DTTM 12

Chapter 12: Three Requests

Snowflakes drifted into my outstretched palm, melting instantly. All around me were low, tin-roofed houses, and tangled power lines overhead like a spiderweb. This time, I was walking alone in the snow.

I remember that it was when I was thirteen years old, in a very cold winter.

Although the Zong family bought me, they did not sever my ties with my family. They still allowed me to return home for two days each month to reunite with my relatives, which was supposed to be my monthly homecoming. On this day, however, my father stole the savings that my grandmother had hidden under the bed and tried to go out gambling again.

When my grandmother discovered this, the two immediately started arguing. Seeing my father’s face turn red and he looked like he was about to hit her, I quickly stepped forward to protect my grandmother. In the chaos, my father pushed me, and my forehead hit the corner of the table.

“What are you arguing for? If you die, this money will still be mine!”

My skin broke and a small amount of blood flowed out. My grandmother hugged me and cried. My father showed no remorse. He just panted heavily, wiped his nose, took the money, and walked out of the house without looking back.

“He wasn’t like this before, Ah Jun wasn’t like this before…” My grandmother murmured again and again while holding me, I don’t know if she was hypnotizing herself or me.

The bleeding on my forehead stopped quickly; the injury wasn’t actually serious, but the next day the area turned a mix of blue and purple, which looked rather frightening.

My father didn’t return until the early hours of the next day, and my grandmother, worried about him, couldn’t sleep all night. As for me, because of the pain in my forehead and the cold that I was no longer used to, my sleep was also fragmented, waking up almost every hour.

I woke up again at four in the morning and saw my grandmother still staring at the door, waiting anxiously. I sighed softly, got dressed, and got up.

“I’ll go look for him.”

As soon as the door opened, the wind and snow outside suddenly swept in, dissipating the last bit of warmth.

“Take this umbrella, Xiao Man.” Grandmother found a tattered black umbrella in the corner and stuffed it into my hand, instructing me, “Ah Jun has never stayed out this late before. He must have fallen somewhere while drunk. Look carefully in the corners, look carefully.”

“I understand,” I replied as I walked out of the house.

In Zengcheng, it was still very dark at four or five o’clock in the morning during winter. There were no lights on the road, and it was slippery. I could only rely on the moonlight to feel my way forward.

We lived in a remote suburb, in what was considered a settlement of the Wo people of Zengcheng. The rest of the year was alright, but winter was the hardest. There was no heating, no money to buy charcoal, and the thin tin-roofed houses couldn’t retain much heat. Every winter, many Wo people died. Therefore, on snowy days like this, there were very few pedestrians on the streets, and generally no one ventured out unnecessarily.

I don’t know if it was good luck or bad luck, but I found my father after walking for about half an hour.

No one knows a son better than his mother. Just as his grandmother had predicted, he got completely drunk and collapsed on an iron bridge no more than two kilometers from home.

When I found him, his face was ashen, and he was covered in snow. He was severely hypothermic and would freeze to death in just an hour… no, in another half hour.

The river flowed powerfully beneath our feet, but my father’s breathing, contrary to this, grew weaker and weaker.

Normally, this iron bridge was so rusted that it looked like it could collapse in the wind at any moment. But when such a thick snow fell, it was as if it were frozen solid and didn’t move an inch.

I stared at him for a while, and my forehead started to sting again, probably because of the snow. I covered the wound, moved away from him, and took a step back.

Everything in this world can be roughly divided into two categories, those that are needed and those that are not needed.

Mutual needs, viewed as a mutually beneficial symbiosis, can forge the most unbreakable alliance in the world and represent the optimal relationship. Unilateral needs reduce everything to a scale of weighing, with the value of the needy party merely a bargaining chip to be calculated, resulting in the most distressing relationship. And no mutual needs mean that each other becomes like dust in the wind, easily swept away without a care, discarded like mustard seeds, which is the simplest relationship.

My father no longer needed me, and I… gave up seeking affection from him.

The snow continued to fall. I stood on the bridge with my umbrella, quietly watching the murky river and my dying father on the bridge.

As dawn broke and smoke began to rise from the chimneys, the view from the bridge was unobstructed, allowing a glimpse of the rising sun in the distance, it was a magnificent sunrise.

