined lace around the hem. With her head bowed low, she clumsily creased the raw edge upward, clutching an oversized needle to bind the hem with crooked, erratic stitches.
"What are you doing?" Wei Zhi Yuan asked.
The sudden sound of his voice startled her, driving the needle straight into the pad of her thumb. She winced, vigorously shaking her stung fingers as she whined, "Ouch! Brother, you scared the life out of me! The lace ripped clean through and couldn't be patched, so I'm cutting it off and sewing a plain folded edge."
She trailed off, cocking her head to inspect her handiwork. Her lips puckered into a pout. "Great. It's completely crooked."
Comrade Bao’s fine motor skills had never approached the baseline competence of the working masses; she was notoriously all thumbs, incapable of sewing a button, let alone tailoring. Given the household's current financial cushion, purchasing designer brands was out of the question, but buying a fresh cotton frock for a little girl was hardly an extravagance.
Yet Song Lee Lee -- who lived by the iron creed of being pampered when circumstances allowed, and inventing circumstances to be pampered when they didn't -- had not breathed a single word about replacing it.
Wei Zhi Yuan realized with a pang that their older brother’s prolonged disappearance had cast its suffocating shadow over far more than just himself.
Having stitched the hem at a grotesque tilt, the girl took small sewing snips, unpicked the thread with painstaking slowness, and started over. Before long, however, the seam wandered off-course once more.
She let out an agonized, defeated sigh, tossing the needle into the wicker basket. A deep, heavy grievance welled up in her chest; she sniffled quietly, yet noticing that only she and Wei Zhi Yuan were home, she stubbornly blinked the tears back into her sockets.
She was small for her age, but she was no longer a mindless toddler. In her heart, Wei Zhi Yuan belonged to a fundamentally different category than Big Brother or Grandma. Wei Chain was like a fierce, patriarchal sovereign separated by an unbridgeable generational divide, whereas Wei Zhi Yuan was her generational peer -- she couldn't bring herself to act like an incompetent brat before him.
A moment later, she shuffled across the linoleum and plucked a wooden straightedge off his study desk. "Second Brother, lend me this long ruler."
Hunching over the low dining table, she pinned the fabric flat beneath the wooden edge, struggling with the thread to keep the stitch line from drifting.
Wei Zhi Yuan kept his gaze trained on his textbook, but the open page had not turned for half an hour. Several times, words rose in his throat: Drop the needle. I'll buy you a new dress tomorrow.
Yet the syllables withered on his tongue. He didn't dare say it.
Though a modest sum remained in the drawer, losing Wei Chain was indistinguishable from severing the family’s economic lifeline. Without a wage earner to replenish the cache, even mountains of silver would eventually be worn down to bedrock.
The two children harbored the exact same terror in their marrows, maintaining a silent, unspoken pact never to pierce the thin veil of normalcy.
The front door creaked open, and Fatty San strolled in.
Fatty San always possessed a boisterous, untroubled aura. Day in and day out, the man thrived on relentless, carefree cheer, as though life were an endless comedy; in Wei Chain’s dry words, the fellow's round face was permanently bathed in the flushed afterglow of cheap sorghum wine.
Poking his head into the foyer, Fatty San asked with breezy curiosity, "Hey, that wretched brother of yours still hasn't dragged his ass back? Did some wealthy mountain matriarch snatch him off to be a live-in bridegroom, living in clover?"
Per Wei Zhi Yuan’s strict directive, the news of Wei Chain’s severed communication had been kept strictly within the four walls of the flat. Fatty San remained cheerfully oblivious.
"Any day now," Wei Zhi Yuan replied smoothly, his features betraying nothing. "Word reached us yesterday that the convoy is heading back north."
"Ah," Fatty San grunted, taking the lie at face value. Glancing down at the mess of thread in the girl's lap, he grinned. "Bao, training to be a master seamstress?"
Song Lee Lee looked up, her gaze colliding with Wei Zhi Yuan’s. She was young and had never possessed the wits to read adults, yet at that very second, an unexpected instinct flared to life -- she deciphered the warning in her second brother's eyes. Falling in line with the clumsy deception, she muttered, "I... I got sick of the frilly lace. It looked childish, so I'm tearing it out."
Fatty San waved a meaty hand. "If you hate it, tell your big brother to buy a new one. What's the point of torturing your fingers?"
Song Lee Lee was an honest child who rarely manufactured deceit. Caught off guard, she hurriedly dropped her chin, terrified her trembling face would betray her.
