For a modest household on South Gate Avenue, life was less about living and more about scraping by, a kind of …
For a modest household on South Gate Avenue, life was less about living and more about scraping by, a kind of existence that teenage Zhang Ankang despised
.A family, three meals a day, counting every scrap of silver. If they were lucky, they might buy discounted scraps of meat from the butcher, and that would be considered a feast.
The neighbors bickered endlessly. Today, one family gossiped about another. Tomorrow, the east end quarreled with the west. If it rained at noon and one household took in their laundry without warning the other, then next time the sky darkened or birds flew low, they'd return the silence.
When Zhang Ankang was young, he thought these were the most important matters in the world. As he grew older, he realized how petty people could be. Why waste years squabbling over such nonsense? But his life was made of these trifles. The place was stifling, too small. He longed for something big.
In his mind, before something big happened, there ought to be earth-shattering omens, like in the tales of wandering heroes.
But when the truly big things come, they arrive in silence. No damp prelude of rain, no low-flying insects, no suffocating tension in the air.
The omen of a massacre was quieter than a drizzle in Kaifeng City.
The bell of Hopewell Academy still rang at the usual hour. The streets buzzed with the clamor of merchants.
Back then, few had ever stopped to wonder: What is it that most people in this world would fight to the death for?
Within hours, that question would no longer need answering.
For some, the thing they'd give their lives to reclaim was once just an ordinary moment, taken for granted.
A home. Three meals a day. A handful of coins. They would beg for the return of a life so mundane that a quarrel over forgotten laundry could stretch on for years.
Don't be afraid. After the rain, the fires of Kaifeng City will burn out.
No, how could they? A fire kindled by human lives cannot be extinguished until the last who remember them are gone.
Instead, it fractures into tiny embers, seeping into the fabric of fate. It burns beneath the skin of countless souls, scorching their days, one after another.