The Child's Past Life

by Cai Jun

  Around midnight, the teenager stumbled out of the motel with a cigarette and a can of beer. The girl followed him. Suddenly, a muscular young man charged toward them.

  Si Wang’s eyes were crazed. “Hey, stop!”

  “Who the hell are you?” The teenage boy puffed smoke at him. “Get out of my sight!”

  The teenage girl also said drunkenly, “Crazy!”

  “Young lady, if you don’t want any trouble, you should go now.”

  Under the dim streetlight, Si Wang took away the boy’s cigarette. The girl wasn’t stupid—she took off.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The teenager pushed Si Wang, but he didn’t move at all. It was like trying to move a wall.

  “I don’t want to beat you up. I’m just warning you not to see Shen Min again.”

  “Oh, do you go to school with her? You like her, but she’s not into you, so you’re stalking her? Poor loser!”

  “I’m her older brother, and I don’t call her Little Min!”

  The teenage took a swing at Si Wang, who blocked the punch. Si Wang’s right fist connected with the boy’s nose, and blood spurted out. The boy tried to stand up but was hit again. More hits followed.

  He could barely cry for help.

  “If I ever see you with her again—”

  Si Wang left right away to avoid the police.

  The teenage boy managed to disappear from Shen Min’s world.

  CHAPTER 65

  December 21, 2012. The end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.

  “If there was tomorrow, how do you want to make up your face? If there was no tomorrow, how do we say good-bye?”

  Xiaozhi often felt that this was the song in Shen Ming’s head right before he was killed.

  From the thirtieth floor of the building, they could look down on half the city. His knockoff cell phone’s ringtone was “If There Was Tomorrow.” Not the original from 1990 but the mixed duet with Shin and Simon Hsueh. Xiaozhi sat on the windowsill with her legs folded, puffing hot air on the cold glass. He drew on the steamed glass—first a kitten, then some glasses.

  “Si Wang, please behave!”

  She puffed once again and the mist swallowed the kitten.

  “I’m Shen Ming.”

  “I asked you to come here tonight, not Shen Ming.”

  They were in Ouyang Xiaozhi’s tidy one-bedroom apartment.

  Even though they’d seen each other in class, they hadn’t spoken for days. Early that morning, however, she got a text from him: “Xiaozhi, I want to see you. If there was tomorrow?”

  It was Friday. Xiaozhi didn’t text him the address until it was dusk. It was the end of the world, the first day of winter, and also the shortest day of the year. Traditionally, people would go to the cemetery on this day because it was a day when the ghosts came out.

  Si Wang didn’t go home after getting the text. He came out of the subway, turned off his phone, and went up to her apartment.

  “Mr. Zhang talked to me this morning. He told me not to have any contact with you, not even in the teachers’ lounge.”

  “Zhang Mingsong?” Si Wang drew a puppy on the window. “Why?”

  “The principal talked to me in the afternoon too, saying the same thing. The school Party Committee made the decision.”

  “Is everyone saying this?”

  “All the teachers and students. Your mom will know soon, too.”

  “What’s the point? If there was no tomorrow?”

  She added some steam to the glass. “Wouldn’t that be great, if tonight really was the last night ever? Sorry, I shouldn’t talk like this, I’m a teacher.”

  “Xiaozhi, why didn’t you ever marry? There must have been a lot of men who liked you.”

  “What do you want me to say? That I haven’t forgotten Mr. Shen? That I feel guilty about his death? You’re wrong.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Ouyang Xiaozhi squeezed his nose like he was a toddler. “You’ll understand when you’re as old as me.”

  “I’m seven years older than you.”

  “Shut up—”

  Si Wang kissed her before she could finish.

  After a slight moment of hesitation Xiaozhi relaxed into him.

  He breathed out. “I’m sorry.”

  “I warned you—any man who gets close to me dies.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “I gave myself the name Xiaozhi.”

  “A name doesn’t matter. I’m Si Wang, but also Shen Ming.”

  “I was an abandoned baby. Someone found me in a trash can near the Suzhou River. I don’t know who my parents were or when I was born. I don’t remember when I started to live with a group of homeless people. We scavenged for food. When I was eleven years old, we got to that slum across from Nanming High. I picked trash and lived in a world no one cared about. I stole a drumstick and was locked in the Demon Girl Zone for it. If you hadn’t saved me, I would have died.”

  “I still remember your face from that day.”

  Xiaozhi leaned against the window like she was floating in air. “I didn’t even have a name when I was locked down there. But for the first time in my life I really wanted to live. I was so grateful you saved me. But when I got back to the homeless people and had to keep picking trash, taking beatings all the time, eating cold and hard buns, I would think, why did you save me? Why didn’t you let me die?”

  “You wanted to die?”

  “I’m sorry, I set that fire. I used a match to light some trash in a hut. I just wanted to kill myself, I didn’t think anyone else would be hurt. I was only eleven, too naive to think the fire would spread and get out of control.”

  Tears squeezed out of her tightly shut eyes.

  “I remember watching the fire and hearing the screams. The fire trucks weren’t there yet. I wasn’t trying to save you, I just wanted to look like a hero, even if I had to die.”