After several agonizing seconds, she pursed her lips, forcing out a timid murmur: "I... I want to save money."
Fatty San froze in genuine disbelief before letting out a hearty bellow: "Look at our girl! She’s actually grown sensible! If that scoundrel brother of yours could hear this, he'd roll over in his grave and rest in peace."
It was mindless, crude banter. Fatty San was a loudmouth with no verbal filter, and Wei Chain himself traded in callous, venomous jests without taboo. Yet the instant the words rest in peace left his mouth, both Wei Zhi Yuan and Song Lee Lee snapped their heads up simultaneously.
The children’s faces were drained of color, as pale and rigid as polished stone.
Neither uttered a sound.
Fatty San’s instincts flared. The breath caught in his throat, and he gave his own fleshy cheek a light slap. "Bah! Listen to this foul mouth of mine -- spouting absolute nonsense. Don't take it to heart, you two. Forget what I said."
After a brittle pause, Wei Zhi Yuan managed to stretch his lips into a strained, polite smile. Song Lee Lee, lacking such masks, couldn't smile at all. Gathering her bunched-up skirt and the wicker sewing basket into her arms, she whispered to the floorboards, "The light's bad here. I'm going into the bedroom."
She spun on her heel and slipped through the door.
At this point, even a blind man would have picked up the wrongness in the air.
Fatty San parted his lips to interrogate Wei Zhi Yuan, but catching the dark, unyielding obstinacy locked deep within the boy's pupils, he swallowed his words.
He understood. The children were bleeding inside; the presence of an outsider was merely forcing them to swallow the poison in silence.
Better clear out, Fatty San told himself. If I hang around any longer, these two pups will suffocate to death.
He offered a brief farewell and made for the stairs, resolving to intercept Old Mrs. Song that night to wring the truth out of her.
Left alone in the stillness, Wei Zhi Yuan turned his thoughts back to the single piece of unfinished business awaiting his attention.
The following afternoon, he selected a quiet, scorching hour to slip out of the flat. Before leaving, he retrieved the envelope of camp allowance Wei Chain had given him, stared at it for a long second, and tucked it into the inner lining of his satchel.
It was the final physical possession his brother had placed into his hands; carrying it against his ribs anchored the wild, unmoored panic in his chest.
Once this business was settled, he planned to use that very cash to purchase a new summer dress for Little Bao. If Wei Chain truly never returned, he had zero intention of attending the Mathematics Olympiad camp. Academic accolades were meaningless under a fallen roof.
Outside, laborers were locked into their afternoon shifts, while those off duty hid from the summer heat behind shuttered windows.
Over the past weeks, Wei Zhi Yuan had mapped his quarry's domestic history with chilling precision: the predator had married once, divorced shortly thereafter, and currently lived entirely alone in a rented room.
Having committed the factory’s shift roster to memory, Wei Zhi Yuan knew that on this particular day, the man was assigned to the warehouse graveyard rotation from late afternoon until midnight.
The flat would be completely empty.
Having stalked the quarry and scouted the terrain relentlessly, Wei Zhi Yuan had already circled the perimeter of that dilapidated tenement four or five times.
Darting forward, he scaled the concrete wall abutting the grain silo with feline agility. Planting his sneakers against the brickwork, he kicked off in two sharp, silent bounds, vaulting cleanly onto the second-story balcony.
Drawing a small utility blade from his pocket, he sliced a narrow slit through the wire mesh of the screen window -- just wide enough to slide a single hand inside. He retracted his fingers into the oversized sleeve of the dark windbreaker he had specifically worn for the job, reaching through the severed screen to pivot the brass latch on the inside. With a fluid, noiseless twist, he tumbled over the sill into the room.
He had meticulously planned every variable in advance, anticipating every contingency and complication until the entire operation ran like clockwork in his mind.
Burglary seemed to be a latent gift; on his very first breach, he moved with the seamless, ghostly fluidity of a seasoned recidivist -- soundless, breathing as shallow as a draft of cool air.
Even at this stage, he maintained the cold, methodical rigor of an investigator testing a hypothesis: dare to presume boldly, but verify with ruthless precision. His initial entry into the predator's lair was meant purely to secure definitive proof.
Before long, however, Wei Zhi Yuan discovered that his scrupulous caution had been entirely redundant.
He found lots of erotic posters and pictures in the dirty bedroom, most of which featured children. Judging by the pictures, the man seemed to have a strong attraction to young boys and girls aged six to nine who hadn't developed yet. Since he lived alone, he didn't even bother to hide them, instead plastering them all over the walls.
