tw: domestic violence
It was very late by the time the program was finished recording, and ordinary children had already gone to bed, but Fan Jialuo was still taking Xu Yiyang through the bustling city amid the cool summer night breeze.
Xu Yiyang was happy. In fact, he had never been happier, and his mood improved every day. He couldn’t wait to accompany his big brother forever on this neon-lit road, to see the scenery on both sides, and to appreciate everything in the world. But at this time, he stared at the time on the dashboard and firmly spat out two words, “Croak, croak!”
“Ah, Gugu is still hungry! Come on, let’s go home.” Fan Jialuo changed lanes and got onto the highway.
Back in their neighborhood, Fan Jialuo waited in the car while Xu Yiyang went into the back mountains to catch bugs. Don’t misunderstand, Fan Jialuo didn’t mean to hire child labor, but his unique physique caused spirits to grow restless and retreat wherever he went, so it was difficult for him to catch living creatures. Gugu was surrounded by his magnetic field day and night, so it didn’t react too violently. Otherwise, it would have jumped out of the fish tank to escape its prison.
Half an hour later, Xu Yiyang emerged from the dark back mountains with grass clippings all over his hair. He held a small bottle full of mosquitoes in his raised hand, and he looked at his big brother with bright eyes.
“So many? You’re amazing!” Fan Jialuo took the bottle and gave a thumbs up.
The eager Xu Yiyang smiled brilliantly.
A pair of large and small figures held hands and slowly climbed up the stairs.
After two families left in a short period of time, the building seemed much quieter, but the hidden atrocities still continued. The woman on the fourth floor was still being beaten and scolded by her entire family today. Her desperate cries were met with even worse treatment, until her voice faded away. The seventh floor was exceptionally quiet today, as if no one was home. The fourteenth and seventeenth floors were naturally empty, as silent as death. On the eighteenth floor, a thin woman with disheveled hair was standing uneasily by the door. She reached out to knock on the door several times, but always retracted her hand in a timid manner.
Just as she made up her mind to leave, two figures suddenly stepped out of the stairwell silently, startling her.
“Ah!” She pressed herself against the wall and let out a short cry, only to exhale slowly when the voice-activated lights came on. “Mr. Fan, it’s you!” Her lifeless face and scarred body were completely exposed under the light, and Fan Jialuo and Xu Yiyang’s gazes were immediately drawn to those scars.
She seemed to feel ashamed, so she crossed her arms in front of her chest in an attempt to conceal those undignified marks. She was only in her twenties, but her temples were already graying prematurely, and the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes were sculpted after suffering day and night, revealing the cruel contours of time.
She turned red and mumbled, “Hello Mr. Fan, I am a tenant from the seventh floor. My surname is Lu, and my name is Lu Dan. I watched your program recently and learned that you are a psychic, so I want to…” Her back hunched over, as if she couldn’t bear the heavy pressure of life, and she took several deep breaths before speaking dryly, “I want to ask you, will my life change? Can you help me to predict my future?”
However, Fan Jialuo pierced her true innermost thoughts. “Are you trying to ask, will you leave your husband alive?”
The woman looked up sharply with a horrified expression, and then subconsciously looked at the child, fearing that this cruel topic would have a negative influence on the child. This showed what a kind person she was, thinking about others’ feelings almost all the time. However, it was this type of woman that was the most vulnerable to domestic violence, because their kindness, consideration, and weakness were precisely the breeding grounds for evil.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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People who have not suffered endless suffering were incapable of understanding this feeling. Only god knew how she broke down and cried when she saw that frog being released by Mr. Fan, and how she broke free from the shackles of fear to run desperately to the eighteenth floor for help. She had no way to live, she really had no way out.
Fan Jialuo shook his head and whispered, “the only person who can save you is yourself. You have to divorce him and leave decisively, without turning back. This is the only path that I can point you in, but can you do it? Do you have the courage?”