  “Weren’t you afraid of dying?”

  “No. It was a few weeks before the college entrance exams. It was so difficult back then. I wanted to be a Chinese major at Peking University, so I had tens of thousands of competitors. I thought I’d get sponsored admission even if I saved just one person. It was a totally selfish act. I’d been fantasizing about a fire or a flood—anything that would put the whole school at risk. Just so I could save someone and get an award. I’m the one who should say sorry.”

  “No, you did save me. I set the fire and killed people, including the homeless people who helped raise me. I’m a killer, or at least an arsonist. But I never told anyone this. You’re the only one who knows.”

  He looked down at the teeming crowds and smiled bitterly. “I’ve known your secret for a long time. When I saved you that day, you still had half a box of matches. I put them in my pocket. The way you talked to me, how afraid you were, that told me everything.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I didn’t want your life ruined. Another selfish reason was, if you weren’t a victim but an arsonist, my saving you would be pointless. Who would get an award for saving a killer?”

  Xiaozhi stroked his chin. “Mr. Shen, I remember you telling me seventeen years ago, in the woods by Nanming Road, that we were the same.”

  “Like two meteors coming from outer space to the same blue planet, colliding and turning into ashes.”

  “Shen Ming, I’m still grateful that you saved my life. It changed everything for me. Everyone heard about the selfless high school hero and the little homeless girl. An army officer adopted me since his wife couldn’t have kids. I became an army brat and had everything I needed. For the first time in my life I wore new clothes and ate rice every day. I wasn’t looked at with disgust anymore. The day after I was adopted, my adoptive father was called to the front line in Vietnam. When I saw him a
gain, he was already a martyr.”

  “Xiaozhi, I don’t need to know this.”

  She was talking to the space in front of her. “After that, my adoptive mother started disliking me. She saw me as the orphan who’d brought them bad luck. But she was family to a military man and got a lot of benefits, and I got a lot of opportunities as a martyr’s daughter. I was able to go to school. August First School accepted me. I studied really hard to catch up, jumping several grades in a few years, and got into a good high school in the city. When some thugs singled me out and bothered me, I had to transfer to Nanming High.”

  “Then we met again.”

  “I didn’t think you’d recognize me.”

  “First in 1988, underground in the Demon Girl Zone, and then in the fire. After six years, you’d turned into a gorgeous young woman. You looked so different—except for your eyes.” He caressed her face.

  “If anyone knew about me and that fire, I’d go to jail—or at least I wouldn’t have the life I have today.”

  “Liu Man knew.”

  Ouyang Xiaozhi sighed. “I should have guessed.”

  “The night before she was killed, she talked to me in the self-study room. She told me she knew about us. She said she was always jealous of you. No one paid her any attention after you came. Every boy liked you more.”

  “She got close to me and acted like my best friend just to find out my secrets?”

  “I think those rumors about you at school all came from her. She said she learned who you really were a few days earlier. She knew you were adopted in 1988, the only survivor from that fire, and I was the one who saved you.”

  “She imagined the rest?”

  “Yes, Liu Man guessed that I liked you. She said we had done things. I denied it of course.”

  “But we never did anything, I’ve never even been inside your room, Mr. Shen.”

  It was hard to tell if she looked relieved or regretful.

  “Then I found Liu Man dead the next morning, I—”

  Xiaozhi covered his mouth. “Don’t say anything else.”

  After a long time, he continued, “I died thirteen days later.”

  “That was quite a year for me. After Mr. Shen died, I was accepted at the Teachers’ College. After graduation, I went to the poor rural area to teach. I was once like those kids, hungry and uneducated.”

  “I don’t need to know your past. There is only one question left. But I’m afraid if I ask, you’ll disappear forever.”

  Ouyang Xiaozhi covered her face. “I know what you’re thinking. Why did I ask to see you that night? Why didn’t I show up? Why didn’t I tell the school or the police after you died? Why did I lie to everyone?”

  Si Wang said nothing.

  Xiaozhi looked out the window. The city was full of lights and commotion on this chilly night, but it was a gilded shell.

  The phone rang playing, “If there was tomorrow, how do you want to make up your face? If there was no tomorrow, how do we say good-bye?”

  When he woke up from dreams where he kept killing people, it was already dawn on December 22. The concrete jungle outside hadn’t changed; it was still snowing hard.

  There was tomorrow after all.

  Ouyang Xiaozhi was standing by the window, wearing a cotton robe, staring at the snow-covered city. He stood behind her, wearing nothing. He was afraid to stroke her shoulders again. He leaned in to smell her hair.

  She turned to look at his eyes, their lips once again so close.

  She shook her head. “Si Wang, please go. Your mom is waiting for you.”

  He didn’t say, “I’m Shen Ming.” He got dressed in silence and went to the door. He looked at her back, she was like a puff of smoke, ready to disappear at any moment.

  How do you say good-bye?

  Si Wang walked out into the snow. The reborn city felt warm, and his steps became lighter.