Not wanting to leave any trace of himself, Wei Zhi Yuan flipped through the items in his coat sleeves, calculating the feasibility of reporting.
He vetoed the idea.
Wei Zhi Yuan had only heard about this pervert from his brother and his third brother. He seemed to have killed a little girl years ago, but she has long since died. Even her family refused to report it to the police. He has absolutely no evidence to suggest that this person is guilty.
As for that encounter in the alley, it amounted to nothing more than an attempted assault. If cornered, the bastard could easily dig in his heels and claim he had merely been shaking down a kid for loose change.
And stashing children's pornographic materials behind closed doors? It might bring him a minor headache, but what of it? The law didn't give a damn about what filth a man kept in the privacy of his own home.
He won't be sentenced for this. However, Wei Zhi Yuan is guilty of a series of offences ranging from stalking to breaking and entering.
He was already in enough trouble; he couldn't risk getting into more over this.
Finally, Wei Zhi Yuan rummaged through another drawer and found things that clearly belonged to a child: a little girl's cartoon hair clip, their school uniform buttons and even a few pieces of children's underwear.
Next to a dozen videotapes.
Wei Zhi Yuan pulled out the top videotape and placed it in the old VCR next to him. After some noise and white dots appeared on the screen, a colourful erotic video featuring a girl of about ten years old began to play.
Wei Zhi Yuan was not interested in this. He frowned and fast-forwarded the tape, seeing that there was something absurd in the world: the whole box of videotapes featured that one little girl, and the content was also absurdly repetitive. Surprisingly, the switching between several poorly written themes was quite a performance.
Wei Zhiyuan didn't feel he was doing anyone a favour; he just felt having such a person in the world made him feel a little sick.
Having learned enough, he was ready to exit the tape and leave quietly to carry out his next plan.
Just as he was about to press pause, the fast-forwarded video jumped to the next clip.
These are all crude pirated tapes, and whoever burned them was probably careless, mixing in a video of something else as well. The first few images flashed by as the video was fast-forwarded, and Wei Zhi Yuan glanced at them. He thought that the background style seemed to have changed, and his hand, which was about to press the pause button, paused involuntarily.
Then, his jaw suddenly dropped and his eyes widened.
He saw two tall European and American men, both dressed very stylishly, deliver two lines of dialogue, and then, surprisingly, adopt an ambiguous attitude, hug each other, kiss, and roll around together.
Wei Zhi Yuan did not know when to stop fast-forwarding. His eyes were fixed on the two people on the screen. The two male protagonists were both slender and muscular, with angular muscles. Where it counted most, they certainly weren’t lacking.
On the screen, the two incomprehensible male leads carried on with uninhibited, ravenous fervor.
Wei Zhi Yuan froze solid on the floor. His outstretched arm hung suspended in midair, completely forgotten. Just as the two figures on the cathode-ray tube grunted, swore, and drove straight to the point, a sharp, sudden rap of knuckles battered the front door from the outside.
As if struck by lightning, Wei Zhi Yuan hit the VCR power switch in a blur. He stood pinned to the floorboards of the unfamiliar, squalid room, holding his breath until his lungs burned.
A gruff voice bellowed through the wood: "Power bill! Anyone home?!"
Wei Zhi Yuan squeezed his eyes shut, his fists clenching tight at his seams as he silently counted each thunderous beat hammering in his ribs.
Inhaling a razor-thin breath, the complete spatial blueprint of the tenement flashed through his mind, instantly mapping three distinct extraction routes -- if the intruder forced the lock, or if...
The collector lingered on the landing for a few tense seconds before spitting an irritable curse: "The minute it's time to pay up, everyone drops dead. Cheap bastards, Pah!"
Shuffling footsteps faded down the concrete stairwell.
Wei Zhi Yuan finally released the breath trapped in his chest.
His shirt was already soaked clean through with cold sweat, yet his hands moved with mechanical precision. He ejected the video cassette, carefully reset every displaced item back to its exact millimeter, and finally rooted out a cash stash wedged beneath a low cupboard, drawing three hundred yuan from the wad.
His hammering pulse had leveled out somewhat, though the burning heat still lingered across his cheekbones. Returning to the window, he smoothed the sliced wire screen as flat as possible before pressing his eye to the peephole for several long, cautious moments. Only after confirming the corridor was deserted -- and noting that the latch wasn't of the deadbolt type that locked from the outside -- did he ease the door open, pull it shut behind him, and slip soundlessly down the stairwell.
