Peach Pits

Originally, he only had his good looks going for him, but now that his face has become like this, he can be completely labelled as having ‘no redeeming qualities’.

“Did you fight back?” I pull back my hand, and while I feel sorry for him, I also have not forgotten to feel concern about Yang Haiyang’s condition.

But I am not overly worried about him. You see, while Shang Muxiao has youth on his side, Yang Haiyang has many years of fighting experience. Those muscles of his are not just for show, so he should not suffer from defeat.

Shang Muxiao straightens up and puts his mask back on, “I did not. It was him who hit me one-sidedly, I did not fight back.”

He says it as if he is really telling the truth. My eyes slowly move down to his bruised knuckles.

“This is not…” he notices my gaze and raises up his hand as he explains, “I got this when I hit the wall. I really did not hit him back.”

He does not know about my relationship with Yang Haiyang, so there is no need to deliberately lie to me and I am more inclined to think that he really did not fight back — this inclination comes as a surprise to me, as though the sun has risen from the west.

“Why would you smash your hand against the wall so badly?” Placing my teaching materials on my lap, I roll my wheelchair out the door.

Shang Muxiao follows. The entire time, he keeps about two steps away from me.

“Because I cannot bear to hit him.”

I am surprised to hear him say that he did not hit Yang Haiyang, and am even more surprised to learn that he would rather hit a wall than fight back.

We have not seen each other for a mere few days, how could his temperament have changed so drastically? It is as if he has been bewitched.

“What? You think for me to have been beaten this badly, I must have fought back?” Shang Muxiao sneers, suspecting what I am thinking based on my long silence.

Nah, I think that not only would you fight back, but you would give back double what you received in return.

“It’s not that, I just think it… is a bit unlike you.”

Thinking is one thing, but saying is another. I am no longer at the rash young age where one says what I think; I know what should be said to people and how, even if it is not the truth.

“In what way?” With his hands in his jacket pockets, he catches up to me so he is now walking alongside me. “I am usually pretty well behaved.”

I cannot help but look up at him, curious to know what expression he is wearing when saying that.

He senses it and looks down at me and says, “What? As far as I am concerned, one who does not commit offences that are against the law is ‘well-behaved.’”

“……”

I make no comment and look back at the path in silence. I admire his ability to speak shamelessly about himself like that without any change in his expression. 

On both sides of the main path, which is the widest in the school, tall French Plane trees stand. They have been growing here for so many years that their canopies have conjoined to shade the path. The sunlight can only pass between the gaps in the leaves with the help of the wind, hardly transmitting any of its warmth to the earth.

It is now late autumn and the leaves of the trees have turned from green to golden yellow. I assume that it will not be long before these leaves fall off and this pathway will see sunlight again.

“Your car is fixed now, right?” We are almost out of the Plane trees pathway when Shang Muxiao suddenly asks.

The sunlight climbs from my feet to my torso, arid and warm. If I were alone, I would have stopped here to bask in the sun.

“Mmn, you do not have to bother driving me home from now on.” I purposefully slow down, trying to prolong this journey.

Shang Muxiao is oblivious to this, still walking at the same pace as before, and in no time at all, he is ahead of me.

“You haven’t forgotten our appointment tomorrow, have you?” He asks.

I am 32, not 62. I will not forget what I promised that soon.

“I have not,” I say.

He stops in his tracks and looks over with a frown, as if only then noticing that we are no longer abreast of each other.

“Why are you so slow?” He complains, his mask unable to hide his impatience.

The sunlight settles upon him, and the bruise at the corner of his eye becomes more apparent. I squint my eyes, still moving slowly and leisurely forward, not at all hastened.

“You cannot wait, then you can go ahead.”

He clicks his tongue at my remark, seeming as if he has something to say.

“Whatever…” but for some reason chooses to hold back the words. “I’ll be at your apartment tomorrow night. Eight o’clock, do not forget.”

He waits for me to reach him before continuing forward. This time he is walking very slowly, matching my pace.

