However, Shu Dong was still very puzzled. "Why did you come to get a tattoo?"
Not understanding why the topic had suddenly shifted, Yu Zhiyi suddenly thought of the afternoon in April when he had first met her. He looked at Shu Dong, and the atmosphere between them suddenly felt much less confrontational.
"I wanted to try it," Yu Zhiyi said.
"Do you still want to try it now?" Shu Dong asked.
Yu Zhiyi suddenly fell silent.
Shu Dong smiled, a faint trace of sarcasm in her expression. She stepped forward and lifted Yu Zhiyi's white T-shirt...
"What are you doing?" Yu Zhiyi was startled by her sudden movement.
As Shu Dong looked at the completely unblemished skin of his back—which she had expected all along—why did her heart ache so much?
His fondness for her was just like the tattoo on his back: he only wanted to give it a try. Once he grew tired of it, the tattoo could be washed away, and the person could be discarded just as easily. He was merely passing through for a brief moment, yet he had brought Shu Dong the despair of a withered tree blooming in spring only to die completely once again.
Realizing belatedly what she was looking at, Yu Zhiyi slowly took hold of Shu Dong's hand, his voice gentle. "Government institutions don't allow tattoos on the body, so I went and had it removed. Don't overthink it."
Right. As it turned out, the world he belonged to could not accept someone like her.
Yet why was this world's judgment of a person's worth so distorted?
Shu Dong looked at Yu Zhiyi's refined, bespectacled face. She had always looked up to and envied people who studied, but now she was finally experiencing it firsthand: people with good grades did not necessarily keep the benevolence and morality from books in their hearts, and street punks were not necessarily all scoundrels and ruffians; people with tattoos were not necessarily bad people, and those dressed in suits and leather shoes were not necessarily good ones.
***
"Brother Feng, Brother Feng, why are they starting to strip?"
Little streamer Chen Hui went live again. Song Feng gripped the edges of his game console so tightly that his knuckles gradually turned pale. He raised his hand and flung the console onto the table with a loud crash.
Chen Hui was startled as he stood by the window, and the little brats playing games all stole glances at Song Feng.
"What's wrong?" Chen Hui felt a bit guilty.
Song Feng ignored him. Ever since Shu Dong and Yu Zhiyi went downstairs, he hadn't glanced outside even once, but now he was going to go down there and see just how foolish she could be.
Glancing out the window, he saw her pulling aside Yu Zhiyi's clothes, though he couldn't tell what she was looking at. With a gloomy expression, Song Feng headed straight downstairs.
***
Lowering his clothes, Shu Dong maintained a calm expression, though her breathing was trembling. There was nothing left to say. She pulled her hand out of his grip. "Yu Zhiyi, I deeply regret being with you."
Still lost in the fantasy that Shu Dong would once again obediently hang on his every word, the gentleness on Yu Zhiyi's face instantly froze, then turned sinister. He stared coldly at Shu Dong. "So that's why you went with Song Feng?"
"So what if I did?" Shu Dong replied.
She hadn't wanted to make things too ugly, but a feast attended with ill intent rarely reached a graceful end.
"What do you see in him?" Yu Zhiyi asked.
"He's better than you."
Yu Zhiyi let out a scoff. "Did you sleep with him?"
"I did."
Yu Zhiyi was momentarily stunned, but the next moment he burst out laughing. "You're just trying to make me angry, aren't you?"
Shu Dong smiled faintly. "Do you think it's necessary?"
The scales in his heart were gradually tilting. Given her taciturn nature, Yu Zhiyi didn't believe she would actually do anything with Song Feng. But Shu Dong as she appeared right now was sharp, somewhat aloof, and most importantly, completely dismissive of him—something Yu Zhiyi had never anticipated.
"Are you done talking?"
Song Feng stepped forward and pulled Shu Dong to his side. Standing too far away, he hadn't heard what they had just said, but judging by Yu Zhiyi's expression, he didn't seem particularly triumphant. It looked like Shu Dong wasn't entirely foolish after all.
As if offering a reward, Song Feng ruffled Shu Dong's hair. Surprisingly, this time she didn't dodge away; instead, she leaned a bit closer into Song Feng's embrace. "Let's go."
