Zheng Tan watched the boy walk into a residential neighborhood and followed him.

He just wanted to check out the neighborhood, so he stopped when the boy entered a building. However, the boy paused to turn and look at him.

After all the things he had been through, Zheng Tan could sense kindness or malice from humans quite easily. The boy was looking at him with pure anticipation, so he walked into the building after some hesitation.

Fu Lei smiled and started heading up the stairs. He always took the stairs a few at a time, but today he walked slowly and would turn to check behind him every once in a while.

The boy took out his keys in front of an apartment on the fourth floor. He opened the door and waved to Zheng Tan.

Zheng Tan listened carefully but didn’t hear anyone home besides the boy. He entered the apartment.

It was a normal home. The furniture was old and plain. The apartment was even smaller than the Jiao house. It was only about fifty square meters. Zheng Tan felt a bit constrained. The house had two bedrooms and a living room. The boy’s room was the smaller bedroom. The size of the room was on par with Youzi’s room, but it much messier. A few books were lying on the floor. Zheng Tan walked over and glimpsed the boy’s name, Fu Lei, on the cover of one book.

Every stroke was written with force and conviction, yet the handwriting was far from beautiful.

Zheng Tan was surveying Fu Lei’s room when the boy laid a fish head in front of him.

The dish was probably a leftover from yesterday. It was old and the soup on the fish had already turned into gel.

Zheng Tan turned his head.

“You don’t want it?”

Fu Lei didn’t understand. His neighbor’s cat would have taken the fish and ran off with it by now.

Zheng Tan walked around the room, then jumped onto the desk. Things were piled on the desk, but there was a wooden prize cup on the desk that was free from clutter. It was very clean, unlike the piggy bank nearby which was covered in dust. The owner obviously cleaned it very often.

“I won it when I was ten,” Fu Lei picked up the prize cup and said proudly.

The kid was much more chatty when he was excited.

Zheng Tan had seen a lot of people like him. They opened up to animals.

As a kid, it was natural for him to want to share something he was proud of whenever he got a chance. It didn’t matter that a cat most likely couldn’t understand anything he said.

Zheng Tan learned that Fu Lei had indeed practiced martial arts before. However, he never trained systematically.

Fu Lei grew up in the countryside. His parents were busy, so he lived with his grandparents in their village. Someone in the village owned a dojo, and Fu Lei was one of the many children who entered it.

His grandparents were happy to see their grandson practice some martial arts.

The cup was sculpted by their master. The sculpting was good too.

Fu Lei managed to beat his peers in a test and earned the prize. Sadly, their master left the dojo to work in the city. He moved south and became a security guard. The dojo closed after he left.

Fu Lei kept practicing even after his parent brought him to the city. He didn’t have a bike and ran to school every morning to save bus fare.

This was not his first time being stopped on his way to school by bullies. He solved the situation every time by fighting. He would win sometimes and lose when the other side had too many people. This, however, gave people the impression that he was a problematic kid. Most of his elementary school classmates avoided him.

After he entered middle school, people who knew him from primary school spread stories about him and he managed to earn a reputation, even though the school year had just begun. That was why teachers let him be in the back of the classroom.

Fu Lei felt he wasn’t interested in studying and would work like his master in the south when he grew up. However, the first time he mentioned this, his father had beaten him so hard he had to stay in bed for a week.

Whenever he mentioned he didn’t want to study, his father would beat him, so he learned to keep quiet. Because of the nine-year compulsory education system, he would be able to enter middle school no matter what. His parent used a bit of bribery to get him into the school he was in now. They wanted him to ‘study hard and improve’. Fu Lei ignored their wishes.

Fu Lei’s mood was dampened now. He found school boring and missed his days in the dojo.

He carefully put the prize cup down. Fu Lei opened a drawer and took out some ointment for the cuts on his hand.

Zheng Tan looked into the drawer. It was full of all kinds of ointments. Did his parents buy all this because they knew their kid got in fights regularly?

He was speechless.

Fu Lei sat on the floor and took out his pencils. A few of his mechanical pencils were broken, so he took out the lead to place into other pencils.

As he worked, the pair of them heard the door open.

Fu Lei jumped. He stuffed his pens into his backpack and said to Zheng Tan,”Hide under the bed, quick!”

Zheng Tan didn’t know why he said this but still hid obediently under the bed.

The next moment, a middle age man came barging into the room. He saw Fu Lei and it was like a volcano had erupted.

“Fu Lei! You’re skipping class again?!”

The man saw the ointment on the floor and yelled, “You got into a f*cking fight again?!”

Zheng Tan then heard the sound of Fu Lei being beaten.

His father really was short tempered. He started beating the kid even before he asked what had happened. However, this showed that Fu Lei really did get into fights a lot and skipped school on a regular basis.

“I spent so much money to get you into that school and what do you do? You skip class and get into fights! If I hadn’t left something at home today, you would have gotten away with it, you bastard!”

Fu Lei’s father kept hitting him. He had come home to pick up something and caught Fu Lei at home before he could even have a sip of water. He was tired now and sat on the side of the bed panting. He didn’t stop talking though.

“Nothing is as important as studying. If you don’t study, you’ll be like me and have to work in a factory. The work is so hard and there is little money. You need to know English even if you want to be a bellboy at a high-end hotel. Do you not see the motto I wrote you?”

Fu Lei’s father pointed to a piece of paper taped at the head of the bed.

Fu Lei’s father dropped out of school after sixth grade. He managed to learn a skill and now worked in a factory. His mother only went to elementary school too and was now a cashier at a supermarket. The couple knew first-hand what problems no education would bring and wanted their son to study hard. Mao’s famous quote ‘study hard and improve every day’ was their motto.

Fu Lei’s father had the saying written in calligraphy and taped to Fu Lei’s bed. He looked towards the piece of paper, only to find it was sabotaged.

The saying had been changed to ‘study bad and improve none’.

Fu Lei’s father was silent for a second, then took off his shoe and started beating the boy again.

Zheng Tan could only see their legs from under the bed, however, he could tell from the sounds that Fu Lei was getting a good beating. However, he didn’t let out a sound.

Fu Lei’s father was in a hurry to get back to work. He let go of the boy and wrote him an absence note. He signed his name on the note and slapped it onto the table. He then left. The door shut after him with a bang.

Zheng Tan came out from under the bed and looked at Fu Lei who was rubbing his behind. He looked at the note Fu Lei’s father left and shook his head. He had made up an excuse for his son.

Zheng Tan didn’t know what to think about Fu Lei and his father. He did, however, believe Fu Lei’s dad was too extreme. If he knew what the job market would be like in ten years, Zheng Tan was curious what he would think.

This was how society was though. Very few people were at the top of the social pyramid.

Fu Lei’s father had a point, but he was not completely right. Fu Lei’s future was in his own hands.

Zheng Tan watched Fu Lei pocket his note and pack up his backpack in silence. It was clear this happened very often.

The boy could take a lot of pain.

Suddenly, Zheng Tan got an idea. Why not have Fu Lei run the fifteen hundred meter race?

The boy ran to school every day, he had good stamina and was fast.

The only problem was how to get Fu Lei to sign up for the race. He definitely knew about the sports tournament and would know that no one had signed up for long-distance running yet. Why hadn’t he signed up?

Oh well, he’d leave it to Jiao Yuan to ask Fu Lei.

Zheng Tan checked the clock on Fu Lei’s table. It was time for him to go home.

“Are you leaving?” Fu Lei followed the cat and opened the front for him.

Zheng Tan eyed him and memorized his apartment number before heading down the stairs.