Chapter 8
Grief-stricken though he was, Shen Quanquan still polished off the entire mountain yam, not even letting the stray crumbs stuck to his fingers go to waste. The sensation of a full belly lifted his spirits considerably. Picking up a stuffed teddy bear from the bed, he gave it a soft kiss.
It was a dark-brown plush bear, its fleece threadbare and patchy, faintly revealing the netting beneath. It was missing an arm, and the seams of its left ear had unraveled, leaving it dangling precariously from the side of its head.
Slapping the bear behind his back, Shen Quanquan stepped out of the shed. Not daring to bring his toys back to the orphanage for fear of the older kids stealing them, he could only play with them when he came here.
Among the towering cubes of scrap metal, he launched into a solitary gunfight. One moment he was shooting off to the left, ducking his head back in a flash and pulling the earflap of his cap to his mouth to use as a walkie-talkie: “I’ll draw their fire! Cover me!” The next, he was wriggling across the dirt on his stomach, rolling left and right to dodge an imaginary hail of bullets.
Every now and then, he would pause his game to peek at the older kids. Only when he confirmed they had finally cleared out of the junkyard did he sprint over at full tilt.
The cargo shuttle delivering waste arrived once a day, after which the automated forklift carted the garbage into the processing plant. The older kids had already combed through the surface layer. Shen Quanquan poked and prodded all around with a little stick, but turned up absolutely nothing. Downcast, he slid down the trash mound, trudged dejectedly back to his office, tucked the plush bear away, shut the door tight, and began the trek back to the orphanage in disappointment.
Cutting straight through the abandoned settlement would have shaved off a great deal of the journey, but after picking through the dump, everyone always chose to crawl back out through the chain-link fence and circle all the way around the town’s perimeter before heading back.
As much as the children of the Angel Orphanage adored the junkyard, they feared the neighboring Mixin Town in equal measure. The place was rife with ghost stories—a four-to-six split when weighed against the tales about the orphanage’s backyard.
The two-tenths difference was simply because most children had never set foot inside and couldn’t quite picture the scene, unlike the orphanage backyard, which could evoke a far more immediate and visceral dread.
Shen Quanquan wasn’t afraid of the backyard. He had no idea what the ghosts there looked like, but ghosts had never hit him, nor had they ever stolen his food—so why be afraid?
Yet Shen Quanquan was terrified of this abandoned town.
Those dark, gaping windows, the shadowy rooms, and the desolate streets made his heart pound with unease, compelling him to run as far away as he could.
He didn’t understand why he feared it, entirely unaware that it was, in truth, an instinctual dread of loneliness and death.
Even as fear gnawed at him, curiosity tugged just as hard.
As he skirted the fence toward the orphanage, he would steal quick glances back through the gaps—one peek, then another.
Through the spaces between the buildings, he could see the structures across the street, catch glimpses of metal signs embedded in the facades, ornate wrought-iron benches fixed outside storefronts, and smoothly paved concrete sidewalks.
Though caked in dust and grime, the objects drifting into view still retained traces of their former elegance—far prettier than the orphanage, prettier even than what people described of Keke Town—making him constantly imagine what this place must have looked like in its prime.
Lingering too long only stoked his fear, so he would yank his gaze away and quicken his pace.
Upon returning to the orphanage, Shen Quanquan didn’t immediately slip through the broken hole by the pump house. Instead, hunching his back, he scampered along the fence bordering the front gate, scouring the road with painstaking care for his missing marbles.
It had taken him ages to collect those six marbles; not a single one could be lost. He was going to give them to his brother next time he visited the orphanage.
Having proclaimed it so many times to others, Shen Quanquan’s inner thoughts had naturally shifted from calling Chu Ya “that person” or “the big kid from Cloud Peak” to simply “brother.”
Though the road was completely exposed, thick banks of dirt lined both sides, making the sunken marbles exceedingly difficult to spot. Poking around with his stick, he finally unearthed one. Just as he tucked it into his pocket with bubbling delight, a harsh bark cracked from behind: “Who’s that over there?!”
