Chapter 5: 5

Yan Hang enjoyed working at the cafe. There was a good working environment and they didn’t usually get many customers. Late starts in the morning meant that he had plenty of time to wake up, make himself breakfast, and finish it without having to rush at all.

His dad was home today, so he made breakfast for two.

“What’s for breakfast?” Dad had woken up before him and just returned home after a brief outing.

“Omurice with prawn.” Yan Hang handed him the plate.

“I love prawn.” Dad grabbed a fork and went straight to pulling apart the layer of egg, only to look at Yan Hang again. “You said there were prawns in here?”

“Omurice with prawn pieces,” Yan Hang corrected himself.

“How would I know they’re prawns if they’re cut into small pieces?” Dad didn’t look amused.

“Can’t you taste it?” Yan Hang asked as he ate his own.

“Nope,” came the quick answer.

“Guess you could call it omurice with diced shrimp then,” Yan Hang started to consider organising a talking competition between his dad and Chu Yi.

“That’s more like it.” Dad nodded and picked up his food again in delight.

“You working later?”

“10:30,” Yan Hang said.

“Should I visit?” Dad enquired.

“Please don’t,” Yan Hang sighed. “Our boss is a guy. Why don’t you change targets?”

“No way. I can go up to him and see which one of us is more handsome.” Dad found a piece of shrimp after much digging around and savoured it slowly.

“You are,” Yan Hang replied.

“I can hear your sincerity.” Dad patted him on the shoulder and turned on the TV with the remote.

Dad was watching the local news channel. No matter where he ended up, he would always have a TV at home, always switched to the local news.

Yan Hang didn’t understand why he loved watching the local news so much.

If they were in a bigger city, the news would be more interesting, but in a smaller city, the local news broadcasted about nothing but fights in the neighbourhood, worn-down roads, or faulty street lamps. Small villages were even worse; the content would be equivalent to the gossip spread around by old grandpas and grandmas as they chatted about by the streets.

But Dad loved watching them. If the village they used to live in had their own local village news, Yan Hang was confident his dad would watch it.

Someone’s cow ate somebody’s crops, or maybe someone’s chicken fought with someone else’s duck, or someone’s dog mated with another’s…

“Take the card, there’s 154 on it,” Dad said. “If your workplace doesn’t provide lunch, you can show off by going to the Japanese restaurant next door. Could you imagine? A cafe worker having Japanese cuisine for lunch.”

“…Sure.” Yan Hang gave a short answer and left home.

After a short walk, Yan Hang saw quite a couple of students on the streets. Only then did he realise that today was a weekend. He checked his phone just to be certain.

He used his phone quite a lot, but never once did he take note of the date or time.

In his life, these two things were almost unnecessary. Sometimes he couldn’t even be bothered about what year it was.

However, if there ever came a time where such things proved to be important, such as now, he would always fork out his phone and confirm the date and time with much seriousness.

Every so often, he needed something like this to give himself the feeling of security.

There were more customers in the cafe than usual since it was a weekend.
After changing into his uniform, he walked into the shop and saw his boss. Boss Li was a middle-aged man who exerted much effort to look artsy and majestic. His outfit matched that guise nicely, but one had to wonder at the bowl cut atop his head.

“Jidao,” Boss Li waved at him the moment he saw him, “right on time. Can you go and put some pastries in the oven? We’ve got a lot of customers today. Gonna run out soon.”

“Sure,” Yan Hang nodded, silently cursing his dad in his head for no less than 20 seconds.

He knew having a name like Jidao wasn’t a good idea. If he wasn’t fast enough, he would’ve replied “bu jidao” — no idea. [1]

[1] The name “Jidao” is close to the word “Zhidao” in Chinese, which means “I know”. Yan Hang almost replied “Bu ji dao”, which means “I don’t know”.

Yan Hang kept himself busy for a while, returning to the shop floor after baking the pastries.

He didn’t have an issue with helping out once every so often, but he would never agree if the boss worked him like a chef but paid him the mere wage of a waiter.

He would leave immediately if that were to happen.

Money’s nothing but shit; that’s right.

Maybe it was because of Dad’s influence. While they’ve been running around for the past few years, Dad never seemed to have saved up any money. As a result, Yan Hang didn’t have a habit of saving money either. As long as there was enough money for transport, rent, and food, all was well.

