Wang An was the first to walk in. When Wang An saw Zhang Bin, it was like an animal seeing food. Even Gu Chen didn’t expect Wang An to move so fast. In a blink, Wang An’s fist landed on Zhang Bin’s face. And the man groaned. Zhang Bin was handcuffed so he couldn’t avoid the punch.
Wang An glared at Zhang Bin. In his childish voice, he grunted, “There is nothing to clarify. He’s the one who did it. I hate myself for not killing him when I had the chance. Or else my sister Fang Xiao Qi wouldn’t have killed herself. He’s the one behind it!”
Zhang Bin was startled and then said with disbelief, “Fang Xiao Qi killed herself?”
Wang An hissed, “You still want to play the fool now? That day at our home, you were the one who said this was not over. You would not stop until you ruin my whole family. Have you not said that?! You’re a man, if you have the guts, then admit the truth!” Wang An was mature for his age but he was still a boy and tears soon fell down his face, “When I was small, my older brother and sisters have no work, we don’t know how to earn money and father has to work very hard to keep our lives afloat. My big sister, Fang Xiao Qi went around collecting bottles to earn some extra money. But she would never spend the money on herself, instead she’d buy snacks so that I could bring them to school.” Wang An’s whole body was shaking. “If not for my sister, I would not be here today. Because of her, I’m not afraid when the other kids laugh at me, I don’t mind having no new clothes, I’m not worried about going to sleep with an empty stomach.” Wang An shouted out his anger, “But you, you have ruined her!”
We managed to imagine a soft yet determined girl from Wang An’s description. She might not be good with words, but she was not a soft flower. But such a person had chosen to commit suicide on New Year’s Eve, just how much despair she must have felt to pick a choice like that.
And Wang An understood that despair.
Faced with a boy around 8, Zhang Bin was totally silent. In this world of ours, maturity was never relevant to age.
“Well, say something!” Wang An demanded.
Zhang Bin’s body shivered and then he admitted, “I did, but I wasn’t the one who did those things, it was your older brother, not me!” When Zhang Bin said that, I knew things were probably not far from my expectation. Under the interrogation of a primary school boy, Zhang Bin told the truth. I soon realized there was just a small difference between my hypothesis and Zhang Bin’s details of the truth.
When the trio was released from the detention centre, there was only one and a half months left until the new year. However, the trio had not even a single cent on them because they were locked up and were unable to do any ‘business’. Naturally, they blamed Hao Ren for it. If not for Hao Ren, they would be able to earn at least 1000 RMB every month. It was not a lot but it was enough to celebrate the new year. Hao Ren’s appearance had ruined that. So Zhang Bin decided to take revenge.
Zhang Bin’s revenge was to ruin Hao Ren’s new year as well. They harassed the boss of the internet café and got Hao Ren fired from his job. However, Hao Ren didn’t get angered at all, this instead angered Zhang Bin. When Zhang Bin looked into Hao Ren’s background, he found out the man had adopted 4 children.
The eldest son was Du Zigui, he worked at a vehicle repair shop and thus Zhang Bin approached Du Zigui. After Du Zigui got off work, Zhang Bin’s group stopped him on his way home and ambushed him. Zhang Bin was not satisfied after a full beating so they dragged Du Zigui to his container home and trapped him there. They went out to call Hao Ren and had him meet them at the place. However, when they returned home, they realized Du Zigui had drunk the glass of liquid they left on the table. Unfortunately, the glass contained not water but amidone.
Amidone was a drug meant to help drug addicts, invented in the second world war. Compared to heroin, morphine, amidone’s half-life was longer, it was between 24 hours to 36 hours. In comparison, the half-life of heroin is 2 to 4 hours. In other words, 2 to 4 hours after someone took heroin, they would have the need to take the second hit. If they couldn’t find heroin, their life would become hell.
After the first drink of amidone, one would have the need to ingest it again after 24 hours. It was designed as an alternative to stronger drugs but amidone was found out to be addictive too. In fact, this treatment was no different from swapping out the bigger devil for the smaller devil. In China, amidone was banned like all the other drugs.
