Chapter 4 Shattered

Chapter 4 Shattered

The atmosphere remained tense, the uneven neon lights slicing the scene in half. Almost everyone held their breath; Chen Xian hadn't seen Zhou Liao like this in a long time.

He glanced at Qin Zhan, who was bent over, blood seeping from his fingertips, his hair plastered to his forehead from the spilled alcohol. Yet, Chen Xian felt an inexplicable tightness in his chest, as if this sight made Qin Zhan look like a ghost crawling out of hell.

"Hmm?" Zhou Liao lightly slapped Qin Zhan's face. "Or do you have money to compensate?"

The young man had already called the manager when he went to fetch cleaning supplies for Qin Zhan.

Upon seeing the scene, the manager's head spun. The table was filled with expensive liquor, worth ten times more than any other table. Clearly, these were people they couldn't afford to offend, but neither could they let their employee be treated this way, especially with so many onlookers affecting business.

"Excuse me, sir. Did our waiter make a mistake?" The manager approached with a fawning smile.

"Can't you see the mess on the floor?" Zhou Liao looked up, displeased at being interrupted.

"Did our waiter break it?" The manager wanted a quick resolution. He knew he couldn't provoke this group and said, pained, "How about we give you another bottle of Hennessy?"

"Do you think I care about the money?"

"Of course not, it's just a solution," the manager said, while security moved closer. "Or how would you like to resolve this?"

Zhou Liao surveyed the surroundings, then sat back down, placing a hand on his twin sister's shoulder, his gaze falling on Qin Zhan, who was looking down. "Your waiter said he'd clean it up. I told him to lick it. Is that a problem?"

The manager was slightly embarrassed. "Sir, we understand your anger, but..."

"Let him go," Chen Xian interrupted.

Zhou Liao's forehead twitched as he turned to Chen Xian, but Chen Xian ignored his gaze.

"Let him go back first. You deal with his situation later."

Seeing someone stepping in, the manager quickly changed his demeanor and turned around angrily. "Did you hear what the customer said? Leave the stuff here and go help in the back."

After a moment, Qin Zhan stood up and bowed mechanically before turning to leave.

"Who the fuck said you could leave?"

As Zhou Liao tried to stand, Chen Xian pressed him down, whispering, "Don't let them take pictures."

Zhou Liao took a deep breath, clenching his fists. His parents were always busy with work, barely visible for months, and their only demand was that he didn't cause too much trouble. They had money but no energy to deal with his issues.

"Damn it."

.......

"I'm sorry. If I had known, I wouldn't have asked you to serve that table." In the locker room, the young man apologized, holding a clean cloth to wipe the dried alcohol off Qin Zhan, but Qin Zhan stopped him.

"I'll do it myself."

"Okay."

Instead of wiping, Qin Zhan turned sideways and stripped off his work uniform right in front of him. The young man blushed upon seeing Qin Zhan's well-defined muscles. Qin Zhan's skin tone varied greatly; the exposed parts were tanned, while the rest were pale and sickly.

What made him gasp was the web of scars across Qin Zhan's waist, some healed into white keloids, others resembling new skin after burn injuries.

"Qin..."

Qin Zhan quickly put on his own clothes and turned to look at the young man, his eyes cold.

The young man hesitated to ask but eventually complimented, "You have a great body. You must be popular."

Qin Zhan glanced at his name tag, which read Ollie.

"No."

"Anyway, I can never tell your preferences..." Ollie, with red ears, scratched his head, trying to gauge Qin Zhan's orientation, thinking he wasn't as cold as he seemed, "What type do you like?"

Qin Zhan seemed confused but looked at him briefly as he put his clothes away.

"Everyone has preferences, right? Just curious..." Ollie asked gently.

Qin Zhan didn't answer immediately. When Ollie started feeling awkward, Qin Zhan finally spoke.

"Shattered."

"What?"

"I like shattered things."

"Oh... That's quite unique." Ollie opened his mouth to say more but heard someone calling him to serve drinks outside. Blushing, he rushed out.

Qin Zhan kept his job but lost his pay for the night. He heard that the table still paid all the bills, and the manager didn't offer any compensation, given the surveillance footage. It seemed the manager used this incident to save on wages.

Qin Zhan accepted this silently, knowing it was hard to find another high-paying night job, especially one that would hire someone like him.

The manager scolded him for a long time, and he left the bar close to four in the morning. As he walked through the dark alley, he could still hear the roar of sports cars outside.

He glanced over and saw Zhou Liao and his group. Zhou Liao appeared drunk, leaning against a sports car, kissing one of the twins. After breaking the kiss, he held the other's chin and continued.

Until one of the girls blushed and slapped him. Qin Zhan noticed the cigarette in Zhou Liao's hand, realizing he had transferred the smoke to her mouth.

......

He lowered his cap and quickly left.

Qin Zhan lived not far from the bar, about a thirty-minute walk in a village within a developing area. The house belonged to his aunt, otherwise, he might still be living in a town on the outskirts of the city.

His father had died, a schizophrenic, and his mother, sold into marriage, had escaped after years of torment. He also had a grandmother who favored boys and now suffered from kidney failure. He thought she was both pitiful and deserved her fate, insisting on having a son, which resulted in a schizophrenic with violent tendencies. After years of abuse, his father drowned in a river, and his only daughter fled at seventeen, never returning.

Qin Zhan had never met his aunt. But on the day he received a scholarship from a prestigious high school in the city center, he received a letter from her.

Inside were a few hundred yuan, the address and key to a house, which was the current house in the urban village. The letter stated that it was a house she no longer wanted, and he could live there for convenience while studying.

This house was small and dilapidated, about fifty square meters, and most of the surrounding residents had already moved away. Next to the house was a shed, originally used by nearby residents to raise pigs, but later abandoned. Qin Zhan had converted it into a small storage room.

When he came out after his shower, the sky was beginning to brighten. Qin Zhan pulled the curtains shut, blocking out the incoming light, then sat down on a chair and put on disposable gloves. As he turned on the desk lamp, the sudden brightness appeared somewhat pale and eerie in the dim room.

The warehouse was filled with a faint but unpleasant odor. On the table lay a dead bird wrapped in white paper, its body stiff from being left too long.

Qin Zhan looked at it for two seconds. He cleaned the rotting wound on its side with an alcohol wipe, then picked up a knife nearby and began to cut from the bird's chest down along the coverts. As the sharp blade pierced through, accumulated bodily fluids oozed out, emitting a nauseating stench.

He disliked torturing animals because their painful struggles reminded him too much of himself back then, which was meaningless.

But he liked the corpses of dead animals, enjoying how they became fragmented under his hands, transforming from whole to broken, exuding a twisted yet grotesque beauty that was hard to describe.

The stench emanating from them was identical to what he experienced in his childhood.

He always smelled that foul odor at home until one day when his mother, carrying a bag, said she was going far away and gave him a birthday gift box she had bought a month in advance. He had never received such a gift before and opened it with great joy, only to find inside a corpse of a young, scarred, shriveled body.

He saw that it was the dead, innocent, and abandoned self.