Sweetened Red Beans - Chapter 4

I waited until the classroom had been swept, locked the door, and left the key on the windowsill of the teachers’ temporary lodgings.

I’d just come downstairs when several older boys rushed past, carrying Zhou Maoxiu.

I stood there for a moment, sighed, went back upstairs, and knocked on the sixth-grade teacher’s door.

Consider it my good deed for the day.

The teacher was very anxious. I wasn’t particularly concerned. He wasn’t going to die, after all.

By the time we found him, they’d thrown Zhou Maoxiu into a rice paddy beside the road. He was soaked and coated in mud from head to toe. Only his eyes remained visible—chillingly cold, with a hint of madness.

The field was large, the water shallow. Black mud protruded above the surface, and green leaves sprouted from the rice stubble.

He sat in one corner, tiny and alone.

Something twisted in my chest.

The original girl had witnessed this too. She’d let it happen, mocked him, splashed water and flung mud at him, and only left after she’d had her fun.

I went to the edge of the field and held out a hand. “Come here.”

The muddy little figure didn’t move. His eyes were bright and icy. They should have held a child’s innocent delight. Instead, they held the viciousness of someone ready to drag another person to their death with him.

After a moment, I offered a sweet.

His eyes slowly turned toward it. His black pupils contracted, revealing the faintest trace of hurt.

“Come here.” I reached a little farther.

It took a long while before he tried to rise. The heavy mud seemed determined to pull him under. Using his hands and feet, he stood, fell to his knees, stood, fell again, and finally got upright and came to me.

A hand so thickly coated with mud that no skin showed reached out.

I withdrew the sweet, took his hand, and lowered it into the water.

“Let’s wash the mud off first.”

The teacher frowned as though facing an enormous inconvenience. In the end, he said, “Take him home, would you?”

“You’d better deal with this yourself, sir. Zhou Maoxiu’s father is a notorious drunk in our village. When he’s drunk, he beats people.”

Eventually, the parents of several sixth-graders were contacted. They worked it out among themselves, took Zhou Maoxiu to be washed, and dressed him in someone’s old clothes.

After all these days, I finally saw the hero’s actual face.

Apart from being a little too thin, there was nothing unattractive about him. A male lead was a male lead.

He trailed behind me with someone else’s old schoolbag. It was so big that the bottom almost reached the backs of his knees. The books inside were some sixth-grader’s hand-me-downs too.

His previous bag had been black with dirt. One broken strap was tied in a careless knot. The busted zip gaped like a bloody mouth. Who knew which rubbish heap he’d found it in?

Today, it had met its end in the rice paddy.

I turned. He stopped.

“I didn’t like you stealing my bun this morning. If you do it again, I will hit you. Just try me.”

He looked up, gave me a furious glare, and ran ahead.

“Sweet!” I shouted after him.

He stopped abruptly, raced back, snatched the sweet, and fled again.

I couldn’t help spitting out, “Little bastard!”

Grandma asked why the Zhou boy hadn’t come around for days.

I said I didn’t know.

Maybe he resented me for threatening to hit him. Tapping the basin no longer brought him running. The food on the wall remained untouched, gathering mosquitoes and flies.

Or maybe school lunch kept him going, barely, and he didn’t need my food anymore.

I’d keep trying for another two days. If he didn’t eat it, I’d stop leaving it out.