After a long while, Feng Ze finally managed to say, "I like it a lot."
Peach's Mom said nothing more.
Only the television could be heard in the living room.
"Ze," Peach's Mom asked as she dried his hair, "you're seven this year?"
Feng Ze murmured an assent.
"Have you always lived at the Orphanage?"
Feng Ze murmured another assent.
Peach's Mom paused. "You've never met your mom?"
Feng Ze was silent for half a minute before saying, "No."
"My mom died giving birth to me."
For as long as Feng Ze could remember, he had lived at the Orphanage. Much of what he knew had come from his teachers.
His teacher had said his mother had slept with a man, but the man hadn't wanted her. With no other choice, she had gone to a little clinic to give birth and died during labor.
The doctor at the clinic had raised him until he was six months old, but then something had happened to the doctor too, and he had been sent to the Orphanage.
Feng Ze didn't know the finer details.
Peach's Mom quietly finished drying his hair, then asked, "Why did you try to hit Peach with something that night?"
Feng Ze frowned slightly. "...I wasn't trying to hit him."
How could he ever hit Tao Zhiyan?
If not for Tao Zhiyan, he would have died long ago.
That little boy was the person Feng Ze was most grateful to now.
That night, he hadn't known what was wrong with him. He had clearly been in Tao Zhiyan's home, so why had he seen the sewer?
No, it hadn't just been that night.
Over the past few days, he had kept seeing strange things.
Rats, dead cats. He could even hear Tao Zhiyan calling him.
"Auntie," Feng