The entrance of Guangming Street in the Walled City was the place with the largest flow of people coming in and out.
The bulletin board often had temporary notices posted on it; water or power cuts, construction and renovation, and other miscellaneous matters. Once hit by rain, the poor-quality red slips would fall to the ground here and there.
Today was an overcast day, but unusually, people crowded here in droves. The noise of the crowd was chaotic.
“Oh my God, even the neighbor and a high school student are involved, such misfortune for the family!”
“The husband goes out for a trip and comes back to find he’s become the King of Cuckolds, tsk tsk, so shameful! If it were me, I wouldn’t have the face to come back!”
“I remember her; she usually acts decent, but behind the scenes, she’s actually this promiscuous…”
“Her husband is tall, honest-looking, and quite handsome…I really don’t get young people these days. The old saying says, ‘the wife is not as good as the concubine,’ but now it’s ‘the husband is not as good as the lover’!”
“This woman is so promiscuous, especially with that fox-like face. I advise all the neighbors to keep an eye on their husbands!”
“Oh, please, Big sister, look at your husband’s wretched appearance, can he compare to the handsome young men in the photos? If you like eating fatty pork yourself, don’t drag it out onto the street and force others to eat it!”
“Be careful, the butcher next door might take your husband to be castrated.”
“But who put up these photos? Someone’s deliberately targeting her, right? They’ve gone too far, aren’t they making it impossible for her to face people?”
“What she did isn’t honorable either, is she still afraid of being exposed?”
“Someone must let her husband know, what will he do when he comes back?”
“What can he do? Divorce! Who would dare keep such a woman?”
“These two lovers… which one is the mistress, and which one is the concubine? Do they even know about each other? Ah, if they start fighting, it’ll be even more entertaining!”
“The entire Walled City now knows. How will she dare to go out in the future?”
Figures swarmed, deep and shallow.
Right and wrong were discussed, and there was hesitance and doubts.
In the enclosed, cramped space of the Walled City, the slightest bit of gossip and scandal was enough to tear open the vent in people’s hearts, unleashing their desires.
Their black shadows cast on the ground were like elongated ghosts, their features were blurred and only the meddlesome grins stretched wide and mouths that were crimson red like blood could be seen.
“Make way.”
A clear, cold voice rang out.
Everything around instantly fell silent, with only the wind at the end of the alley rustling as it rolled paper balls all the way to the entrance.
They were like sardines crowded together, now flowing apart to leave an empty, narrow path in the middle for the person to pass through.
The protagonist of the scandal, who only showed his side profile or back in the photos, now walked out among them in reality. He emerged from the encircling crowd wearing a green cheongsam, his face cold and serene, his brows and eyes like the boundless autumn moon.
Without a word, he tore down the photos and collaged text from the bulletin board.
[These bad people, do not spread dirty rumors about my little cat, I’m going to tear your mouths apart!]
[Falling in love with someone else’s wife is also a normal human feeling…]
[Why am I not in these photos?! Who took them? How dare they ignore the Little Cat Husband Legion from the live stream!]
[The famous Xin Little Cat’s husband…that’s right, it’s me, arriving in all my glory!]
Xin Hexue removed all the photos and text, crumpling the papers in his hand and sweeping his gaze over the onlookers around.
“It’s all fake news based on hearsay!” As he walked past, Gu Mifeng and his assistant collected the envelopes and photos delivered to various shops. When people questioned them and refused to hand them over, Gu Mifeng said, “It must be fake news. This is my patient. Since she came to my clinic for treatment, why doesn’t it say here ‘wife going to see the doctor turns into cheating! The doctor ‘treating’ leads to passion, the husband wears the green hat and is heartbroken’?” “It’s neither true nor objective, not even comprehensive. How can it not be fake news?”
He was tall and sturdy, wearing sunglasses, and nonchalant yet frank and open as he joked about it. His completely dismissive attitude left the crowd unsure how to respond.
After all, he was the only Western doctor in the Walled City. They’d still need injections for major or minor illnesses later; offending him would be troublesome. These people couldn’t point fingers and say much more, so they dispersed on their own.
“They’re all anonymous letters, no sender is written.” The assistant flipped through the stack of envelopes in his hand. “But they were all sent to shops with high customer traffic around here. Someone is deliberately targeting you. You’d better go ask the rooftop postman Li Zheng. He’s the only postman in the Walled City, he’ll definitely know who requested the mail.”
Xin Hexue was puzzled, “Rooftop postman?”
The assistant replied, “Because the buildings in the Walled City are built very densely, one right next to another. Although the rooftops vary in height, the difference is usually only a story or two, and they’re generally connected by ladders. Li Zheng prefers taking the rooftop shortcuts when delivering mail, so over time, everyone here calls him the rooftop postman.”
“He makes one round early in the morning and another in the evening. If you wait on the rooftop around six after dinner, you might see him.”
Xin Hexue lowered his eyes and smiled. “Thank you.”
