Chapter 170

170: The Lives of the Supporting Cast

There's a saying: those with nothing to lose fear nothing.

Having nothing from the start, Shen Qingyang had never been afraid of loss.

His foster father was a drunk and a gambler. Once, he owed a debt—payable with a hand.

When the collectors came, the man was out. Shen Qingyang's foster mother, trembling, grabbed his thin wrist and pushed it forward.

"He's not here. Will this do? We truly have no money."

He was young then, his wrist as thin as a stick from constant hunger.

His expression was eerily calm. Vacant. Sorrow had died in him long before he ever learned the word for it. He hadn't felt sadness since he was very small.

The debt collector's face twitched, probably never expecting someone to offer up their son. He didn't dare actually take the hand, leaving with a sullen scowl instead.

The villagers said the Shen family was bad bamboo that somehow produced a good shoot. The couple were plain, but the child they'd brought in was fair-skinned, clean, and likable.

Shen Qingyang grew up on the charity of the village.

Once, a neighbor, unable to bear his pangs of hunger, called him in and fed him a meal. After that, his foster parents never set out his bowl and chopsticks again.

He learned early he wasn't their blood.

"We found you in a trash can in the dead of winter, a tiny little thing. I was on sanitation duty, saw you, you see?"

"If we hadn't taken you in, you'd be dead. Understand? A person should know gratitude!"

The village's only primary school was kilometers away. At 5:30 every morning, Shen Qingyang began his walk.

Summer was tolerable; the mosquitos were a minor nuisance. In winter, crossing the frozen ground left his limbs swollen and purple.

A college student volunteering as a teacher couldn't bear it and found him two old coats.

He couldn't wash them—washing made them lose their warmth. He wore them for years.

School by day, stumbling home in the dark to work.

A child like that should have died young.

But he hadn't died as an infant, discarded in a bin by his birth mother. He hadn't died growing up abused, never even contracting a serious illness.

Officials had come for poverty alleviation, but they alleviated poverty, not willpower. The moment they left, the couple reverted.

The most laughable part was when the village allocated a piglet to the family, hoping his foster father would raise it.

The pig grew thinner than Shen Qingyang. The man sold it secretly, went to town to visit a brothel, and got caught in a vice raid. The aid worker nearly fainted from rage.

Shen Qingyang's formal education ended after junior high.

Compulsory education lasted only nine years. No one would pay the fees.

That summer, he gathered medicinal herbs and mushrooms in the mountains. Every three days, he walked five kilometers to sell them to a dealer in town, his hands and feet rubbed raw.

After a whole summer of backbreaking work, he saved 1,917.5 yuan. Enough for the first semester's tuition and living expenses at high school.

The rural education was poor, but his score barely scraped him into a standard high school. No scholarship. His worst subject was English—62 points, with 8 lucky guesses on the listening section.

Boarding was 600 a semester, tuition 900. That left 417 for food. Once in high school, he could apply for financial aid.

There will be a way, he told himself, lying with his acceptance letter under his pillow.

But on his last night at that house, exhaustion took him.

He slept too deeply.

When he woke, the letter was still under the pillow. The money was gone.

He searched desperately. Asked his foster mother. She claimed ignorance. His foster father was out.

Shen Qingyang waited by the door until the man returned, swinging a small bag of spiced takeout.

"Where's my money?" His clenched fists trembled.

The tuition he'd sweated a summer for—his foster father had taken it to a mahjong parlor in town and lost every last cent.

Shen Qingyang was willing to kneel, to kowtow to those men, to beg the money back and sign an IOU to repay it later. But he didn't even know who they were.

For the first time in all those years, he cried. Screamed. Wanted to fight to the death.

His foster father slapped him hard across the face. "I saved your life! What's wrong with taking a little money? What use is studying? You should get out and earn money early, pay me back for all these years of room and board!"

Shen Qingyang finally ran away.

—

In this world, if you're willing to endure hardship, you can always earn something.

Job opportunities were scarce in small places. It took Shen Qingyang another two months to finally save a little.

Why City K? Perhaps because the volunteer teacher who'd once helped him was from a university there. Shen Qingyang held a vague, inexplicable fondness for the place.

The bus ticket cost 164 yuan. He had to go to the county seat, transfer to the city, then catch another bus to K.

The high-speed rail was actually cheaper, but Shen Qingyang didn't know that.

He was fifteen. No phone. No ID. His clothes were new: pants for 29, shirt for 19, shoes for 45. All clearance summer wear, even as winter approached.

The big city was beautiful. So beautiful. A pity he had no home here.

If a person had a luck stat, Shen Qingyang's would be permanently in the negatives.