Just then, voices suddenly came from under the bridge.

I calmly squatted down, using the umbrella to shield my father and me, and pretended to tug at him, “Dad, why did you drink so much? I’ve told you to drink less!”

“It’s so cold today.”

“Yeah…”

The two men talked to each other, not meddling in other people’s business, and soon left.

My father’s body was as cold as ice, or rather, he had become a huge block of ice.

I squatted there and waited for a while, making sure no one came. Then I took a deep breath and pushed the large block of ice into the rushing river.

“Splash!”

My father’s body fell into the water, rolled a couple of times, and then disappeared with the ceaseless flow of the river.

Bathed in the morning sun, I removed the umbrella from my head and discovered that the snow had stopped. I hurried down the bridge, never looking back at the murky river.

I couldn’t stay any longer. I went back and told my grandmother that the man hadn’t been found. I comforted her, saying that my father might have run away and hidden somewhere because he incurred had debts again, and that he might come back in a few days. That night, I returned to Baiyujing.

When I returned to the Zong family, Zong Yanlei was receiving a blood transfusion, I usually had my blood drawn once a month, and this blood was divided into four portions for Zong Yanlei to use each week.

The clothes I wore outside felt a bit hot indoors, especially since Zong Yanlei’s living room was warmer than the rest of the house. I took off my cloak and went into Zong Yanlei’s bedroom, wanting to let him know I was back as soon as possible.

Zong Yanlei leaned against the headboard, holding a screen in his hands, watching a movie or video, from which the roar of an engine kept coming from.

“Young Master, I’m back.” I walked to his bedside and stood there.

He heard the sound and looked up at me from the screen. In just one glance, his brows furrowed.

“What’s wrong with your head?”

“My father beat me up.” I smiled at him.

He frowned even more: “Come here.”

Holding my cloak, I obediently approached him. Seeing him extend his hand, I bent down slightly first. He didn’t hold back; he pressed his fingertips directly against my wound, and kneaded the area like he was playing with a piece of clay.

I trembled in pain, and only managed to resist my instinctive urge to dodge.

“Young master, it can’t be wiped off,” I said to him.

He stared at me without a trace of a smile on his face: “Your face was never pretty to begin with, and now it’s even uglier.” His fingertips left my forehead and slowly traced across my eyes, nose, and mouth. “Your organs, even every inch of your skin and blood, belong to me. How can you allow others to damage my property so easily?”

Seeing that he was genuinely angry, I suppressed my smile and, regardless of whether I was in the wrong, apologized first: “I’m sorry, young master.”

He withdrew his hand, observed me for a moment, and suddenly smiled: “Call your father here.”

Having served him for so long, I could tell that this was definitely not a happy smile. On the contrary, every time he smiled like that, someone was about to be in trouble.

“Call him?”

“I need to teach those ignorant bastards the price of damaging my property.”

I understood, I knew perfectly well, he wasn’t standing up for me. He simply couldn’t tolerate anyone touching what belonged to him, even if it was dirty and cheap to him. But for a moment, when he looked into my eyes and said, “I’ll make him pay for damaging my property,” my heart, which had never moved even when I witnessed my father fall into the filthy river, suddenly pounded in my chest. It was a leap that made my very soul tremble.

“Do you want to punish him?” I asked.

“What, you want to plead for him?”

I quickly shook my head: “No, he’s gone. He didn’t come back all night last night, I don’t know if he went to hide from his debts. So, it might be difficult to find him now.”

Hearing this, he muttered unhappily, “Gone? He got off easy.”

“I’ll let you know as soon as he gets back,” I promised him.

Everything in this world can be roughly divided into two categories, those that are needed and those that are not needed.

I’d always felt like I was someone no one needed. My mother left with my younger brother, my father sold me to cannibalistic nobles, and my grandmother only cared about her own son, never about my plight. I was like a speck of dust; its vibration, explosion, and death couldn’t even elicit a glance from the “giants” of this world.

Zong Yanlei asked me if I had ever hated my mother. I didn’t hate her; I just regretted that I wasn’t indispensable to her.

Those servants of the Zong family who knew of my existence and my relationship with Zong Yanlei always looked at me with pity. In their eyes, I was the one being constantly taken from, exploited, and oppressed. But that wasn’t the case.

