The boy on the bicycle

"Hey! Wait up, carriage!"

The child riding the "bicycle" from earlier had caught up, pedaling that strange two-wheeled contraption alongside the carriage.

He held the handlebars with one hand and still clutched the little wooden stick in the other. An eager, instantly familiar smile lit his face, and fine beads of sweat dotted his forehead. Clearly, chasing the dog had taken some effort.

The unfortunate mongrel had long since vanished. What surprised Xiao Yan and Xiao Zhan even more was that the child spoke the same language as those strange words Xiao Yan had used earlier.

"Odd changes, even stays!" the child shouted in crisp, clear Chinese, looking at Xiao Yan inside the carriage with sparkling eyes and a mischievous gleam.

Almost by reflex, Xiao Yan's mouth moved faster than his brain, supplying the next line: "The quadrant determines the sign!" The moment the words left his mouth, he froze, his little face flushing crimson. I'm done for! Why did I answer him?! Father is definitely going to get suspicious now! Mortified, he wished he could find a crack in the ground to crawl into, desperately signaling with his eyes for the boy on the bicycle to shut up.

Yet the child seemed completely oblivious to Xiao Yan's hints. Instead, he grew even more excited, easily pedaling along at the carriage's pace as he continued calling out in fluent Chinese.

"I knew it! I heard you say 'bicycle' earlier! Thought I was hearing things! Bro, did you transmigrate here too? What era are you from? Let me tell you, I had it rough when I first got to this lousy place. There wasn't a damn thing here. It took me ages to cobble this bicycle together, and a hell of a lot of work..."

As though someone had opened the floodgates, the child launched into an endless stream of stories and complaints about his arrival in this unfamiliar world, completely ignoring Xiao Yan's increasingly red face and eyes that practically spat fire. His carefree, guileless manner, paired with a homemade "bicycle" so out of place in this world, made him stand out all the more.

Inside the carriage, Xiao Zhan had initially been somewhat wary of the child's strange language and behavior. But as he watched the dramatic scene unfold, listened to that lively-sounding "gibberish" he could not understand, and looked at his youngest son, who seemed ready to bury himself, his expression shifted from confusion to amazement, finally settling into a smile he could barely suppress.

He looked at the energetic young cyclist whose words poured out like a rushing river, then at the thoroughly embarrassed, red-cheeked Xiao Yan, and felt as though a great stone had been lifted from his heart. This child... he's a little odd, but he seems cheerful and lively. Perhaps... Yan'er can finally have a companion?

Just as the young cyclist was talking up a storm, a burst of noisy shouting and cursing suddenly came from the other end of the street. Several children around eleven or twelve, considerably sturdier than the cyclist, charged over aggressively. The one in the lead was hefting a few moderately sized stones in his hand.

"That's him! The Crazy Ghost who hurt Laifu!" "Lunatic! Riding that piece of junk around all day, showing off! And you dared hit my dog! Pelt him!"

The older children immediately showed their vicious side when they spotted the young cyclist. Without a care that the Xiao Clan patriarch's carriage was right beside them, they hurled their stones straight at him, spewing ugly curses all the while.

"Fuck!" The young cyclist reacted in an instant, ducking nimbly beneath several flying stones. The abrupt syllable that burst from his mouth was something Xiao Zhan had never heard before, but it made Xiao Yan go rigid. His excitement instantly gave way to irritation. "These little fuckers just won't stop haunting me! Right, I'm out of here!"

He made a face at Xiao Yan inside the carriage, then stamped hard on the pedals. The bicycle's front wheel shot up half a foot off the ground! He immediately swerved around the charging older children at an impossibly sharp angle, his wheels kicking up dust. Like a nimble whirlwind, he darted into a nearby alley and vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving the older children behind to curse in furious frustration.

Inside the carriage, Xiao Yan watched the direction in which the boy had vanished. His tense little face relaxed despite himself, and he let out a quiet breath. "He's finally gone..." But then he felt his father's gaze upon him, carrying a hint of scrutiny and some other, indescribable emotion.

The atmosphere inside the carriage instantly grew awkward, as though that brief bustle had never happened. Xiao Yan lowered his head and stared at his fingers without speaking again. Even the clamor outside the window seemed to grow distant.

Neither spoke for the rest of the journey, and the carriage soon returned to the Xiao Clan estate. After getting out, Xiao Zhan did not immediately return to his study. Instead, he summoned a capable guard and gave him a few quiet instructions. The guard left to carry them out, and only then did Xiao Zhan turn to the still-silent Xiao Yan, patting his shoulder and signaling for him to return to his own courtyard. Xiao Yan nodded and left without a word.

The guard returned to report that very evening. Yet what he had learned made Xiao Zhan's brows knit tightly. According to the guard, the boy riding that strange contraption seemed to have appeared in Wutan City out of thin air. No one knew where he came from or who his parents were. No one even knew his name; they only called him the Crazy Ghost. He had abruptly turned up in the slums in the western part of the city and built himself a crude shack to live in.

The neighbors all thought the child behaved strangely and was not quite right in the head. He was always tinkering with "scrap metal" that no one understood and spouting "nonsense" that no one could make sense of. As for how he survived, he apparently used that two-wheeled thing to run occasional errands and do odd jobs, and also fought.

According to several residents who had seen him clash with others, the child fought with extreme ferocity and would resort to anything. Once, cornered in a vegetable garden, he had grabbed a manure dipper and beaten several local thugs who had provoked him until they wailed for their fathers and mothers. After that, no one in the area dared pick a fight with him lightly.

After hearing the guard's report, Xiao Zhan frowned deeply, his fingers tapping unconsciously against the tabletop as the news replayed in his mind. Appeared out of thin air, strange words and behavior, fighting with... a manure dipper. What on earth is all this? The boy riding the "bicycle" was practically a mystery, one filled with unknown dangers. Let Yan'er befriend someone like that? Xiao Zhan instinctively wanted to refuse. How could the Xiao Clan's third young master, its youngest Dou Zhe and its hope for the future, associate with such a crude "Crazy Ghost" of unknown origin?

But... the scene from that day surfaced in his mind again. When the boy had shouted "Odd changes, even stays!" in that strange language, Yan'er had answered almost instinctively with "The quadrant determines the sign!"

The astonishment and chagrin that had flashed across Xiao Yan's face, followed by the embarrassment and blush Xiao Zhan had almost never seen on him, were all etched clearly in his mind. It was nothing like the composure his son displayed whenever someone praised his talent. It was the panic of having his secret exposed by "one of his own," a... vivid reaction that belonged to a young boy.

Perhaps his Yan'er was not as opposed to interacting with others as he appeared. Perhaps no one had ever truly entered his world, and no one could understand his "nonsense." And this boy, who spoke the same strange language and rode a strange iron contraption, seemed to be the only person who could somehow "resonate" with Yan'er. Even if the way they resonated was somewhat... peculiar.

Xiao Zhan sighed and rubbed the space between his brows. As a parent, he only wanted his child to be happy and have friends. Yan'er's talent certainly mattered, but his withdrawn nature had always been a thorn in Xiao Zhan's heart.