Main Story Part 13XiYan takes a long drag on the cigarette, "You can"t imagine how it feels like to be locked away in a metal box all alone for two days and two nights. You definitely won"t be able to understand the fear and madness you feel when you can"t control your bodily fluids and they flow out of your own body. After that, you would live together with your faeces in a dark s.p.a.ce that never sees light. It reeks inside there. It"s completely dark in there and is completely filled with despair. It just so happened to be our Young Master"s 9th birthday during those days. No cake, no candles, just darkness and a stinky metal box…"
Rings of smoke are breathed out, "He was left inside the house with nothing to eat, he could only constantly drink tap water. Unfortunately, after his mum finally came back, there were no delicious delicacies like how he had predicted, there was only a whipping for him go to go see ZhouGong[1] (T/N: to go to sleep/pa.s.s out). The child escaped to his father and elder brother but was kicked out because he was small, skinny, dirty and stank…"
"Later on, the mafia boss died from an illness and it became a problem of who would be the successor. Everybody recommended the child"s brother because not only was he clever, tactful and well-behaved, he was also loved by his own mum and the mafia boss since he was young. The prost.i.tute wasn"t content and so just like a dead horse being the doctor of a live horse (T/N: last resort), she sent her own ten year old child to an a.s.sa.s.sin"s training camp. The child didn"t want to leave so he cried and begged, but the mum kicked him and said, "I"m doing all of this for your sake, this is me loving you!!"
By then he had finished smoking his first cigarette, XiYan takes out a lighter and lights his second cigarette. He takes a drag and continues, "An a.s.sa.s.sin training camp, what kind of place could that be? It"s just a deserted island, it"s just a place where people would die everyday. Children would sleep in the pen every night. When you sleep you must always stay alert because you never know when a mouse would climb into your stomach and eat your organs. If you die, it"s very simple, you"ll either be thrown into the forest to be fed to the tigers or thrown into the sea to feed the sharks. Our Young Master ate rats and wild gra.s.s there. One year later, he used a dagger and made his very first kill: the first person who stole his meat. At that time, our Young Master was 12 years old, he learnt how to protect himself…"
"An instructor took a liking to our beautiful Young Master. One time, he was pressed beneath the instructor who kept saying he loved him, while using a leather belt and stun gun to commence SM play. Luckily, that instructor only liked SM. Oh, that instructor really liked to use the stun gun, he liked watching the convulsions and spasms of beautiful juveniles after they were stunned. Fortunately, that instructor didn"t like personally topping an extremely stinky XiaoGui. However, that day, our Young Master watched with his very own eyes, the scene of five people doing it. The girl kept on looking at him using begging eyes, from crying to begging for mercy to hysterical laughter, despair and utter madness. It continued until the girl"s eyes rolled to the back of her head and she never made a sound again. That year, our Young Master was 15."
"After that, the silent juvenile used his thin body and from a tiger"s mouth, rescued person after person who would have died, I was one of them. We united together, we protected him and he protected us…"
Another smoke ring is breathed out, "When Young Master was twenty, he used a knife and independently led us to destroy that island and kill all the instructors. He brought us, a bunch of people with slight neuroticism back here and gave us a place where we could live."
"This year, our 23 year old Young Master got wounded from his brother"s ambush, but Young Master sent us a message telling us that he was okay and that we shouldn"t act rashly because he found someone who truly loved him. That person is you, if you left him there from the beginning or kicked him aside, I can guarantee that you would still be the same you as before, but if there was one thing you shouldn"t have done no matter what, was extend your hand out to him, you definitely shouldn"t have sheltered him either. You even gave him so much sunlight."
XiYan throws the cigarette b.u.t.t onto the floor and steps on it with his leather shoes. He looks towards me with a slight glint in his eyes and says, "In Young Master"s life, he"s never experienced what real love and care is, so he used his own method to obtain you. You reap what you sew, in Young Master"s eyes, the more he cares about someone, the less he"s in control of the severity and harshness of his methods. The wounds on your body are more than enough evidence of how important you are to Young Master. This has never happened before, it"s true that he sometimes is very violent and can"t control his strength, but we all respect him very much. He may be an abnormal, but he is still the person we respect the most and the person we are willing to put our lives on the line for in order to protect."