The woman just continued to shed tears and didn’t say anything. Obviously, she couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the courage. After day after day of abuse, her spine had long since been broken until it completely shattered, and she didn’t even dare to raise the thought of resistance.
“Divorcing, and going far away, you have to do all these things yourself. It’s useless to seek help from others. You should go back.” Fan Jialuo sighed softly, then pushed open the door, took the child’s hand, and stepped into the extremely cold room.
The woman shivered from the cold air that suddenly emerged from the room, and when she came back to her senses, the other party had already closed the door, cutting off her prying eyes. She stood silently in place for a long time, only stumbling away after all her tears had dried up. She knew that living would only bring endless suffering for her, so how could there be such a thing as redemption? Everything in the program must be fake. As those people on the internet said, it was just a beautiful lie fabricated by the screenwriter.
After walking into the house, Fan Jialuo and Xu Yiyang both went to the balcony, which was lit with only one dim lamp, and stared silently at the frog in the fish tank.
“Who will feed it first today?” Fan Jialuo bent down and fiddled with the top of the fish tank.
Xu Yiyang stretched out his little fist and shook it up and down a bit.
“Okay, we’ll play rock-paper-scissors,” Fan Jialuo readily agreed. However, he was a psychic, and no one could beat a psychic at rock-paper-scissors, so Xu Yiyang lost three times in a row and could only watch him stuff three mosquitoes into the fish tank. His small mouth was frowning so hard that one could hang an oil lantern from it.
While playing the fourth time, the corners of Fan Jialuo’s lips hooked up and he deliberately used scissors against the child’s fist. Xu Yiyang covered his mouth and laughed, happily throwing a mosquito into the fish tank. They played this childish game every day, but never felt bored. The originally cold and lonely home gradually became lively, and also full of vitality.
Fan Jialuo lost three times in a row before filling the two bathtubs with water and urging the child to go to bed. Before going to bed, he would inject a little bit of dirty air into the fish tank, a little bit every day, slowly testing the frog’s tolerance. He would protect it, but also let it grow until, even without him, it could still face the cruel world alone.
When there was no work, Fan Jialuo’s days were really leisurely. He sent Xu Yiyang to school in the morning, picked him up from school in the evening, went for a drive on the road, and came back to raise the frog. After coming back, he would study while Xu Yiyang did his homework, and then sleep soundly. But one evening, someone knocked on the door to his house again. As soon as he opened the door, the woman named Lu Dan fell down and sat at the entrance, crying and begging, “Mr. Fan, please help me, I’m going to be killed by him! I really have no way out!”
The corners of her eyes were cut by her husband’s fists, and blood slid down her cheeks onto her neck, staining most of her shoulders red. Her exposed skin was completely covered with bruises, all from his belt. The backs of her hands had several round, festering burn wounds from cigarette butts. Her wrists were circled by bloody marks after being tied by ropes. She suffered this inhuman torture every day. The atrocities continued to escalate, and she did not know when it would end.
Lu Dan cried in desperation, “Mr. Fan, don’t hate me. I really want to resist, but I don’t know how to. I can’t beat him at all. He will kill my mom, dad, and brother, he’s really capable of anything. Mr. Fan, it’s okay if you don’t help me, but if you don’t hear me screaming for three days in a row, will you please call the police for me? I must have been killed by him already. I may not live much longer…”
Only a person with no way out would say something like that. However, she was too weak and kind. Ever since she was a child, she didn’t even dare to watch a chicken being killed, so how could she possibly deal with a man as brutal as her husband? As pessimistic as it may sound, sometimes being kind can be a mistake.
Fan Jialuo looked at the woman kneeling by his feet and crying so hard that she was about to faint, and finally let out a long sigh. He asked with a serious expression, “Do you trust me?”
“I trust you. Besides you, I don’t know who else I can turn to for help.” Lu Dan nodded weakly.
