The health benefits are remarkable, and Jiang Kezhou had a good night's sleep. Probably because he thought about it every day and dreamed at night, this night he dreamed of meeting Ye Zheng for the first time again. It's just that this time the dream was mostly fragmented scenes, intermittently like looking at flowers in a fog, and even the fear that made the scalp tingle like a shadow before was not real.
Probably time has passed and the scars have finally begun to scab.
In the southeast corner of the old town in the north of the city, there are several dilapidated tube buildings piled up. Illegal buildings and garbage piles can be seen everywhere. The concrete pavement, which has been in disrepair for a long time, is rough and uneven, with a small pit in three steps and a large pit in ten steps. Let alone ordinary people, wild dogs can easily sprain their feet running on it.
It's dark, dirty, and full of old men and women who don't care, and poor, rattling vagrants. It is like a sewer where the sun does not shine, poverty is accompanied by bacteria, and the damp and musty smell lingers in every corner, and it seems to be branded on everyone's soul, which makes them bow their heads when they walk in the crowd, as if Born to be a dwarf.
Compared with other wild monkeys that no one cares about, Jiang Kezhou when he was young is simply a strange flower in the gutter. He has lived in the tube building for more than ten years. Apart from being thinner than his peers, he looks very strong. His clothes are old but tidy, and he always has a clean handkerchief in his pocket; he has a gentle personality and good academic performance. meal.
Mother Jiang is gentle and virtuous, and she keeps the house clean and tidy every day—even if the broken building is full of dust and the glass can never be wiped clean. She is a good wife and mother, but she has only one leg.
When she was twenty-three years old, she had a car accident and her right leg was amputated from the knee down. At that time, her boyfriend, who was already talking about marriage, was unwilling to have a handicapped wife. The family members were afraid that she would not be able to marry, so they rushed He found her a worker who was ten years older than her. Jiang Kezhou was born in the first year of marriage.
Ever since he could remember, Jiang Kezhou had never seen his father sober.
His father's daily job was to smoke, drink, and play mahjong, making the house a mess. He never had a good face towards them, and the most common sentence he said to Jiang Kezhou was "Debt collectors, get out!"
It's not that Jiang Kezhou never felt resentment, and the child's hatred was even more persistent and intense than ordinary people could imagine. Several times he hid in the kitchen, listening to the loud snoring outside through a door, clutching the kitchen knife tightly in his hand, desperately restraining the desire to rush out and slaughter the beast soaked in wine.
Once, he was so angry that his hand trembled so badly that he missed the kitchen knife and fell down on the back of his foot. The sharp blade made a deep gash in the flesh in an instant. Jiang Kezhou didn't feel any pain at first. When the blood gushed out, he lowered his head and saw the blood staining the ground red. The anger that was roaring and surging in his chest, almost bursting out, suddenly calmed down. .
He was stunned for only a moment, and the pain soon spread, occupying all the senses. He couldn't stand up anymore, so he slid against the wall and sat on the ground, holding his legs and staring blankly at the wound, getting more and more sleepy the more he looked. He was no longer young at that time, and while his eyelids were twitching, he thought to himself: "If I die, will there be no such things?"
Jiang Kezhou curiously reached out his hand to dip some blood, spread it on his fingertips, and even smelled it. It's a pity that the kitchen is full of blood smell at the moment, and nothing can be smelled. He stared at the blood-smeared fingerprints on his hand. Out of a good hygiene habit, he subconsciously wanted to find something to wipe, so he turned back and took out a handkerchief from his pocket. The moment the soft fabric touched his palm, a thunderous thought suddenly exploded in his mind—
What the hell would happen if he died
Jiang Kezhou shook violently, and a layer of cold sweat suddenly broke out on his back.
Only then did he regain the long-lost fear, forcefully opened the kitchen door, and cried out heart-piercingly with the loudest voice a ten-year-old child could make.
Apart from her son, Mother Jiang has nothing to look forward to. She was scared to death by Jiang Kezhou's injury, but Jiang Kezhou, who was still a little bean, turned to comfort her. From then on, the mother and son depended on each other and concentrated on living their lives, as if treating his father like a ball of air that could only talk nonsense.
It's a pity that good people don't live long. When Jiang Kezhou was fifteen years old, Jiang's mother had a cold and high fever which turned into pneumonia. She was already weak, and she had been working hard for years, and her body was completely worn down by illness. Her condition fluctuated from good to bad, and she did not survive the winter of that year.
Jiang Kezhou and his father, who rarely sobered up once, took care of the funeral together. His mother lived an ordinary life and died peacefully, not many people could remember her and come to see her. To others, her death is like a leaf falling on the vast water, which cannot stir up any ripples, but only brews a storm in Jiang Kezhou's world.
After the funeral, the fifteen-year-old boy packed up his mother's belongings and the meager funeral. They had nothing, and a small cardboard box was enough to hold all their belongings. Jiang Kezhou hugged this cardboard box and left his first home in life. .
When he left, he had no nostalgia, and his childish back carried a lonely courage that would never turn back. A narrow alley full of pits and pits, he walked out of the tragic wind and cold water.
For the next six years, Jiang Kezhou never came back, and his only connection with his "family" was his uncle Wang Yi. And this entanglement was limited to Jiang Kezhou's chance meeting on the road when he was in high school. His uncle saw that he was having a hard time, so he secretly gave him a hundred yuan without telling his aunt.
He finished high school and was admitted to university by relying on his savings and part-time job money. The scars on his feet have faded, and when he sees them, he will think of himself who hated him so naively back then. The past events are not unforgettable to him, but he just finds it funny: Who in this world can't live without them? It's up to each person to live how they live, and they can't blame others.
