☆, Chapter 1: Killed
Hao Ren figured she was probably what people called the legendary “pale, rich, and beautiful” girl. As for pale, due to a perennial lack of sunlight, she was as desolately white as an unpainted canvas. As for rich, her father was H City’s most despised tycoon, Hao Weiguo. As for beautiful, having never had a decent meal since she was little, she had been starved into the standard oval face and large eyes.
Although she was “pale, rich, and beautiful,” her circumstances were vastly different from what people imagined. She had no luxury mansion or sports car, nor did she dine on delicacies. For as long as she could remember, the most expensive piece of clothing she had ever worn cost no more than three hundred yuan (and that included a down jacket), and the most expensive thing she had ever eaten wasn’t some ginseng or bird’s nest soup or caviar, but a small abalone that any ordinary person could afford—and that was at someone else’s wedding banquet.
Logically, a “pale, rich, and beautiful” girl should be able to eat whatever she wanted and get whatever she desired. Unfortunately, that was not how she remembered it.
She remembered that in kindergarten, she had cried for an entire week over a Barbie doll and still didn’t get it.
In elementary school, she wanted a nice, multi-functional pencil case. She told Hao Weiguo, and Hao Weiguo tossed her a pencil pouch that came free with a magazine his wife had bought.
In middle school, she once secretly took a hundred-yuan bill that Hao Weiguo had forgotten on the coffee table for a beautiful dress. She was then beaten so badly she limped for a whole week. She got the dress, but it had been torn to shreds by Hao Weiguo.
By high school, she had finally learned her lesson. She knew that no matter what, she would never get what she wanted from Hao Weiguo. So, for a reference book she desperately wanted, she saved up her meal money for an entire month.
It wasn’t that the book was expensive—it wasn’t. After a discount, it was only forty-eight yuan. The problem was that her meal allowance was too small. Three hundred yuan a month. Not just for lunch, but for all her meals. Because Hao Weiguo often took his wife and son out for social engagements, Hao Ren had to eat dinner at school as well. At the time, a balanced meal with meat and vegetables at the school cafeteria cost seven or eight yuan, but her budget for each meal was only five yuan. For that book, she ate nothing but vegetables for a month. The cafeteria lady couldn’t bear to watch and would secretly drizzle some meat broth over her rice every day, sometimes even adding a bit of meat. To this day, she could still clearly remember the warmth in that cafeteria lady’s eyes.
She was clearly Hao Weiguo’s biological daughter, yet she felt exactly like Harry Potter living under the roof of his Uncle Vernon’s family in the Harry Potter books. She, too, had once hugged a copy of Harry Potter borrowed from the library, fantasizing that one day, an owl would arrive before her with her Hogwarts acceptance letter.
University was her Hogwarts. And her postman didn’t need to be as high-class and fancy as an owl; a delivery guy would suffice.
While others dreaded the college entrance exams, she looked forward to their arrival as if they were a long-awaited festival. Unfortunately, she was no Harry Potter, and there was no Hogwarts in her life. On the eve of her exams, a sudden car accident left her a high-level paraplegic. From then on, her life was reduced to the pale blue walls of her nursery, painted with little angels, and the unchanging shadows of the tree outside her window.
Yes, a nursery. This small, ten-square-meter nursery had been her home since she was a child. The curtains, which hadn’t been changed in over twenty years, were washed so much they had faded to white. The paintings of little angels on the wall had also grown mottled with the passage of time. The only thing that remained unchanged was her. She had always been here.
Hao Ren often touched the little angels on the wall, imagining the mood of the woman she was supposed to call “Mother” when she painted them, imagining if her own life would have been different if that woman were still alive.
Yes, she was a motherless child. Not long after giving birth to her, her mother had suffered from postpartum depression and jumped directly from the twenty-fifth-floor rooftop of the Hao Corporation’s Yuntian Building. It was said that she had originally planned to jump while holding Hao Ren, but in the end, she couldn’t bear to do it and left the swaddled baby behind, embarking on her final journey alone.
Her grandmother said that Hao Ren must have known what happened to her mother, because when she was found on the rooftop, her throat was already raw from crying. Although her grandmother would dissolve into tears every time she spoke of it, Hao Ren couldn’t cry. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t cry. She didn’t know if she had inherited Hao Weiguo’s heart of stone, or if all her tears had already been shed on that rooftop.
Hao Ren knew the reason for her mother’s postpartum depression. Before she was old enough to understand, her father had brought another woman home from outside, and with her came a boy who was only two months younger than Hao Ren. From the moment she could remember, she would often hold a photo she had gotten from her grandmother, silently asking the beautiful young woman with the sweet smile in the picture why she hadn’t taken her with her back then.
Hao Ren had known since she was a child that she was an unloved child. Her mother was gone, her father couldn’t care less if she lived or died, and the woman who later entered the family looked at her as if she were a bedbug. Even her grandmother, the only one who was nice to her, she wasn’t sure if it was truly love. Sometimes, her warmth could melt any glacier, but at other times, she would inadvertently reveal a chilling gaze that made Hao Ren’s blood run cold, so foreign and terrifying. It was probably because Hao Ren’s face reminded her of the murderer who had caused her daughter’s death.
