The Gift of Kings (HuaLian TGCF)

Chapter 11 The Boy From Back Then

Then

Hua Cheng was 11 the year his family fled Xianle. His father's gambling habit had finally gotten them into a whole deeper than they could get out of so rather than be thrown in debtor's prison he had taken his second wife and his three sons across the border into Yong'an. If he'd thought more about it he would've only taken two of his sons, at least that's what he shouted when he threw his third and nameless son out into the snow. Hong'er, who thought of himself by that baby name, not having any other one to use, had sat in the snow for a little while, just looking at the closed door of the small hut they were currently living in.

It wasn't the first time he'd been thrown out, it wasn't even the 10th, but that day everything just felt particularly pointless. His mother was the only one who had ever loved or wanted him, and she was gone. His brothers were indifferent to him, preoccupied with their own plans to get away from their father and with no time or kindness to spare for him. At least they didn't beat him. Their indifference was the closest thing to kindness he had and it made life just barely bearable but they would be gone soon, gone away from his father and his stepmother, and then it would just be Hong'er left, alone with his two parents and the baby.

The baby. Would Hong'er even be allowed to share a roof with it?

Just an incense time earlier Hong'er had woken to the sound of his stepmother declaring that she didn't want "that cursed brat" anywhere near her precious new child. The hut only had the one room and when his stepmother turned and pointed at the place where Hong'er slept curled in his one thin blanket she had seen that his eyes were open and that he was watching her.

"See!" She'd shrieked "there he goes giving me one of those looks again! He's going to place a curse on my child!" And then Hong'er's father had yelled at him for his disrespectful gaze and thrown him out into the snow.

Slowly Hong'er picked himself up out of the freezing drift he had been tossed into and began to walk. He wasn't sure where he was going. In Xianle he had at least known which shrines and abandoned buildings he could huddle in until he'd been gone long enough that his father had calmed down and it would be safe to go back, but here, on the outskirts of the little village they were staying in for the time being, he didn't know of anywhere like that, and besides, what was the point anyway? What was the point of any of it?

Hong'er wished that he could leave with his brothers but they were a few years older than him and when he'd ask to go with them they had laughed at him and told him that they weren't dragging a baby. 11 was hardly a baby and it wasn't like he needed them to take care of him, he'd been taking care of himself ever since his mother died after all, it wasn't like anyone else ever did anything for him, it wasn't like he had a choice, but still they called him a baby and told him they wouldn't take him and so what could he do?

Stay.

That was his only option. Stay with his father and his stepmother in the beatings and the nights spent on the streets in the mornings waking up hungry and for what? What was the point of any of it?

Ahead of him Hong'er saw the frozen lake emerging through the trees and he wondered idly if stepping into it would actually be any colder than the snowdrift's his father threw him into. He didn't have proper winter clothing. He was dressed in rags. He was already freezing. What was a little bit more cold? If he got cold enough maybe he would go numb, really numb, numb enough not to feel it when they beat him, numb enough to ignore the empty ache of his stomach and the ever present pain in his chest which had followed him everywhere since the day his mother died.

His mother. She was the only reason he had kept going until then, because it was what she wanted for him, he knew that, but it was hard, so hard, and pointless, so pointless, and there was no way out and no future and no reason to fight anymore, and maybe, if he let that cold in all the way, if he let it sing him to sleep, maybe he would finally see her again.