“Then don’t ask anything, and let your husband eat this. When you feel ready, give it back to me.” Fan Jialuo placed something the size of a sesame seed into the woman’s palm.
Lu Dan’s eyes were blurred by tears, and she couldn’t see what the grayish-white sesame seed sized object was, but she couldn’t help but clench her hand tightly and ask anxiously, “How can I return something that has already been eaten? It must be poison. Is it poison? Will it kill him?”
“At some point, your brain will tell you—enough is enough. When you hear such a voice, it will naturally return to your palm, and you can just give it back to me. It is not poisonous. It represents desire, and after you see the desires of your husband and yourself, you will understand what to do.”
Lu Dan didn’t understand his words and simply nodded in a daze. As she gripped the sesame seed and prepared to leave, she suddenly asked, “Mr. Fan, aren’t you afraid that I won’t return it to you?”
Fan Jialuo smiled in an unconcerned manner. “No, because no matter where you go, I will always be able to find it. What’s more, are you sure you will dare to keep it after seeing the nature of desire?”
Lu Dan didn’t know why, but she stood at the door and bowed deeply a few times, then staggered away. She knew that after her husband had vented his anger, he would drive out to meet his friends for a drink, drink until midnight, and return home, or eat something and fall asleep, or dig her up and use the catalyst of alcohol to torture her again.
He would beat her when he was happy, and he would beat her when he wasn’t happy. He never considered her feelings, and he never saw her as a flesh and blood human. Perhaps in his heart, she was just a damaged object that could be replaced at any time.
He would even post a warm message to his Moments after breaking her leg, with the tone of a good husband: [Yesterday, my wife broke her leg while exercising, why is she so careless? The doctor said my wife is calcium deficient and her bones are a little weak, so she can’t stand the activity. I need to buy calcium vitamins to supplement her.]
His friends liked this message one after another, but they didn’t know how the fear in her heart swallowed her soul when she lay on the hospital bed and saw the large box of calcium vitamins he bought.
The stronger she was, the harder he could hit her—She seemed to be able to hear the hideous truth inside his heart.
The more she recalled the bits and pieces of her marriage, the stronger the resentment in Lu Dan’s heart. She mixed the grayish sesame seed into a seaweed wrapped rice ball, sprinkled it with real white sesame seeds, drizzled it with a delicious sauce, and placed it in the refrigerator. She sat in the dark and waited. At 3 a.m., her husband finally returned, half-drunk but conscious enough to open his mouth and yell for a midnight snack.
Lu Dan handed over the rice ball with shaking hands, and he ate it in one large bite before walking into the bathroom to take a shower.
Lu Dan placed her ear to the bathroom door and paid close attention to the movements inside. She thought it was poison, but the man didn’t die, and instead he began to yell and vent his anger. He shouted irritably, like every day in the past, “Lu Dan, Lu Dan, where did you go? The shower gel is out, don’t you know how to change it? Lu Dan, Lu Dan, come in for me!”
Lu Dan didn’t dare to go in, so he ran out by himself, grabbed his wife’s hair without even wearing a shirt, and swung at her stomach and head with his fists, hitting her most vulnerable places. The familiar sharp pain came, shattering the little hope that Lu Dan had finally raised. Was it no use? Was that thing not even the least bit useful?
She realized that she may have been deceived, but at this moment, a sudden change occurred: her husband actually grew another pair of arms from his armpits. They had greenish-gray skin, thin bones, but unusually developed veins and muscles, just like a pair of the devil’s arms. They began to beat her, punch after punch, with such force that they could break her bones.
She almost fainted from the pain, but for some reason, she clearly remembered Mr. Fan’s words—It was not poisonous, just a manifestation of desire.
What was a manifestation of desire? She reluctantly raised her head and looked at her husband, who had turned into a monster, through a layer of bloody mist, and suddenly remembered what he had said countless times when he was furious, “I fucking wish I had a few more hands so I could beat you to death, you fucking bitch!”