A strange, searing fire clawed at the pit of Wei Zhi Yuan’s stomach, leaving his throat parched as if wrapped in an inescapable, cloying grease. Convincing himself the reaction was born purely of moral disgust and boiling outrage, he stopped at a roadside kiosk for an ice-cold bottle of Arctic Ocean soda. Tilting his head, he downed the chilled orange fizz in three violent gulps, finally drowning the phantom fire.
Wei Zhi Yuan returned home with unnerving composure. He left a brief note for Little Bao, claiming he had headed to the municipal library for study materials and shouldn't be waited on for dinner. Then, he cut straight across town toward the processing plant where the predator worked.
On the very last page of his private notebook, he penned three stark characters: Cho Jan Gwo. With a red ballpoint pen, he slashed a heavy, deliberate cross through the name.
That was the pervert's legal identity.
That evening, Cho Jan Gwo dined in the plant canteen as was his habit.
Lately, his eyes had been tracking a pretty young boy who looked as delicate as a girl. Boys of that age were reckless and wild, running untethered through the alleys during summer break while their parents were notoriously lax with supervision -- far easier prey to snatch without raising alarms than sheltered little girls.
As he cleared his aluminum tray, the old gatekeeper shuffled over balancing two glass bottles of liquor. "Someone just dropped these off for you."
Cho Jan Gwo blinked in confusion. "Me? I didn't order any liquor."
The watchman vaguely sensed there was something off about this fellow. Though he couldn't put his finger on the exact brand of rot, instinct warned him to keep his distance. Giving him a dismissive, indifferent look, the old man dropped the two bottles and a delivery slip right in front of him. "It’s yours, signed in your name. If you didn't buy it, who did? The tab's already paid -- over three hundred yuan. Expensive stuff."
Wanting nothing more to do with him, the watchman merely told him to drop the signed slip back at the gatehouse after his shift, then turned on his heel and left.
Cho Jan Gwo inspected the slip. Sure enough, it was a delivery receipt from a local tavern he regularly frequented, his own name printed plainly across the top without error.
He figured the shop boy must have jumbled the patron names -- the place was always packed with regulars, and mix-ups were common. Regardless, the cash was already settled, and only a damned fool refused a free handout. If someone came asking later, he'd just play dumb and shove the blame away; after all, the tavern had botched the delivery first.
Without the slightest pang of guilt, he claimed the liquor for himself, uncorking the bottles on shift. Pairing them with a small dish of fried peanuts, he downed three bottles of the fiery spirit until his limbs melted into deadweight. He slumped into the wicker recliner like a boneless corpse, having entirely forgotten he was on the clock, treating gross neglect of duty as naturally as breathing.
In his drunken haze, a faint metallic click reached his ears. He paid it no mind, merely rolling over onto his side.
A moment later, the crisp, delicate lilt of a little girl’s voice drifted through the dark.
It was unmistakable -- that undeveloped, fragile, high-pitched timbre.
As if shocked out of his alcoholic stupor, a perverse jolt shot through his veins. His bloodshot eyes snapped wide, and he bolted upright in the chair.
Voices drifted from beyond the heavy workshop door -- the child seemed to be murmuring softly to herself, occasionally breaking into fragments of a tuneless nursery rhyme, punctuated by the faint, rhythmic patter of skipping footsteps.
He remembered that just across the courtyard in the staff dorms, a female worker lived alone with her eight-year-old daughter. Every time that girl crossed his path, a foul itch had clawed at the pit of his gut; yet, perpetually paranoid, he rarely dared touch prey within his immediate circle, forcing his depraved cravings down.
But right now... it was the dead of night.
The alcohol boiling in his veins detonated inside his skull.
The man's hair stood on end with excitement. He licked his dry, thirsty lips and rubbed his impatiently erect crotch. Then he stood up. Still blind drunk, he saw only a wash of stark white and staggered forward, top-heavy and unsteady, chasing a voice that seemed to drift near and far.
As he walked, he felt a coolness around him and shivered, sobering up somewhat. He frowned, realising that this was a cryogenic cold storage facility for meat products, from which he could hear rustling noises.
The man came to his senses and rushed inside. "Hey! You can't just go into the cold room!" he exclaimed.
The little girl seemed to mumble something too quietly for him to hear. The man's throat rolled obscenely up and down as reason struggled hard with lust for a moment, but lust won out.
