The Daylong Cicada Song

(If you want to get straight to the baseball-related parts, please skip to Chapter 6.)

(If you want to get straight to Seido, please skip to Chapter 86, though I still recommend reading what comes before.)

The daylong chorus of cicadas still rang in Kōshū's ears. He lay in bed, the sheets damp and hot beneath him. Through the wall, he could hear a man and a woman talking. Unlike their usual loud fights, with pots and bowls smashed about, this quietness gave him the uneasy sense that a storm was coming. He quietly climbed out of bed and pulled his door open a crack. Their hushed voices grew clearer.

"When are you leaving?" the man asked. After his muffled words came the click of a lighter. Then, with the last syllable still in his mouth, he exhaled a stream of smoke. "Hah—"

"Cough, cough—" Even without seeing her, Kōshū could instantly picture the woman frowning and waving away the smoke. Footsteps moved, and he quickly pulled the door nearly shut. But then the living room window was opened, and the woman answered, "This weekend."

Kōshū did not open the crack again. With his forehead against the door, the voices reached his ears without obstruction. "Then what about Takano?"

"Can't he stay with your mother?" The woman's voice was a little unclear, as if she were looking out the window.

"My mother can't. She's hospitalized again," the man retorted quickly. "This time it's for real."

"Heh heh." The woman's voice became clear again, as though she had turned back in surprise. "When has it ever not been for real? Isn't the hospital practically her home..."

"Tch." The man made a quiet sound of impatience.

The woman stopped talking for a moment, then said, "Anyway, I'm telling you, Gao Zhen, I'm going to live my own life now. I'm warning you not to cause me any more trouble." But her tone immediately turned pleading again. "Let's split up. What's the point of dragging this out?"

"Hey, then what exactly are we supposed to do about Takano?" the man cut in before she had finished. There seemed to be some guilt in his voice, but he quickly added, "I really can't take him in. I'm telling you, Xiaowen's about to give birth..."

"Heh heh, of course you can't. In another five years, she'll be in her prime, and your son will be a grown man..."

"Hey, hey, hey, we're getting off track. Just tell me what we're doing about Takano."

"What are you asking me for? With that tone, aren't you just telling me to take Takano..." The woman's voice suddenly rose, and the man immediately raised his voice in return.

Hearing this, Kōshū expressionlessly shut the door tight and lay back down on the bed. The only thing he could think of was his grandfather bringing him home in winter. In the biting wind, his grandfather's broad back shielded him from the cold. The wind howled and fell silent by turns beside his ears. Looking sideways, he watched vendors selling candied hawthorn and roasted sweet potatoes along the street. Sometimes his grandfather would stop beneath a streetlamp, where the nighttime light drifted down like snow. He could no longer remember his grandfather's face. All he remembered was the sour taste in his mouth, exactly like what he tasted now.

What should I do? Grandma and Grandpa's house was still there. He could probably still live there. But what about money? He did not know whether his savings would be enough.

Thinking of that, he climbed out of bed again, felt around beneath it for a box, and began counting his money.

The argument outside grew louder again, forcing him to count aloud. "Thirty, thirty-one..."

By the time he counted it a second time, Kōshū suddenly remembered that he had sold the recyclables he had saved up for twenty yuan that day. He hurriedly searched his pockets, but the door was suddenly shoved open. His mother did not come in, remaining in the doorway instead. Her eyes still held the sharpness from the argument, but when she saw Kōshū's expression, her voice softened. "Takano, Mom is leaving today. I originally planned to leave this weekend, but there isn't really anything left to take from the house, and the Japanese company is rushing me, so..."

There was nothing left to take from the house. Then what about me? Her voice was cut off by her son's tears, but she turned her face away and did not look at him. Her hand fumbled toward her wallet, as if she had found something to hold onto. She took out a bank card. "The password is your birthday. Don't give it to your father."

"What are you talking about? No matter what, I wouldn't take my child's money." His father's voice came from the living room. The house was small, and he could see what his wife was doing.

His mother then turned around and resumed arguing with his father. A moment later, the door slammed shut with a tremendous bang, and her scent vanished from the house. After an unknown amount of time, Kōshū took the bank card from the storage cabinet in the hallway. When he turned around, there was no one left in the living room.

That night, Kōshū wandered the streets aimlessly until he found himself in front of a rundown apartment building. Only then did he realize he had come downstairs from his grandfather's old place. The room on the third floor was lit up. But when he knocked, an unfamiliar face opened the door. Under the other person's questioning gaze, he greedily scanned the familiar furnishings. They had bought the old apartment, probably just so their child could attend school nearby, and had not had time to renovate it. There were still no fish in the fish tank, but the grandfather clock that had stood against the wall was gone. Its constant ticking still seemed to echo in Kōshū's ears.

Just as Kōshū was thinking about the grandfather clock, his view was suddenly blocked by the door. With the sound of it closing, he jolted awake as if from a dream. His grandfather's house had been sold. Then where was the money? He hurried down the stairs, desperate to know whether his grandfather's house was represented by that bank card.

As he rushed home, dreamlike images flashed before his eyes: his mother crying, his father walking side by side with a pregnant woman, arguments, police officers. Everything else vanished, leaving only the bank card in Kōshū's mind.