So my husband’s desire is to inflict violence. One pair of hands is not enough, so he wants to grow a few more pairs? What is Mr. Fan planning to do by feeding this kind of thing to this devil? Let him beat me to death? Lu Dan thought this amid the intense pain, and then laughed in despair.
So this was Mr. Fan’s so-called help? Giving her a dead end and ending all her pain directly? Could no one in this world be trusted? That was right, if you died, you’re done, and you don’t have to endure the endless pain anymore! No matter whether it’s being cheated on or beaten, everything will come to an end!
Thinking like this, Lu Dan even put down the hands protecting her head, closed her eyes, and silently endured the fists that landed like raindrops. She gave up her last hope and stopped struggling, completely disappointed in humanity.
The man grew tired of hitting, only to realize that he had grown a pair of strange hands on his body, so he let out a horrified cry before patting his head and muttering to himself, “I must be drunk. A hallucination, everything is an illusion! No one has four hands! I just have to go to bed, and I’ll be back to normal after waking up.”
He staggered to the bedroom and fell into a sound sleep. The pair of greenish gray hands moved around a few times, tearing the bed sheets and blanket, until they slowly grew still. Lu Dan lay on the floor covered in blood. Her breathing was weak, her consciousness was dull, but she did not die in the end. Today was just another day struggling on the brink of despair.
At six in the morning, Lu Dan’s powerful biological clock woke her out of her semi-conscious state. She knew that it was time to make breakfast. Otherwise, she would be beaten severely if she was even a second late. Thinking of those strange hands, she began to tremble, and then fell into deep regret. If she had known that sesame seed was such a weird object, she would never have given it to her husband to swallow. She thought that Mr. Fan was a good man, and she never expected…
But soon, the kind-hearted woman fell into an endless cycle of self-blame. Because I thought of poisoning my husband, I suffered retribution? People really can’t do bad things!
As she struggled to get up, her husband screamed in terror from the bedroom, and not long after, he rushed out and ran around the house like a headless fly. He checked his body using various reflective surfaces such as the cabinet doors, full-length mirrors, sliding doors, windows, and so on.
“What is this? What the hell is this?” He pulled at his hair with the look of a man on the verge of collapse. The greenish gray hands waved beside him, tearing at everything within reach.
At this moment, the man’s cell phone rang, and when he saw the caller ID, he immediately suppressed the panic in his heart and tried to speak in a calm and steady tone. He kept nodding, saying that he could definitely sign the contract worth billions, but after putting the phone down, he looked helplessly at the strange hands on his body.
He had to wear an expensive and well-fitting suit to work, he had a multi-billion yuan deal to negotiate, and he was about to get a promotion and raise. He couldn’t afford any mistakes or he would lose his job, his income, and fall from the wealthy middle class to the bottom of society! Therefore, he had to go out like a normal person today! It was indeed a pleasure to hit someone with these hands, but they became his nightmare during the day!
He was rampaging around the house, pulling at his hair, and about to explode with anxiety. When he stepped into the kitchen for the 99th time, he looked at the cold, gleaming knives and finally made up his mind. “Lu Dan, come here and help me cut off these hands!”
Lu Dan, who was lying on the floor while silently gasping for breath, thought she was hallucinating in a daze.
t/n: happy holidays everyone!
Is that what the thief had? Wonder how his retribution will be?
Go re-read Chapter 96-98…
Yes he had them. And grew even more of them during the arrest, turning him into a human centipede..
Uh, he died? Ch. 97 said he only had 3 1/2 hours to live, so if Song Rui didn’t lie with that, Li Youde (thief) should be gone now…
Poor Lu Dan… I had a classmate who couldn’t stand even just the mention of blood and pain; this type of person, they feel the world’s pain and wish everyone well. It’s really difficult for such kind people to survive in this dark world, much less live in it.
I hope she’ll live, live well.