Li Xiu was stunned for a moment before he realized what had happened.

Looking at the rice scattered everywhere on the floor, he just felt tired.

The rats have come again, he thought.

This was not the first time Li Xiu had encountered rats in the room—in places like shantytowns, putting a bowl of rice under the bed every day attracted more rats than ghosts.

Several times before, when Li Xiu was delivering food, he could see something pass through the shadows under the bed when he lowered his head. Li Xiu tried to strike it at first, but gave up after several attempts. If the clutter in this house was not cleaned up, not to speak of a human being like Li Xiu, even a cat would probably be powerless against the rats.

Speaking of which, considering the location of Li Xiu’s home, only seeing a rat now could already be considered a rarity. The sanitary conditions of the shantytown were inherently poor, and the area where Li Xiu and his grandmother lived happened to be the dirtiest and messiest location in the area.

Even a reserved teenager like Li Xiu, who rarely interacted with others, often heard neighbors complain about rats and cockroaches in their homes over the years.

However, in the early years when the neighbors’ houses were in a mess due to rat infestations, Li Xiu’s house was always very clean.

Not to mention rats, there were not even many mosquitos in the summer.

Now that he thought about it, it was actually the previous situation where mosquitos would not enter the house that was abnormal.

He would buy some rat poison another day.

Staring dazedly, Li Xiu vaguely noticed that something wasn’t right. But his health was currently very poor, and he couldn’t squeeze out the energy to care about what might or might not be there.

Li Xiu left the room. 

After being perfunctory with his grandmother, he secretly took a broom and returned to the room. Once he had cleaned everything up, he tiptoed out.

After packing the rice mixed with ashes into a red cloth bag, Li Xiu was about to dispose of it when an old, hoarse voice suddenly came from behind him.

“A-Xiu, why were you back so late?”

Li Xiu’s hands shook, and he reflexively hid the cloth bag in his school bag.

He turned around to meet his grandmother’s wrinkled face.

As a person aged, their eyes became cloudy. His grandmother’s eyes looked hollow in the dim light, like two polished glass beads.

She had been standing there looking at Li Xiu for who knew how long.

Li Xiu’s fingertips curled, and he tightened the strap of his school bag.

“Grandmother…..”

Just as he was about to speak nonsense, his grandmother’s voice became rapid and high-pitched.

“You came back too late, he should be hungry…..deliver food. A-Xiu, you must hurry and deliver food to your gege.” 

Li Xiu’s voice immediately stuck in his throat.

After a brief pause, he took a deep breath and said calmly: “En, don’t worry, I’ve already brought food to Gege.”

When his grandmother heard this answer, a trace of confusion flashed in her eyes. The old woman seemed to parse this sentence after a while, and forced out a tremulous smile.

“That’s good, that’s good. You must remember to deliver meals on time in the future.”

The old woman continued to repeat herself. After heaving a long sigh of relief, her shoulders shrunk, her whole body sinking as she staggered out of the kitchen.

Looking at his grandmother’s back, Li Xiu pursed his lips and said no more.

His grandmother’s confusion had grown increasingly serious.

This was why Li Xiu hid the spilled rice.

Since he was a child, Li Xiu would bring his gege a meal every night according to the rules, then take the bowl back from under the bed before going to school the next day.

The uncooked rice his gege hadn’t “eaten” was put away in a red cloth bag and regularly taken to the park to scatter for the fish. Of course, in his grandmother’s words, it was best to burn the uncooked rice to ashes along with the red bag.

“That way, it’s less likely to lure dirty things.”

Li Xiu remembered his grandmother saying this to him once.

But after several instances of burning it, the neighboring auntie thought that burning things was inauspicious and smoky. And in order to avoid causing further trouble, Li Xiu later compromised by simply leaving it to the koi in the park.

The first time a rat knocked over the rice, Li Xiu was at a loss, not certain what to do with it.

He didn’t think too much about it, and just informed his grandmother and asked her what to do. It was such a simple question, but when his grandmother heard this, she became exceedingly strange.

It was just some rice knocked over by a rat, but the old woman cried and made a fuss for a long time, as if she had gone crazy. What she said was inconsistent with her previous and future words, saying that she felt sorry for Li Xiu, that she was greedy and brought home an evil ghost, and now it wanted to kill Li Xiu…..

The old woman’s agitation at the time really didn’t frighten Li Xiu. He didn’t even have time to ask her why she was so scared before she directly fell asleep, and when she woke up again, she had completely forgotten her previous madness.

“Send food, A-Xiu, ah. Send food to your gege.”

She just continued to remind Li Xiu.

“You must not starve your gege, ah.”

……

Out of some sort of intuition, Li Xiu did not continue to ask.

And from that day on, Li Xiu never dared to let his grandmother know that his gege’s share of “food” placed under the bed would occasionally be knocked over by rats.

He felt that it was very possible that his grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease.

Each time Li Xiu thought of this, it felt as if a block of stone was pressing down on his body, and he almost couldn’t breathe.

