Chapter 23: CH 23

Chapter 23: Confrontation

CW: there is a very brief, non-specific reference/joke about sexual assault in this chapter, and a concrete, non-detailed reference to sexual abuse of a minor by a guardian figure later in the chapter. Also, there is a brief description of a suicide. I have lightened the font of these spots so you can potentially skip over it. Please, if you are sensitive to these things, either skim through them or stop reading. 

Lu Hui sat down, but did not signal his compromise. 

He’d been by himself for far too long. For seventeen years, from the age of fifteen to thirty-two, he’d been alone. He’d walked amongst people of all different kinds, detested the world and its ways, become bitter and sarcastic. Especially at this moment, on the balcony’s divan with sheets of rain curtaining the background, his wolf-like eyes projected the icy-cold sheen of glass. He drew out all of his thorns and used them as lances to attack the gentle young man in front of him: “This morning, I didn’t just move out. I also gathered some information.” He raised the corners of his lips, “Made a few calls to get an understanding of some things.”

“Called who?” Ji Fanyang lifted his head and his expression shifted, “You wouldn’t call…”

“Your ex-girlfriends, yes.” Lu Hui said smugly, “I’m really grateful for Captain Wei’s assistance. I received three phone numbers. Because it was so long ago, it wasn’t convenient for me to check with the first girlfriend.”

Ji Fanyang stopped his massaging movements and frowned: “What did you tell them?”

“I didn’t tell them anything. I only received two calls, and when I brought up your name—” Lu Hui drawled, as if telling a mischievous joke, “They told me everything. I didn’t expect that our little angel would draw so many complaints.”

Ji Fanyang silently sat down. His tawny eyes looked at Lu Hui. Even when Lu Hui brought out all of his ridiculing sarcasm, his limid, clear eyes held little indignation. He smoothed out his lips and said somewhat embarrassedly: “So, what did they tell you?”

“That you’re someone with a weird savior complex.” Lu Hui raised his right hand and rubbed his index finger along the stubble along his jaw. He tilted his head and looked at Ji Fanyang carefully, like he was restoring an ancient relic or was objectively assessing a piece of porcelain, “You find people who are suffering, people who are in pain, people who are tragic, and you get close to them, you guide them. You want to make them see the light.”

“In our squad, you and Rao Feifei are about the same age. She’s sweet and pretty, her temperament is free and open, and she’s from a good family. As a heterosexual man, when you walked into that office, the first one you should have noticed was Rao Feifei, not a thirty-something, unsociable, eccentric man like me.”

“You chose to follow me around from dawn till dusk. If the Public Safety Bureau hadn’t been paying you, I would’ve thought my sister had hired a nanny for me. You trust in your feelings, and you follow your feelings. You met your enormously problematic ex-girlfriends and you guided them to see the beauty of the world, and then they threw you away directly.”

“It sounds like a case of requiting kindness with enmity, but it’s actually not. They didn’t throw you away. It was you who distanced yourself from them, making them have no choice but break up with you. This is your modus operandi: you cure someone, then leave to find the next sob story.”

“Wounded people are special to you. When you focus your attention on guiding these tragic people, your heart is free of other concerns and you’re wholeheartedly concentrated on them. This makes them see you as someone different from others. When the sob story becomes an actual drama, or an overstated rom-com, you check out. You treat all of them so warmly that all of the ‘sob stories’ start to blur together. They become commonplace.”

“Simply put.” Lu Hui smiled odiously, “For you, the freshness only lasts until a cure is found. Afterward, you no longer have the inclination to pay attention to them, and you become Mr. Goody-goody, a man who treats his girlfriends with indifferent kindness[1]. They didn’t feel they were special and they suspected that you didn’t love them, and so, they chose to break up.” Lu Hui bent his right leg, “They said that they didn’t feel your affection and had no choice but to break up. Your love has a short shelf life.”

“I didn’t…” Ji Fanyang attempted to refute him. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find any reasons he could use to defend himself. 

“It’s a shame that they don’t know. Your love doesn’t have a short shelf life. You just never loved them at all.” Lu Hui said, patting the young man’s shoulder out of pity, “You just enjoy giving guidance and the happiness of finding a cure. Their dependence on and gratitude toward you can satisfy your hypocritical messiastic heart.”

Ji Fanyang supported his forehead on his left hand and pinched the bridge of his nose forcefully: “So, you think guiding others to find hope in life is wrong?”

“Finding hope isn’t wrong. What I mean to say is that, you are a hidden piece of human scum.” Lu Hui relaxed on the divan, “You cure person after person, lend your ear to listen to their secrets, and you get a heap of gratitude. Then you abandon them, move on to the next pitiful girl, and get another round of compliments. You’re twenty-five now. Wait until you’re sixty-five. You could have forty ex-girlfriends by then, or you could be lucky enough to get a girl or two to marry you. Then you’ll be even more miserable. You’ll divorce them, then have to pay separate alimonies.”

