Wang Xiaole

It has been three days since I arrived at the Twilight Church.

Life these past few days has been quite mundane. Nanny Cheng, who is in charge of the choir, started by teaching them to read the church's gospel books, then moved on to memorizing poems about truth, kindness, and beauty, and today, they have already begun learning how to read sheet music.

Life in the church is indeed much better than for other laborers in Yuguang. To maintain cleanliness and hygiene, Li Wei and the others are required to bathe every day and are fed food that ordinary laborers could never dream of tasting.

Li Wei has become reasonably familiar with the three boys in his dormitory. During the lunch break that day, one of them invited the others to use the time to visit the graveyard behind the church.

His grandparents are buried there, and since his parents are always busy at the factory, they never have time to pay their respects.

The other two roommates agreed to go with him, but Li Wei did not want to leave the church grounds so casually.

Over the past two days, the police department, in conjunction with the Yuguang Labor Union, has conducted carpet searches across all districts. Even with a Bishop to back the church, it has still been inspected twice.

Although neither search resulted in the arrest of Li Wei or Feng Zi, Li Wei refuses to take unnecessary risks when he can be careful.

Besides, he has no intention of getting too close to his three roommates. He and Feng Zi are bound to cause a major incident later on, and the better his relationship with those around him, the more he would end up harming them.

During the lunch break, Li Wei did not go to find Feng Zi—letting that cripple go find books to read in the church's public library on her own—but instead sat on a bench in the main hall, watching the boy named Wang Xiaole perform his daily cleaning duties.

"What is Nanny Cheng to you?"

Li Wei asked casually.

Having been here for a few days, he had already figured out who the relative taking care of Wang Xiaole actually was.

The boy, who was diligently sweeping with a broom, stiffened visibly upon hearing the question. He looked up at Li Wei, appearing nervous; he had never expected him to suddenly ask such a thing.

"Why do you ask that?"

Li Wei raised an eyebrow.

"I just saw her speaking with you privately last night. If it's a private matter, then forget it; I was just curious, no malice intended."

Due to a child's unique intuition, Wang Xiaole felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity from Li Wei, especially in his voice, even though he was certain he did not recognize this face at all.

But because of this sense of closeness, he believed Li Wei and felt that the other party truly meant no harm.

"Nanny Cheng is my great-aunt. If you could, please keep it a secret; she doesn't want people to know about our relationship."

"Why? She isn't exactly pulling strings to get you into the choir, so what is there to hide?"

Wang Xiaole put down his broom. He sat down beside Li Wei, maintaining that usual mopey, punching-bag demeanor.

"Nanny Cheng doesn't like children. I have no other relatives left, so I had no choice but to come to the church to find her and beg her to be my guardian until I'm old enough to get an ID card and work in the factory."

In Yuguang, there is an age requirement to become a laborer and earn blood money in the factories.

You must be 14 years old to apply for an ID card, but the application requires a guardian's signature; otherwise, you can only become an undocumented resident.

That is why, after his parents died, Wang Xiaole had to find a legal guardian for himself.

"What about your other relatives?"

"My father died of illness when I was very young, and my mother raised me by working in the factory alone. But those foremen kept coming to find her. They would come to our house, tie my hands with rope, and tether me to the door to keep me from running around, then they would lock the door and bully my mother."

Wang Xiaole's voice was calm, as if he were long accustomed to it, feeling no sense of how tragic the situation truly was.

"Later, my mother's mind started to slip. Sometimes she would suddenly hug me and say she saw my father. She said he was leading a dog, that he had bitten all the bad people to death, and that he was taking us to live a good life. Granny Wang next door said she was crazy, but Mother always insisted she wasn't—that it was everyone else who had gone mad."

"I was scared and wanted her to come to the church to see a priest, but she didn't dare ask for leave, fearing the factory would fire her. Then, last month, she died in the Coal Mine Field. They said she was worked to death."

"Once Mother died, I didn't know if I had any other relatives besides Nanny Cheng. She even helped arrange Mother's burial in the church graveyard. I brought the money left at home to find her; she could have all of it, as long as she agreed to raise me and keep me from becoming an undocumented resident."

"Mother was terrified that I would become an undocumented resident, because life for them is even harder than for normal laborers. She was also afraid I would end up physically disabled; she believed in the Twilight and always felt that if one's body was incomplete, one would never be whole even after entering the Twilight."

It was as if he had finally found someone to confide in; Li Wei's simple question had opened the floodgates, and he poured out his entire experience.

But clearly, Wang Xiaole knew what should and shouldn't be said. For instance, the "money left at home" was, in all likelihood, the compensation Li Wei had helped him and the other families extract. On that point, he remained tight-lipped.

After listening to him, Li Wei suddenly didn't know what to say.

He had originally just been curious whether this child could actually hold onto the compensation money he had received in such a harsh environment as Yuguang.

It turned out that he had never intended to keep the money for himself, but had used it to buy a chance to survive in this broken society.

From his contact over the last two days, Li Wei could tell that Nanny Cheng was clearly a mercenary character; the children she gave special care to were all those whose families had slipped her money.

For Wang Xiaole to get her to be his guardian, he had likely handed over more than half of that twenty-one thousand in compensation.

In the end, Li Wei could only offer words that were half-comfort and half-persuasion.

"Now that you're in the church, life will get better."

The boy gripped his broom tightly, smiled, and nodded vigorously.

"Of course it will!"

Just as Li Wei stood up, preparing to end this somewhat oppressive chat during the lunch break, a flurry of hurried footsteps suddenly echoed from the back of the church.

He turned his head and saw his three roommates, who had gone to the graveyard, being surrounded by church staff and brought into the hall, their faces pale and filled with terror.

"Explain yourselves! How did you discover that all the graves in the cemetery are empty!"