As the Crows Fall | ONC 2020 Grand Winner

i | Count the Crows

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She counts the crows as the man across the street takes a bullet to the head.

Eight.

Eight crows watch from barren branches of pale trees whose leaves have long scattered to the wind. She almost thinks she can hear their heartbeats, but no. It is her own.

The man falls quickly, to little effect. His body simply sways back with the force of the bullet, shoulders slumping against the wall and leaving stains on the otherwise pristine brick fixture.

Yin Ruwei did not kill him.

Yes, she watched from her bench across the way, her parchment open to the sunlight and a brush in her hand as she recorded his final moments in the form of desolate strokes on a page, but she did not kill the man.

For a moment, only silence hangs in the air. It's an empty silence, unfilled and yawning. There is no gravity to this silence and even the crows are still in its delicacy.

Ruwei waits.

Bie ya miao zhu zhang, she's always been told. Don't stretch young plants to make them grow. Have patience.

And she does. She has as much patience as does the man she had killed, who stood waiting since dawn for his dealer to appear, unaware that no one would arrive. She has as much patience as does the sniper, who remained motionless over five hundred meters away, sorting through time for the opportune moment to take a shot.

She has as much patience as revenge requires.

Revenge is often thought to be a rash reaction, committed only by fools in the grip of emotion, but Ruwei knows better than that.

Revenge is patient.

She lets her painting dry as the dying sun makes its way across the sky. She is not in a hurry. The crows watch the dead man as she watches them.

His blood pools on the ground beneath him in slow eddies across the pavement. His name is Wentao. No one comes for him.

The crow perched on the lowest branch lets out a soft caw.

Ruwei stands and brushes imaginary dust from her peacoat, tucking her parchment and ink under her arm.

Her gongbi is not nearly so precise as she'd wish it, the details too scarce and the strokes too imprecise for her liking, but she is not concerned. She will fix this when she returns to Douxiu.

She counts the crows as she walks away.

Seven.

Seven crows and a dead man at her back.

She holds her painting to her chest and smiles.

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They say that every person's soul is like a cake.

Each time you fall in love, you give a piece away. Each time your heart is broken, you lose that piece forever.

In a perfect love, you give a piece to the one in your heart. In a perfect love, they will give you one in return.

In a perfect love, but no love is perfect.

Ruwei crumples the frayed note in her hand. She knows that far too well.

How many times has she done this now? Crumpled and re-crumpled the paper she holds, the scribbles that dictate her life.

The storm clouds gather overhead. It's an unusual time for rain, stranger still that there was no forecast, but Ruwei knows deaths bought through blood are loathed by nature. Revenge often angers the Earth.