Chapter 73 - No one is natural lapse from virtue

Translator: Lionwwang  Editor: Lionwwang

When I calm down, I’ve thought it all out slowly.

Dorra is a little hooligan, unexpected, but also reasonable. Considering her background, she has no father since childhood, grew up in a single-parent family, and her mother died a few years ago. It is not surprising that a young girl, lacking family warmth and family education, has become a rebellious hooligan.

“What are you standing there for?” Azle gives me a push.

Suddenly, I start smiling and look back at Azle: “Very good!”

“Good for what?”

“I mean this little girl, Dorra.” My smile is sincere, and there is no irritation in my eyes.

Azle frowns: “Aren’t you crazy? This girl is obviously a little hooligan. Such a girl is common in bars. What’s good? I tell you, even if someone tells me she’s prostitute or addicted to drugs, I won’t be surprised.”

I understand what he meant. In fact, he is too embarrassed to say it too ugly. Indeed, in our life experience, we have seen too many such little hooligans.

Find any Disco in the city at twelve o’clock in the night. There are full of such hooligans and gangsters. After taking drugs, they dance with heads shaking against the wall. After they have gone too far, they are in a state of ecstasy. Any man can take them away to do wherever he wants.

Although I recognized the hidden meaning of his words, but I just shake my head and speak nothing. I look at Jojo and ask: “What do you think?”

Jojo sighs: “This little girl is full of conceit. She’s just at the most rebellious stage of her life. Say it in positive is fearless. Say it in negative is that she is acting recklessly and down to earth with a bump.”

I’m still smiling, but with something else in the smile.

“Jojo, Azle, She’s just a fearless little girl. Can she be more arrogant than us? Can she be extremely audacious than us? Can she do things out of the ordinary more than we do? Can her life be more absurd than ours?” I say in mild tone, “I just saw something familiar from her.”

“What?” They ask at the same time.

“Myself!” I say. I look at these two friends of mine, “This little girl is almost another younger me. I used to be like that too.”

No parents, no family, no relatives and family reunion, aren’t these issues very much like my life in previous years?

When I was in middle school, my parents passed away, left me alone in the world. I had such a bad time. I was fighting, smoking, truanting from the school and roaming around the streets all day.

At that time, I had such a period to hate everything and despise everything, including myself!

And I used to paralyze myself with this almost degenerate way of life, covered myself up. I also liked a small mess, every day in and out of various chaotic places, and wasted my time together with a group of the same small messes every night, looked more like a ghost than a human being. I wasted all my time outside just because I didn’t want to back home.

Because I had no home! There was only an empty house! No one at home would be waiting for me! No one would be leaving a light for me! No one would be cooking for me. What I could only is using everything to hide my inner fear, or to say loneliness.

But I was luckier than her that I had a master who taught me Kongfu.

My master was a folk master. At that time, in his fifties, there was a small barber shop of his own. When I was sent to a middle school by my parents in a small town outside the city, my master lived in that town too. No one knew that this seemingly ordinary little old man is a kongfu master.

I remember very clearly that when I was in the second grade of middle school, my parents died in a car accident. I never went back to school after the funeral. As a teenager, I experienced the first and most painful experience in my life. I have no relatives, no friends. For the first month, I shut myself up at home, didn’t go out, afraid of seeing the sunshine just like a ghost.

Then I began to be corrupted by bad examples. I began to wander around places like discos, drinking alcohol, fighting, and meeting a lot of small mess friends, and doing evils with them. Only when I got drunk, I could just forget my loneliness for a while.

The mind in my mind at that time was: Whatever! Nothing really matters! Anyway, even if I die, no one would care about me!

That’s when I used to go in and out of the police station. If it weren’t for my young age, I’m afraid it would not be so easy to get out.

I’ve been living like that for around a whole year. After a fight in the disco, I was once again taken to the police station and sent to the detention center for ten days.

Ten days later, I came out of it, alone, without a bag. My hair was sticky and my body smelt weird stink. It was not that I didn’t take a bath, but when I was inside, I would fight with other people every night. I would either be beaten or beat others and rolled from the bed to the ground. Sometimes I was splashed by water. Sometimes I was covered with a quilt and be beaten!

After the daybreak, I had to pretend that nothing happened. All I could depend on was I myself. If I dared to report, then what awaited me was greater revenge at night!

The reason for this was that I refused to buy cigarettes for a “boss” in the same cell on my first day there.

When I came out of the detention house, I had several new injuries on my body. When I looked at the bright sunshine in the sky, I suddenly felt very confused. At that moment, I really thought about death.

