Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Under the order of the supervisors, the duty senior student lifted the lid off the iron bucket. Finally, it was time for food distribution, and the orderly queue began to stir. The children all stretched their necks to peer into the bucket.

Shen Juanjuan also tiptoed to see. But he was too far away to make out anything clearly, so his eyes followed the first child in line. He watched as the child picked up a small enamel bowl from the tray, and the duty senior student ladled soup into it from the iron bucket, then handed over a thick, round boiled sweet potato from another bucket.

Shen Juanjuan exclaimed in surprise, his eyes sparkling as he looked at Lin Duozhi: "Sweet potatoes! It's sweet potatoes!"

"I didn't see that, really?"

After swallowing hard, Shen Juanjuan firmly replied: "Really."

The other children also saw the boiled sweet potatoes and broke into smiles.

Although dry and coarse, sweet potatoes could be choking if eaten too quickly. However, they were filling and had a faint sweetness, making them a favorite among the orphanage children.

The younger students who had already received their meals held their warm sweet potatoes in one hand and their bowls of soup in the other, carefully making their way to the tables on the other side of the dining hall. The children along the way swallowed their saliva, eager for the queue to move faster.

Just as Shen Juanjuan moved forward a few steps with the queue, a staff member from the orphanage entered the dining hall and informed several supervisors that the director needed them. The supervisors had no choice but to leave the duty students to continue distributing food as they hurriedly left the dining hall.

All the students in the dining hall watched the supervisors walk out the door, reappear on the playground outside the window, and finally disappear at the staircase leading to the administrative building.

"Grab the sweet potatoes!"

Someone shouted from the senior students' queue, and the quiet dining hall erupted. A group of senior students rushed toward the row of iron buckets.

The senior students crowded together, reaching their hands into the bucket for the sweet potatoes. The duty students tried to push and hit them, yelling hoarsely, but to no avail.

Wang Zhusheng's older brother, originally a duty student, was now also grabbing sweet potatoes, elbowing people aside and stuffing them into his pockets.

Children raised in the orphanage were like little wolves; fighting for food was their instinct. After a few seconds of hesitation, the younger students also charged forward recklessly.

Shen Juanjuan ran forward, but since he was initially at the back of the queue, he remained on the outskirts of the crowd, unable to get close to the bucket.

He anxiously circled around the crowd, jumping to see inside. Finally finding a gap, he managed to stick his head in, only to be pushed back by someone's rear, causing his hat to fall off.

Next to Shen Juanjuan was Liu Sijin's sister, the bald senior girl. She was tall and had long arms, pushing her way through with furrowed brows. She grabbed the collars or hair of those in front of her, clearing a path and rushing to the bucket.

As Shen Juanjuan picked up his hat, he spotted a sweet potato lying between the crowded feet, half-crushed.

His heart leaped with joy, and he immediately crawled under others' legs to reach it. But someone's knee accidentally hit his nose, causing him pain and tears to well up.

Ignoring the pain in his nose, he squinted through his tears to grab the sweet potato. Just as his hand touched it, a foot stepped down, crushing both his fingers and the sweet potato.

Shen Juanjuan yelped and pulled his hand back, quickly crawling out. His nose hurt, his fingers hurt, and he hadn't even gotten the sweet potato. He started crying as he walked towards the window, shaking his sore fingers.

The sweet potatoes in the bucket were soon snatched up, and the senior students dispersed. The younger students rushed forward, disappointedly staring at the empty bucket. Some quietly fetched their bowls to get soup, while others began to cry.

Shen Juanjuan finally got over the initial pain, straightened his fingers, and put on his cotton cap, noticing Wang Zhusheng and his brother sitting at a nearby table.

Wang Zhusheng held a sweet potato in his left hand and had his mouth stuffed full. His brother peeled another one and placed it in his right hand.

Shen Juanjuan feared Wang Zhusheng's brother and sobbed softly, moving away to stand farther from them. Yet, he couldn't help but glance at them repeatedly, which caught Wang Zhusheng's attention.

Wang Zhusheng's gaze fell on Shen Juanjuan, and he suddenly tugged at his brother: "Brother, look, the stink bug is dying. The stink bug's nose is bleeding."

Seeing Wang Zhusheng's brother look up, Shen Juanjuan turned away in fright. He raised his hand to wipe his nose, finding it covered in blood. Looking down, he saw specks of red on his chest.

"Eat quickly! Don't mind others; the supervisors are coming back," Wang Zhusheng's brother said.

Shen Juanjuan had never had a nosebleed before and didn't know what to do. Despite his fear of the senior students, he naturally sought help from the older ones, looking at the seniors with a distressed expression. But the senior students, worried about the supervisors returning, were busy devouring their sweet potatoes, ignoring him.