He had expected her to be bewitched by Yu Zhiyi's honeyed words when she came down, but to his surprise, not only was she not fooled, she had returned with a completely different attitude. Highly satisfied, Song Feng couldn't help smiling as he looked at her.
He put his arm around Shu Dong's shoulders and turned to leave.
Yet Song Feng's smile, in Yu Zhiyi's eyes, was nothing short of provocation. Watching the backs of the two figures leaving, Yu Zhiyi felt a sharp, throbbing pain at the back of his head. "Song Feng, do you like my leftovers that much?"
As expected, Song Feng stopped in his tracks. He looked down at Shu Dong, but could only see her lowered eyelashes.
This time, Song Feng genuinely cared about Shu Dong; there was no exploitation or ulterior motive involved.
Shu Dong's eyes were already shrouded in gloom and disappointment; adding another layer wouldn't make much difference.
Song Feng tightened his arm slightly around her shoulder in silent comfort. Then, he turned around, his fists already itching for a fight.
Seeing the two of them stop, Yu Zhiyi achieved his goal. He stepped forward and continued with a smile, "Looking at it this way, the two of you really are a perfect match."
"Song Feng has lived with his grandpa and grandma." Yu Zhiyi's gaze swept over them before finally landing on Shu Dong. "And as for you, Dongdong, you don't even know who your biological parents are, nor do you know where the human traffickers who kidnapped you are now."
"A perfect match."
Song Feng knew Yu Zhiyi wouldn't say anything pleasant, and his fists had already hardened like iron. But the more he listened... for a moment, he couldn't quite understand what Yu Zhiyi was talking about, except that he could feel the girl beside him trembling slightly.
With a blank stare, Song Feng looked down at Shu Dong's pale and distraught appearance. A fire gradually ignited within his chest. Without stopping to ponder what nonsense Yu Zhiyi was spouting, he took two steps forward and lashed out with a kick at Yu Zhiyi.
Yu Zhiyi, who had been prepared, dodged to the side.
Given Song Feng's state of extreme fury, had Yu Zhiyi failed to dodge, he probably would have spent half a month recovering in the hospital.
"Damn it! Why are they fighting again?!"
Had Song Feng looked up just then, he would have seen a row of heads—led by Chen Hui—protruding from the third-floor internet cafe window. Chen Hui bolted down the stairs immediately.
"Yu Zhiyi, are you even human?!"
Song Feng grabbed Yu Zhiyi by the collar and slammed him fiercely against the wall. Thinking of the trembling girl beside him moments before, all of Song Feng's blood rushed to his head. In a blind rage, three Yu Zhiyis wouldn't have been a match for him.
Though it felt as though his internal organs were being shaken out of place, Yu Zhiyi still managed to smile. "The truth is often hard to accept."
A few yards away, Shu Dong listened to the sounds of the two men arguing and fighting behind her, feeling as though it were all happening in a distant realm. In her world, only a single sentence kept echoing endlessly: You don't even know your biological parents, nor do you know where the human traffickers who kidnapped you are now.
Shu Dong raised her head to look at the sky. The world spun wildly, as if the heavens might collapse at any second and crush her under their weight. Steadying herself, she walked back toward the tattoo parlor like a walking corpse...
None of it—none of it had anything to do with her.
Song Feng watched her frail figure retreat, and his heart ached abruptly. Seizing the moment when Song Feng was distracted, Yu Zhiyi rapidly broke free from his grip and delivered a heavy punch to Song Feng's face.
"Song Feng, are you trying to use her to disgust me? Well, I'm sorry to ruin your clever little scheme. I don't care about her, and I don't like her, so do whatever you want with her."
Yu Zhiyi put his absolute all into that punch. Song Feng felt as though his jaw had been dislodged, instantly plunging him into a numb wave of pain. Yet in the grips of extreme fury, pain goes unfelt; the rapid surge of adrenaline kept his entire body in a state of high excitement.
Without a moment's hesitation, Song Feng returned two punches. "Yu Zhiyi, didn't you go off to live your noble college life? Why are you still tangling with me now?"