The days that followed seemed to fast-forward. After skipping school for a while, the boy suddenly returned one day. He became extremely quiet. Occasionally, when he went to get food, he would run into former teammates from the Track and Field Team. Zhao Kaikai sat down across from Kōshū.

"You really aren't coming back?"

"Yeah. Didn't I say so? I want to focus on studying." Kōshū had already given that reason to many people.

"Tch." Zhao Kaikai picked up a piece of braised pork. "Then why did I see you running on the field yesterday?"

Zhao Kaikai was the kind of person who had to get to the bottom of things, but he got along well with a lot of people, including Kōshū back when they were on the Track and Field Team. Both of them had trained as sprinters. Kōshū put down his chopsticks. Though he was in the noisy cafeteria, a small corner of his heart quietly opened up. "I want to go to Japan."

"Huh? Because your mom went to Japan?" Zhao Kaikai understood as soon as he thought about it. He remembered that quitting the team required a parent's signature, and how Kōshū's father had hurried through the process in ten minutes. He felt sorry for his friend.

"Don't tell me you want to go right now."

"My mom sold Grandpa's house and left all the money to me." Kōshū thought of the number on the bank card.

"Man, I really don't get you. You're a grown man. Your mom gave you all the money, doesn't that mean she wants you to live well here? And you still want to chase after her..." Zhao Kaikai wanted to say, If your mom wanted you to go with her, she wouldn't have left you behind. Giving you money was just a clean break. But the words never left his mouth.

"No. How much money does she have left, then? All my dad's money went into his new family."

Seeing him like this, Zhao Kaikai understood that he had become obsessed. Apparently, he still had not recovered from the blow. Kōshū had mentioned his parents' divorce before. He had thought he could go with his mother, only for neither side to want him now.

"Let me give you some advice, brother. Don't tell anyone else that you have so much money. If somebody gets greedy and sets you up, you'll be finished."

Half a year later, something major happened. Kōshū's mother, far away in Japan, had no choice but to take leave and fly back to China.

Winter in the Imperial Capital was exceptionally dry. As soon as Shen Qing stepped off the plane, the warmth lingering in her nasal passages was replaced by the biting cold wind. She paused for a moment to adjust, but she had already turned on her phone and returned the police officer's call.

"Hello, I'm Takano's mother. I've arrived in BJ. What's the process now? I only took two days off, and my flight is tomorrow night... Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. As for the money... Okay, okay. I'll discuss it in detail once I get there. Thank you."

After hanging up, Shen Qing's lips had already begun to dry out. She touched up her makeup in the restroom while sorting through the news she had received two days ago. Takano had been tricked into a pyramid scheme by a classmate from the Track and Field Team and had invested a great deal of money in so-called financial products. Fortunately, most of the money had been deposited in separate fixed-term accounts. Even so, compared with the financial loss, the state Takano was in, as described over the phone, was more worrying. He firmly believed in the entire scam. After being rescued by the police, he had fallen silent, seemingly deeply shaken.

"Ah, I never thought I'd come back here one day," Shen Qing murmured. "I really should have taken him with me back then. But he looks so much like his father."

Even now, Shen Qing still leaned toward not taking the child with her. She had suffered too much harm in that family, and in order to say goodbye completely, she had left her homeland. Over the past six months, aside from occasional moments, she had immersed herself in her brand-new life. In the end, it was her current husband—Mr. Sasaki—who had persuaded her to make this trip. Yet compared to Mr. Sasaki's proactive attitude, she felt uneasy about facing Takano again.

But she had no time to sort through her feelings. The taxi had stopped outside the detention center.

It seemed that every procedure was merely a confirmation. Shen Qing saw that Takano was already sitting in the waiting room. Their eyes met briefly. Takano had grown much paler, but much thinner too. There was a trace of stubbornness in his expression. He looked at Shen Qing only once before staring at the stains on the table in front of him again, his Adam's apple bobbing.

Shen Qing looked away, signed the confirmation documents, and spent the entire morning being lectured by the police before she was finally able to take Takano out of the detention center.

They walked one behind the other, separated by the distance of three people. Shen Qing waited at the intersection, wondering where they should eat and what she should say to the child. Takano stood several meters behind her, staring at the woman's back. A sudden feeling of helplessness welled up inside him. What would this woman who never looked back do this time? Take him out for a meal? Send him straight to his father? Or was she merely waiting to call him a taxi?

He glanced to the right, then swayed toward a nearby alley, thinking about the rented room he had not returned to in months. It was probably covered in dust by now.

Shen Qing had not expected that in the short time she spent hailing a taxi, the child had already walked more than ten meters away. Her first instinct was to call out to him. But as she looked at this child who had begun acting on his own, that unfamiliar back seemed to offer her two choices: one, to separate like this, inexplicably yet naturally; or two, as her current husband had said, to take the child to Japan.

"Miss, are you still taking a taxi?" the driver urged.

Shen Qing snapped out of it, suddenly realizing that she had almost abandoned this child for the second time. Guilt surged through her, and she shouted, "Takano, where are you going?"

This is my first time writing on Qidian, haha.

After reading Ace of Diamond, I had a story in my head that I wanted to tell.

I don't know whether I can write a sports novel, but I'll give it a try.