Should there be extra, they’d treat themselves to a good meal. Should there be none, they’d try to make more.

Yan Hang made money by working. As for Dad, he didn’t know, and had decided not to dig into it.

“Can I have a cup of Latte? Take away, please.” A young girl with her phone in-hand walked up to the counter, ready to scan and pay.

“Will be ready shortly,” Yan Hang started making coffee without much hesitation.

He only just turned on the coffee grinder when he heard a noise coming from the girl.

Yan Hang gazed at her.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to make it anymore. My phone, um… it’s dead,” the young girl said.

Yan Hang stayed silent.

“I don’t have cash.” She started to look a bit uneasy.

When Yan Hang first arrived, he had seen a charger sitting underneath the counter. Some waiter before him must have left it here.

He bent down and reached for the charger, putting it in front of the young girl and pointed to the outlet. “You can charge it there.”

“…Sure.” The young girl looked quite surprised. She took the charger and went to charge her phone, eyeing Yan Hang every so often.

“Nice,” Boss Li commented with his arms crossed.

“Hm?” Yan Hang turned around to look at him.

“I think this is the first I’ve ever seen someone force a purchase on a customer with so much ease,” he said.

“I… I just gave her the charger.” Yan Hang didn’t know what else to say.

“You said you were gonna buy it and now you’re telling me otherwise? Bitch,” Boss Li imitated Yan Hang. “Now that expression was on-point.”

Yan Hang paused to think back to the incident. He probably forgot to smile.

“I’ll be more careful next time.”

“No need. Keep up the good work,” Boss Li said. “You managed to sell one extra cup of coffee, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Gotta take every penny you get a chance at. We need that sort of enthusiasm here.”

“Cool.” Yan Hang nodded.

After having worked the whole day, Yan Hang finally finished in the afternoon. Yan Hang’s legs felt a bit sore. Maybe it was because of the air-conditioning in the shop, but his head didn’t feel great either.

He hadn’t worked for over a year and wasn’t used to standing for such a long time. Running for two hours wouldn’t be a problem for him, but standing was another story.

He finished changing and left the cafe stretching his arms. Running home to loosen his body would be a good idea.

Wherever Yan Hang felt tired, his temper would change alongside it. Such a change of temper was often unexpected. By the time he realised this annoyance growing within him, it was already spiraling out of control. It was to the point that he ignored his colleague’s goodbye when he left.

To pull himself out of it, he would usually just go for a jog.

Jogging for an hour would force out the sweat. After, he could go home, have a shower, and laze about on the sofa. It was a nice plan he had going on.

However, jogging on the streets at this time of the day wasn’t easy.
Moreover, it was a weekend. There were quite a number of people on the streets. If he wanted to jog without bumping into anyone while also making sure not to get lost… he would have no choice but to go to that tattered road by the river.

The thought of having to jog on that road made Yan Hang feel a whole lot worse.

If he didn’t run, he’d feel bad; if he did run, he’d still feel bad.

By the time he arrived at the intersection by the river where the road started, he still hadn’t decided what to do.

There was a bridge next to him. The bridge was lively enough with heavy traffic, but the road along the river, below the worn-down stairs beside the bridge, was anything but lively. You would think that a small road along the river would have quite a peaceful atmosphere, but not this one.

After standing on the stairs for a while, Yan Hang ultimately decided to just go for it.

But about ten metres after descending the steps, he stopped again.

Looking down from the railing, he could see someone on the muddy, rubbish-strewn banks of the river.

They were bent over, searching for something.

A treasure hunter?

Yan Hang was so amused by this thought that his irritation diminished somewhat. He walked over to the railing to see what the person was doing.

The next second, he was stunned.

The treasure hunter was Chu Yi.

Since Chu Yi expressed his gratitude and humbly declined his offer to defend justice yesterday, Yan Hang thought that he should find the time to return the extorted ten bucks to Chu Yi, and not associate with the child anymore.

He didn’t think they would meet like this.

Jumping over the rails, Yan Hang stood on the river border. He gazed at Chu Yi as the latter rummaged diligently through the banks with a stick.


After five minutes of watching, Chu Yi was still hunched over in the same fashion. He didn’t seem to be making progress.