Few places hired underage labor. With nowhere to stay, he slept in a park for several nights.

One day, half-asleep, someone shook him awake. A middle-aged man struck up a conversation.

Asked where he was from, why he was here.

Shen Qingyang told him.

The man said it was a shame, offered to introduce him to a job, even said he could give him a little money.

Overjoyed, Shen Qingyang followed him to a beat-up Santana. The man didn't get into the driver's seat. He climbed into the back and tried to kiss him.

Terrified, gripped by a nauseating disgust, Shen Qingyang fumbled for the door handle, hands shaking. He ran and never looked back.

But that was long ago. Or perhaps not so long—four years? Five?

From leaving home to reaching the city, Shen Qingyang drifted through odd jobs. He finally broke his leg at an unregulated construction site and, as misfortune would have it, met Lu Yan.

Sometimes, Shen Qingyang wondered how Doctor Lu saw him. Did he look at him the way Shen Qingyang had once looked at that middle-aged man?

Dirty. Disgusting. Something to be hidden.

Base desire.

*

Shen Qingyang liked Lu Yan. Who didn't? Even the dogs in the complex wagged their tails harder for him.

Sometimes, Shen Qingyang wondered if he was different to Lu Yan.

The doctor thanked him. Checked his recovery progress. Gave him books he no longer needed.

But the thought felt presumptuous, so audacious he usually didn't dare entertain it.

Doctor Lu was good to everyone. Shen Qingyang had never seen him lose his temper, not even with the most difficult patients or their families.

"The Pollution Disease has brought much suffering," Shen Qingyang once said to the Prophet. "But I am grateful for it."

Without it, his entire life would likely have remained just that.

Shen Qingyang's starting point was too low. It wasn't for lack of effort; he had simply hit the ceiling of his own ascent.

A junior high education. A lame leg. Utterly alone.

Sometimes, in secret, Shen Qingyang thought: the world is unstable now. If he saved Lu Yan, would the other come to like him too?

He held no attachment to human society. The only person he couldn't let go of was Lu Yan.

That's why Lu Cheng's words had enraged him so.

How dare he? How dare he touch someone Shen Qingyang didn't even dare brush against in secret?

Pollutants were prone to emotional extremes. By the time Shen Qingyang calmed down, his teacher was reduced to a single, screaming eyeball.

"Don't kill me! I have foresight! I can tell you the future you wish to see!"

—

Shen Qingyang wished to see a future with Lu Yan in it.

His pollution index was higher than Lu Cheng's, so he saw further.

He saw the future where Lu Yan was devoured.

A new god, usurping the old god's vessel, descending upon the world.

That was a future Shen Qingyang would not allow.

So, Shen Qingyang declared, "I will prove… I am the one most suited for you, Doctor."

He offered himself to Lu Yan. Completely. Without reservation.

Watching the white umbilical cords pierce his body, Shen Qingyang's smile was one of pure, unadulterated happiness.

He wanted Lu Yan to live.

Even if the world where Lu Yan lived had no place for him.

As consciousness faded, instinctual survival struggle made him twitch weakly, but the white tendrils held fast.

In his fading haze, he met Lu Yan's slowly opening eyes.

Shen Qingyang wept. But in the sea, those tears would be invisible.

"Will you remember me, Doctor?"

—

Lu Yan thought for a long time before deciding to inform Tang Xun'an. "I'm going to visit Shen Qingyang's grave."

He knew Tang Xun'an didn't like him.

But Shen Qingyang was different from the others. Gu Zheng had his comrades at the Research Institute. Feng Qing had his fellow soldiers. Other deceased Awakened had descendants… Only Shen Qingyang. Besides Lu Yan, perhaps no one else would remember.

Tang Xun'an's hand, sharpening a blade, paused. "Alright. Come back early."

The system clicked its tongue admiringly. [Now that's what you call the main consort. This is the dignity of the primary position, wouldn't you say, Emperor Di?]

Lu Yan didn't reply. He finished breakfast, went out, and got in the car.

The driver was ready. He stepped on the accelerator, heading for the cemetery.

The plot was also bought by Lu Yan. Shen Qingyang died young. Only twenty-one.

If he'd stayed in school, he'd have been a college student, not yet graduated.

He was willing to learn, his mind wasn't slow. If he'd studied properly, his grades wouldn't have been poor.

Lu Yan gazed out the car window. Winter held the world in its grip, yet along the roadside, from the skeletal branches of barren trees, tender green buds were defiantly pushing through.

In his arms, he held a bouquet of bellflowers, a deep blue verging on purple. He’d asked the driver to get them.

A love that was all or nothing. Obsessive. Hopeless.

He would remember.

(Side Story - End)