In fact, he often heard discussions about him and his grandmother from his neighbors. In the eyes of outsiders, his grandmother didn’t actually treat A-Xiu very well.

The reason his grandmother had adopted Li Xiu was purely because her own biological daughter had severed ties with her.

In order to have someone to take care of her at the end of her life, his grandmother had adopted the crippled Li Xiu.

She had a bad temperament and seldom looked after Li Xiu.

But……

Even if his grandmother was cold and strict, she was Li Xiu’s only relative in the world.

When his grandmother completely forgot him due to Alzheimers, Li Xiu didn’t know what he would do.

*

At night, Li Xiu’s low-grade fever became serious.

His head ached. His vision also went dark for a while.

Li Xiu realized that his physical condition was suboptimal and quickly grabbed some pills from a drawer, swallowing them down. After returning to bed and lying down for a while, Li Xiu broke out in a cold sweat. Even his pajamas were soaked through.

The biting cold continued to spread from the marrow of his bones, and the swelling of his skin continued to emit a high temperature like a branding iron. Li Xiu tossed and turned in bed, feeling cold and damp beneath the quilt. Once his consciousness became blurred, a stale odor like dust and rust rose from deep inside the quilt, threads of it climbing out to wrap around Li Xiu’s body.

……That was the unique smell in the old rooms of the Xiao family villa.

Li Xiu was uncomfortable, and didn’t sleep well.

In the end, Li Xiu couldn’t take it anymore. Even though he felt so uncomfortable that he almost fainted, he gritted his teeth and went to the bathroom to bathe.

*

The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was cramped, dark, and damp.

Click.

With the flip of a switch, a dim light turned on, gradually turning the humid water vapor rising in the bathroom yellow.

Li Xiu’s breathing was heavy, and he felt weak all over. He could barely stand upright, and his body incrementally pressed completely against the wall.

The hot water was turned to the max. In the steamy bathroom, he still felt cold.

Especially the right leg, which he washed and washed many times. Even after washing it with soap for a long time, Li Xiu still felt that it was covered in the sticky sweat that the boys had smeared on his calves and knees during their excitement in the evening.

“Bleh…..”

The boy’s suppressed retching sounds echoed in the bathroom.

After a long while, Li Xiu turned off the water.

He hung his head and stood under the showerhead for a long time.

All he could see was his disgusting, deformed leg.

So weak that it didn’t even have the strength to kick someone.

Unable to run or jump.

This leg was useless.

Drip……

The water vapor condensed on the ceiling and fell down again.

Cool water droplets slowly flowed down along Li Xiu’s bony back.

All at once, Li Xiu shuddered.

Just now……it was as if cold fingertips were sliding along his skin.

Li Xiu turned his head to glance at the cracked tile wall behind him. His shadow was reflected on the yellowing tiles.

He couldn’t say why, but he was a little flustered.

Still due to the low-grade fever, as soon as the hot water was turned off, the bone-piercing coldness swept over him again.

As Li Xiu’s body trembled, he wiped his body with a dry towel. His eyes inadvertently glanced at the bathroom mirror, and at the same time, he felt as if he had rubbed something through the towel.

He seemed to have……touched a pair of hands.

Li Xiu’s pupils suddenly constricted.

At a glance, he saw a tall, slender shadow standing behind him.

And the arms of that shadow were pressing on his shoulders.

His own hands happened to cover those of the shadow.

“Hiss—”

Li Xiu threw the towel and staggered back.

He hit the wall hard with a bang. Bursts of pain erupted where he had been beaten in the afternoon, and Li Xiu nearly lost consciousness. 

His heart was practically beating out of his chest.

After standing there for a moment, Li Xiu hugged the towel to him and looked around.

Of course, Li Xiu didn’t see anything. All that was before him was the familiar old bathroom he had seen for countless years.

Once he calmed down, the pale-faced Li Xiu wiped off the fog on the mirror. Only then did he realize that he had just seen the pattern on the old ceramic tiles caused by water stains as a human figure.

As for the thing he had touched through the towel just now, well, it was himself.

The places where he had been beaten were covered in terrible black and blue marks. His skin was completely numb, and almost felt like it belonged to someone else.

Li Xiu thought hard. The low-grade fever made his thinking a little chaotic, but this did not hinder him from making a judgment.

“That’s what it was.”

In a daze, Li Xiu felt a little ashamed of his small mistake.

But he had to admit that at that moment, he did feel an unspeakable chill up his spine.

It must have been because of the fever.

The young man tried his best to comfort himself. Although Li Xiu had clearly come to his senses, his heart still jumped wildly.

He became increasingly dizzy.

Without too much thought, Li Xiu hurriedly dressed and left the bathroom. He knew he should rest as soon as possible. Otherwise, he would have no energy to deal with the bullying at school the next day.

It was precisely this anxiety that made Li Xiu completely unaware that after he left the bathroom, the previously closed bathroom door opened a crack.

Above the door, something flickered in the gap.

…..Like a pair of eyes, looking deeply at Li Xiu through the crack in the door.

---

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Chapter 4 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 6