Shen Quanquan jumped out of his skin. Slowly turning around, he saw a supervisor standing in the front courtyard, pointing a finger straight at him through the fence bars.
He dug his heels in to bolt, but the supervisor bellowed again, “Freeze right where you are!”
Shen Quanquan froze in a half-lunge, not daring to take another step. Instead, he slapped both hands over his face, peering out through the cracks between his fingers.
Rushing over in a foul temper, the supervisor wrenched open the front gate, seized him by the scruff of his neck, and hoisted him back inside.
“Utterly incorrigible! Thick-skinned as they come! Caught once this morning, and now sneaking beyond the gates again!”
Shen Quanquan’s toes tapped the dirt in alternating hops as he attempted damage control: “Actually, you’ve got the wrong person! I’m not Shen Quanquan!”
The supervisor smacked his hands away from his face with a sharp thwack. “How did you get out?”
Shen Quanquan clamped his lips shut, refusing to utter a peep.
He had been caught a few times before while sneaking out through the fence hole, and he knew that no matter what, he couldn’t rat out the loose iron bar. If he did, he would never be able to slip out again, and he would face the brutal wrath of the older kids.
“I’m asking you: this gate is locked, so how did you get out?”
Shen Quanquan blinked innocently, remaining steadfastly mute.
The one hauling him along was the head supervisor. Passing supervisors greeted him, “Head Supervisor Chen.” Then, looking down at Shen Quanquan’s face, one chuckled, “Well, well, caught again?”
“Yep, caught again, hehe,” Shen Quanquan replied, looking just a little sheepish.
“Go check the gate lock in a bit. Might be failing to catch sometimes, otherwise these brazen little brats wouldn’t be slipping out,” Head Supervisor Chen ordered.
“Right away, I’ll go check.”
Under the watchful eyes of a trailing flock of junior students, Shen Quanquan was marched right back into the punishment room.
“I’ll be let out before dinner, right? Right? I’ll get to eat dinner, won’t I?!” Shen Quanquan pressed his mouth to the crack of the door and yelled at the top of his lungs.
Head Supervisor Chen ignored him, simply shooing away the crowd of younger kids as their shuffling footsteps and chatter faded into the distance.
Left all alone in the punishment room, Shen Quanquan showed not a shred of panic. Pulling out the necktie, he draped it around his neck, caressing the silk with fond affection and admiring his reflection in the windowpane. Finally, he plopped down in his usual corner, contentedly inhaling the sweet chocolate aroma wafting from his pocket.
Every now and then, kids from his dorm would wander over beneath the window to talk to him. Beside Lin Duozhi, Tang Yuanyuan and Chen Hongliang showed up, too.
“Did you feed your puppy just now?” Lin Duozhi asked.
Shen Quanquan gripped the window bars. “No, I couldn’t find him.”
Tang Yuanyuan asked, “Did you look under the bed?”
“I did.” Shen Quanquan thought for a second. “He even tore up my sofa.”
“What about the bathroom? The washroom?”
Shen Quanquan answered, “There isn’t a bathroom or washroom over there. He squeezed through a hole and ran away. He runs super fast.”
Chen Hongliang tilted his head back, looking up at Shen Quanquan. “I think he must be a quantum beast that got recalled back into a Sentinel or Guide’s mental realm.”
“No way! Aren’t quantum beasts ducks? The quantum beast in Lily’s Adventures is a duck!” Shen Quanquan and Lin Duozhi corrected him in unison. “Ducks are quantum beasts!”
Tang Yuanyuan chimed in, “We don’t even have Sentinels or Guides down here. They only exist up on Cloud Peak.”
“Yes we do! The big kids said there are some in Keke Town!”
“No there aren’t!”
“Yes there are!” Chen Hongliang’s booming voice roared out.
After a few sharp retorts, Tang Yuanyuan and Chen Hongliang lunged at each other, tumbling into a brawl. Shen Quanquan watched them scuffle through the window bars for a while before turning back to chat with Lin Duozhi.
