The ultimate blue sea

Chapter 4 - Exploding Head

Su Qing felt as though his body had been torn into several pieces. After the pain, his senses began to numb. All around was a vast expanse of whiteness. He struggled to open his eyes and dimly saw the bespectacled man with his arms crossed over his chest, watching him indifferently as he quietly chatted with the woman next to him.

For a moment, Su Qing thought he was going to die. He felt himself floating, as though rising up into the sky. Nothing around him had anything to do with him. He felt indifference and ignorance welling up inside him.

That four-eyed son of a bitch had said that one out of five people could become some damned "little grey." Su Qing even found the time to irrelevantly think, That's 20%... In his whole life, in exams big and small, including even physical education tests, he had never reached the top 20%.

In the numbness that came after the pain, Su Qing let his mind wander irrelevantly and suddenly felt that he wanted to cry a little.

For some reason, he remembered his dad, who wore Armani over frayed long underwear. He had made so much money, but he didn't know how to spend it. Everyone said he was a nouveau riche.

Su Qing had heard it being said behind his back. He had been very little, taken out tottering to be shown off at a cocktail party by his dad. He had said, This is my son, our little golden boy. Along the way, Su Qing had got caught up in playing and been separated from his dad for a while, and he had heard the aunties and uncles who called him "Chairman Su" disdainfully saying behind his back, "No matter how much money he has, he's still a bumpkin with a sack of bills on his back. He can make it, but he can't spend it. He's got no taste. That son of his is the same. However good-looking he is, he's still golden on the outside but useless on the inside."

These words had made a deep impression on Su Qing's young mind. Su Qing recalled that it seemed to be then that he had set himself the grand goal of learning to "spend money." It was as though, if he learned to spend money, he wouldn't be "the nouveau riche's son" anymore, wouldn't be "a bumpkin with no taste."

But while the ability to spend money could be learned, it wasn't so easy to learn taste. After so many years of earnest study, Su Qing had yet to escape the scathing and humiliating reputation of being "the nouveau riche's son." When others spent money, they were living exquisitely; when he spent money, he was squandering a fortune. Su Qing had thought about it for a long time but couldn't understand why this was.

Then, he inexplicably remembered how he had slipped up once and gone to do drugs at a karaoke bar with some young people. The first time, there was no legendary high, and he had a strong reaction. On the way back, he bumped into walls the whole time, and he threw up. When his dad saw him, he gave him two fierce slaps. His face swelled up like a mantou. He didn't dare to go out for a week.

Su Qing had wanted to jump up and resist, but he had seen the wrinkles on Su Chengde's face. They were so deep, deep as though carved by a knife day after day. He hadn't thought anything about it at the time, but subconsciously he hadn't touched the stuff again.

Now, with his consciousness blurred, an uncontrollable thought surged up in Su Qing's mind—That's my dad. He's old.

That's my dad, he thought. He has a son who hasn't been back home in years and broke off relations with him. The only offspring he's had in his life, about to die unnoticed in a place no one knows about. There won't even be a body. Years later, maybe he'll be even older and his heart will soften. He'll regret flying into a rage and fighting with his son and want to find his own flesh and blood to enjoy a few years of happy retirement. And maybe it's only then that he'll discover that his son is gone.

Vanished from this world.

The blurred memories of his childhood seemed to have been stimulated, awakening from slumber in the depths of his consciousness, event after event, all coming clearly into view. Su Qing abruptly remembered when he was little, how Su Chengde put him on his shoulders and took him for a ride around the yard like a horse. He remembered that the year his mom died, Su Chengde, red-eyed, didn't sleep all night and smoked countless cigarettes. Then he sat at his bedside and said to him, "It's all right. Mom is gone, but Dad loves you."