MFW 3

Fu Siting couldn’t eat anything that night and took the bus home alone. 

The bus was crowded with people, bustling and noisy. 

People’s joys and sorrows are not shared. Squeezed in front of him were two cheerful female college students sharing headphones, excitedly whispering in front of a tablet: 

“Li Fei is so handsome! On repeat, on repeat, hurry!” 

“A free single and such a high-quality production, oh my god, it’s so generous! I’m so looking forward to its release tomorrow. Can’t today just be tomorrow?”

Neon lights flashed across the glass like silent fireworks. 

Fu Siting was tall, and his gaze passed over their shoulders, clearly seeing the screen on the tablet. 

On the screen, sixteen-year-old Li Fei already possessed a handsome face, a silver suit accentuating his tall figure. 

He stood on the stage, immersed in the music, his pure black eyes sparkling with a sharp, piercing light. 

Fu Siting’s gaze lingered on the looping screen.

… 

Fu Siting came from a poor family; he couldn’t even afford a down jacket for winter, let alone a cell phone or computer, luxuries beyond his reach. 

Over the years, he could only occasionally catch glimpses of Li Fei through giant posters in shopping malls, huge outdoor screens in parks, and fashion magazines held by his classmates. 

Or, he’d learn about him little by little through secret searches during computer class or conversations about celebrities among the students in front and behind him. 

Li Fei was the same age as him, the beloved son of the famous director Shen Mingde, whom he loved to show off. 

Director Shen was exceptionally talented, enjoying a high reputation both domestically and internationally, and Li Fei had embarked on an acting career from a young age. 

He was an excellent actor, not only making a name for himself in China early on but also appearing in several foreign films. Last year, he won a prestigious international film award, becoming its youngest recipient. 

Besides acting, Li Fei also played piano and violin. 

Although not a professional singer, he had released an album that sold well and received critical acclaim. His songs were frequently played on the school radio. 

Li Fei’s voice wasn’t boyish; it was deep and magnetic, possessing a captivating maturity beyond his years. 

Like his demeanor, he was elegant and sharp even at a young age, and rarely smiled. 

But when he did smile, it was like the rising sun, warm and dazzling—a beauty Fu Siting could never reach, a beauty unattainable in the clouds. 

The bus arrived at its stop, and the two girls got off. 

One of the girls’ small Li Fei plush toys hanging from her bag were knocked off. Fu Siting tried to call out to her, but his voice was drowned out. He too was pushed to a corner of the bus by the newly boarded passengers, but his gaze never left the plush toy. 

Only when they were almost at the final stop, and most of the passengers had disembarked, did he finally pick up the battered, blackened, and dirty plush toy from the ground. 

Gently wiping the dirt from the toy’s face, he carefully put it in his pocket. 

The final stop was a desolate old town beside a railway line. Narrow, potholed alleys, dilapidated, dark tenement buildings, there weren’t even streetlights. 

The lights in the stairwells had been broken for years, and no one had bothered to fix them. 

Fu Siting went upstairs in the dark, fumbling with the key in the lock for a while before finally opening the door. 

The room was small, and the rent was only three hundred yuan a month, not expensive. However, no matter how diligently he cleaned, he couldn’t get rid of the faint musty smell. 

The room was pitch black. Fu Siting didn’t turn on the light, went straight to the bed, and lay down on his back. 

When a person is truly beyond help, they don’t actually feel sadness or collapse. 

Instead, they become numb and insensitive. 

He lay there quietly, his handsome face expressionless. Like a soulless shell, he lay motionless for a long time. 

His stomach ached slightly. 

He clutched it; this wretched stomach had been aching on and off for the past two years, but he had never paid attention. He never even considered that it was a sign of illness 

…Why him? 

There are so many bad people in the world, and he tried his best to live, never doing anything wrong. Why was he the one who got sick? 

The small doll in his palm felt soft to the touch. 

Fu Siting held it up to his eyes, carefully wiping away the last stains. 

The doll was exquisitely made; although it was a chibi version, it truly captured some of Li Fei’s spirit. Fu Siting was lost in thought, his mind wandering. 

He had only seen one of Li Fei’s movies, a school event he organized in his first year of junior high. 

The movie was called “Rebirth,” a story about the grievances of the Republican era. 

At that time, Li Fei was not yet fourteen years old, but his eyes already possessed a cold glint. 

Throughout the entire movie, during his scenes, the entire theater was silent, everyone holding their breath and watching his every move. After the movie, almost all the girls in his class were discussing Li Fei, his handsomeness, his acting skills, the characters he portrayed. 

They also kept gossiping about which famous director he would collaborate with next to create another masterpiece. 

Fu Siting didn’t discuss it with anyone. 