His complexion looked somewhat pale, and a few strands of his dark hair were damp and stuck to his cheeks, making him appear particularly pitiable.
Knowing the other party was already married and pregnant, the assistant quickly suppressed his swaying emotions, pinched himself, and warned himself not to entertain beastly thoughts.
But he couldn’t help feeling compassion, and finally advised, “The clinic will close after 3 p.m. today. Teacher Gu is going out of the Walled City for a visit, and I, as the assistant, have to follow. If anyone else gives you trouble, be sure to tell us when we return.”
Before leaving, Gu Mifeng turned and placed a black, hard object into Xin Hexue’s bag. “Don’t stay on the rooftop too long in the evening. I should be back from the visit by nine.”
Xin Hexue lowered his eyelashes, his left hand reaching into the bag to feel the foreign object.
It was a handgun.
……
Tan’s Dessert Shop.
The signboard at the entrance swayed and wobbled in the strong wind like a walking penguin.
Xin Hexue reached out and straightened it.
He looked up; the old woman was walking out of the shop, one hand clenched into a fist and pounding her back that was bent like an autumn rice stalk. Her eyesight was poor, so she didn’t notice Xin Hexue at first. Holding an envelope, she looked around toward the street, “Who? Who delivered this letter to me today?!”
She looked older than other women her age; her face, in her fifties, had wrinkles that seemed twenty years older. Her hair was graying, perhaps because she had lost her husband and then her daughter.
She tore up the photos in her hand with force, her eyes clouded with shadows as she spat fiercely toward the street, “I’m telling all of you, those who gossip and tell lies will be punished by heaven! People do evil things but heaven is watching, heaven will punish such people!”
The old woman spoke so vehemently that she choked and coughed twice, then turned back angrily toward the shop.
As she turned, she seemed to see someone. She looked at Xin Hexue in surprise, and two clear streams of tears flowed from under her eyes. “A’e…”
“Grandma, it’s me.”
Xin Hexue said helplessly.
The old woman numbly wiped her tears with her apron, pulled herself together, and said, “It’s you. Come, Grandma will treat you to dessert.”
………
Xin Hexue’s mind wasn’t on the dessert.
But he couldn’t refuse the other party’s hospitality, so he finished the entire bowl.
The old woman chatted with him intermittently during her busy and idle moments.
“You and your husband came from S City? What made you think of coming here?”
Xin Hexue: “He grew up here, so he wanted to come back and see.”
Old woman: “I see, I see… Speaking of S City, it’s such a big city. My daughter went to a big city before, to study! She could have found a good job outside, but she worried about my health and came back!”
“My husband passed away early, and I have low blood pressure and stomach problems. When it acts up, it feels like I’m vomiting bile. She was always worried I had no one to look after me…”
The old woman shook her head, cleared a table, and slowly mopped the floor.
Xin Hexue set down his spoon. When the shop had no customers and it was nearly closing time, he took out a medical record from his bag. It was the one he had stolen from the clinic earlier.
Pressing his hand on the medical record, he asked gently, “Grandma, may I ask what accident happened that took Sister A’e from us?”
The grandmother’s eyes flickered, but she remained silent.
“Don’t worry, I’m just curious. I used to be a teacher at Flowers Kindergarten. The principal praised Teacher Annie to me several times for her serious work and how popular she was with the children.” Xin Hexue’s words were half-true, half-false, but his expression showed just the right amount of regret. “I only just found out that Teacher Annie was A’e. I wanted to ask her for advice, but I didn’t expect her to already be gone.”
Hearing this, the old woman was moved. She put the rag on the table and stopped working.
“It’s all because of the Walled City’s shoddy projects. My daughter was sleeping just fine when the three-blade ceiling fan fell on her.”
“I only found out when I went to bring her food in the morning. We took her to the clinic for emergency treatment, but they said she’d lost too much blood and wasn’t breathing.”
The ceiling fans installed indoors in the Walled City were quite large. Logically, unless someone was dead asleep, such an accident at night shouldn’t go unheard by the family. Moreover, as people age, the elderly tend to sleep lightly.
Xin Hexue found it strange and asked, “Did you and A’e not live together?”
The old woman shook her head. “She got married and bought a new place in Ju’an Building. She lived with her husband.”
As she spoke, she choked up. “They were living a good life. She was pregnant with my grandchild, and her husband worked as a seaman; one trip out to sea could earn a decent wage, enough for the family with some to spare. Who knew the ship would have an accident? The ocean is vast, we couldn’t even find the body. Then, not many months later, she followed him, two lives gone…”
“My daughter…she had such a miserable life…”
Xin Hexue could only pat her back to help calm her.
Lowering his gaze, his eyes fell on the medical record cover, and he spoke quietly.
“Grandma, may I ask presumptuously…”
“Did you know your daughter sought treatment for neurosis at the clinic before she passed?”
The originally kind-faced old woman suddenly erupted. She frowned fiercely, her eyes widened, and she shouted, “What are you saying?! What are you saying! My daughter was not mentally ill! Impossible, my daughter was not mentally ill!”