"Remember this: whatever belongs to you, I can take it whenever I want. As for my things, the ones you took were only ever what I threw away."
After taking those two punches, Yu Zhiyi was completely dazed. His jaw ached so fiercely he couldn't muster even an ounce of strength, and blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. His black-rimmed glasses were long gone, but as he looked at Song Feng's arrogant face—
Leveraging his position, Yu Zhiyi pinned Song Feng's head and slammed it viciously against the wall...
Song Feng's gaze was still fixed on Shu Dong's retreating figure. When the pain struck, he felt a brief flash of bewilderment, but he could no longer utter a single word. Blood streamed down from the top of his head, blurring his vision, and then he collapsed to the ground, tottering and unsteady.
***
Just as Chen Hui rounded the corner after coming downstairs, he saw Song Feng collapse to the ground. His footsteps froze, his eyes filled with sheer disbelief.
"Brother Feng!" Snapping out of it, Chen Hui sprinted toward them as hard as he could. "Brother Feng!"
Taking advantage of the moment Song Feng had been distracted by watching Shu Dong, Yu Zhiyi had treacherously succeeded. But he wasn't faring much better himself; Song Feng's punches were always vicious and accurate. Yu Zhiyi sat slumped on the ground in exhaustion, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, looking thoroughly wretched.
Yet as he looked at the dying Song Feng beside him, he actually smiled with satisfaction.
"Brother Feng, Brother Feng," Chen Hui gingerly lifted Song Feng's head, panic mounting as he looked at his blood-covered face. "Stop fucking playing dead with me, say something!"
Song Feng still gave no response.
"Yu Zhiyi, you just wait." It had been a long time since such a fierce look had appeared on Chen Hui's face, but right now he had no mood to fight Yu Zhiyi.
Pulling out his phone with slightly trembling hands, Chen Hui dialed the emergency number.
Yu Zhiyi let out a faint laugh. "Relax, he won't die."
The kids upstairs, realizing something was wrong, threw caution to the wind and abandoned Chen Hui's order to stay put. Three or four boys came rushing down the stairs.
Well, Yu Zhiyi was in for a miserable time.
***
The hospital was very close. Inside the ambulance, Song Feng gradually regained a sliver of consciousness. He cracked his eyes open a tiny slit, and through his hazy vision...
He saw Shu Dong's face.
"Am I ugly?"
The heart that had been hanging in mid-air finally settled back down. Shu Dong let out a long breath. "Ugly."
Song Feng twitched the corner of his mouth.
Shu Dong smiled as well.
Back at school, Boss Song frequently ended up bruised and battered from fights, and various female classmates would practically fight for the privilege of caring for him by his hospital bed—all of whom Boss Song chased away because he felt that looking bruised and swollen ruined his image.
Even young men had their pride.
"Why'd you call an ambulance?" Song Feng asked weakly.
"Weren't you scared?"
"What was there to be scared of..."
"I was scared I'd be a young widow!"
Song Feng couldn't help laughing, though the movement was so slight it was barely perceptible. He felt his eyelids grow heavy and his head throb as if it were splitting open, and a moment later, he lost consciousness once more.
With her entire attention focused on Song Feng, Shu Dong watched his every minute reaction. Seeing him close his eyes again, the heart that had just settled down flew right back up.
She probed tentatively, "Song Feng."
No response.
"Brother Feng?" Chen Hui grabbed Song Feng's hand.
Still no response.
"Doctor, doctor, what's wrong with him?" Chen Hui panicked.
Wearing a mask, the nurse was tending to Song Feng's wounds. "Right now we can only see the external injuries. We'll need to head back inside for a full checkup first."
They reached the hospital in no time. Shu Dong sat on a chair outside, her face pale, her palms continuously breaking out in cold sweat.
Initially, she had been hiding in the shop, lost in a daze as she thought about her circumstances and life over the past few years, only for the noise outside to grow increasingly loud. Looking out the window, she had seen Song Feng lying collapsed on the ground, and then heard the wail of the ambulance...
Shu Dong didn't know how to describe her feelings at that moment.
In the hospital corridor, Chen Hui and Shu Dong sat together, but throughout the entire journey, Chen Hui hadn't spoken a single word to her. For the current predicament, Chen Hui inexplicably shifted the blame onto Shu Dong.