He silently returned home, but his mind was filled with the image of that boy. 

In that movie, Li Fei played Gu Xun, a young master from a fallen family, burdened with national and personal vendettas. 

Because it was a Republican-era film, he had two completely different sets of makeup and costumes in the movie. One outfit was a sophisticated black leather suit, highlighting his upright spine and narrow, powerful waist; the other was a moonlit brocade gown from the Republican era, which he wore as he walked gracefully across the ruins of the crumbling stage, now engulfed in flames. 

The camera followed his steps, focusing on his ankles peeking out from beneath his gown in the firelight. 

Fu Siting’s gaze was fixed on him. 

A strange heat began to rise between his legs. The flames, moving up his gown, gradually burned through the screen and onto Fu Siting himself. 

His throat felt parched, a sensation he had never experienced before. 

After that day, Fu Siting found himself developing a special interest for Li Fei. 

He began unconsciously collecting snippets of information about him. Even a brief mention of Li Fei could make him happy all day. 

Seeing an advertisement for Li Fei on the street would bring a rare smile to his face. 

He couldn’t afford to go to the movies, but every time Li Fei had a new film released, it felt like a holiday. This unfamiliar feeling grew stronger each day, both sweet and vexing. 

It wasn’t until a late afternoon in early winter that he truly realized what this strange feeling was. 

That afternoon, he had a shameful dream. 

In the dream, Li Fei, wearing a pale white mandarin jacket from the Republican era, leaned back in a bamboo chair, his ankles still inadvertently exposed. 

He knelt before Li Fei, his fingers trembling, and reverently touched his ankles. 

Fu Siting woke up from this dream in the middle of the night, frozen on the bed, too shocked to speak. 

He washed his wet trousers. 

After changing, he couldn’t fall asleep again, curling up in bed in agony, gritting his teeth.

For the entire summer after that, he buried himself in his own thoughts. 

He was young then, and he forced himself to never think about Li Fei again, for fear of defiling him. 

But it was no use. 

Even after repeatedly telling himself he couldn’t, his delusions were like wildfire, impossible to extinguish, and his madness rekindled. 

… 

That night, Fu Siting packed a few changes of clothes in his house and rushed back to the hospital in the middle of the night. 

He had a gastroscopy the next afternoon, requiring him to fast all night and all morning. Not long after the surgery, the pathology report confirming stomach cancer came back. 

The doctor’s face was grave: “We can’t delay any longer; surgery must be arranged immediately.” Fu Siting was quickly admitted, and his surgery was scheduled for four days later. 

After being readmitted, Fu Siting lay in bed for a day. 

Perhaps it was bad luck, but the ward was unusually noisy that day. The family members in the next bed were arguing for some unknown reason, crying and screaming uncontrollably. Another bed had someone constantly making loud phone calls. And the bed next to that had a young couple arguing, sometimes calm, sometimes exasperated. 

The sounds mingled together, making Fu Siting extremely uncomfortable. 

So the next day, taking advantage of the nurse’s inattention, he quietly dressed and slipped back to school. 

When he entered the classroom, there was a moment of silence. 

The students whispered among themselves, their gazes filled with either pity or avoidance. Fu Siting had always been quiet and had few friends. Many knew that there was a withdrawn, difficult-to-get-along-with cripple in Class 4. 

And now, that withdrawn cripple was a dying cripple. 

Some people looked at him with the fear of looking at a corpse. And Fu Siting, looking at his reflection in the glass, indeed resembled a skeleton. 

… 

Fu Siting wasn’t unattractive before. 

In fact, the reason Liang Jun initially hated him and targeted him was because a girl Liang Jun liked in junior high had once praised Fu Siting for being handsome and academically gifted, her ideal type. 

Fu Siting was indeed quite good-looking in junior high. 

At that time, his mother hadn’t been diagnosed with uremia, and the family still had some compensation money left by his stepfather. He didn’t need to scrimp and save or work every day, so he wasn’t haggard. 

But in just one year, life had worn him down to an unrecognizable, emaciated state. 

Now he’s in terrible shape, and his grades have plummeted. 

He’s got nothing left. 

… 

After the first period, Teacher Kan called Fu Siting to the principal’s office. 

The principal offered a lot of comforting words, kindly telling him that the school would help him raise funds and that he must not give up hope. 

The principal and teachers were incredibly efficient. 

By noon, the fundraising event had begun. 

The loudspeaker relentlessly broadcast Fu Siting’s pitiful story of his parent’ illness and his disabled but determined nature. This resilient student was now suffering from cancer, and many students shed tears of sympathy. 

Fu Siting sat calmly in the classroom listening to all of this. 

No one wants their dignity to be torn apart and displayed for all to see. But when you’re at your wit’s end, you have no right to care about dignity. 

