“Mingcheng?” 

“Wen Mingcheng?!”

“What are you doing? Oh my god, Husband—”

The woman’s frightened cry sounded behind me, and she quickly ran upstairs in high heels while shouting.

Very quickly, I heard garbled voices coming from upstairs.

“Mom, what happened with my brother?”

“Mingyi, be good. Play with your teddy bear and don’t come out. Husband, Mingcheng seems to be…..”

Soon, the man and woman came down and gathered around me, asking me why I had done this.

The scissors in my hand were snatched away by my grim-faced father. My mother looked at my bloodied hands and cried until her makeup ran.

At that time, I could not understand their anxiety and the way they fell apart. I tilted my head slightly and gazed at them, trying to understand their emotions.

Was this something serious?

I was just interested in the ornamental fish in the fish tank, so I stood on a chair and fished out the biggest one with a net, and happened to see a pair of scissors on the table…..

My father yanked me hard and asked me with an extremely cold expression: “Do you not understand that this is wrong?”

“This doctor is truly useless, I want to replace him…..”

I staggered as I steadied myself. What was wrong?

Clearly you told Mingyi to have the courage to try things she is interested in, so why can’t I?

I was also a little angry, but I still apologized to them: “Sorry, Mom and Dad.”

My mother looked at me expectantly: “What did you do wrong?”

I said: “I shouldn’t have taken the fish out of the tank.”

After that, I took the initiative to pick up the fish my father had knocked to the ground.

Only, its belly was broken. Some messy things had fallen out of it, leaving a mess on the floor. I didn’t mind, and handed it to my mother with both hands. “Mom, I’ll give it back to you.”

My mother screamed as she stared at the disemboweled fish. She covered her mouth and retched a few times, then backed away in disarray. The fish in my hands was once more knocked to the floor by my father, and he roughly took me to the bathroom to wash my hands.

My hands hurt from his scrubbing. This should be a punishment.

So I seriously thought about several possibilities regarding my mistake, and apologized to him again: “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have chosen the biggest one. I didn’t understand how to be modest. Next time, I will definitely choose a smaller one.”

My father gives me a slap to the face.

“Monster!”

My parents didn’t let me go to kindergarten or play with Mingyi. They got me a new doctor and made me stay with him.

He was an elderly man, and looked very old. Both his beard and hair were white. I thought there would be nothing to say between us, but I didn’t expect him to smile and enjoy talking to me.

I ignored him at first, but day after day, I found what he said interesting, and he was the only one in the family who was willing to read fairy tales to me.

In fact, it was my mother who would read storybooks to me before, but I always asked questions that scared her. I didn’t understand why she was afraid or why she hit me. Afterwards, she would only read to my sister and refused to read to me.

But this old man was not afraid of me. After I asked some questions, he just stayed silent for a moment and then answered me with a smile.

He was very patient, and I felt that his face was very round, his hair was all white, and he looked like a snow-white rabbit when he smiled.

He read me stories every day, and I reciprocated in courtesy by telling him the fish story and asking why my parents blamed me.

He explained to me a lesson about life and death.

I listened silently. I didn’t understand some of it, but I didn’t care. There were still issues I was concerned about. “Mom says I’m the son of Satan. Do you think I’m a monster too?”

“No, you are not.” He knelt down and looked at me levelly, his expression very firm. “You will understand in the future. You will understand the preciousness of life, that you should revere life. You will understand compassion, and know how to love and protect. You just understand emotions a little slower.”

His expression looked earnest and trusting, something I had never seen before.

So I thought I should also trust in him.

I began to take the initiative to learn from him, and learned some of the emotional terms he spoke of. Of course, what he talked about most was life and love.

I learned everything very quickly. The home tutor for cultural lessons was always very surprised by me, but I always did poorly in psychology class.

Later, he died.

As he got older, he fell and lost his life.

He lay amongst white lilies. There were many people surrounding him. I walked to his coffin and placed a white chrysanthemum next to his face.

His face was tranquil, as if he was asleep, but I never saw him again.

After returning home, I waited for him to come and teach me. I waited in the classroom that had been set up for him at home for many days, but he never showed up.

One day, my mother happened to discover that I sat in the psychology classroom every day. The expression on her face when she looked at me was confused to begin with, but then it turned into pleasant surprise. She rushed over excitedly and asked why I was staying here, and if I missed my teacher.

I couldn’t really understand what she meant. I felt like I was just waiting for him to come back and teach me a lesson, so I didn’t answer her.

Later, when I was alone and bored, I once again thought of my fish tank idea.

Those fish were still in the tank, but the biggest and reddest one I took out had disappeared.

I focused on the yellow beta, which had a beautiful tail and fins, like a fairy wearing a gauze dress.

I fished it out and held it firmly in my hand to observe it. It could not break away from my strength, and desperately opened and closed its gills in an attempt to breathe.

I stroked its beautiful fins and felt its body struggling in my palm. I wanted to clutch it hard, but after a few minutes, its struggles became feeble, and the opening and closing of its gills did as well.

I tossed it back into the fish tank.

It took a long time to calm down, then slowly regained its vitality and swam leisurely with the other fish in the tank.

I counted the fish in the tank again and there were still the same few fish. The yellow beta still existed, but the red goldfish had disappeared. 

Suddenly, I understood what life was. Life was a very precious thing. If it disappeared, it would never exist again.

Both my teacher and the red fish had lost their lives.

They would never appear again.

The psychology teacher had taught me lessons about life and love for a long time.

When I was seven years old, he used his own death to make me understand life. I began to cherish and respect life, and another person made me understand love.

“A-Zhen, this is Mingcheng-gege. This is Mingyi-meimei. You can go to school and play with them from now on. Go on, say hello.”

A gentle-looking woman wearing a cheongsam introduced us to a boy.

The boy was about ten years old. He raised his head to look at me. His face was red and rosy, his eyebrows were thin and light, and his eyes were round but slender at the tips, looking like lilies in the sun.

He called me quickly, coy and embarrassed: “Mingcheng-gege.”

It was so fast that it was almost inaudible.

He seemed to be about the same age as me, and maybe that was why he was embarrassed to call me “gege.”

But my attention was on his eyes. The way he looked at me was very special, something I had never seen before in my father’s circle. It was like melting snow in early spring, very pure and soft.

He also looked like the lambs and finches I had seen in the pastures.

There was no vigilance nor questions, no flattery nor attentiveness. He was full of childlike tenderness and curiosity.

It was said that he was the beloved son of a calligrapher. I saw dried ink stains on his fingertips.

For the first time, I smiled from the bottom of my heart. 

“Hello, my name is Wen Mingcheng.”

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Chapter 28 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 30