Yet in his heart, he knew very well that it was Boss Song who had gone out of his way to provoke her in the first place.
Considering that she had ultimately gotten into the ambulance and ignored Yu Zhiyi, Chen Hui decided to forgive her.
After an unknown length of time, Song Feng was finally wheeled out by the medical staff and brought into a ward.
"Doctor, how long until he wakes up?" Chen Hui asked, feeling deeply unaccustomed to seeing Song Feng lying so motionlessly on the bed.
"He was given anesthesia for the stitches. I'll come back to check on him once the test results are out."
"When will the test results be ready?" Chen Hui pressed.
"Go pick up the test report on the first floor in two hours," the doctor replied. "Bring the scans and find me in my office then."
Chen Hui nodded. "Got it. Thank you, doctor."
Chen Hui knew nothing of hospitals and couldn't make heads or tails of those tedious procedures. Yet people like him were undoubtedly fortunate; when his grandpa and grandma fell ill, his parents were there to run around for them. In everyone's eyes, he was still just a child, with family members to stand as a buffer when trouble struck.
Song Feng, however, was already intimately familiar with the hospital routine—registering, paying fees, handling hospital admissions, getting checks, picking up prescriptions... As his grandparents aged, Song Feng had grown increasingly accustomed to hospitals, especially in recent years. Too accustomed.
No one gets to remain a child forever, and no one is born an adult.
Walking that path from the emergency room to the inpatient department, you could distinctly feel yourself growing up in an instant—a kind of growth you might wish to evade and reject, yet were utterly powerless to escape or refuse.
In the empty hospital corridor at three in the morning, the numbers on the electronic display ticked away second by second. You slowly grow up from a child, moving from your first taste of fear and panic to a gradual numbness and habituation, until you eventually learn to accept parting of life and death, and finally master the art of saying goodbye...
Much of Song Feng's growing up had taken place inside hospitals.
***
With the ward door closed, Chen Hui and Shu Dong stared at Song Feng's bloodless face, the tension in their hearts refusing to snap.
Suddenly, Chen Hui's phone rang.
He hurriedly silenced the ringtone, glanced at Boss Song, and stepped outside the door to answer.
"What is it, Mom?"
"You only know how to run around playing outside! Do you have any idea how busy things are at home? Get your ass back here within the hour!"
Chen Hui grew anxious. "I can't. I've got stuff to deal with today, I can't come back."
"What stuff? What kind of proper business could you possibly have all day long?"
Peering through the small window into the ward, Chen Hui was caught in a dilemma. He knew the family restaurant was swamped today, but he couldn't just walk away from Boss Song either—and on top of that, he had to keep this hidden from his mom, grandpa, and grandma...
Chen Hui felt like his brain was about to explode. "Shall I send a few friends over to help you out?"
"Those hoodlum friends of yours? They don't even care about their own family affairs and you want them to help others? Tell me, am I supposed to pay them wages or not?"
In Aunt Wu's eyes, Song Feng was the only one of Chen Hui's hoodlum friends who was actually decent; Aunt Wu judged people primarily by their faces.
"Then I'll head back a bit later. You and Dad just hold out for another two more hours."
Even if he left right now, he wouldn't be at ease. Chen Hui went off to handle some paperwork, and two hours later, he retrieved the test results and went to find the doctor.
The doctor was an elderly gentleman. Adjusting his glasses as he examined the scans, he said, "Judging by the films, there's no obvious intracranial injury, but the external wounds need to be properly cared for—make sure they don't get infected. Additionally, he suffered a severe impact to the head and has a mild concussion. Make sure the patient gets plenty of rest."
"Alright, alright. Thank you, doctor." Hearing that Boss Song's brain was fine, Chen Hui let out a long sigh of relief.
"Make sure he doesn't go getting into fights anymore," the doctor muttered, perhaps seeing that Song Feng was around the same age as his own grandson. "A young man getting himself beaten up like this—what happens if he develops some chronic issue? He won't even be able to find a girlfriend in the future."
"Don't worry, doctor, he definitely won't fight again."