Jiang Kezhou eats enough for himself and the whole family is not hungry, but the trouble is like he has grown legs and refuses to let him go. He was studying in another place, and one day he suddenly received a call from his uncle Wang Yi, who said anxiously that his father was not well, and urged him to go back and have a look. Jiang Kezhou hasn't been home for several years, and he doesn't know what happened to his father. It stands to reason that the two sides have not communicated with each other for so many years, let alone family ties, and they may not be able to recognize each other when they meet. But after all, there is still a legal father-son relationship. If something happened to his father, Jiang Kezhou couldn't avoid it even if he deliberately avoided it.
The day he arrived home was April 1st, and the weather was gloomy. He sat on a hard seat for half the night and rushed back from other places, shaking so hard that his bones were about to fall apart. The city is changing with each passing day, and the street scenes along the way have become strange. Jiang Kezhou fumbled the route in his memory to Tongzilou, but nothing had changed here—it was so broken that it couldn't be broken any further.
The child who never looked back at that time has now grown up. He is probably the highest educated person who has come out of this shantytown. Revisiting the old place, Jiang Kezhou was not in a sad mood, he was still far away from becoming famous, and there was nothing worth remembering about this place, so he just stood at the entrance of the alley to identify the old building he used to live in, and went straight Walk over there.
The old and dilapidated stairs were filthy, and the sound of TV washing machines in other people's homes mixed into a chorus, accompanied by percussion music such as pots and pans chopping dumpling stuffing. Jiang Kezhou walked up to the fourth floor, and on the door of a house on the east side were old Spring Festival couplets from an unknown year.
Wang Yi explained that Jiang's father hadn't moved away and was still at home. Jiang Kezhou didn't suspect him, so he went directly to knock on the door. No one answered the door after knocking for a long time. Jiang Kezhou only said that Jiang's father had gone out, and when he was about to go downstairs, the door suddenly opened from the inside. A tall strange man stood at the door and asked vigilantly, "Who are you looking for?"
Jiang Kezhou knew that Father Jiang liked to play cards and drink too much, and thought he was a friend brought home by Father Jiang, so he asked, "Is Jiang Hongwei at home?"
The man squinted his eyes and looked him up and down, then asked suspiciously, "Are you Jiang Hongwei's son?"
Jiang Kezhou didn't want to talk too much, so he nodded.
The man turned sideways to make a gap: "Come in."
The interior design of the old building is very strange, the entrance is perpendicular to a narrow corridor instead of facing the living room. The first thing outsiders see when they enter the door is the kitchen door and a wall, so they didn't realize something was wrong until Jiang Kezhou walked into the room. He reacted surprisingly quickly and turned around to rush out, but it was too late.
The man following him kicked him in the hollow of his knee, Jiang Kezhou staggered, couldn't stand still, and greeted him directly on the concrete floor of the living room.
The man behind leaned forward and twisted his arms backwards, pressing him firmly to the ground.
There were several unkind men sitting in the living room, all with vicious faces. The room was full of smog, except for a few plastic chairs, it was almost as empty as a rough house. Jiang Hongwei was tied to the heating pipe with a bruised nose and a swollen face, and his right hand was smashed to bloody flesh. Seeing Jiang Kezhou coming in, he shouted hoarsely: "Brother Song... Brother Song! I really don't have any money at hand. Please give me a few more days. I’ll definitely get money! I’m going to sell the house!”
The man he called Brother Song was about forty, with small eyes and thick lips, and a green skin shaved. He sneered when he heard this: "You are the pigsty? Jiang, don't you remember how much money you owe me? ah?"
The man standing next to Jiang Hongwei immediately kicked him on the back. Jiang Hongwei howled earth-shatteringly and begged for mercy.
"Boy," Song Ge walked up to Jiang Kezhou and kicked him, "If you want to blame it, blame your bad luck. Who told you that you didn't have a good pregnancy, and why did you have such a dead ghost? Jiang Hongwei borrowed money from me." He owes me six hundred thousand yuan for gambling." He looked down at Jiang Kezhou's eyes and said, "I crippled his right hand according to the rules. This old bastard is useless, boy, the father's debt is paid by the son, you have to pay it for him money."
Jiang Kezhou has stepped into the society with one foot since high school. He has heard about such things for a long time, and immediately understood what Brother Song meant. Dare to call you Brother Song, and you have seen the situation at home. Don’t say that I have nothing to do with him, even if I do, it will be difficult to get the money together for a while. Can you give me a few more days, Let's figure it out?"
Brother Song squatted halfway in front of him, pointed the cigarette butt at him a little more modestly, and asked softly with a nonchalant smile: "Boy, are you fooling me?"
Jiang Kezhou broke out in a cold sweat suddenly, and his mind could hardly turn: "Then what do you want?"
"I know what your family is like very well," Song Ge patted him on the face, "So this is why you came back. If you don't have money, someone can do it." With force in his hand, he twisted Jiang Kezhou's body aside, Standing up and lighting a cigarette, he said to the man holding Jiang Kezhou, "Tie it up, cover your eyes, and give him an injection."
Before Jiang Kezhou could figure out the meaning of Brother Song's words, a sudden sharp pain came from the back of his neck. The needle pierced the thin skin and injected half of an unknown liquid into his body. A few minutes later, an uncontrollable drowsiness surged up, and Jiang Kezhou's waist and legs went limp, only then did he realize that the other party had given him an anesthetic or something. He kept his eyes wide open, his eyes were about to burst, but he couldn't stop the strong attack of the medicine, and he fell headfirst on the cold concrete floor.
Brother Song took a deep puff on his cigarette, and wiped out the cigarette butt on the floor: "Go, take him with you, and go to Boss Sun."