Hao Ren had always been the bedbug the Hao family couldn’t wait to get rid of. After the accident, she became a complete ghost. One day, Hao Weiguo saw her in the dining room and actually showed a look of utter astonishment on his face. She wondered if he had almost forgotten he even had such a daughter.
Her life was not without its sunshine.
Hao Ren often used the old laptop her half-brother had discarded to weave Cinderella stories in the world of the internet. In her stories, no matter the protagonist’s identity or background, no matter how miserable they were at the start, a handsome prince would always appear in the end to rescue them from their sea of suffering. Of course, such cliché stories didn’t attract many readers, but she was content, as if she were being reborn again and again within her stories.
The nursery was on the first floor. Occasionally, she would wheel herself around the neighborhood. The Hao family was the wealthiest in H City, and the villa complex they lived in, even after twenty years, was still the best in the city. The landscaping here was excellent; every corner was as beautiful as a park. Although it caused the residents to suffer from mosquito bites, it also became the only place where Hao Ren could find some respite. Her favorite author was Shi Tiesheng, and she would often spend entire afternoons sitting in the shade of a tree with a collection of his works, a gift from a high school classmate. She could even recite many of the essays inside from memory, word for word.
She also had a dog, named Daizi, a common, yellow-furred Chinese native dog. Hao Ren had found Daizi during her second year of high school. It had been hit by a car, one of its legs broken, and was lying on the roadside, on the verge of death. She borrowed two hundred yuan from a classmate and took it to a pet hospital, barely managing to save its life. Although its life was saved, it was missing a front leg. Hao Ren then protested with a hunger strike, even fainting in class from low blood sugar, before she was finally allowed to keep it.
Hao Ren felt that the best decision she had ever made in her life was saving Daizi. Although it took her an entire semester to pay back the two hundred yuan she had borrowed to save it, and she had to endure quite a few scornful looks because of it, she never once regretted it. The warmth this three-legged dog gave her was something no human had ever provided. She couldn’t afford dog food and could only save half of her own meals for it. Whether it was steamed buns, instant noodles, it would always eat them without complaint. Sometimes, even Hao Ren couldn’t help but tease it, saying it must have been a herbivore in its past life.
When she was in class, it would quietly squat at the school gate, waiting for Hao Ren to appear. Then, under the astonished gazes of the crowd, it would wag its tail and eat the lunch Hao Ren brought out. After school, it would silently follow behind Hao Ren, accompanying her home. The cafeteria lady learned of its existence and would occasionally bring some bones for it. It would even, to Hao Ren’s amused exasperation, save half the bones for her.
After the accident, Daizi became Hao Ren’s only companion. When she was writing, it would lie quietly at her feet. When she went out, it would walk silently by her side. Occasionally, it would even let Hao Ren hold its leash and, like a sled dog, pull Hao Ren’s wheelchair as they raced down the sidewalk, letting Hao Ren feel the sensation of running free along with it.
Though it only had three legs, it ran with more stability and agility than a normal dog. Watching Daizi’s running figure, feeling the gentle breeze caress her cheeks like a lover’s hand, Hao Ren would often laugh with abandon. Hearing her laughter, Daizi would often run even more joyfully, as if it had been injected with a stimulant. By the time the girl and the dog came to their senses, they would already be an unknown distance from home.
She encountered the two kidnappers while she and Daizi were playing their usual high-speed racing game. Those two must have been watching her for a long time. One man subdued Daizi with a dog-catching pole, while the other, as if he had rehearsed it, swiftly lifted Hao Ren into a nearby van. Hao Ren only had time to hear Daizi’s mournful cry before the van started.
The kidnappers took her to an abandoned warehouse and demanded five million from Hao Weiguo. When she heard the kidnapper make that phone call, Hao Ren laughed, laughed until she was out of breath. They thought she was a treasured jewel held in someone’s palm, but she was nothing more than a blade of grass casually tossed on the ground.
“He won’t give you the money!” When she had laughed enough, she said this to the kidnappers in a mocking tone.
The kidnapper, furious, slapped her hard across the face.
For the next two days, the kidnappers worked tirelessly to extort the ransom, even cutting off one of Hao Ren’s ears and sending it over. Unfortunately, the answer they received was: not a chance!
Even the kidnappers found such a response hard to believe. One of them grabbed Hao Ren by the collar, his voice murderous as he asked her, “Are you really his biological daughter?”
“That’s a question I’ve been wondering about my whole life.” When she was very, very young, Hao Ren had secretly compared her own small hands and feet to Hao Weiguo’s. Except for the difference in size, they looked like they shared the same genes no matter how she looked.
“They told us to just kill you. Said that keeping a waste of space like you around is just a waste of food.” Even the kidnapper’s expression showed a hint of pity as he said this.
Although she had long guessed the outcome, hearing the kidnapper actually say it, Hao Ren couldn’t help but let tears stream down her face. Five million—the price of one of Hao Yi’s cars, a necklace for that woman, a house Hao Weiguo might buy on a whim… But when it came to her life, he suddenly became reluctant to part with it.
