FWP Chapter 15

Chapter 15: 15 Truly a Terrible Person

“Chen Buchu’s father, I call him Uncle Chen Li. He told me that my parents were in a car accident and were in intensive care for a whole day and night, but they were brain dead.”

“He asked me if I wanted to sign an organ donation agreement,” the sun had fully risen, and Wanderer turned around, finding Yu Zipei’s eyes, smiling slightly, trying to convey a confused emotion, “He said this could help more people.”

“I donated.”

“I remember what my parents looked like. The night Chen Buchu let me go back, I was beaten. My dad beat me while crying, hugging me, telling me to wait for him, and when he made money, he would pay it back and take me home.”

“They actually loved me a lot, right.”

Wanderer couldn’t say for sure.

The daytime in Nandu was over, and the earth had a scorched smell. Wanderer squatted by a mailbox on the side of the road, endlessly smoking, putting it out, and then lighting it again.

The mailbox he was leaning against had a stamp issued by the Nandu Post Office a while ago. The stamps were themed around the history of Nandu, selecting the past and present of this small Southeast Asian country from some photographic works.

Wanderer tilted his head back, resting it on the mailbox. He knew that the back of his head was touching a picture of a haystack.

When he was little, he had a lot of toys that other children didn’t have. His mom worked as a cleaner in a casino, running errands for people, often able to keep the change. She saved a little, buying Wanderer toy cars and building blocks.

She had seen how rich people squandered and how extravagant they were, thinking that besides gambling, she probably wouldn’t have another chance in her life.

She lay on the haystack, biting a blade of grass, imagining her child being a free and wealthy person roaming the mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas in the future.

“When the car accident happened, my mom was sitting in the passenger seat, and she was the most seriously injured. Her lungs didn’t meet the donation criteria. Her liver and kidneys were donated. Uncle Chen Li said the liver went to a little girl, and the kidneys went to an old man.”

Yu Zipei immediately reacted. Her legs trembling, she held onto the furniture in the living room and sat down on the sofa.

Organ donations follow “double-blind principles,” so normally Wanderer wouldn’t be able to know where these organs went.

She tentatively said, “Is it that you wanted to know who your parents helped, so you insisted on seeing them?”

Please don’t deny it. Yu Zipei stared at Wanderer without moving, praying in her heart, please don’t deny it.

Otherwise,

Otherwise,

This will make you a sinner,

Your life will become a joke.

Under Yu Zipei’s gaze, Wanderer slowly shook his head.

“I didn’t. Heinitiative told me.”

Wanderer’s arms hung down by his sides. He slightly twisted his arm, seeming uncomfortable with his own torso, “Actually, they shouldn’t have died, right? Did I, make them die without a complete body?”

“Chen Buchu can’t hide things in his heart. He went home last month. Maybe Chen Li is getting old and plans to let him take over. No matter how useless he is, he’s still Chen Li’s son.”

“His apology is genuine, and his malice is also genuine.”

Wanderer slowly paced in front of the French windows. He yawned, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. “Can I have a cigarette? Is it okay to smoke at home?”

Yu Zipei let him do whatever he wanted.

Having said these things, even if he wanted Yu Zipei to immediately kneel down and kowtow to him, confessing, “I shouldn’t have called you a stinky mistress,” Yu Zipei would obediently do it. There was no way around it; Yu Zipei felt Wanderer had it hard. She couldn’t empathize, but her sensory feelings and empathy valves were turned up to maximum power, and she was overwhelmed by the tragedies that had been accumulating for many years and suddenly erupted.

Wanderer smoked, his fingers stroking the roller lighter. He sighed.

“He clearly didn’t have to say it.”

“His so-called apology, the so-called truth, is actually a disguised accusation.”

“Things have been over for so long, and many things have died without proof. Chen Li is older than me. He might not remember whether he did those things, but I remember, ‘tour’ has 12 strokes, and ‘swing’ has 9 strokes,” Wanderer held out his right hand, looking seriously, “21 strokes, two donation agreements. I personally tore their bodies apart.”

“From that day on, I look at Chen Buchu like I’m looking at a searchlight. He wants to judge me.”

Wanderer’s expression and tone were as normal as usual. He stood under the sun, but looked like a monster crawling out from underground. He had twisted, knotty limbs, and damp, cold liquid leaked from under his feet, and eyeballs opened on the surface of his skin. Yu Zipei struggled to operate her hungover brain, trying to search for “Chen Buchu” in the hundreds of thousands of sentences she and Wanderer had said last night.

–But Chen Buchu is dead. He died suddenly, without leaving a single word for me. When we set off, we said we would earn ten million to burn for fun.

–He died of intracranial hemorrhage, and his left leg was cut off at the knee. The zipper of the body bag was pulled to the top, trapping a few dull golden hairs.

–I can’t find that leg.

–I can’t find that leg no matter what.

Wanderer observed Yu Zipei without joy or sorrow. He grinned, “Your expression is so serious. Just like when Zhou Zhao heard it.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t kill him.”

“I just feel like everything is so fractured. I should have been like you, studying, taking exams, graduating, and working. Zhou Zhao wants to become a great architect, and you want to marry him after graduation. Chen Buchu wanted to date five girlfriends at the same time. Everyone has something they want to do. When I was in junior high school, I seemed to have written a composition that looked forward to what kind of person I would become.”

“But it seems that everyone except me is quite successful.”

Wanderer looked around at the place he was in, Yu Zipei’s home, a large flat, inside the second ring road, the window-to-wall ratio was staggering. He strolled around the living room, only a few steps away from Yu Zipei several times.

Yu Zipei retreated in horror, avoiding Wanderer. “Wanderer, Wanderer. Listen to me.”

“Mm. You say.”