However, there were 8 test rehab centres in China that still used this treatment. This was because amidone was cheap. One day of treatment only cost 10 RMB but the efficacy of this treatment was highly contentious. In any case, patients at these centres had to take drug tests often, if they were found to have positive traces of drugs other than amidone in their system, they would immediately be sent to permanent rehab.
Since amidone was about as expensive as heroin on the black market, some drug addicts would take advantage of this opportunity. They would ingest the amidone but not swallow it. After they left the centre, they would spit out the drug and trade it on the black market for drugs of their choice. So at the centres, to prevent this from happening, the doctors would have the patient drink a glass of water after ingesting the amidone and then had the patients speak or else they weren’t allowed to leave the centre.
Elm Town was not a location where such a rehab centre could be found. This particular glass of amidone was a payment from a drug addict who owed the trio money. Zhang Bin planned to sell the drug on the black market but Du Zigui had ruined that by drinking it. Du Zigui was not a drug user and he didn’t know any, so he assumed the glass contained normal water. That was how Du Zigui was turned into a drug addict.
When Zhang Bin saw the amidone was drunk by the kid, he was so angry. He wanted to have Hao Ren pay him the compensation when he was hit by a brilliant idea. He found the drug addict who owed him money to get a small bag of heroin. Zhang Bin’s group packed and left their container home that night. When he was packing, Zhang Bin accidentally spilled some of the white dust on his bed, and that was the trace which I found later.
The trio found a random motel to stay for the night. The second day, Du Zigui was still left alone at Zhang Bin’s home. Zhang Bin went back to feed the kid some breakfast and then purposely left the bag of heroin at the most conspicuous spot before he left. When Du Zigui saw the bag of drugs, something came over him. Du Zigui’s heart muddled as he stared at the bag of white dust. He had no idea what came over him but there was a voice inside him which told him that the dust was good for him and he should take a good sniff of it. In the end, the desire for drugs won over rationality.
He took down the pack and placed the dust under his nose. With a snort, the whole world seemed to float. Du Zigui was an honest man and took all the punishment the world directed at him silently. He had a lot of complaints for his boss but he never said anything. He kept everything bottled up. But with a snort, every trouble that he had melted away.
Just like that Du Zigui became Zhang Bin’s third lackey and he accompanied Zhang Bin to the hospital several times. However Du Zigui became too stuck to Zhang Bin. Zhang Bin just wanted to corrupt Du Zigui as revenge against Hao Ren. He was not a charity organization to feed Du Zigui’s drug addiction. However, Du Zigui had no channel to source the heroin but Zhang Bin so he stuck close to Zhang Bin. Zhang Bin eventually got tired of it.
One night, over beers, Zhang Bin couldn’t stand Du Zigui’s complaint anymore. He cursed, “Damn it, I’m not your father. If you want to take a hit, then go and buy it yourself. If you have no money, how about this? I remember you have a sister called Fang Xiao Qi who is quite cute. If you fuck her, then I will buy the drug for you.”
Then everyone at the table laughed... other than Du Zigui. Zhang Bin managed to get rid of Du Zigui for 2 days. When he returned, the first thing that Du Zigui said silenced the 3 men immediately, “I fucked my little sister like you asked.”
Zhang Bin looked at the young man and felt goosebumps crawl all over him. Zhang Bin was reminded of the drug addicts who lived with him in the container neighbourhood. Those people would do anything when they were in the throes of drug withdrawal.
Zhang Bin did live up to his promise. He found a bag of heroin for Du Zigui. He tossed the bag to the side and Du Zigui ran after it like a dog. While Du Zigui was high, Zhang Bin’s group left in a hurry. The trio didn’t dare to return to their container home because they were afraid of running into Du Zigui.
We were fuming as Zhang Bin explained, “This has nothing to do with me. He was the one who drank the amidone, and he was the one who took the heroin. I didn’t tell him to take it. Plus how could he take what was clearly a joke so seriously? If I told him to kill 100 people, would he have done it too?”
So it was indeed someone familiar who raped Fang Xiao Qi, someone whom she couldn’t have been more familiar with. Everything made sense now. Fang Xiao Qi was raped by her own brother one month ago. The torment followed her for a whole month until she couldn’t stand it anymore and chose to end her life on the eve of Lunar New Year.
While the fireworks burst in the sky, she bloomed like a bloody firework under the bridge.
1 comment:
fuckin dammit
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