Actually, Chen Hui felt more like saying: *Don't worry, even if he were missing a leg, girls would still be throwing themselves at him.*
"Come along, let's go check another ward. There's another brawler in there." The doctor closed the patient records on his computer screen and stood up. "Why do you kids always go around fighting?"
Another brawler?
Chen Hui froze for a second before stepping closer to the doctor. "Is his name Yu Zhiyi?"
"Hmm?" The doctor looked up, thinking for a couple of seconds. "That sounds like the name, yes."
"Doctor, don't treat him! He's the one who beat my friend half to death! He's an awful person! Or when you sew up his wounds, don't use anesthesia—hurt him to death! Give him the most expensive medicine!"
Chen Hui began talking nonsense, though the doctor didn't take offense, merely figuring the kid was a bit foolish.
"In our eyes, they're all patients and we treat them all equally. That boy isn't as injured as your friend, he doesn't need stitches..."
Those little punks must have gone way too soft on him! Failing to stick it to Yu Zhiyi left Chen Hui thoroughly displeased.
Returning to the ward, Chen Hui briefed Shu Dong on Boss Song's condition. "That's pretty much it. I might have to trouble you to stay tonight, I'll come back a bit later."
Shu Dong glanced at Song Feng. "Alright."
"Um, Yu Zhiyi is on this floor too," Chen Hui said, suddenly at a loss for how to phrase it as he looked at Shu Dong. "You guys be careful. Call me if anything happens."
The moment Chen Hui finished speaking, Aunt Wu's relentless life-or-death phone call rang out again. He hurriedly bolted from the ward and rushed back home.
***
After being tossed about all afternoon, Shu Dong's nerves had been tightly strung the entire time. Now that the tension suddenly evaporated, an abnormal wave of exhaustion washed over her. She closed her eyes and massaged her temples.
As twilight gradually deepened, the ward grew dim. Shu Dong turned on a wall lamp, its faint glow illuminating a tiny patch of space and lending the room a tranquil air.
Shu Dong lowered her gaze to study Song Feng. Right now, he wasn't teasing her, nor was he bullying her with his usual overbearing arrogance. Yet seeing him lie there so quietly felt entirely unfamiliar.
Song Feng's lips were chapped and peeling from excessive dryness. Shu Dong went out to the corridor to fetch a cup of warm water, but holding the cup, she suddenly froze...
There was no way for him to drink it in his current state.
Shu Dong took a gentle sip, then another, and eventually finished it herself...
Around seven or eight in the evening, the night grew pitch black. Not a sound stirred inside the ward. Sitting by the hospital bed, Shu Dong propped her head in her hand and slowly drifted off to sleep.
Song Feng opened his eyes to this very sight.
His consciousness wasn't entirely clear yet, and his vision was gradually shifting from hazy to sharp. After taking a moment to collect himself, the corners of his mouth couldn't help curling upward.
Why hadn't he realized it before? Waking up to find someone keeping watch by your side felt this incredible?
Song Feng wanted to sit up, but the moment he moved, he seemed to brush against a wound, drawing in a sharp hiss of pain. The anesthesia was wearing off now, making every sensation acutely direct.
He obediently lay back down.
Song Feng's movements had been slight, so Shu Dong remained asleep.
With her chin propped in her hand, even in sleep she maintained an expression weighed down by worries. Suddenly, Song Feng recalled what Yu Zhiyi had said that afternoon...
She had been...
Song Feng's hands involuntarily clenched into fists. When it came to Shu Dong, he couldn't even bring himself to utter those words, let alone bear to dwell on them in his mind. The mere thought of Yu Zhiyi's face made Song Feng's breathing grow heavy. It was only because he hadn't performed at his best today; next time, every single time he laid eyes on that piece of trash, he would beat him again.
Shu Dong's sleep wasn't particularly deep. The next second, her eyes snapped open without warning, straight into Song Feng's unblinking stare...
Startled out of her wits, Shu Dong couldn't help throwing her weight backward.
She was caught by Song Feng's outstretched hand.
"Is my face really that terrifying?" Song Feng gritted his teeth, propping up half his torso to grab Shu Dong and keep her from tumbling to the floor.