“Zhou Zhao, Zhou Zhao is not a great architect at all, he’s not even an architect, in New York he’s just a lousy draftsman, and I’m even more hopeless, I’ve taken the dental license exam several times, and my husband had a child with a mistress outside, only half a year younger than Wen Wen, Wen Wen’s IQ is like mine, she can’t even do addition and subtraction within ten…”

“…We’re not as successful as you think.”

Wanderer shrugged, “Is that so? But I’m very jealous of you, jealous of Zhou Zhao, jealous of Li Tinglin. From the first time I saw you and Li Tinglin, I’ve been tormented and felt uncomfortable all over.”

“Yesterday, or the day before, I went to Zhou Zhao’s house to find him. Li Tinglin opened the door.”

“You went to find Zhou Zhao? But he’s not here at all.”

Wanderer nodded, “Yeah, how could I be as well-informed as you?”

Yu Zipei stammered to make up for it, “Not well-informed, not well-informed, I haven’t seen him in years.”

Wanderer took a few steps forward and sat down next to Yu Zipei. He had just been standing in front of the window, directly facing the air conditioning outlet, and was cold as ice from his hair to his heels.

Yu Zipei got goosebumps all over.

Wanderer’s gaze was deep, as if he had been prepared for a long time, “Then can you call him? I want to see him.”

/

Zhou Zhao’s ringtone was “Zhang San’s Song.”

It sounds good usually.

But for two people who haven’t slept for less than three hours, it was like demonic sounds piercing their ears. One was still jet-lagged, and the other hadn’t seen the sun at eight in the morning since adulthood.

Tsai Chin sang: Forget the pain, forget the sorrow

Li Tinglin stretched out a foot from the ground, kicking the air painfully a few times.

On the sofa, Zhou Zhao, who was sleeping like a dead pig, didn’t move.

We want to fly to that faraway place and take a look ~

“Tsai…Zhou Zhao, Zhou Zhao,” Li Tinglin shouted weakly with his broken gong voice.

This world is not so desolate

“Zhou Zhao. Phone.”

We want to fly to that faraway place and have a look

Zhou Zhao turned over.

“The phone is ringing.”

This world is still a piece of light

“If you pretend to be dead again, I’ll beat you to death.”

“Zhou Zhao!”

Li Tinglin’s eyes widened, lying straight on the carpet. He gave himself a shout, jumped up suddenly, and in one breath grabbed Zhou Zhao’s phone from the coffee table.

Just as he was about to hang up hard, the pupils in his eye sockets, stained with eye boogers, turned to the screen.

“Damn it! Zhou Zhao! Your mom is resurrected!”

Zhou Zhao sat up with a jolt, “Who!”

Li Tinglin shoved the phone in front of Zhou Zhao’s face. Three big characters flickered on the screen, the animation effects were very cute, “Yu Zipei” jumped and danced, awakening Zhou Zhao’s first morning back home. Zhou Zhao was relieved, as long as it wasn’t his mom resurrected.

He wiped his face and answered the phone. Li Tinglin swiped and stuck his ear to the back of the phone.

Zhou Zhao: “Hello.” He had prepared a greeting.

But he heard that Yu Zipei didn’t have any intention of greeting him at all. As soon as the phone was connected, she said without explanation: “Zhou Zhao, you buy a ticket back home now, immediately, I’ll book a ticket for you.”

Li Tinglin winked and squeezed in front of Zhou Zhao, exaggeratingly mouthing: Broken! Mirror! Reunited!

Zhou Zhao swatted Li Tinglin away like a fly, broken my ass, reunited my ass.

He calmly replied: “I came back last night, did something happen on your end?”

Yu Zipei: “Ah! So that’s you in the photos Li Tinglin posted.”

Li Tinglin interjected: “Yeah, did you see my new hair color? Is it good-looking?”

Yu Zipei: “It’s so ugly. Oh, it’s not your turn now. Zhou Zhao, listen to me–”

On the sofa, Yu Zipei’s eyeballs turned to the fullest extent. Wanderer was sitting on a single sofa, closing his eyes and pretending to sleep. He was looking up, the Adam’s apple protruding on a slender neck, docile and harmless. Yu Zipei swallowed hard, “I met our old classmate yesterday. We haven’t seen him in so many years, and he wants to see you.”

Yu Zipei turned on the speakerphone, making sure Wanderer could hear. She waited for Zhou Zhao’s answer, but Li Tinglin was always so clueless, he chirped: “Ah, old classmate, who is it, why want to see Zhou Zhao first and not me.”

Wanderer opened his eyes, looking at the phone on the table. He said calmly, “Haven’t we already met?”

Li Tinglin jumped away like he had seen a ghost. He kept five meters away from Zhou Zhao’s phone, like a monkey sitting on a hot kettle, “Wanderer… Wanderer.”

Hearing Wanderer’s voice, Zhou Zhao was speechless for a few seconds. He was wearing a set of gray loungewear, and his messy hair slightly covered his eyes, a little prickly. He suspected that he hadn’t woken up at all. He hadn’t attended that wedding, hadn’t gone to the airport, Prince Charming hadn’t died, Wanderer hadn’t disappeared. He hadn’t boarded that long night train, hadn’t looked at himself in the glass window, he hadn’t eaten that sour kumquat, hadn’t heard Wanderer sing by the riverbank. He was sitting in the classroom of No. 16 High School, the curtains were moved by the wind, the shadow of the magnolia flowers swayed on his desk, the afternoon prep bell rang, he woke up from his nap, moving his sore arms and neck. Wanderer went to the bathroom to wash his face, with water droplets hanging on his eyebrows and eyelashes, and walked in from the back door of the classroom with a refreshing look, sitting next to him.

He had a long dream.

“Wanderer.”

“What do you want to eat for breakfast?”