“Boss, what do we do? Do we send her back?” After all the trouble of a successful kidnapping, they had run into such a bizarre father. The underlings were in a state of chaos.
“Send her back? Have you forgotten what Hao Weiguo did to your families? Since he’s so heartless, we’ll give him what he wants. We’ll send his daughter to the next world!” The kidnappers’ leader looked at Hao Ren, his gaze initially holding a trace of pity, but it finally hardened into a thick, unyielding ferocity.
“Don’t blame us. We brothers were forced into this with no other way to live. If you’re going to blame someone, blame your good-for-nothing father!” After saying this, the leader’s brightly polished knife slashed viciously across Hao Ren’s neck.
Hao Ren only felt a cold sensation on her neck, and then warm blood began to flow out like a tap had been turned on. Novels and television were all liars; it was impossible to die immediately from having your throat slit. Death was a painful and lengthy process. Hao Ren could clearly feel the pain from the wound, could feel the heat of the blood flowing out of it, could see the terrified faces of the kidnappers, yet she remained conscious. She wondered if it was because the leader was inexperienced and had cut the wrong spot.
At the thought of their inexperience, Hao Ren even managed a small laugh at her own dark humor just before death, and even the pain from the wound seemed to lessen slightly.
That bloody, smiling face must have been a terrifying sight. The kidnappers were probably seeing such a gruesome scene for the first time, and they were all trembling like leaves in the wind.
As she lost a large amount of blood, Hao Ren finally felt her consciousness begin to fade. For some reason, a conversation she had as a child while sitting on her grandmother’s lap suddenly surfaced in her mind.
“Grandma, what does ‘Ren’ mean?”
“Good, benevolent, great. For the emperors of old, ‘Ren’ was the finest of all qualities.”
“So I have the name of a ruler?” Hao Ren remembered that her younger, ignorant self had a brilliant smile on her face then.
“It’s a pity China has never had a queen…” When her grandmother said this, her wrinkled face had tightened, and as she looked down at Hao Ren in her lap, a faint trace of pity even appeared in her eyes.
“Grandma, we had Wu Zetian.” Hao Ren remembered answering quickly, because a major drama about Wu Zetian was airing on TV at the time.
“That doesn’t count, it doesn’t count at all…”
…
Ren. What a grand, majestic, and imperial name. Thinking back now, her old man must have wanted a son from the very beginning. He must have been so disappointed when she was born. She hoped that in her next life, she wouldn’t be born into such a family. And if she had to be, she prayed she wouldn’t be a girl again…
“Woof woof!”
Just as Hao Ren thought she was about to die a miserable, lonely death in a strange place, a familiar bark suddenly sounded from the warehouse entrance. Hao Ren’s spirits lifted, and she looked up in the direction of the sound. The sun was setting in the west, and she saw a silhouette—the silhouette of a three-legged dog.
Her Daizi, just like the hero in her novels, had come to her, covered in wounds. She didn’t know if the wounds were from the kidnappers, but one of its hind legs was also crippled. It stood with difficulty on its remaining two legs, limping, each step seeming to exhaust all the strength in its body. Hao Ren could imagine why it had taken so long to cover what wasn’t a great distance.
“Woof woof woof!” Seeming to see the wounds on Hao Ren’s body, Daizi turned and let out a series of mournful, furious roars at the kidnappers. It bared its teeth in anger for a moment before finally choosing to continue walking toward Hao Ren.
Limping, each step left a few drops of crimson blood behind it.
“Boss!”
An underling picked up a wooden club and rushed forward, seemingly wanting to beat Daizi to death, but the leader stopped him. The leader snatched the club and threw it to the ground, shaking his head with a grave expression.
Daizi kept crawling toward Hao Ren, not even sparing them a glance. Yes, crawling. It had finally lost its strength and stumbled to the ground, but it was still crawling toward Hao Ren.
Hao Ren wanted to call Daizi’s name, but only a faint gurgling sound came from her throat. She struggled to crawl in Daizi’s direction. She didn’t know how long she crawled, but finally, the girl and the dog met somewhere in the warehouse.
“Awooo—” Daizi let out a heart-wrenching howl, extending its tongue to weakly lick Hao Ren’s face as tears streamed from its eyes.
But Hao Ren didn’t cry. She smiled. With a look of pure bliss, she used all her strength to hug Daizi tightly in her arms.
Daizi, how lucky I am to die with you!
Hao Ren still remembered what it looked like when she first met it. It was just like now, covered in blood, lying by the roadside silently licking its wounds. Just an unwanted stray dog, dirty and ugly. No one cared if it lived or died. Even if it died, no one would spare it a second glance. The first time Hao Ren saw it, she thought of herself. So, without hesitation, she saved it. She never expected to receive so much warmth in return.
Thank you, for being my family…
As if sensing Hao Ren’s feelings, Daizi weakly nuzzled her cheek.
Finally, Daizi stopped moving. Hao Ren, too, breathed her last. In the fading light of the setting sun, the girl and the dog held each other tightly. Though they were covered in blood, a brilliant smile was frozen on Hao Ren’s face, as if she had no other wish in this life.