CH 1

(T/N: I’ve no editor for this story for now)

Cheng Jin believes that the important turning point in his life was when he was 14 years old. 

At the beginning of that year, the plane his parents were on crashed, and neither of them survived. After hearing the news, his grandfather suffered a heart attack and died. 

In the blink of an eye, his family was destroyed, leaving only him and his grandmother dependent on each other for their lives. 

His grandmother was in her 60s that year, and her health was not very good. When the bad news came, the old lady took care of everything in an orderly manner, because she knew she couldn’t fall down yet, or what would her young grandson do without her.

At this moment, Cheng Jin felt that the sky was falling down, and after a few days in a daze, he remembered that his grandmother was still old but had to deal with the affairs of his parents and grandfather alone, and had to take care of him every day. Overnight, Cheng Jin realised that he should be an adult, and he would take care of his elderly grandmother in the future. 

People can put a smile on their faces and pretend to forget the pain, but those injuries are clear in their hearts, and they are even more bloody in the dead of night. 

Cheng Jin couldn’t sleep every night. When his grandmother fell asleep, he would secretly go out and wander aimlessly in Qianming City. When it was almost dawn, he would go home exhausted, sleep for two hours, and then get up to buy his and Grandma’s breakfast. Before going to school he would eat with his grandmother.

This situation changed at the end of the year. Cheng Jin felt that someone was always following him in those days. Looking back, except for the occasional car driving by, there were no pedestrians at all. Cheng Jin didn’t see anything strange. He still took a regular walk outside late at night and went home when it was time. 

One day after Cheng Jin felt that he had been followed for almost a week, when he was walking through an alley that night, he suddenly felt a palpitation¹.

As soon as he turned around, he was thrown to the ground. Cheng Jin struggled with the person who attacked him. When the scuffle² started, Cheng Jin’s eyes were already used to the darkness. Even if the attacker put the sportswear hat on his head, he could still see clearly that this was a boy about his age, so he sighed in relief: “Hey, what are you doing?”

After the death of his parents, Cheng Jin has been wondering why it was not someone else who died, but he never thought of hurting others. 

Later, Cheng Jin never went out to roam at night again, and his grandmother’s eyes were no longer so worried when she looked at him. He had been to various nursing homes and hospitals to find the boy, but he never saw him again.

Footnotes:

1. Palpitation: the sensation that the heart is racing, pounding, fluttering or skipping a beat, often bothersome.

2. Scuffle: a short fight or struggle at close quarters.