Chapter 7 – Scuffle

translator: xiin
editors: baumkuchen & butter

[ Yuyu, are you all right? How did you get into trouble as soon as you got to Jing City? Maybe you should come back to A City, mother always feels uneasy about you being there on your own. ] 

Song Yu was sitting in a taxi when he saw the message that Mother Song had sent over. He thought about it and replied.

[ It’s nothing, grandmother is taking very good care of me. This time, it was me being too willful. Sorry, mom. ] 

He waited for a long time but did not receive a reply. Mother Song was probably busy.

Song Yu switched the phone interface to show a navigation map.

Jing City was hot and dry in July, and the cicadas chirped until they were exhausted.

After getting out of the taxi, Song Yu took in his surroundings and kept to the shade as he walked around.

He could see all the way to the end of the alleyway. There were vegetable leaves scattered on the ground, so it was probably used as a vegetable market in the mornings. The buildings beside the street were old, and blackened walls with cracked lime could be seen when one walked inside. There were ‘scam ads’ pasted on the electric pole, and some unknown person had thrown up on the leaflets tossed to the ground. There weren’t very many cars on the street as he walked, and most of the sounds he could hear came from women cursing and scolding.

Depressing, poor, noisy. This was the place Xie Sui had grown up in.

Song Yu bypassed the alleyway and came to a normal main road.

He guessed that Xie Sui would be working at this time, so he strolled along the street.

When he found Xie Sui, he was in front of a small restaurant. However, it seemed like something had happened.

There were people surrounding an area of the street.

At the center was an overturned bicycle and scattered potatoes and peppers. Xie Sui crouched down to pick up the vegetables in silence while a married woman holding a child stood there and shouted abuse at him.

“My child and I were just walking down the street and he rode his bike and bumped into us. This vicious brat did it deliberately! My child is so young, is he trying to take his life?!”

“That bike almost hit my child! Does he not have eyes? He must have done it on purpose!”

“What did my family do wrong? For us to encounter him and his mother.”

“He really is a whore’s son. His mother seduces men as soon as she comes, and he’s no good, either. He’s a dirty, vicious bastard, and I really don’t know that that kind-hearted old woman is doing. He disgusts everyone on this street.”

The married woman was the one who spat out such filthy words.

Xie Sui’s back looked stiff and fragile as he crouched on the ground. His black hair fell forward to cover his expression, but when the woman began to talk about his mother, the young man’s hands clenched into fists and he raised his head like a trapped animal, roaring, “My mother didn’t do that!”

His sense of presence scared the woman. She took a step back and immediately raised her voice, “Look, look, this son of a bitch that the ** raised is showing his true face! He’s going to hit people! He’s going to hit people!”

Xie Sui gritted his teeth. It looked like he wanted to stand up.

That woman screamed even louder, “That kid is hitting someone! He’s hitting someone!”

In the next second, Xie Sui was kicked in the head by an adult man who’d run out from the crowd.

“Beast!”

At this time, Xie Sui was fifteen years old, his body thin and slender. This kick sent him flying to the post to the side, scraping his forehead and making it bleed.

The adult man stepped down on Xie Sui’s hand, “You bumped into people and still want to hit them?”

The onlookers began to point and laugh.

“I originally thought he was pitiful, but now I feel that there must be something despicable about him that caused him to end up this way.”

“If he’s hated by everyone, then he should first see what’s wrong with himself.”

“He’s even willing to attack such a small child; Xie Sui’s heart is really wicked and evil.”

“Can that old woman send him away? He’s like a disaster star. Nothing good has ever happened with him here.”

That woman was still cursing and scolding, “He almost killed my child with his bicycle and he even wanted to hit me! He’s hopeless! Hopeless! Who’ll report it to the police? A person like him should stay in prison for a lifetime. Don’t let him come out and harm others.”

Song Yu had heard her words very clearly on the way over. This was the scene he saw when he squeezed through the crowd.

For Xie Sui, such things happened countless times every day. Slander, verbal abuse, beatings.

The author of the original story repeatedly emphasized his miserable childhood in order to create his extremely fragile and sensitive heart, paving the way for the future emotional drama, so that Gong #1, Gong #2, Gong #3 could use words to help soothe his wounds. What a joke. It was just a few sentences, but for the extremely traumatized Xie Sui, it was so precious that he would commit himself desperately and give up everything. It was really sick. Every single person in the book was sick.

