Death Progress Bar

ave lives, don’t dirty it because of me.”

Li Jiuzheng’s hand stiffened.
His tone abruptly sank and become colder: “Did you think I’ll let you off if you say that?”

“I just want you to let yourself off!” Shi Jin replied, forcing himself to make his body relax and lean on his brother.
Glancing at the time of death on the tombstone, he said softly, “During all these years you had countless chances to kill me, but you never ever tried.
In reality, you don’t want to kill me, do you?”

Li Jiuzhend didn’t answer, nor did he push him away.
He simply gazed at the grave, and his eyes were full of emotions, too deep to be understood by anyone except for himself.

The wound on his shoulder was being pressed, which made Shi Jin uncomfortable.
His eyebrows knitted from pain, but he did his best to keep his voice and expression steady.
He slowly turned sideways to face his brother and tried to embrace his waist with one hand.
Asking Xiao Si to give him buffs, he said, making his voice fall lower and lower, “Brother, I know you just lost your mother and couldn’t deal with it, so you acted on impulse… This year, it finally became possible to spend New Year with her, but suddenly, she was gone, and you lost this chance forever.”

Li Jiuzheng tensed, and the hand that gripped Shi Jin’s injured shoulder tightened sharply.

Shi Jin threw himself into his eyes and hugged him hard, using this opportunity to push the scalpel away.
He patted his brother on the back comfortingly, and continued, “I’m the same as you, this year, I’m all alone too.
My mom died many years ago.
I don’t know what she looked like, where she’s buried—in fact, I have no memory of her at all.
Brother, you’re all I have left…”

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The man kept silent, but the fingers clenched on the scalpel gradually relaxed their hold.
Instead, his lips pressed together.

“Brother, let me stay with you.
We’ll celebrate the New Year together, as before.
Everything will pass, it’s all right, it’s all right now.” Shi Jin kept pacifying him, asking Xiao Si to add to him all the buffs it thought even remotely useful.

“…What are you scheming?” A while later, Li Jiuzheng finally was willing to speak.
His voice was low and his words taunting, but he let the hand holding the scalpel drop.
Abruptly, his body relaxed and he sat heavily on the ground.

Xiao Si cried out in delight,

Shi Jin let out a sigh, relieved that his plan to make Li Jiuzheng feel they were both similarly pitiful worked.
He sat down too, worming himself into his arms, and rubbed his shoulders soothingly.
“Brother, if you feel sad, then just cry.
I’ll stay with you.”

Scientific research showed that hugging and crying helped to relieve stress and tension, making people feel better afterward.
Shi Jin simply hoped his brother would vent and let go of some of his killing intent.

However, Li Jiuzheng didn’t cooperate with him.
Although he didn’t push him away, as his mood slowly calmed down, his eyes exhibited their usual cold indifference.
“Only weaklings cry.
I’m not a weakling,” he said.

“…” Shi Jin suddenly regretted not watching more tearjerking talk-shows—maybe he would’ve learned from the hosts how to make people cry.

The progress bar still hovered in the danger zone; apparently, Li Jiuzheng’s killing intent was still there.
Shi Jin weighed his options and said obligingly, “Then I’ll cry for you! I’m not strong at all.
When my mother died, I was too young to understand and I don’t know if I had ever cried.
We suffer the same kind of pain, but you can’t cry, so I’ll cry instead.
It’s okay, I’ll always be my brother’s sweet little quilted jacket.” He let Xiao Si give him a little buff, then sniffed and burst into tears.
He cried as if the world was ending; soon, Li Jiuzheng’s shoulder was soaked.

Li Jiuzheng: “…”

“Waaaah, children without the mothers are like grass on the roadside, nobody cares about them.
Nobody cares about us…” Shi Jin cried and cried, and then started to bawl loudly.
While he was at it, he inadvertently rubbed his snot on Li Jiuzheng’s coat.

Li Jiuzheng, who was a bit mysophobic, stiffened and tried to push him away.

Shi Jin was weeping his heart out here, so how would he let himself to be pushed away? He put his good arm around his brother’s neck and hugged him tighter.
Inwardly, he howled at Xiao Si, “What the hell is this buff?! I feel so freaking miserable I could topple the Great Wall with my tears!”

Xiao Si whispered timidly,

Shi Jin: “…Boohoo!”

Accompanied by the whistle of the north wind, the sun was setting.

The two brothers sat in front of the tombstone.
One was staring at it blankly, his hands limply hanging down, his eyebrows wrinkled, and the expression of forbearance in his eyes; the other was hugging him and crying his eyes out as if the sky had to burst into tears too for him to stop.

When the occasional grave visitors saw this scene, they couldn’t help but imagine some blood-and-thunder drama with a tragic ending.
They sighed, then shook their heads and walked away.

It took more than an hour for Shi Jin’s crying to subside.
Then, the dehydration, hunger, and fever reminded about themselves, along with some other negative conditions.
Shi Jin’s consciousness began to fade.
Because of the cold, he couldn’t help but to curl up and try to burrow into/snuggle up to Li Jiuzheng’s arms.

