Wang Xiaole

It had been three days since Li Wei arrived at the Twilight Church.

The past few days had been uneventful. Nanny Cheng, who was in charge of teaching the Choir, had started by having them read the church's Gospel Book. Later, she made them memorize hymns praising truth, goodness, beauty, and other virtues. Today, they had begun learning to read sheet music.

Life at the church was indeed much better than that of the laborers elsewhere in Yuguang. To keep them clean and hygienic, Li Wei and the others were required to bathe every day, and they were given food that ordinary laborers could never afford to taste.

Li Wei had grown reasonably familiar with the three boys who shared his dorm room. During their break that noon, one of them invited the others to use their free time to visit the cemetery behind the church and pay respects at the graves.

His grandparents were buried there. His parents were usually busy at the factory and never had time to visit their graves.

The other two boys in the dorm agreed to go with him, but Li Wei didn't want to leave the church on a whim.

Over the past two days, the Police Department and Yuguang's Labor Union had conducted a thorough search of every district. Even with someone like The Bishop there to lend the church his authority, it had still been inspected twice.

Neither inspection had caught Li Wei and Feng Zi, but Li Wei would never take an unnecessary risk when he could avoid it.

Besides, he had never planned to get too close to his three roommates. He and Feng Zi would surely cause a huge commotion later on. The closer he got to the people around him now, the more he would endanger them.

During the lunch break, Li Wei didn't go looking for Feng Zi. He let the cripple go to the church's public library to find something to read, while he sat on a bench in the hall and watched a boy named Wang Xiaole do his daily cleaning.

"What is Nanny Cheng to you?"

Li Wei asked casually.

In the few days since he'd arrived, he had figured out who the relative taking care of Wang Xiaole was.

The boy was sweeping carefully with a broom. At the question, his body visibly stiffened. He nervously looked up at Li Wei, clearly not expecting him to ask it so suddenly.

"Why do you ask?"

Li Wei raised an eyebrow.

"I saw her talking to you in private last night. If it's personal, forget I asked. I was just curious. I mean no harm."

With the special intuition of a child, Wang Xiaole sensed a strange familiarity in Li Wei, especially in his voice, though he was certain he had never seen this face before.

But that familiar feeling made him trust Li Wei's words. He believed that Li Wei really meant no harm.

"Nanny Cheng is my great-aunt. If you can, please keep it a secret. She doesn't want anyone to know we're related."

"Why? It's not as if she pulled strings to get you into the Choir. What's there to hide?"

Wang Xiaole put down his broom. He always seemed so sullen and downtrodden. He sat down beside Li Wei.

"Nanny Cheng doesn't like children. I really don't have any other relatives, so I had to come here to the church and ask her to be my guardian until I'm old enough to get an ID card and work at a factory."

In Yuguang, there were age restrictions for anyone who wanted to become a laborer and earn a living at a factory.

You had to be at least fourteen to apply for an ID card, but you needed a guardian to sign the application. Without an ID card, you could only become an undocumented person.

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

"What about your other relatives?"

"Dad died of an illness when I was very little. Mom raised me by herself while working at the factory. But the foremen kept coming after her. They'd come to our home, tie my hands with a rope, and fasten me beside the door so I couldn't run around. Then they'd shut the door and bully Mom."

Wang Xiaole's voice was calm. He seemed to have grown used to it, and didn't feel how sad it was.

"After a while, Mom started losing her mind. Sometimes she'd suddenly hug me and say she saw Dad. He was holding a dog, and it bit all the bad men to death. Then he took us away to live a good life. Granny Wang, who lives next door, said Mom had gone crazy, but Mom kept saying she wasn't crazy—everyone else was."

"I was scared and wanted her to come to the church to see a priest, but she didn't dare ask for time off. She thought the factory would fire her. Then last month, she died at the Coal Mine Field. I heard she worked herself to death."

"After Mom died, I didn't know if I had any relatives besides Nanny Cheng. She also helped arrange for Mom to be buried at the church. I brought her the money we had left at home. She can have all of it, as long as she agrees to raise me and doesn't let me become an undocumented person."

"Mom was afraid I'd end up undocumented, because it's much harder for them to survive than ordinary laborers. She was also afraid I'd become physically disabled. She believed in Twilight, and always thought that if you were missing a part of your body, you wouldn't be whole even after entering Twilight."

It was as if he'd finally found someone he could confide in. Li Wei had asked one simple question, and Wang Xiaole had poured out his whole story.

But clearly, Wang Xiaole knew what he should and shouldn't say. Take "the money we had left at home," for instance. It was almost certainly the compensation Li Wei had secured for him and the other laborers' families. He had never breathed a word about that.

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

He had only wondered whether a child could hold on to the compensation money he'd received from Li Wei in such a harsh place as Yuguang.

He hadn't expected that Wang Xiaole had never intended to keep the money for himself. Instead, he had planned to use it to find a chance to scrape by in this wretched society.

From the past two days of interactions, Li Wei could tell that Nanny Cheng was clearly a greedy opportunist. The children she took special care of were always the ones whose families had slipped her money.

If Wang Xiaole wanted her to be his guardian, he would probably have to give up at least half of the twenty-one thousand in compensation.

In the end, Li Wei could only offer words that might have been meant to comfort him or persuade him.

"Now that you're at the church, things will get better from here on."

The boy gripped his broom tightly. He smiled and nodded with all his might.

"Of course!"

Just as Li Wei stood up, ready to end their rather heavy lunch-break conversation, a flurry of hurried footsteps suddenly came from the back of the church.

He turned around and saw his three roommates, who had gone to visit the cemetery behind the church. They were pale and visibly nervous as a group of church staff surrounded them and escorted them into the hall.

"Explain yourselves! How did you find out all the graves in the cemetery were empty?"