Published at 31st of August 2019 2:39 am

Part 2

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

Old man (2)

The old man stood up remorsefully, gave a deep bow and left the bookstore. I remained behind, ears burning, still collecting the ripped up paper.

The boss swept the remaining paper into a wicker dustpan, after which I stood there angrily reading for a few minutes. Then I bought a highlighter and escaped, my face filled with embarrassment.

Actually, from nose to tail, I remained blame-free for the whole situation. I didn’t do anything at all. But I was the kind of person who hated awkwardness, and for something so embarrassing to occur made me want to die.

As I walked home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the strange incident.

Actually, the old man was exceedingly polite, just a bit strange. It didn’t seem like he had any ill intentions.

But to recommend novels to me so enthusiastically, it seemed really weird.

Whatever.

It was like a random question mark or exclamation point in life, not even enough to make a complete sentence.

I was walking through an alley about 300 meters from home. The defective streetlights flickered, causing my shadow to flash back and forth between dark and light. However, I had long since grown accustomed to walking through this alley at night, and had never believed in ghosts or monsters.

And then, my heart suddenly started beating faster. I couldn’t control it.

A constrictive feeling roiled in the pit of my stomach, as if my whole body was being squeezed by the palm of a giant.

I forced myself to take a few deep breaths, and walked forward even faster. Inexplicably I, who usually hated going home, suddenly rushed back as quickly as possible.

This really was a strange alley.

There was something inexplicably queasy about it.

Everything had started.

The whole way home, I felt encompassed by a strange pressure, as if someone was watching me. It vanished the moment I walked through the front gate. I let out a sigh. I felt like I had just surfaced from deep in the ocean and could finally breathe. It was as if I had only imagined that feeling of moments ago.

“I’m back.” I lowered my head and tossed off my shoes. I wanted nothing more than to dash from the front porch into my bedroom.

But I knew it wouldn’t happen, not any more than a soldier sloshing up onto the beaches of Normandy could avoid bullets. It was a simple truth.

“Yuan Zai! Come and drink some tea! It’s top quality stuff from the mainland!” The roaring voice belonged to a fat, bald loser.

He always claimed to bring top quality products from the mainland, and talked everything up as if it were the rarest treasure in the world. But I knew that he was conning my father. He looked like a treacherous court official, and yet I was forced to call him Uncle Wang.

My dad’s loser drinking buddies shouted greetings, calling me over to the sofa to check out the rare, ancient teapot they were using and try some of the gourmet tea cakes. And then they proceeded to passionately instruct me how to distinguish the difference between good products and poor products. I think it would be better if they could teach my dad how to pick friends.

Amidst all the raucousness, my heart felt like a lump of excrement, but my face was filled with an expression that said, “Thank you for educating me so well, dear uncles!” It’s not that I wanted to be a two-faced wolf like them, but rather, a problem with my personality. I never wanted to make anyone uncomfortable, that’s all.

I stayed in the smoke-filled living room for an hour and half, before finally extricating myself and returning to my room. I felt like I hadn’t seen it in ages. I was really tired.

A few days ago, dad had mentioned that in a few months he would go to the mainland to open a factory, because the textiles industry in Taiwan was a quickly becoming a “Twilight Industry,” as he called it, with no real future. I really wished he would get to the mainland as soon as possible. As far as starting some factories and making some money, I didn’t really care. I just didn’t want him and his deadbeat friends messing up my life.

I took a shower and read a bit, then went to sleep. Same as usual.

The past few days, as I lay going to sleep, I kept thinking that maybe I should take some after-school cram courses. Not because of pressure regarding schoolwork, but because if I did that, it would give me a good excuse to come home late.

Ah forget it, I grumbled.

I’d keep going to the book store to read novels. At worst, I could read the monolithic Legend of the Swordsman from Mount Zu, and that would leave me with a true sense of accomplishment.

At that time, I assumed 1986 would pass by in a completely meaningless fashion. I wouldn’t leave anything behind, and wouldn’t take anything with me. It would be a completely blank piece of paper.

But!

Just before I actually fell asleep, I suddenly thought of something very strange.

I crawled out of bed and grabbed a novel, about one-hundred pages long. I tried as hard as I could to rip it down the middle.

Just as I’d predicted, it was pretty much impossible.

If you tried really hard to rip it down the spine, to tear it into a front half and a back half, well maybe that was possible.

But to grab both ends and tear it into a cloud of paper, well that was simply impossible. Even if it was only a hundred pages like this book, it just was not as simple as it sounded.

I tugged back and forth until my wrists began to ache, but nothing happened to the little hundred-page book.

That old man at the bookstore had incredible wrist strength! With a laugh, he’d casually torn to pieces a novel of nearly three hundred pages. He was old but frighteningly powerful.

“Freak,” I grumbled to myself, and then finally went to sleep.

When it comes to unbelievable things, it’s best just to sigh and move on. It’s stupid to spend time trying to get to the bottom of them.

The characteristic of curiosity barely existed in me at all.

The next day I rode my bicycle to school, the same as usual. But the usual part only lasted until I pushed my bike out the door.

That day, it felt like the pedals of the bike had been weighted down with bricks. Every pedal stroke took effort, and after riding for only five minutes, I stopped at a traffic light panting like a cow.

It felt like I was going to die at any moment.

My family’s unhealthy lifestyle clearly had an enormously injurious effect on me and was causing my heart to age prematurely and perhaps fatally. But after my parents learned of the situation, would it be possible that they might let me rent a house and live on my own to recover my health?

My thoughts went wild, and in an instant, my heart started pounding again. It felt as if the blood vessels in my chest had started to expand.

It was just like the previous night in the alley!

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