"Shen Juanjuan's nose is bleeding."

"Why is Shen Juanjuan bleeding?"

Several younger students gathered around to ask, and Wang Zhusheng loudly responded: "He's going to die."

Terrified, Shen Juanjuan stood still, watching the blood drip from his nose. Lin Duozhi approached with a bowl of soup and was shocked: "What happened?"

"Lin Duozhi, I think I'm going to die," Shen Juanjuan said, his voice trembling.

"Ah! Are you going to die?" Lin Duozhi exclaimed.

Before Shen Juanjuan could answer, the dining hall doors burst open, and several supervisors stormed in, angry. They wielded rulers and started beating the senior students without warning.

The sound of rulers hitting cotton coats was dull yet loud, and the thin coats did little to shield the pain. The struck senior students cried out in agony, while those not yet hit hastily stuffed sweet potatoes into their mouths, choking and gasping.

"Put all the sweet potatoes back in your hands!" the supervisors yelled angrily.

Some senior students quickly returned the sweet potatoes to the bucket, while others continued eating until they were dragged by the collar and beaten several times, limping away.

The younger students were frozen with fear, not daring to breathe. Shen Juanjuan wanted to seek help from the supervisors but dared not speak up, standing by the window with a sorrowful face, silently watching the supervisors.

A supervisor passed by and glanced at him: "What's wrong with you?"

Shen Juanjuan's lips trembled: "I'm going to die."

"You won't die." The supervisor took out a piece of paper from his pocket, crumpled it into two balls, and handed them over: "Plug your nostrils with these."

Shen Juanjuan quickly took the paper balls and plugged his nostrils as instructed. Lin Duozhi tilted his head and comforted him: "It's okay, the supervisor said you won't die."

Relieved, Shen Juanjuan finally felt better and began to observe others. He saw Wang Zhusheng's brother holding onto a sweet potato, getting hit on the hand by a ruler, grimacing in pain and rubbing his hand against his leg. Shen Juanjuan felt a surge of joy, almost laughing out loud.

Standing next to them, Wang Zhusheng glared at him. Shen Juanjuan, still with tear-streaked cheeks, stuck out his tongue and made a face at him, then proudly raised his chin, flicking the paper sticking out of his nostril.

The senior students had already consumed many sweet potatoes, and the returned ones barely filled four buckets, some of them partially eaten.

The supervisors had no choice but to break the whole sweet potatoes in half and distribute them to the younger and middle-grade students. When it was Shen Juanjuan's turn, the supervisor noticed his tear-stained and bloody face with paper plugs in his nostrils and gave him a large sweet potato that had only been nibbled on slightly.

"Is it enough?" the supervisor asked.

Shen Juanjuan couldn't stop smiling. "It's enough, more than enough, hahaha..."

After lunch was free time, and Shen Juanjuan went to the playground with a few other kids from his dormitory. He still had half of his sweet potato in his hand.

"Why aren't you eating it?" Lin Duozhi asked.

Shen Juanjuan said solemnly, "I'm going to work."

Lin Duozhi was shocked. "Are you sneaking off to the landfill again? You just got punished for that."

"But I wasn't punished for sneaking off; I was punished for running out and back and out again. This time, I'm actually sneaking off."

"If you get caught sneaking off now, you'll be punished too."

"As long as I can have dinner, it's fine." Shen Juanjuan didn't care at all.

Although he hadn't had a nosebleed for a while, he still plugged his nostrils. Whenever other kids looked at him curiously, he would take out the wads of paper and then put them back in.

The other kids asked, "Shen Juanjuan, why do you plug your nose?"

"It's because of a nosebleed. If you have a nosebleed, plugging it like this helps." Shen Juanjuan answered proudly.

"I saw some older students plugging their noses too. It turns out they had nosebleeds too."

This peculiar way of dealing with nosebleeds immediately earned Shen Juanjuan the inexplicable envy of the other kids, which made him very satisfied.

Shen Juanjuan bid farewell to Lin Duozhi and walked to the back of the water pump house, where he saw several older students standing furtively by the fence.

These older students clearly recognized this habitual offender from the younger class, so after a moment of tension, they relaxed, ignoring Shen Juanjuan's presence. They shifted a loose iron bar on the fence, and each one crawled through the gap in turn.

The last older student instructed Shen Juanjuan before crawling through: "Remember to put the iron bar back in place later. If the supervisor finds out, we won't be able to get out, and you'll face our revenge."

"I'll put it back," Shen Juanjuan promised quickly.

He stood far away, waiting until all the older students had crawled through the hole. After another half minute, he followed, crawled through the hole, and straightened the skewed iron bar.

Ten minutes later, Shen Juanjuan was walking down the road in high spirits, holding half a sweet potato and occasionally kicking stones along the way. After about twenty minutes, he arrived at a cluster of buildings.