He glanced up at the wall clock hung above the warehouse door -- more than an hour remained before the midnight shift change. He knew the protocol: with inventory shuttling in and out during the day, the cold-storage vault was never secured with the heavy master padlock, only the standard latch. Every staff member held a key. Only when the graveyard shift rotated at midnight would the guards snap the heavy padlock shut, sealing the vault until six the following morning.
An hour was more than enough time to do plenty of things.
He pitched his voice into a sickeningly gentle whisper: "Little girl... you can't be playing in here. Come on out with Uncle, and Uncle will buy you something sweet..."
Driven by raw greed, he stepped straight into the freezing darkness, entirely blind to the fact that the clock face above the vault door had stopped ticking hours ago.
He trailed the soft, piping voice deeper into the labyrinth of frosted concrete, closing in until it sounded right around the corner -- just behind a dividing partition! The man ran his tongue over dry lips, lunging forward with an eager grin: "Gotcha..."
No young girl waited in the frost. Resting on a steel rack was an obsolete mobile phone -- a bulky model that had fallen out of production years ago -- looping a recorded ringtone on repeat, spilling the tender, high-pitched voice of a child into the freezing air.
Without warning, the battery gave out. The audio died mid-syllable.
Absolute, suffocating silence swallowed the cold-storage vault.
A cold shock spiked through his chest. Before his mind could catch up, a thunderous clang detonated behind him -- a sound etched into his very bones: the heavy steel outer door slamming shut, followed by the dull, metallic snap of the massive master padlock dropping into place!
Wait! Midnight was still an hour away -- why the hell would anyone drop the lock now?!
He lunged wildly toward the reinforced door, slamming his fists against the frost-coated steel, howling at the top of his lungs: "Someone’s inside! Open up! Let me out! LET ME OUT!"
Wei Zhi Yuan lingered in the shadows until midnight tolled. Striking a match, he reduced his secret notebook to ash, watching the charred edges curl into nothingness before heading straight home. Slipping into his room, he fanned the thick reams of mathematical scratch paper across the mattress, meticulously staging the scene of an exhausted, studious scholar -- neither Grandma nor Little Bao had ever set foot inside a municipal library; neither had any idea when its doors locked for the night.
The damp chill of midnight dew still clung to his collar. He had assumed that transforming into such a vile, rotten seed would curse him with sleeplessness. Yet the moment his cheek touched the cotton pillow, a wave of profound, liberating relief washed through every joint and marrow in his frame. Easing Wei Chain’s pillow flush against his own, he rested his head in the hollow, pretending his big brother lay right beside him...
Wei Zhi Yuan drifted into slumber cushioned by that strange, intoxicating blend of latent guilt and lingering dread. Through the haze of sleep, a dream took hold: his older brother lay sprawled across the mattress, wearing nothing but an unbuttoned dress shirt falling loosely over bare skin. The scars crisscrossing his flesh did nothing to mar the lean, striking symmetry of that body; if anything, they honed it into something feral and raw.
Wei Chain’s eyes inherited his mother’s fine shape, yet they held a fierce, piercing clarity all his own. Below the straight, clean bridge of his nose, his lips curled into an elusive, unspoken smile -- a phantom expression born entirely of Wei Zhi Yuan’s private, fevered imagining.
Looking down upon that exposed frame, the sticky, restless heat from earlier that night surged back with a vengeance. As if possessed by a demon, the youth moved toward the bed in a trance, his hand reaching out with ghostly, treasonous intent, hungering to touch.
His older brother merely watched him with languid, heavy lidded eyes, lazily reaching out a hand to stroke him in passing. Wei Zhi Yuan could scarcely contain the violent tremor that seized him, a strange, terrifyingly deep craving coiling tight in his gut.
A sharp, frantic trill of the telephone tore him from sleep.
He jackknifed upright, his face paralyzed in a momentary daze before a silent tsunami crashed through the core of his chest.
A sticky, damp chill clung between his thighs. Hesitating for an agonizing second, he maneuvered awkwardly out from beneath the covers and reached for the receiver.
"Hello..."
"It’s me." The familiar voice sounded slightly gravelly, hoarse over the crackling line. "Still half-asleep, aren't you? Ran into some trouble on my end earlier -- cell phone's out of commission for now. Tell Grandma not to worry. I'll be home in a couple of days."
Wei Zhi Yuan had no recollection of how he managed to finish the call. Every nerve in his frame felt utterly, hopelessly numb.