The adult man seemed to feel that he was just and righteous, arrogantly wanting to punch Xie Sui, “You have no father and no mother. I’ll stand in for your father and teach you how to be a man.”

Song Yu picked up a few marbles from the ground and tossed them at his face in an instant.

One of them almost hit the man’s eye. The man yelled out in fear and stepped back, releasing Xie Sui’s hand from beneath his foot.

“Who hit me!”

He was enraged. When he looked up and saw Song Yu, his anger grew unbearable, “Brat, you’re his classmate, aren’t you––Laozi will teach both of you a lesson together!”

He rolled up his sleeves and strode over menacingly. The man’s deterrence was very strong and plentiful, but Song Yu never even looked at him. He was on the phone.

“Hey, 110¹110 – chinese equivalent to 911? I want to report an incident.”

“Over on Lianyun street, there’s someone fighting. An adult man is bullying a high school student and he’s about to beat him to death, come quickly!”

On the other side of the phone, the police seemed to be asking for more details.

Song Yu yelled at the phone, “That high school student is me! Lives are at stake, do you care or not?!”

Everyone: “……”

Beep.

After hanging up the phone, Song Yu’s eyes were cold as he met the man’s gaze.

His actions of calling the police were so flashy that it left the crowd of onlookers stunned silly. The adult man had also frozen three steps away from him. The fists that he’d lifted up just couldn’t seem to smash down.

Song Yu was too lazy to deal with him. He headed straight to the mother and son and spoke to the child who’d been hiding behind the mother, “Hands out.”

The woman guarded her child like a mother hen guarding its chick and shrieked, “What are you doing!”

Song Yu bypassed her and pulled the child out directly. Then, he spread open his palm to reveal the slingshot in his hand.

The married woman instantly turned pale.

Song Yu laughed, “Oh, not bad, little friend. Your marbles are quite accurate.” He tilted his head and spoke to the woman, “Auntie, you’ve gotten exactly what you wanted. I’ve called the police. Let’s see who ends up detained in the end.”

All the onlookers were struck dumb at this moment. On Xie Sui’s face was a mark that could be seen with the naked eye, which had clearly been made by a marble. It was right beneath the eye, and if he’d been any less fortunate, he might have been blinded.

The married woman looked flustered, “So what if my child is playing with marbles? He’s only five years old. What can he understand?!”

Song Yu: “He might not understand much, but his mother must understand these things.”

The child was frightened by Song Yu’s expression and tone and suddenly burst out in tears.

As soon as he started crying, the woman instantly found her footing again, scolding like a shrew, “I think you’re together with that bastard raised by that whore. One of you hits people after bumping into them, and the other comes over to invert justice and bully my son and I. Sure enough, uneducated people will end up playing with fellow uneducated people. A nest of snakes and mice²snakes and mice – unsavory, bad people all amount to the same thing!”

“You’re also a black-hearted, rotten slut³slut – xiin: pretty sure this is the woman talking. in which case she’s calling Song Yu a slut (like she called Xie Sui’s mother… like mother, like son… and so his friends must be, too?)!”

Song Yu looked at the meanness between her eyebrows and spoke lightly, “Save some energy for explaining things to the police when they come.”

The married woman cursed, “My child’s only five years old. He doesn’t understand anything, what does he have to be afraid of?! Xie Sui is someone whose mother died early, someone who was raised by an uneducated **, and his heart is extremely vicious.” When she spoke now, there was no mention of being bumped by the bicycle.

Song Yu was so angry he was smiling. His manner was graceful and elegant, “Auntie, I’m now fifteen and haven’t reached adulthood. I also don’t understand anything––what’s there to be afraid of?”

He went forward, his dark eyes showing a bone-chilling coldness, “I’m not even afraid of killing.”

At this moment, the woman was left thoroughly mute. Her vicious words were swallowed back into her stomach, and she held her child’s hand as she retreated, “Madman, a madman…”

Song Yu chuckled sarcastically.

Xie Sui, who was sitting on the ground, lifted up his head and looked at Song Yu’s profile against the mid-summer July sky, appearing to be deep in thought. He hadn’t had a chance to put up the terrified and pitiful appearance of his fifteen year old self, and his eyes were as cold and gorgeous as gems beneath the scattered black hair.

Xie Sui expressionlessly reached out to wipe at a bit of the blood on his forehead and suddenly felt that it was dull and uninteresting.

In order to make that family suffer a fate worse than death, he’d suffered such injuries.

… It really wasn’t worth it.