“How long are they locking you up for this time?” Lin Duozhi asked.
Shen Quanquan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Will they let you out for dinner?”
Shen Quanquan looked blank. “I don’t know that either.”
“Aaargh—Take that!” The two boys rolling on the ground were still going at it with all their might.
Lin Duozhi said, “I’m heading back then. Our class is going to the recreation room to watch TV in a minute.”
“Watch TV?! Oh man, we get to watch TV today?!” Shen Quanquan stomped his feet in exasperation, rocking the stool beneath him precariously. “I can’t watch it! I’m locked in here, so I won’t get to watch TV!”
Lin Duozhi looked over at the two wrestling on the dirt: “It’s TV time!”
Instantly, the two children tugging at each other’s hair broke apart. “Are there going to be cartoons today?”
Tang Yuanyuan smoothed back his bird’s nest of hair. “I want to watch Episode 10 of Lily’s Adventures! A quantum beast shows up in that one!”
Chen Hongliang: “I want to watch Lily’s Adventures too!”
“I love Lily’s duck quantum beast so much.”
“Me too!”
Face pressed flat against the bars, Shen Quanquan watched them scurry toward the classrooms with burning envy, feeling as though a kitten’s claws were raking restlessly across his heart.
The orphanage had only a single television set, and each class was allotted one viewing session per week. Even though the same few animated shows played on an endless loop, the children looked forward to it with bated breath.
Still, Shen Quanquan wasn’t entirely crushed. After all, though he was locked up and missing the cartoon, he had managed to recover one of his lost marbles.
Curled up in the corner, Shen Quanquan idly rolled the marble around, reciting lines from the cartoon under his breath. Occasionally, he would gaze up at the sky, studying that vast expanse of black earth floating high overhead.
“…Mental attack, quantum beast deploy…”
By the time Shen Quanquan looked up at the sky again, total darkness had fallen. Streetlight trickled through the window grating, casting a pale, pallid sheen across his face and softening the dark curl of his long eyelashes. Nighttime in the Abyss grew even colder. Huddled in the corner, shivering violently, every breath he puffed out bloomed into thick white mist.
He hadn’t been let out in time for dinner. But having pushed past the sharpest pangs of hunger, he felt only cold—a chill so biting it seemed to seep straight from the marrow of his bones. Digging a chocolate ball out of his pocket with trembling fingers, he popped it into his mouth, his teeth crunching against it with soft clicks.
Nibbling on the chocolate with the necktie wound snug around his neck, Shen Quanquan stared into the impenetrable blackness of the sky. Though Cloud Peak was hidden from view, he imagined his brother must be tucked away in a soft, plush bed under a thick, warm quilt, sharing stories from the cartoons with the other older kids at the Cloud Peak orphanage.
A low mechanical thrum hummed from the water heater, prompting the circle of staff around it to let out long, relieved sighs.
“Worked on it an entire day, and we finally got this blasted thing fixed. The yard finally has hot water again,” one supervisor remarked with evident relief.
Beside him, another supervisor began packing up his tools. “Nothing we could do about it. That replacement part is only manufactured on Cloud Peak. We submitted request after request, and never heard a peep back. By the way, do you know why the Logistics Department suddenly rushed the parts down to us?”
“Why?” the others asked.
“When I escorted that young Master Chu from the inspection delegation to wash his hands, I was worried he’d throw a fit over the freezing water. Turned out he didn’t say a word, just washed his hands multiple times under the cold tap. But the moment he walked out of the washroom, he made a call to someone, and his expression and tone were pretty harsh.”
The others pressed, “What did he say?”
“He was walking ahead and didn’t speak loudly, so I couldn’t catch much. I only heard the words ‘water heater.'”
“Then that had to be it. That’s why Logistics rushed the parts right down to us.”
…
Chattering softly, several supervisors exited the washroom and crossed the sports ground. Glancing toward the pitch-black school building, Head Supervisor Chen suddenly froze in his tracks, his face draining of color: “Damn it!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I spent the whole afternoon fixing the water heater—I forgot I still had one locked up inside!”