“I felt sorry for you and thought of you as my daughter, that’s why I spoke up for you. I didn’t expect you to be like the others, talking badly about my daughter. Get out! Get out! My daughter was not mentally ill! Don’t you dare spread nonsense!”
Xin Hexue was driven out of the dessert shop.
In the 1990s, neurosis was used to describe mild mental disorders, including anxiety, OCD, neurasthenia, somatization disorder…
It was not the same concept as mental illness.
Even if it were a mental illness, it should be faced and treated properly, it was just a pity the times weren’t suitable for that yet.
Xin Hexue speculated that Tan E might have been trapped by the swirling rumors at the time.
Attaching the term mental illness to a woman was undoubtedly labeling her as a “madwoman,” a monster.
So it was no wonder the old woman lost control.
As for whether Tan E told her mother about going to the clinic…
Xin Hexue put away the medical record.
Probably not.
The old woman likely found out later through the gossip.
He looked at Tan’s Dessert Shop. The black-and-white photo of the woman, smiling brightly, still hung on the wall inside. The red candles on either side of the shrine burned quietly, their wax drippy.
“Go away! Go away!”
The old woman shooed him.
…………
After 6 p.m., Xin Hexue walked up to the rooftop.
Ju’an Building was the tallest building in the entire Walled City, a full sixteen stories.
There were so many floors, but no elevator.
By the time Xin Hexue opened the rooftop door, his forehead was damp. As the rusty door swung open, the evening wind rushed into his collar, blowing his coat into billowing waves. The sun was just about to set, and the monsoon wind carried the coolness of late spring, early summer.
He waited for a long time, until nearly 8 p.m., when the rooftop postman finally hurriedly appeared.
Li Zheng climbed over the connecting ladder between the adjacent building’s rooftop before scrambling onto this building’s rooftop.
As soon as he appeared, Xin Hexue shone the flashlight beam he was holding onto him.
Seeing someone waiting on the rooftop, Li Zheng was surprised. “Huh? I deliver letters to your home, there’s no need to specially wait up here.”
True to his name, Li Zheng had regular features, a short crew cut, medium height…there was nothing particularly wrong, but nothing especially outstanding either.
Scratching the back of his head, Li Zheng shyly unzipped the large bag at his waist that was bulging with envelopes. “Which household are you from? I’ll look for your letter.”
“511.”
Xin Hexue answered.
Li Zheng flipped through. His letters were organized with rubber bands.
“Hmm… there’s no letter for you.”
Each building’s resident letters were bundled together with a rubber band into a stack. This made it easy to find.
Xin Hexue said, “Well, I was not expecting any letters. I just wanted to ask, who asked you to send those anonymous letters this morning?”
“Wasn’t it you?”
Li Zheng looked up and asked in confusion.
“Ju’an Building, unit 511.”
“When I delivered mail to that floor this morning, there was a pile of letters outside your room, with money underneath, asking me to send them to various addresses. I found it strange…in the same Walled City and just a couple streets away, couldn’t you deliver them yourself?”
“But you have quite a number of people at your place, right? Do you have roommates? I heard a lot of people moving around inside when I picked up the mail.”
……..
Xin Hexue walked down the stairs step by step.
At the stairwell on the fourteenth floor, he parted ways with Li Zheng, who needed to stop there to deliver mail.
The sound-activated lights in the stairwell had always worked intermittently, and they seemed to have short-circuited again tonight. Fortunately, Xin Hexue had brought a flashlight, and its bright beam shone on the steps.
As he descended, he flipped through the photos he had collected during the day.
Xin Hexue always felt there was something strange about these photos.
It wasn’t because of the candid photography skills.
Xin Hexue turned the photos sideways, upside down, left and right. The person must have been close to him, observing him since the day he entered the Walled City; otherwise, there wouldn’t be photos from the very first day he and Zhou Liao moved in.
As he walked from the tenth floor down to the ninth, he suddenly heard a scream.
“Ah!”
A black shadow flashed through the night and fell straight down.
The voice was familiar.
Xin Hexue rushed to the corridor railing and looked down. Lights turned on on the first floor, residents came out of their rooms, and exclamations rose one after another.
It was Li Zheng.
He had jumped.
Both legs were broken, left and right, and bent at unimaginable angles. The bone from his elbow pierced through his long-sleeved shirt, and was sticking out pale and white. His neck was twisted to the left.
Under the body, a pool of deep red blood spread.
Xin Hexue’s breath caught.
In a split second, he suddenly understood.
The reason he found those photos strange was that from every shooting angle, the people in them seemed inverted, with the sky below, and the ground above.
In other words, someone was hanging upside down and pressing the shutter while lying on the ceiling.
More and more people gathered on the first floor, and Xin Hexue hurriedly ran downstairs.
It seemed like a long time had passed before he could finally look up at the number “10” that was painted in red on the white wall covered with mildew stains at the corners.
At the same time, he heard the sound of something coming up the stairs.
It had four legs.