“Where exactly are you going to take me?”

Right up ahead is a carrefour, and just past it is my office. Though I had agreed to the bet and promised not to avoid him, I still want to know where I will be taken to so I can be mentally prepared.

But Shang Muxiao leaves me in suspense.

“To a fun place. You will not be disappointed.” Reaching the carrefour, he stops and says, “I still have a class to go to, so I’ll be off now. See you tomorrow, Professor Bei.”

He takes a few steps backwards as he waves at me, then puts his hands in his pockets and turns to go in the other direction.

I watch his back for a moment, then turn my wheelchair around and wheel away in the opposite direction from him.

 

As soon as I reach my office and put down my teaching materials, I call Yang Haiyang.

The other end answers after a few rings, and I can faintly make out the honking of car horns in the background.

“Yeah, yeah, put it there… Hello, Bei Jie, what’s up? Is something wrong?”

He sounds busy, so I cut to the chase, “Shang-xiaojie’s brother came to class today with a bruised face…”

Before I can finish my words, Yang Haiyang interrupts me vehemently, “Fuck, don’t mention that lunatic to me! His ancestors must have been blessed for he has not been beaten to death yet.”

He starts to recount to me how much of a nut job Shang Muxiao really is and what happened that day.

“So it was a good day, everything was fine, then suddenly I hear a loud crash, and see that the glass pane of my shop is all smashed.” Yang Haiyang bewilderedly went out to take a look, only to see Shang Muxiao standing outside, dusting his hands off together, wearing a provocative expression. Not only was he not running away when he saw Yang Haiyang, but he also gave him the middle finger.

New enmity piled on old. Even so, Yang Haiyang admits to me that he had been impulsive.

“I asked him ‘are you sick?’, to which he replied, ‘if you don’t break up with my sister, I might get sicker, and next time I will smash more than just glass’. You know the convenience store is my heart’s blood, and Yunrou is my Achilles’ heel, so when he came at me with these two points, I went up and punched him.” The two scuffled. Yang Haiyang was too enraged to notice how many punches he had thrown or how many he had received, and only felt that Shang Muxiao was still quite unskilled.

Hearing all this, I feel that something is amiss. Since it was Shang Muxiao who started the whole thing, how could he let Yang Haiyang put up such a one-sided fight?

“You have no idea how much of a faker he can be. Just when I thought that he was really unskilled and that he had probably never been punched like this before, his true colours were exposed. He probably couldn’t take it anymore because after several blows he grabbed me by the neck, pushed me against the wall, and that look in his eyes… I almost thought he was going to stab me with a knife. But in the end he just punched the wall, and while I was still standing there frozen, patted my bottom and left.”

That night, Shang Yunrou phoned and called him out for what he had done. She could not believe that he had put that kind of beatdown on her brother. It was only then that Yang Haiyang realised he had been caught in a trap. That prick Shang Muxiao had chosen to sacrifice himself to drive a wedge between him and Shang Yunrou. This approach was truly outrageous. Yang Haiyang’s blood boiled.

For the past two days, he has been so busy with the shop and coaxing Shang Yunrou. He is in an utterly terrible fix, and his hatred for Shang Muxiao can be said to have risen to an all-time high.

“How in the world can there be such a cunning little shithead!!” I can just imagine Yang Haiyang vomiting blood in anger right now.

Truly… an out-and-out crafty owl.

Distress and pitifulness are all pretence, while his trick of intentionally sacrificing himself to get his opponent’s guard down, his ruthlessness, and his cunning represent his true character, and that makes him someone very hard to guard against.

“Shang-xiaojie must be very troubled about this, you should talk to her. She seems just, she will understand,” I say to Yang Haiyang, who is in the middle of refitting the shop’s glass. He seems to be short-handed, so I just add, “talk to you next time” and end the call.

When night comes, I receive a message from him saying that he has made up with Shang Yunrou, and showing me a video of the latter sitting in a rocking chair reading a storybook to Yang Youling.

