Headache.
It was as if the inside of his head was incessantly being stapled and causing a stabbing pain. He seemed to hear the harsh sound of breaking glass that usually came when his parents were loudly fighting.
“Have you ever taken care of your son? After all these years, you can keep drinking and drinking, but can you even manage this family?”
“Family? Who bought this house? Who bought the furniture? You only fucking know what day I get paid, but you don’t even know where it comes from.”
“I don’t want these things!”
“Don’t want them? I’ll smash them! And break them! Don’t want them? I’ll smash them! You don’t want them?! I don’t want any of them, either!”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Go away, everyone just leave!
Li Cu pressed his hands hard against his ears and immediately woke up. With a glance, he saw a white curtain up above and a fluorescent lamp on the side.
He gasped for air and tried hard to breathe as the sounds of the fight in his ear gradually quieted down. He kept his eyes wide open until he could hear nothing.
The nurse was changing the IV bag when she was startled by his movement. “Do you need so much effort to open your eyes? You look like a corpse turning into a zombie. “
Li Cu narrowed his eyes and said to himself, “It’s really bad. I haven’t had that kind of nightmare for such a long time, but it’s still so real.” Would he ever escape this nightmare in his lifetime? No, absolutely not.
He closed his eyes for a moment and slowly recovered. Only then did he realize that he was in the hospital, but he couldn’t remember why. “Why am I here?” When he spoke, his throat was surprisingly dry and he smelled something strange.
“You were found in an alley off Changpu Street. Someone hit you on the head a dozen times with a brick and gave you a moderate concussion. You fainted and lost consciousness. In fact, I’m surprised you’re even laying here alive. You should be in the morgue.” The nurse said. Li Cu clearly saw that this was a middle-aged nurse who had worked late shifts for many years, which made her look haggard. “The doctor said you were lucky because you have a thick skull and a small brain.” The nurse added.
Li Cu was silent at first, but the words brick and alley caused him to slowly remember what had happened. It appeared that he had been robbed, but he didn’t know if anything else was taken. If so, he really didn’t want to live. When he felt the rest of his body and found nothing unusual, he breathed a sigh of relief. When he thought about the bloody guy that attacked him, he figured maybe someone got their revenge on the guy, or maybe it was an underworld gang fight, and after escaping, he robbed him along the way.
This wasn’t some fucking run-of-the-mill bad luck, it was a catastrophe.
“I just heard my parents fighting. Was I dreaming or am I hearing voices?” Li Cu felt his head and found an IV in his hand.
“No, I can hear your parents fighting right now.” The nurse said, “They were yelling at each other in the corridor a few days ago. We had to ask them to leave and made sure they wouldn’t come see you at the same time. You may not know it, but you’ve been in a coma for more than ten days. “
“More than ten days?! Bullshit!” Li Cu darkly scolded in his heart as he clenched his teeth and tried to sit up. As soon as he moved, however, he felt a sharp pain from his back that was even more painful than his head.
“Did my back get hurt, too?” Li Cu asked.
“Your back? Yes, it’s injured.” The nurse said, “You’d better not scratch the knife wounds.”
“Shit, he cut me, too?!” Li Cu felt angry and scolded, “If he was just robbing five hundred yuan, was there a need to be so brutal? It’s not enough to beat me with bricks, but to cut me, too?!” At that time, he found the nurse’s expression was a little strange.
“What happened to him?” He asked.
“What happened to who? You mean the guy with all the injuries, right?” The nurse suddenly smiled and said, “He’s no better than you. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” Li Cu was surprised. “The police caught and killed him?”
“No, when they found you, he was already dead beside you. He had lost too much blood. He was holding you so tightly that you were connected by blood.”
Li Cu froze and thought for a moment before he understood what the nurse meant. It looked like this unfortunate man robbed him and died halfway through the act, which was too dramatic. If he hadn’t been stunned at that time, the police might have thought he had robbed the other party when they arrived. But with all those injuries, why even bother trying to rob someone? Shouldn’t he have gone directly to the hospital? Did he not even have the money to take a taxi? If Li Cu had known earlier, the guy could’ve just asked him to borrow the money.
Li Cu suddenly felt a twinge of guilt, but quickly comforted himself. The main reason why the other party had died so tragically on the spot was because he had knocked Li Cu unconscious without bothering to ask if he could borrow some money.
The nurse smiled at him again and said, “Have a good rest.” As she spoke, she drew the curtain around his hospital bed.
Li Cu pinched his eyebrows and felt as if it was all a dream. In his mind, a few hours ago he was thinking about which internet cafe to go to for the night, but he had almost been killed and was now lying in the hospital.
Well, at least he wasn’t dead, so he could get out of going to class for more than a month. In this case, the pain of class was far more than the pain of being cut by a knife. The teachers should really take the time to reflect.
He laughed when he thought about the bad thing he had done before. The teacher and all of his classmates would have to come see him with flowers and fruits— this was definitely fate.
He felt very uncomfortable after not moving for more than ten days, but when he made a slight move, a great deal of pain shot out from his back. It appeared the knife wound was quite serious.
When he shrugged his shoulder and felt the pain sweep across his entire back, he suddenly realized that the wound was very strange, as if there was more than one.
He remembered the nurse’s expression and had a bad feeling as he reached to touch his back. Soon, he felt the bandage.
The wound should have stopped bleeding, and there was gauze covering it. He reached his hand under the gauze and felt the wound, noticing that it had scabbed over and felt very painful and itchy. As he touched it, cold sweat began to appear.
There were a lot of wounds, and the more he touched them, the more panicked he became. Why did the shapes of these wounds feel so strange? Were they really made by a knife? He gritted his teeth and rolled over to stand up, but his legs were so weak that he almost fell to his knees. He struggled to hold on to the nearby stool, pulled out the IV drip, stumbled into the toilet, tore off the gauze on his back, and turned to look.
He was instantly shocked and thought: What’s this?
His whole back was engraved with a very strange figure, and it had all been done with a knife. It wasn’t one or two wounds, but hundreds of nicks that were all scabbed over and had formed horrible scars.
“What kind of picture is this?” His whole body was cold and an unspeakable fear swept over him. He couldn’t help but let out a shout.
MereBear's Translation 