This was a desolate town, devoid of any signs of life. All the buildings appeared abandoned for a long time, with wind whistling through the dark windows and damaged walls.

Outside the town, tall metal fences stood, but due to their age and lack of maintenance, there were many broken gaps in the rusted netting. Shen Juanjuan followed the metal fence until he left the cluster of buildings and chose a gap to crawl through.

Inside the fence was a vast open area, with collapsed concrete bricks piled up at the edges. The remaining steps indicated that this used to be a bustling football field.

On the left side of the field were many identical cubes, with varied colors, looking like compressed metal blocks. On the right side was all garbage, with an unmanned forklift loading the trash into a concrete building next to the field.

The concrete building bore the words: Morna Third Waste Processing Plant.

The older students who had arrived earlier were rummaging through the piles of garbage, laughing loudly. Shen Juanjuan didn't approach them and ran to the right instead.

He crossed the entire field, ensuring he could no longer hear the older students' voices, and began shouting, "Puppy, Puppy." Then he held up the half sweet potato: "Puppy, I brought food for you, Puppy."

He ran breathlessly, his nose blocked, and finally removed the paper wads.

"Puppy, I'm here. You haven't eaten today, so I brought food for you." Shen Juanjuan moved through the gaps between the metal blocks, calling out loudly: "We had sweet potatoes today, and I saved a lot for you. Try it, it's delicious."

After passing through the pile of metal blocks, he came upon a row of tin houses. There were four rooms in total, one of which had a mountain of empty cardboard boxes stacked against the door. The rusted walls still bore the faint words: Shorten Construction Time, Ensure Safety.

"Puppy, did you miss me? Were you waiting for me?"

Shen Juanjuan rushed to the room with the cardboard boxes and pushed the door open. The rusty iron door hit the wall, making the tin walls buzz.

He panted, scanned the empty room, and then opened the other three doors.

Turning back to the metal blocks, he shouted, "Puppy, where are you? Are you hiding?"

"Puppy, come out. I brought food for you." Shen Juanjuan waved the half sweet potato, smiling broadly, his voice soft: "The best sweet potato, let's share. Take a bite, come on..."

He looked around, then suddenly changed his expression and shouted fiercely, "Yesterday, when I found you, you became mine! If you don't come out, I'll beat you and break your nose! You'll die! Even plugging your nose with paper won't help!"

The puppy still didn't appear.

Shen Juanjuan's fierce expression turned to panic, his tone pleading: "I won't beat you, I was just scaring you to make you come out."

The entire landfill was silent, except for the distant shouts and laughter of the older students. Shen Juanjuan stood there for a moment, then slowly walked back to the first room.

Though small, this room seemed to have been a single-person dormitory for a foreman, with simple furniture salvaged from a residential building.

A metal bed frame was placed against the left wall, with a wooden nightstand beside it. Opposite was a long sofa, somewhat damaged, revealing yellow inner padding, but also showing fresh scratch marks and torn pieces.

Shen Juanjuan sometimes overheard the supervisors talking about work.

"...I need to go to work... The director is in his office..."

So picking up garbage became his work, and this row of tin houses was his office.

The tin walls were covered with colorful papers, including torn book pages, illustrated packaging bags, and even advertisements for male erectile dysfunction.

In the center of the wall was a corner-cut advertisement featuring cute anthropomorphic animals. This poster was placed prominently, its creases carefully smoothed out, indicating it was the favorite of whoever had put it up.

The single bed had no bedding but served as a storage space, with a stack of empty cardboard boxes of various colors, a yellow plastic stool missing a leg, and a pink toothbrush cup without a handle.

The clutter and vibrant colors filled the small space to the brim.

Shen Juanjuan checked the room again, crouching to look under the bed, noticing a wide crack in the wall beneath it.

He stared at the crack for a while and exclaimed, "Oh, you can crawl through holes too, right? Yes, you can crawl through holes too."

Determined that the puppy had left on its own, Shen Juanjuan stopped searching and calmly sat down on the sofa, lowering his head to nibble on the remaining half of the sweet potato.

He took a big bite, chewing vigorously, and with a shake of his head, he said in a voice laced with relief: "Go ahead, now that you’re gone, I’ll eat it all by myself. This whole sweet potato is mine, all mine. I also have Blackie; I might as well eat it all."

He made exaggerated chewing sounds, swinging his small feet dangling off the edge of the sofa, but tears slowly welled up in his eyes.

Shen Juanjuan finally could no longer hold back, and with a wide, sorrowful cry, he wept: "Yesterday, I asked if you wanted to be my puppy. If you didn’t want to, you were supposed to shake your head. You didn’t shake your head at all, so why did you break your promise?"