Ji Fanyang steadied himself, then started to fire back: “Yes, I admit it. I’m very thankful that you helped me dissect why I have so many break ups. What about you, then? Since Yu Feiyang died, you’ve turned into this. You’ve chosen a dim, lightless path for yourself, you chose to have such a repellant personality. You abhor people who commit suicide, but you’re fascinated with your own self-destruction. Every day, you wish for nothing more than to go out on the battlefield and die a martyr. This doesn’t sound like the behavior of a coward, but did you ever think of your sister? Did you ever think about the people who care about you? You didn’t, you selfish coward.”

“You investigated my records when I was at university and the Provincial Bureau?” Lu Hui sat up violently, “You emptied out your savings, just to help an underaged murderer and look into my past? Are you sick in the head?” 

“You wasted an afternoon arranging a kennel and harassing my ex-girlfriends. Who’s really the sick one here?” Ji Fanyang turned the question around, “And I didn’t empty my savings. I only used four-fifths.”

“Oh, four-fifths. Have you used up all of the belongings you brought with you when you left home?” Lu Hui sneered, “Just because of your messiastic heart and curiosity, you’re so attention seeking[2]?”

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“I’m extremely attention seeking. Now, tell me about that factory.” Ji Fanyang pressed Lu Hui’s right leg down to prevent him from running, “That factory in the suburbs, the one more than twenty kilometers from your home. You were missing for two and a half days. What happened?”

Lu Hui shrank back, wanting to extricate his right leg. Ji Fanyang unswervingly continued to press down on his leg. The young man revealed a triumphant, faint smile: “You can’t run, old bastard.”

Lu Hui kicked his legs out twice, then his shoulders collapsed in defeat. Heaviness shrouded him once again. He cleared his throat: “If you don’t let me go, I’ll call out…”

“Violate a thirty-two-year-old man. I could do it. Really.[3]“ Ji Fanyang smiled slightly.

Lu Hui stared at the young man, dumbstruck. He desperately drew back his right leg. Right now, he was like a wild dog caught in a trap: “Let go, you little bastard.”

“Speak, or we’ll be like this until morning.” Ji Fanyang caught his ankle. 

The two of them glared at each other, their gazes like an evenly matched game of tug of war. Time seemed to solidify, each minute and each second ticking by sluggishly. 

Finally, Lu Hui released a resigned breath and began to tell his story, that bitter, old story: “There was a little boy…”

“It’s you, right.” Ji Fanyang laughed, “This kind of storytelling is way too overdone.”

Lu Hui shot a look at the young man: “Are you listening or not?”

“I’m listening, I’m listening.” Ji Fanyang cleverly readjusted his expression. 

Lu Hui switched from third person narration to first person narration: “My good friend, Yu Feiyang, was an especially open and optimistic person. He was also the first person brave enough to talk to me. My only friend, back then.”

Lu Hui lowered his head, his gaze falling to an ordinary corner of the balcony: “His parents had gotten divorced earlier, and he’d been left in his mother’s custody. We were acquainted in elementary school. In the second year of middle school, he started to cry easily, became passive, and I didn’t pay attention to his unusual behavior.”

“We went to school together, sat at the same desk, but I didn’t pay attention to the change in his mood. He would suddenly cry, not want to go home, and I would bring him home with me and give him a spare bedroom to sleep in. It was usually like this. His mother would come to the school the next day to pick him up.”

“This went on for two years until we graduated middle school at the end of July. I don’t remember the particular date clearly. He came to my house and told me to come out, saying he found a good spot to play around. I went with him. We went by taxi to the factory on the outskirts of the city, more than twenty kilometers away.”

“It was likely a paper mill. I’m not too sure. I was dragged by him into the factory building, up two stories into a small, narrow room. He came in with me. I had been inwardly suspicious and on guard, but because he went into the room with me, it made me curious about what he wanted to do.”

“After he locked us in with an enormous, iron gate and threw the key out the window, he told me everything.”

“He laughed as he explained that, for an entire two years, he had been coerced by his mother. Then, he pulled out a knife and slit his wrists.”

“I watched his blood stream out. Do you know how much blood people can lose?” Lu Hui said expressionlessly. He gestured, “Enough to dye the floor red.”

“The factory’s ceiling was very tall, and the window was narrow. There was no electricity. In the darkness, I sat there for a day and looked at the dead Yu Feiyang’s corpse. The second day, I did my best to climb the wall, hoping to escape from the window.”

“I successfully climbed up to the window. The room was on the second floor. I smashed the glass, jumped off of the second story, and broke my leg.” He rubbed his right leg, “I crawled to the highway. I don’t know who took me to the hospital, but when I woke up, the only one accompanying me by my bedside was my older sister.”

“What about your parents?” Ji Fanyang asked. 

“They.” His voice lacked both sorrow and joy, “They were probably still at the lab working on some research project.”

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