Zong Yanlei and I had a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. He relied on my body for the continuation of his life, and I relied on his needs for spiritual fulfillment. I enjoyed his dependence on me, the process of “restoring” him each time, and his object-like possessiveness towards me.

Needs and needs, this is the most stable relationship and the closest alliance in the world. I thought this relationship would last until one of us dies.

But when we were nineteen, Zong Yanlei suddenly had the possibility of being cured.

Our alliance crumbled.

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I woke up feeling weak all over, and the first thing I saw was the IV bag on the bed. I quickly tried to recall how I got back to the dormitory from the Crown Prince’s banquet.

The digital clock by the bed showed it was 8 am, meaning I had been unconscious for a full ten hours.

My body was fine, and my stomach not only didn’t feel uncomfortable, but I was actually a little hungry. I removed the IV, washed up quickly, and thought I’d go to the cafeteria to get something to eat. Just as I finished getting dressed and opened the door, the door opposite mine opened at that very moment. Zong Yanlei, fully dressed, pushed the door of the dormitory that should have been empty.

He saw me, paused for a moment, then looked down at the back of my hand: “You pulled out the needle yourself?”

I pulled the needle out rather roughly, and it bled a bit. Although I had just washed it, I still felt guilty and hid my hand behind my back.

“I’m hungry and I was in a hurry to go to the cafeteria for breakfast. Have you eaten yet, young master?” Breakfast is only served until nine o’clock; if you’re late, there won’t be any left.

Zong Yanlei ignored my question, turned around and closed the door, raised his chin and said, “Go back to bed and stay there. Someone will bring breakfast over later.”

As he was about to leave, my memory suddenly returned, and I remembered what Bing-ge had said yesterday. I quickly called out to him, “Young master, among the rewards you received yesterday was a seedling nursery in Zengcheng. Could I… buy it from you?”

He stopped and turned around with a smile that suggested someone was about to suffer: “The Crown Prince did indeed grant me land plots yesterday, but I don’t know if there’s any seedling nursery on it. And even if there is, would I sell it to you just because you want it?”

“I’ll give you all the prize money I won this time, please, I just want that piece of land.”

“Is that person important?” Zong Yanlei suddenly asked out of the blue.

I didn’t understand: “Who?”

“Is the person who made you ask me for money and land really that important?”

Does it matter?

A person who no longer needed me asked if those who relied on me and depended on me are important? How could he understand how I survived until now after he threw me out of the Zong family like a rag doll?

“Yes, they are important.” After thinking for a moment, I added, “Very important.”

“Alright.” His smile deepened as he slowly walked towards me. “Do you remember the game we used to play? I would make a request, and if you did it, I would grant your wish.”

My grandmother’s health had never been good. When I was 16, she was diagnosed with cancer. The monthly treatment costs were staggering, far beyond what my meager salary could afford. I lied to her, saying she only had some minor ailments that needed treatment, and then I knelt down before Zong Yanlei when I got home.

He smiled and agreed, just like he did now, and then designed a game for only the two of us. The rules were simple: whatever I could do, he would grant my wish and give me money.

For two years, I extended my grandmother’s life by fulfilling one strange request after another. When she passed away, she was so thin she was just skin and bones. In her delirium, she still held my hand, urging me to find my father. But I never agreed.

“Three requests. If you can meet them, I’ll give the land back to you.” Zong Yanlei pulled my coat tighter around me. “How about it?”

His tone was eerie and gentle, like the Big Bad Wolf trying to lure Little Red Riding Hood into opening the door. I stared at the hand with its distinct knuckles on my chest, and thinking of all the things he had made me do in the past, I couldn’t help but swallow dryly.

“It’s a deal.” But things had come to this, and I had no other choice.

“It’s a deal.” He looked satisfied. He loosened his grip on my clothes, took two steps back, and turned to leave. “You’re exempt from training today. Go and rest in your room.”

Thanks to his grace, I stayed quietly in my room all day and didn’t go out. I took a nap in the afternoon, and when I woke up, I found a new text message on my phone.

Come meet me at 10 PM.

It was an unfamiliar number, but it wasn’t hard to guess who it belonged to.