Besides, his messy life had already been spread around by Liang Jun and his ilks, making it known to everyone in the class. 

However, after class, quite a few students from other classes still lingered outside Class 4 of Grade 1, probably wanting to see what someone who was poor, lame, had cancer, and had no hope looked like. 

They finally saw Fu Siting. 

Fu Siting not only patiently attended an extra day of classes, but he also diligently performed his assigned cleaning duties. 

When they arrived, they saw the slender, tall, thinly dressed boy silently erasing the blackboard. He was much as the legendary aloof and gloomy figure they had heard about— dark, grayish eyes, pale lips. When he looked at them without smiling, he had a chillingly frightening quality. 

The onlookers scattered in fright. 

After erasing the blackboard, Fu Siting went to the cleaning area. 

Class Four’s cleaning area was on the rooftop, right under the loudspeaker of the broadcasting station. 

During the long break at dusk, the broadcasting station played Li Fei’s new song. 

Fu Siting stood in the sunset for a long time, listening to the music flow word by word, melody by melody. The song, mixed with the afterglow of the sunset, enveloped him, a rare warmth in the winter. 

He closed his eyes, recalling the glimpse he had seen on the girls’ screen that night, Li Fei shining brightly on stage. 

They were both sixteen this year. 

Under the same sky, yet so different. 

He struggled in the mud, never seeing the light of day. Li Fei, on the other hand, was a person from a high-class background, with a good family and a hardworking and ambitious personality. Not only was he incredibly talented in acting and singing, but by fifteen he could even fly a helicopter, excellent in every way. 

Heaven is unfair 

… But Fu Siting found that he found it difficult to hate Li Fei because of this unfairness. 

He could easily hate others, like the rich kids in his class, or other people who were born lucky. 

But Li Fei was special to him. Li Fei’s existence was one of the few rare beauties he could see in this meaningless world. 

He didn’t want Li Fei to fall into the mud. 

He wouldn’t feel good about it. 

He didn’t want to see him as miserable as he was. Such an untainted person should shine brightly in the clouds, always singing such beautiful songs, acting in such great movies, always positive and bright, picking stars one after another and putting them in his pocket. 

Fu Siting couldn’t quite explain what that feeling was. 

One shouldn’t harbor beautiful but unrealistic fantasies or hopes for someone they’ve never actually met, let alone idolize them. 

But even knowing this, he still wholeheartedly regarded Li Fei as the only guiding star in the night sky. 

Strange, isn’t it? 

He knew perfectly well that Li Fei’s beauty was likely just a screen image. What was the real Li Fei like? He would never know. 

But even so, just imagining that they were under the same sky, perhaps looking up at the same bright moon, breathing the same gentle breeze, offered him a sliver of comfort amidst the endless repression and pain. 

… 

Fu Siting didn’t know that that evening, he and Li Fei had actually been very close. 

The black sedan sped along the ring road, passing the entrance of the No.3 High School, heading towards the neighboring city. 

Inside the car, Li Fei smiled faintly at his agent across the way: “Alright, don’t look at me like that.” 

“I’m not sad.” 

“This isn’t his first illegitimate child.” 

“But Li Fei…” Agent Ji Cai looked worried, “We should be careful. This woman is definitely not a good person. She might very well force her way and become your stepmother. If she does, things could really get out of control.” 

“Yes, I know. I’ve made a contingency plan.” 

Outside the car, neon lights flickered, and Li Fei took out a document and handed it to Ji Cai.

It was a notarized will. 

“With this, even if I die, not a single piece of my mother’s inheritance will fall into the hands of her, my father, or any of my father’s other women or children.” 

Ji Cai was shocked, her hands trembling. “You…you’re so young, why are you writing a will? It’s so unlucky!” 

“That woman isn’t a good person, but she shouldn’t be! Besides, your father…Director Shen values ​​you so much, he would never allow any other woman to harm you!” 

Li Fei laughed. 

“You overestimate my father. He only cares about himself; I’m completely insignificant to him.” 

“But as long as everyone knows that even if they kill me, all my assets will be donated, and no one will get a penny, they won’t have much motivation to do it, right?”

“But I’ll have to trouble Auntie to publicize this notarization as soon as possible.” 

Ji Cai looked at Li Fei, feeling a pang of heartache. 

Li Fei’s deep black eyes only reflected the gradually setting sunset outside the car window. 

***

Author’s Note: 

Sixteen-year-old Fu Siting: Birth, old age, sickness, and death, unable to afford food. 

Sixteen-year-old Li Fei: Everything imaginable, including the drama and intrigue of wealthy families. 

Li Fei’s father is a director who rose to fame through his mother’s connections; although he’s now famous and wealthy, his grandparents are the true tycoons.