In the video, the little girl with long soft hair is nestled in Shang Yunrou’s embrace, her eyes half-closed, eyelashes hanging over her eyes. She appears to be on the verge of falling asleep.

It has been quite a long time since I last saw this little girl. Thus, I return a message to Yang Haiyang informing him that I will visit Yang Youling in a few days. Yang Haiyang replies with an ‘OK’ and we tentatively agree to meet next Tuesday evening.

 

I am having a dream.

I know I am dreaming. This dream has been my companion for twelve years. I dreamed it almost every night for the first year or two, and then as time passed, it gradually became a dream that I only occasionally have during periods of emotional instability and stress.

From within a moving vehicle, I can hear the sounds of three other people talking. Lu Feiheng is offering me some water, asking me if I want to drink any. I open my eyes and am just about to take the water and thank him when suddenly, everything turns upside down.

Everything is rolling. I am completely unaware of what is happening and by the time I get back to my senses, I have already been flung out of the car. My whole body hurts, and with blurred vision, I can see that the SUV I had just been in is flipped over the guardrail, the hood deformed and the engine emitting sparks.

I see Jing Shen hanging upside down in the car with his face covered in blood. I am uncertain as to whether he is still conscious. I want to go over to his rescue, but my legs are not responding at all.

The gas in the fuel tank leaks and spreads until it eventually ignites with a tiny spark, engulfing the entire car wreck.

Someone picks me up by the arms and drags me away from the hazard.

“My friends… are still there…” I say weakly, my vision gradually turning dark.

When I open my eyes again, it is already the crack of dawn.

I am lying in my bed, listening to the birds chirping outside the window. I take a while to recover, then sit up wearily.

No one likes to relive a nightmare, especially such a terrible nightmare as that.

The whole day, my mind is preoccupied. I forget I set the water to boil, forget to put salt in my cooking, and even fail to remember to add laundry detergent to my load of laundry.

If not for Shang Muxiao calling me, I might have forgotten about my appointment with him too.

“I’m already downstairs. Come on down,” he pauses, then adds, “Make sure you bring your car keys.”

As I come downstairs, I see Shang Muxiao leaning against his blue and white sport bike whilst playing with his helmet in a bored manner. When he sees me, he locks his helmet into place and walks up to me.

“You drive, I’ll navigate. It is a bit far, but the scenery is beautiful.”

Beautiful scenery at this time of night?

I feel confused, but still follow his directions and drive all the way to the place he says.

The road takes us further and further afield, and there are fewer and fewer vehicles on the road. We go out of the city and even past the open land outside the town.

We reach a mountain and as there are no street lights, I turn on my high beam to light the way.

“How much farther is it?” I ask, finally losing my composure.

Shang Muxiao looks out of the window and says, “Almost there.” Why does he sound unsure though…

In the hour that follows, this exchange is repeated no less than three more times.

We drive from eight o’clock to ten o’clock. The dark road is now lined with large fruit trees, which Shang Muxiao says are cherry trees. I do not know if that is true though.

“We are here, pull over!” As if he has seen some kind of sign, Shang Muxiao suddenly signals me to pull over, opens his door, and jumps out of the car before it even comes to a stop.

What the…

In a rare moment, I become somewhat angered over that dangerous action of his.

I turn off the car, get into my wheelchair, and head in his direction. The grass here is slightly uneven, but it does not affect how the wheelchair rolls.

“Do you not realise how dangerous that…” I wheel my way around the car and when I see the view before me, I am suddenly unable to speak.

Before us is a wide scenic overlook. The base of the mountain is dark, with only a few scattered lights. The city in the distance is obscured by the chain of mountains, and I can hear the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves all around me. With the lights from the hi-tech buildings reduced to almost nothing, the light from the stars shines brighter than ever.

“Look, isn’t the scenery beautiful?”

Shang Muxiao raises his arm as he introduces me to the resplendent Milky Way.

 

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Translated by jo. Edited by Phaerre.