And at that moment, at the gate of the detention house I saw my Master in his fifties standing under a sycamore tree. He had a cigarette in his finger – I knew Master had asthma. He had been given up smoking for many years.

He was wearing a dark old jacket, not standing upright, wrinkles on his face like air-dried orange peel, and a lot of cigarette butts at his feet. Seeing me come out, Master threw away the cigarette on hand and walking slowly towards me.

To be honest, I was completely shocked and stunned at that time.

Master took out a thicker coat from a dilapidated leather bag and put it on for me in silence. During the whole process, he didn’t say a word.

I just rigidly let him to put on the coat, let him have it buttoned up one by one. Then master stood in front of me and looked at me for a few seconds. Suddenly, he slapped me on the face. His hand was heavy. He’s a kongfu master. His hand with cocoons all over knocked me down with one slap.

I was lying on the ground with a burning pain on my face. But didn’t know why, but I suddenly felt a little touched. Really! I’m not angry at all. I didn’t hate master beating me at all.

The sun was bright that day. Although it was winter. Master just stood in front of me and looked down at me. His broad figure seemed to cover the sky.

Then he handed out to pull me up. He just whispered to me: “Boy, let’s go home!”

At that time, there seemed to be a gate in my heart, which was opened at once. Instead of getting up, I knelt on the ground, hugged my master’s thighs, wept bitterly, and cried so badly that I rubbed tears and nose all over his trousers.

Really, if there’s the most touching sentence I’ve ever heard in my life. It was on that winter afternoon, at the gate of the detention house, master said to me in his slightly hoarse voice:

“Boy, let’s go home!”

At that moment, I was feeling I have alived, and I realized that I was still a person! I have a home!

…

On the car, I spoke these stories to Jojo in a light tone. Her eyes are red. She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye and whispers: “Then what?”

“After that day, I followed master back to the small town, back to his home. In the evening, he took out the medicine and put it on the wound for me, and cut my hair with his own hands. The next day he went to the school to help me go through the formalities for the resumption of my studies. I stayed in the middle school there until I graduated from high school. I had been good since then and did nothing bad anymore.” I take out a cigarette and light it for myself.

“Your master is really a good man.” Jojo sighs.

“Um.” I nod, “Without him, I won’t be here anymore.”

“Where is your master now? Is he still there?”

The muscles on my face are trembling, I sigh and look out of the window: “Dead. He left in the year I graduated from high school. The gastric cancer.” After that, I throw the cigarette out of the window, and then say lightly, “After my master died, I lifted his coffin onto the car in the crematorium with my own hands. He let me come back before died and let me live well, stop fooling around. Then I just came back and living slowly until now.”

Speaking of this, I look down and think for a while: “In fact, in the past few years, I have been mixed up in the places like nightclubs, and seen too many messy things. Some people wanted to drag me to do evil things with them. But every time I went to bed at night, I would dream of master. In the dream, he didn’t scold or blame me anything. I just dreamed of him standing at the door of the detention house waiting for me. Then I dared not do any thing bad.”

Jojo looks a little sad: “Little 5, you have never said these things to us before.”

I laugh and say: “Even the best friends, there are always some secrets between each othe. For example, have I ever asked you why you only like woman? For example, Azle, have I ever asked him why he is so abusive? Or Wood, did I ever ask him why he was so sullen?”

She looks a little unnatural, then raises her eyebrows, laughs and scolds as a cover-up: “There’s so much nonsense, you don’t want say just don’t say it! Who cares!”

I put away my smile and say seriously: “That’s why I said that little girl really good.” I take out the picture Jim gave me and hand it over. Jojo takes it and has a quick look at it, then keeps driving, frowns: “A clean little girl in the picture.”

“Yes.” I smile calmly, “She should have been a good little girl, her experience may be similar to mine, but there is no one around her to pull her out of that messy environment.”

Jojo closes her mouth and speaks nothing anymore. I sigh: “No one is natural lapse from virtue.”

After hearing this, Jojo’s body is shaking slightly and her eyes looks a little strange, but then she smiles and says: “Let’s go find the little girl now and continue your action to save the lost girl.”

Azle’s car is still behind us. We are heading downtown. Our destination is a karaoke in the city. Just before I came out of school, I have asked Dorra’s classmates, they will have an appointment with friends in the afternoon.

Maybe feel like a little pretentious, but I really seem to see my own shadow from her eyes. I said to myself: I must pull this girl out!

What’s more, she’s Juan’s daughter!