"It"s best if you don"t defy him, otherwise he really will do just about anything. At the same time, I also hope you can save our Young Master and allow him to feel true love."
"Since you gave him hope, you shouldn"t hurt him because of it. This is the reason why I"m telling you his past."
After finishing his speech, XiYan nods in my direction and just leaves, leaving a room filled with the smell of smoke and a room full of pain.
I"m on the couch, thinking over what CanSheng said to me, his story…
"My mum has loved me ever since I was young. She was scared that I would die so she asked a teacher to teach me self-defense skills. The wounds on my body started to build up since then. I know she did all of it because she loves me."
"I have an elder brother. I think he doesn"t think very highly of me, but mum says that as long as I"m stronger than my brother, he"ll think highly of me and respect me. So in order for my brother to like me, mum send me to a small island. That small island had forests, fresh gra.s.s and flowers, beautiful scenery and an azure blue sea. There was an instructor there who taught me how to kill people. Life was very tough but I know that mum had my best interests at heart, so I strived hard to live and survive."
No wonder he"s so persistent on eating meat, no wonder he"s so fragile at night, no wonder he"s so afraid of lightning…
No wonder he"s so anxious, no wonder he can"t bear to part with me…
Now that I think about the excuse he often uses, the light can"t see me, I can"t see the light, it"s because of that metal box ba…
CanSheng, would you break down if you blamed your past on love…
That night, I intensely stare at CanSheng when he opens the door and walks inside the room.
He just stands in the evening glow with a head of slightly overgrown black hair half covering his pretty eyes and a clean and refined gaunt chin. A white shirt fits around his body, clearly he"s such a tall and big person yet he seems a bit skinny. So inside that weak body, there was actually so much pain and darkness buried inside, how did he survive each day and night?
The ten years spent on that island, how did he survive it, clearly he"s at the age where he should just be standing by the window, facing the wind and talking about one"s youth with a smile…
CanSheng, CanSheng…
You make my heart ache so, so much…
I don"t know whether my feelings now are merely out of sympathy or if I"ve actually already fallen in love with that dumb Chou XiaoZi. I only know that I wish to see him reveal his true smile, I want him to experience true feelings, I want him to forget the past he can barely look back on…
At that instance, I softly say, "Welcome home."
And then, tears start running down my face…
He just looks at my tears falling down one by one helplessly before finally licking them away, "YunSheng, what"s the matter?"
I kiss his lips and say, "I"ll never leave you."
T/N
[1] 见周公 This is a phrase that means to go to sleep, or in some instances to pa.s.s out. It literally just means to go and meet the man named Zhou Gong. This phrase has a story behind it that"s called "Dreaming Zhou Gong" (梦周公）that comes out of the a.n.a.lects of Confucius and it goes like this:
Zhou Gong is a politician of the early Western Zhou Dynasty and accomplished great things for the. During the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius really advocated Zhou Gong, and held him in a high position in his heart to the point where he often dreamt of Zhou Gong. Later, Confucius became a government official for the State of Lu and wanted to recover the system of the Western Zhou dynasty but this idea was rejected and he was forced to leave the State of Lu. After that, he travelled around and tried to put forward his own ideas but was rejected everywhere so he could only return to the State of Lu. By then, he had already aged and exclaimed, "甚矣吾衰也！久矣吾不复梦见周公!" Which basically means, I have already become so old that I haven"t dreamt of Zhou Gong in a long time.
And so seeing Zhou Gong meant that you would be dreaming of Zhou Gong in your sleep.
Extra Note: Although this story is being posted as chapters, this is not necessarily the original chapters. This is because, the original author has deleted this story off her own TieBa, so as a translator I am relying on other sources (e.g reposts of the author"s TieBa) to divide chapters, however since it"s reposts, the date of posting and possibly chapter separations may not be accurate. Thank you, Rui.