Yan Hang couldn’t stand it much longer. It hadn’t been obvious when he was running past the other night, but today he could smell the stench wafting from the river with every passing breeze.

“Oi!” He hollered down the river.

Chu Yi didn’t react.

A stutterer, and hard of hearing to boot.

Yan Hang squatted down and whistled in his direction.

The hand holding the stick suddenly stilled in mid-air. After two seconds, Chu Yi turned and stood rooted in his spot.

“What are you up to?” asked Yan Hang.

Chu Yi looked at him wordlessly.

“Come up!” yelled Yan Hang.

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Chu Yi studied his feet, hesitating.

It was then that Yan Hang noticed that his shoes were mostly submerged in black mud.

“Fucking hell.” Yan Hang grew impatient. “Come up here! Why are you Martians so unreasonable! Isn’t it dirty?”

Chu Yi smiled and hesitated a little longer before finally coming to the riverside.

When he reached a rock beneath the border, Yan Hang frowned as he asked, “What are you looking for?”

“A th-thing.” Chu Yi raised his head and looked at him.

“That’s some very on-brand bullshit from you. Come up.” Yan Hang looked around and saw an iron ladder on a levee a few metres to his left. Chu Yi had likely climbed down that way.

Chu Yi reluctantly glanced back at the river bank before walking towards the stairs.

The bottom half of the ladder had rusted off. To climb up, one had to hold the railing and kick off from the wall. It was no trouble getting down — you just had to jump — but climbing up was no mean feat, especially for someone of Chu Yi’s size…

Yan Hang was just about to head down and see if he could lend a hand when Chu Yi leapt up. He grasped the lowest rung, tucked his legs and kicked himself up the wall twice. Before Yan Hang had even reached the ladder, he’d flipped himself over the railing and returned to the road.

“Your skills… they’re not too shabby, young warrior.” Yan Hang was taken aback.

“You f-flatter me,” said Chu Yi.

“What are you looking for?” Yan Hang walked over and asked again.

“Pen,” answered Chu Yi. He looked a little glum.

Yan Hang thought of the exercise books Chu Yi had just bought. Was he looking for some old book that fell into the river? Had he written something important in it? He waited, but Chu Yi didn’t finish his sentence. [2]

[2] In Chinese, “exercise book” is literally “pen-note-book”. Hence Yan Hang’s misunderstanding.

He could only complete it for Chu Yi. “As in your notebook?”

“Pen.” Chu Yi raised his voice slightly.

“Oh, a pen?” Yan Hang finally understood.

Things like pens and paper were far removed from his life. He could only hazard a guess at how much more expensive a pen would be compared to a notebook.

But…

“Just for a pen?” Yan Hang simply could not comprehend Martian logic.

“Mhm.” Chu Yi nodded and retreated a little.

“Why are you backing away? I can still hit you from here.” Yan Hang realised that his anger had completely dissipated after being surprised by Chu Yi. He parked himself on the nearby railing.

“I s-stink.” Chu Yi sniffed, slightly embarrassed.

“Oh,” he replied.

The two fell silent.

After a moment, Yan Hang eyed Chu Yi. “How did your pen get down there?”

Chu Yi smiled without a word.

“Someone threw it, huh?” asked Yan Hang.

Chu Yi still didn’t speak.

“Was it those classmates of yours?” Yan Hang continued asking.

Chu Yi lowered his head and scraped at the mud on his shoes.

Yan Hang reached into his pocket and took out a pack of wet wipes his colleague had given him at lunch.

“Here.” He handed the wipes over.

Chu Yi took them and pulled one out. He flipped it back and forth in his hand, examining it.

“Don’t you have wet wipes on Mars?” said Yan Hang.

“Haven’t s-seen them s-since I got to Earth.” Chu Yi bent down and slowly rubbed the mud off his shoes.

Yan Hang watched him. It didn’t actually make much difference whether he cleaned them or not. The shoes were very old, with an ancient design. They looked like something from a roadside stall… not just any roadside stall, but one in a podunk little village market.

“Chu Yi,” Yan Hang called.

“Hm?” Chu Yi raised his head.

“Why don’t they get along with you?” asked Yan Hang.

Chu Yi looked back down and continued to wipe his shoes. After blackening three sheets of wet wipes, he said, “…guess they hate me.”

“Why do they hate you?” Yan Hang jumped off the railing and squatted in front of him.

