Chapter 761: Smelly Ditch

Chapter 761: Smelly Ditch

“Say it! Are you a man or a woman? Say it out loud!”

Liu Haoqiang’s drunk father had lost it completely. He whipped Liu Haoqiang as she cowered in a corner and demanded an answer.

“Man, I’m a man! Stop it, please. I made a mistake. I knew I was in the wrong...” Liu Haoqiang begged while holding onto herself with both hands.

“You don’t fucking seem like one! You sissy! Freak! Source of my bad luck...” Her father went even harder. “Don’t cry! Men don’t cry!!”

The violent outburst usually lasted over ten minutes until her father was exhausted. Then he would fall sound asleep on the sofa.

Liu Haoqiang always dried her tears quietly and cleaned up the mess in the living room. She even had to lift her father onto the bed before using the first-aid kit to disinfect her wounds.

There were many times when Liu Haoqiang thought about shutting the windows and doors and opening the gas in the kitchen to drag his father to hell with her. But she was a coward who only dared to consider the option, never carrying it out.

Last night, her father beat her because he saw the small red stains on the jeans she hadn’t been able to wash. The blood was from her period.

Her father forbade her from using sanitary pads because he believed it to be repulsive and cursed. However, Liu Haoqiang had no better way to deal with her natural biological phenomenon. She could only resort to using tissues as pads.

She embarrassed herself many times because of that and became the butt of the jokes in the class. The girls kept a wide berth from her, and the boys shunned her. She had no friends.

Her homeroom teacher took it seriously, though, and visited her family in person to talk to her father about it.

Her father accepted whatever the teacher said with simple yeses, but as soon as the teacher was out of the room, Liu Haoqiang got another beating. Her father cursed her out for being a humiliating and cursed one.

Nothing came out of it in the end. It was as if the problem would go away as long as everyone pretended it wasn’t there.

Now, Liu Haoqiang got out of bed and walked into the cramped kitchen, opening the fridge and steaming the cold hard buns in the electric pot. Then she prepared some mustard greens and a small bowl of liquor. This would be her father’s breakfast.

If she didn’t do this, she could receive another beating when she came back home after school.

After all that, Liu Haoqiang returned to her room and stood before the mirror. She took off her shirt, wrapping bandages around her chest tightly to cover her pronounced curves until her torso seemed completely flat from the side.

Then she put on boys’ uniform and put on her backpack. With her hair cut short, she looked like a boy with more delicate features.

She stared at herself in the mirror and practiced the sort of broad smile that boys usually made. She had to make herself seem more like a boy to win their respect and avoid bullying.

When she was about done, the wound around her collarbones throbbed in pain.

A ray of morning light shone into the room, splashing white onto the mirror and obscuring her face.

Suddenly, Liu Haoqiang felt frustration, exhaustion, and deep resentment greater than ever before rising in her heart. The resentment was targeted at her father, herself, and the world.

“Aghh!!”

Liu Haoqiang couldn’t help but picture it, and she felt nauseous.

“There are also water snakes, swamp eels, and all sorts of bugs in the water. Think about it. After your death, they’ll all burrow into your mouth and lay eggs in your body, giving birth to a colony of small water snakes...”

“Oh boy...” The girl braced herself dramatically. “Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.”

Liu Haoqiang paled. She was already covered in goosebumps.

“Hey, ever see the ocean?” the girl suddenly asked apropos to nothing.

Liu Haoqiang shook her head.

“Neither have I. I’m saving up to go on a ferry trip after graduating from high school to look at the ocean,” the girl said. “What about it? Wanna join me?”

“Huh?” Liu Haoqiang thought she had heard her wrong.

“Then you can jump into the ocean to kill yourself,” the girl said earnestly. “Isn’t that better than this ditch?”

Liu Haoqiang thought about it, and to her surprise, it did seem like the better option. Yes, if she was going to die anyway, why not look for a better place? The ocean must be beautiful.

“That’s a promise.” The girl winked at her with her left eye. “Hey, stop standing on the railing. You look stupid.”

Liu Haoqiang flushed red before going pale. She slowly lowered herself.

In a flash, the girl pushed her bicycle aside and took a big stride forward to grab her hand, yanking her toward the bridge.

Liu Haoqiang fell into her arms, and they fell on the stone floor.

Worried that Liu Haoqiang would run away, the girl wrapped her arms so tightly around Liu Haoqiang that she found it difficult to breathe.

The girl shouted, “Why would you do this at this age? Think about your parents! You’re being selfish...”

The moment Liu Haoqiang heard that, the frustration and grievances she had bottled up for more than a decade erupted like a volcano.

“What do you know about me?! My mom died when I was young! My father resents me! He beats me up and whips me with a belt every time he gets drunk... My classmates hate me and stay away from me. No one would be my friends... I’m being selfish by being alive. It’s better that I die. That’ll please everyone...”

The girl gaped at her. That was...more tragic than she could ever imagine.

Liu Haoqiang burst out crying.

“Huh? Eh, ehhhhh?”

The girl was still lying prone on the ground. Suddenly helpless, she kept patting Liu Haoqiang on the back. “Say, people should be more selfish. You...you don’t have to care about other people. You should live for yourself... Hey, girl, would you stop crying and get up first? My legs are going numb...”