Soon after, a fashionably dressed couple came out from the mall across the street. The man had a big belly, and the woman looked unkind and mean. The woman wore high-heeled shoes and was cursing the damned weather in Jing City, but her expression changed abruptly as soon as she arrived in front of the car and saw that the window of the car that had cost several million yuan to buy had been smashed, leaving a series of spiderweb cracks along the glass. She let out a shrill scream.

The married woman on the street had already been intimidated by Song Yu and didn’t dare to scold loudly anymore, secretly cursing him behind his back. She wasn’t afraid at all, and had even dared to pretend not to see with her eyes wide open as she had her son shoot marbles at Xie Sui while he was riding the bicycle because she had an excuse. Her son was only five years old. He was so young, what was there to be afraid of?

Song Yu went over to help Xie Sui up, “Are you okay?”

Xie Sui dropped his gaze and looked at his hand. A long time later, he restrained the deep thoughts and doubts in his eyes and spoke weakly, “Thank you.”

Song Yu felt genuine distress for this protagonist. He sighed, “You’ll really have to go to the hospital this time.” Xie Sui’s wound looked really ferocious; his forehead was blue and purple and had been bleeding constantly.

Song Yu leaned over and a very light fragrance drifted over.

In fact, this injury was really child’s play for Xie Sui. He’d already started using knives and risking his life for the street thugs just for a bit of money as a child, and he was used to bleeding and getting injured. Later on, he’d become A City’s Young Master Xie and encountered those disgusting things––kidnappings, attempted assassinations. He’d shot guns and jumped into the  sea, so this kind of small injury really wasn’t even worth paying attention to.

He didn’t care about it inside, but he put on a forced, stoic expression on his face.

Xie Sui nodded briefly.

That wan, pale face with its silent, enduring expression once again made Song Yu feel an incredible heartache.

The sound of a police car sounded out from the end of the street.

While all the onlookers were looking in the direction of the police.

A woman stalked over from the other side of the street and gave the married woman who was holding the child a fierce slap.

Pa.

The married woman looked stupefied. She was shrewish and very fierce when she scolded others, but she’d never been attacked directly.

Her wits were scattered from the attack.

The woman who’d just crossed the street raised up the child’s hand, looked at the slingshot he was holding, and flew into a rage! She raised her hand and slapped the child as well.

“Bitch, it was your brat, wasn’t it?”

“Wuahhhhhhh––” The child started to cry even more loudly.

The married woman was also red-eyed and became anxious, “Slut, what are you doing––ah!”

Pa!

Another slap.

The owner of the luxury car was also a shrewish and unreasonable person. When she heard the word ‘slut’, she opened her mouth and started to curse back, “Why don’t you ask your mentally handicapped waste of a son what he’s done? He wrecked my car! Several million yuan! Can a bumpkin like you afford to compensate me for it?!”

Several million. The married woman truly felt like she’d entered an ice cellar at this moment. Just now, when her son’s marbles hit Xie Sui, Xie Sui had been crossing the road. She hadn’t paid any attention at all to whether or not they’d hit the car nearby.

Regret and anxiety overwhelmed her. She had no choice but to steel herself and mutter, “Our child is only five years old… he doesn’t know to be sensible…”

The owner of the luxury car stepped forward in anger, but her high heeled shoes just happened to step on one of the marbles on the ground. She slipped and fell flat on her face like a dog eating dung⁴dog eating dung – humorous/derogative chinese slang for falling flat on ones face.

Her bad mood soared up to new heights, and her already irascible and overbearing temper reached a new peak.

A few police came down from the police car. They were still looking for the high school student that had ‘nearly been killed’.

Then, they heard a woman’s howl, “The police are here? That’s great. We’re not finished with this matter; if you want someone to blame, then blame that uneducated brat in your family! What a fool! He doesn’t know to be sensible? This lady doesn’t know, either!”

—–

Butter’s Thoughts:
Married woman with a child only knows one insult: slut
Married woman with a child only knows one excuse: my child is only 5

xiin: yesss, Xie Sui, it’s not worth it~ baby Song Yu feels heartache when you’re hurt and wouldn’t you rather play with Yuyu instead?

• 1
  110 – chinese equivalent to 911
• 2
  snakes and mice – unsavory, bad people
• 3
  slut – xiin: pretty sure this is the woman talking. in which case she’s calling Song Yu a slut (like she called Xie Sui’s mother… like mother, like son… and so his friends must be, too?)
• 4
  dog eating dung – humorous/derogative chinese slang for falling flat on ones face