“I st-stutter,” said Chu Yi.

“That’s it?” Yan Hang frowned.

Chu Yi’s wiping motions paused for a moment before he nodded. “Mhm.”
Bullshit.

Yan Hang side-eyed him and didn’t pry.

Getting bullied for a stutter wasn’t unlikely, just as it wasn’t unlikely that teenagers sometimes disliked people without rhyme or reason. If one person hated you, others would just follow suit; if one person bullied you, others would as well, for fear that marching to a different beat would put them in the camp of the bullied.

But from Chu Yi’s behaviour, it clearly wasn’t just his stutter.

Yan Hang simply didn’t want to ask any further. It took too much effort to communicate with Chu Yi — to reduce his stuttering, the boy wouldn’t say more than five words a sentence.

Except when he was being cheeky.

…someone like this had the nerve to be cheeky. Yan Hang couldn’t help but stare at him again.

Very curious.

After cleaning his shoes, Chu Yi left. Just before he did, he gave the riverbank a final glance.

Yan Hang felt like asking him if it was a gold pen he’d lost.

Not just gold-plated, but a pure, 24K gold pen.

He stood rooted to the spot for a moment. After he determined that Chu Yi was properly gone, he finally got up and ran towards the road.

It was still bright out today. This time, he didn’t twist his ankle — the road’s condition was quite clear to him.

Most cities had streets like these: dirty roads that served as nausea relief for the inebriated and bladder relief for those who couldn’t find a toilet… but even given this, it was a pretty clean road.

As he ran, he thought of looking for Chu Yi’s tree hollow, but didn’t see it.
When he reached home, his dad had finished cooking.

One dish and one soup.

A bok choy soup and a prawn-fried bok choy dish.

“Look here. Now these are big prawns. Aren’t they a sight?” said Dad. “Have a drink with me?”

Yan Hang nodded. They were a sight indeed.

Dad had never considered whether minors should be drinking. Yan Hang could no longer remember how old he was when he first drank; all he knew was that whenever Dad said “Have a drink?”, they would sit and have a drink together.

Today Dad seemed in a bit of a funk, keeping mum the whole time he drank.
Yan Hang kept quiet as well.

Only when the newscaster on TV said the date did he come back to his senses.

It hadn’t even occurred to him when he’d checked the date this morning.

Every year, on this day, Dad would sink into a low mood for some time.

He had never asked, but he guessed that this day had something to do with the mother he had no memory of.

Since his dad was drinking so silently, the two began to over-imbibe. Yan Hang dizzily reclined in bed, feeling the rare instance of a timely sleepiness.
He closed his eyes and slept till Dad woke him up the next day.

Breakfast was already bought: soy milk youtiao.

“Not having it with your bok choy soup?” Yan Hang yawned.

“I’ll cook it for you tonight,” said Dad.

“Let me cook tonight,” said Yan Hang. “You shouldn’t cook anymore; the prawns deserve a better death.”

Dad choked on his youtiao and laughed uproariously.

As Yan Hang left for the cafe, he felt the ten bucks in his pocket. He forgot to return it to Chu Yi yesterday.

To someone who was willing to go through a rubbish dump for a pen, ten bucks was probably a lot of money.

He pulled out his phone as he walked, deciding to ask Chu Yi to meet so he could return the money.

He had barely switched the screen on when he heard a voice, not quite high but weirdly singsong, calling out, “It’s the boss~”

Yan Hang turned to look in the direction of the sound.

At the bus stop stood two people. When he looked over, they quickly turned away and acted completely oblivious.

Yan Hang was bad at remembering roads, but not too bad at faces — especially since he’d seen these twice before.

Lowlifes Number One and Number Two.

Remembering how Chu Yi stood in trash and mud digging for his pen, he felt restless; it was partly on account of Chu Yi’s sullen temper, but more so because of these classmates who treated him as a plaything when they had nothing else to do.

He stopped and walked over to the two.

Pretending to study the bus route, Number Two nudged Number One with his elbow. Simultaneously, they turned their heads. They had probably noticed him.

When Yan Hang was just a few metres away, the two turned tail and ran haphazardly in different directions.

“The fuck?” Yan Hang quickly chose Number One and chased after him.
Fuckin’ dumbass! If you can’t fight me, you think you can outrun me?

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