  He reached Suzhou River and looked down from Wuning Road Bridge. The River of Life and Death melted away all the fallen snow.

  He didn’t get home until the sun rose. His mom was waiting by the door. She hadn’t slept all night, and her eyes were bloodshot. She seemed to have aged a great deal in just one night.

  “Where were you?”

  Under his mom’s menacing gaze, Si Wang took off his coat and poured himself a glass of water, grabbing some bread from the fridge.

  “Wang Er, I waited for you all night. I was afraid to call your homeroom teacher. I was afraid he’d punish you if he knew you didn’t sleep in the dorms. I went to Policeman Ye Xiao, too, and he looked for you all over. He even went to Nanming High.” He Qingying grabbed his collar in her rage, as if she was going to tear apart the sweater she made for him. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll die in front of you!”

  “I was with a woman,” he answered nonchalantly, still eating the bread.

  After recovering from her initial shock, He Qingying made a call. “Hello, Mr. Zhang? Sorry to bother you so early. This is Si Wang’s mother. I’m calling to tell you that my son didn’t come home last night. He said he was with a woman.”

  Zhang Mingsong’s shouts could be heard through the phone. He Qingying pressed the receiver to her ear and hung up after a few minutes. Then she walked over to her son and slapped him.

  PART 5:

  THE SURVIVORS

  CHAPTER 66

  January 1, 2013.

  Ye Xiao sat alone in Huang Hai’s apartment, staring at the chart on the wall. The apartment had been on the market for two years, but there had been no buyers. All the files had been moved out except for the wall chart.

  The big name in the middle, “Shen Ming,” still looked vivid, red like blood.

  Ye Xiao had been over all the leads countless times, the same as his predecessor, but none of them went anywhere. Most of them were dead.

  Could it be Zhang Mingsong, Shen Yuanchao’s favorite suspect? He’d been questioned and had a perfect alibi.

  Ye Xiao added a new name—Si Mingyuan.

  He was Si Wang’s father and went missing in 2002. His residency registration had been canceled. He worked at Nanming Steel Factory before being laid off. Had he returned to his workplace on the night of the crime? There was no evidence for it right now. Ye Xiao didn’t think it was worth asking He Qingying about.

  Si Wang.

  He couldn’t have killed Shen Ming, as he was born six months after the murder.

  Si Wang and Ye Xiao had become friends. He still claimed to be Shen Ming, and supposedly carried the same memories, personality, and emotions. The two did have the same handwriting. Maybe he never drank the Meng Po Soup?

  Ye Xiao didn’t believe Si Wang was Shen Ming. Si Wang was an unusual kid, but there was no such thing as reincarnation.

  Maybe Si Wang had bigger secrets?

  Ye Xiao’s cell phone rang. He rushed out of Huang Hai’s apartment.

  A body had been found near Si Wang’s home.

  Workers for the forced move were taking apart the neighborhood; bulldozers boomed and homes crumbled. Many people tried to stop the demolition, but they were dragged away amid cries. Onlookers gawked in front of the ruins.

  In the rubble of one house that had just been taken apart, some workers found a broken skeleton near the patio. The more they looked, the more human remains they found.

  Ye Xiao squatted near the bones. Two deep holes in the skull looked back at him, as if they had something to say.

  Who are you?

  He suddenly felt someone watching him; he turned around and saw the eighteen-year-old Si Wang.

  Though the identity of the body had yet to be confirmed, the medical examiner’s report did contain some details. The victim was male, approximately 176 centimeters tall, between thirty-five and forty years old, and he’d died about ten years ago; there was a lethal stab wound near his neck. It wa
s presumed to be a murder. The demolished house had changed owners many times over the years. The police were inquiring into who had lived here ten years ago.

  Ye Xiao came to Si Wang’s building late that night. Most everything around it had been destroyed already but the single locust tree still stood.

  A shadow hopped along the ruins. Ye Xiao watched the movement, all too aware of the thugs who worked these parts. The forced move had just made the area worse. Paying closer attention, however, he was able to make out Si Wang, who was crying under the cool moonlight.

  Ye Xiao walked up behind him. “Who are you crying for?”

  The teenager jumped up and tried to kick Ye Xiao. He dodged the blow and grabbed Si Wang by the throat.

  “It’s me!”

  “Sorry, I thought you were one of the workers destroying our homes.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Horrible,” he said, scrambling around until he found a place to sit on the remains of a brick wall.

  It was the first time he’d seen Si Wang so depressed. “What else are you not telling me?”

  “Ye Xiao, I will tell you everything. But first you have to look into someone for me. The survivor from that 1983 murder case on Serenity Road. The one who reported the crime, the victim’s only daughter.”

  “Why her?”

  “Please.”

  Against his better judgment Ye Xiao agreed to look into the woman. A week later, surprising results came back. The girl’s records had disappeared. Ye Xiao visited the victim’s relatives and learned that she’d been adopted by the victim. After the murder, no one else in the family wanted to care for her. Another couple adopted her and she was never heard from again. There was only one photo of her from school, a black-and-white shot taken when she was thirteen.

  He gave the photo to Si Wang.