“When she met Shi Xingrui, she was just a naive girl, not even twenty years old,” Li Jiuzheng suddenly spoke.
His voice was soft but lacking emotion.
It caused Shi Jin to wake up a bit, and he rubbed his head on his brother’s chest to prove he was listening.

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“She was the last woman Shi Xingrui pursued… That was before your mother appeared.
Although Shi Xingrui abandoned her immediately after I was born, she still clung to this illusion—’see, your father cares about you, he hasn’t looked for another woman, maybe he’ll come back to us one day’… These ridiculous thoughts made her indulge in her fantasies more and more.
Finally, she sank into them completely.”

Shi Jin opened his eyes, a little dazed.

“But, in the end, this was just her delusion.
Your mother appeared and it shattered… Then she had another one—’look, that woman and I look alike, your father simply coveted her younger body, but it doesn’t matter; when she has a baby like me, her figure will also change, and then your father will realize who is better… Your mother is special, and you are special too.’”

Shi Jin struggled to prop himself up and see his brother’s face.

Li Jiuzheng looked at him impassively and reached to touch his cheek.
“Then she went mad, in the real sense.
In the beginning, when she woke up, she didn’t believe she had been thrown away.
She ignored the existence of your mother and came to believe you were her child.
She blamed Shi Xingrui not coming to see her on me—because I resembled neither my mother nor my father, so he hated me, and abandoned her because of that.
Later, she even suspected I was swapped at birth.
Don’t you think it’s funny? I was right in front of her, but she thought it was you, whom she’d never seen, that was her son.”

“Brother…” Shi Jin’s heart ached.
He wanted to comfort him but had no idea what to say.

“Genes are such a strange thing.
I had a lot of things I couldn’t understand, so I studied medicine.” Li Jiuzheng covered the lower half of the teenager’s face and watched only his eyes, spellbound.
“Later, I learned a lot of things.
I learned why I don’t look like my parents, and that my mother’s fantasies were actually a mental illness.
I tried my best to treat her, taking care not to let her condition worsen… When, finally, Shi Xingrui died, I was sure she would wake up for real…”

“Brother, don’t talk anymore.” Shi Jin pulled away the hand blocking his face and tugged at it, trying to stop the words pouring from his mouth.

Li Jiuzheng put his hand down.
On his face, there was no expression at all.
“But she died.
She woke up and lost all her will to live.
It didn’t matter how hard I tried to keep her here, she died, right in front of me.
She blamed me until her last breath, asking why couldn’t I look like her.”

Shi Jin quickly grabbed his hand again and said, “It’s not your fault, she was just sick.
The one to blame was Shi Xingrui, and your mother was ill.
It’s not your fault, Brother.”

“I almost made the same mistake as her and fell into the same madness—if only you were never born, if only you really were her child… But this has nothing to do with you.
You’re just a child who had lost his mother…” Li Jiuzheng slowly pulled out his hand.
It seemed as if thick walls went up in his eyes, hiding all his emotions inside and preventing others from entering.
“You can go, Shi Jin.”

Xiao Si cried out,

Shi Jin blinked in surprise, then scowled at Li Jiuzheng.
“Fifth Brother, I won’t go.
Stop thinking too much—things will get better.”

“Go away.” Li Jiuzheng stopped looking at him and picked up the scalpel on the ground.
He glanced toward a nearby path.
“That man is coming to pick you up.
When he saw you, he came straight this way… Leave, I don’t want to see you again.”

Taken aback, Shi Jin looked in the direction he pointed to and saw a familiar figure sitting in a wheelchair.
His eyes brightened and he got up, wanting to rush to his side.
He took a step forward, then stopped and turned back, bending over to snatch the scalpel from Li Jiuzheng’s hand.
He struggled to pull the man up from the ground, saying, “New Year’s Day is an auspicious time to worship the ancestors.
Now that we are done, it’s time to go back and continue celebrating.”

Li Jiuzheng frowned and got up, reaching for the scalpel.
“Give it back to me.”

“No, it’s mine now.” Shi Jin stuffed the scalpel into his pocket, then grabbed his brother’s hand and pulled him in the direction of Lian Jun.
“I said I’m going to accompany you.
Neither of us has parents, so it’s only right to spend the Spring Festival together.
Come on, let’s go.
I’ll make you dumplings when we get home.”

Li Jiuzheng did not move.
“In Chengdu, we don’t eat dumplings on New Year’s day.”

 

Translator’s Notes:
“Sweet little quilted jacket” [贴心小棉袄] – refers to the close relationship between parents and child (almost always daughter).
It’s a metaphor for the child’s love and care for parents: like a quilted jacket, he or she would accompany them closely and let them feel warm.
“Lady Meng Jiang Weeps Down The Great Wall” – a famous Chinese folktale, with many variations.
Lady Meng Jiang’s husband was pressed into service by imperial officials and sent as corvee labor to build the Great Wall of China.
Lady Meng Jiang heard nothing after his departure, so she set out to bring him winter clothes.
Unfortunately, by the time she reached the Great Wall, her husband had already died.
Hearing the bad news, she wept so bitterly that a part of the Great Wall collapsed, revealing his bones.
(Wiki – or google it)