Stay safe

Every morning, Central Park was like a giant heart filled with vitality, with tens of thousands of residents and tourists pouring in from every direction.

Joggers, dog walkers, cyclists, people pushing strollers, people holding selfie sticks... the crowds wove together, and the air carried a mixture of grass, hot dogs, coffee, and sweat.

Lin Rui's food truck was parked beside the open lawn near Columbus Circle at the southwestern corner, its silver body gleaming conspicuously in the sunlight.

He only worked half a day, from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon.

By the time shifts changed, the cash register was stuffed to bursting, and revenue had easily topped three thousand dollars.

Almost every order came to around fifteen dollars. Occasionally, tourists would slip him an extra five or ten as a tip on account of his face.

"Damn, plenty of people don't make as much in a whole day as you get in tips." Linda was working with him today. She kept her voice low, but couldn't hide the excitement in her eyes.

She held a thick fistful of crumpled bills between her fingers and counted rapidly, grinning from ear to ear. "This feels... so damn good!"

Lately, her coursework had weighed on her like a mountain on her back, but she still tried every possible way to snag shifts with Lin Rui.

The three Jones sisters "battled" her almost every day over this half-day shift-not just because sales were high, but because Lin Rui never kept all the tips for himself.

Sometimes he collected over a thousand dollars a day in tips alone, then split them down the middle.

Manhattan was a financial center, with more rich people than anyone could count. As long as the emotional value provided hit the mark, casually handing over a hundred-dollar "tip" was as common as tossing away a tissue.

"Leon, you're just too good."

Linda stuffed her five hundred dollars in tips into her bag, then turned and gave Lin Rui a huge hug, rubbing her cheek against his.

"I've really been short on money lately. When I have time, I'll make sure to reward you properly. I promise I won't be any worse than those three Jones bitches."

When Samantha came to take over that afternoon, she walked right in on this scene. Watching Linda count her money with delight, her heart bled, but there was nothing she could do.

She understood even less why Lin Rui insisted on going to the gym in the afternoon-passing up prime money-making hours to go pump iron was a sheer squandering of heaven's gifts.

"All right, I'm off." Lin Rui gave a few brief instructions, folded his apron and tucked it into his backpack, then turned to leave.

Samantha called after him, "Remember to work with me tomorrow." He merely waved without looking back.

At the subway entrance, he instinctively pulled out his phone and glanced at it. Several unread texts popped up, all from his mother back in China.

"Son, I saw the link you posted online."

"I told your grandma about you running a food truck. She was so happy she couldn't stop smiling all day, and went around telling all the neighbors."

"I also received the twenty thousand dollars you sent. Your dad went on about it all evening, saying you shouldn't be in such a hurry and shouldn't send money home."

"New York is expensive. You need to keep more money on hand. Also, stay safe. Every time your dad and I hear about a shooting in the United States, our hearts practically leap out of our chests."

"The girl running the food truck with you is pretty. What's her name? If you get along well, try dating her. Your dad and I don't object."

Lin Rui read through the messages one by one, the corners of his lips lifting slightly. His fingertips tapped the screen as he picked a few to answer briefly.

Once he entered the subway station, his signal instantly dropped to zero. He put away his phone, took a deep breath, and stepped into that familiar, nose-wrinkling stench.

The New York subway was as filthy and chaotic as ever.

Layers of graffiti covered the platform walls, and the floor was sticky enough to cling to the soles of his shoes.

Several young Black men vaulted straight over the turnstiles without paying. A staff member lazily blew a whistle, but nobody actually chased them. In a corner, someone was cleaning up a fresh pile of feces, the shovel scraping against the floor with a grating, numbing sound.

When Lin Rui first arrived in New York, sights like these had left him dumbfounded. He had thought homeless people had no manners and subway management was abysmal.

Only later had he understood: in the United States, being homeless itself wasn't illegal, but sleeping on the street, pitching a tent in a park, or lingering in a neighborhood was. Police could drive people away, issue tickets, or even arrest them at any time.

Only the subway operated twenty-four hours a day, and anyone could legally stay inside.

So as soon as darkness fell, homeless people flocked into subway stations like migratory birds, found a corner of a carriage, and lay there all night, especially in winter.

He stepped into a carriage and was met by a wave of heat mingled with the reek of urine, sweat, and rotting garbage. Passengers held the handrails numbly, each minding their own business. Nobody looked up.

Lin Rui didn't look for a seat-the seats were covered in stains, and sitting on one would have felt like sitting at a crime scene.

He chose a corner to one side and stood with his back against the doors, hands in his pockets. Closing his eyes, he endured the foul stench and slogged through the journey back to the Bronx.

The carriage swayed, the rumbling of the rails like a lullaby. When the train pulled into a station, he opened his eyes and prepared to get off.

At some point, a filthy person had ended up lying motionless on the carriage floor.

At first, he thought the person was sound asleep. But when the train started moving again and the carriage lights swept across that face, Lin Rui saw clearly: gray-white skin, purple lips, and not the slightest rise or fall of the chest.

It was a corpse, freshly dead.

The surrounding passengers were accustomed to it and remained unmoved. Someone even stepped on the edge of the corpse's leg as they passed, without looking back.

Even by the time Lin Rui reached his stop and got off, he had seen no staff come to collect the body-the subway still roared into the tunnel. He suddenly remembered the words "stay safe" in his mother's text.

Back in Forty Block in the Bronx.

Lin Rui was surprised to find someone waiting for him outside the gym. It was one of the classmates Molly had brought yesterday, fourteen or fifteen years old and as scrawny as a bean sprout.

"Hello, Leon." Yesterday, this "bean sprout" had been picky and disdainful about the gym, but today he spoke with extreme shyness. "My name's Vincent. Can I work out at your gym?" he asked timidly.

"Of course." Lin Rui didn't refuse. "This property belongs to the church. Anyone can use it, free of charge, as long as you're willing to come."

With the gym's iron padlock unlocked, the two pushed the door open and went inside. Lin Rui switched on a few lights, revealing equipment scattered untidily across the floor.

The mess from yesterday's commotion still hadn't been cleaned up.

"I've never worked out before. Could you teach me?" the "bean sprout" continued.

Lin Rui shrugged and pointed to a treadmill in the corner. "Start with the simplest thing. Running, to build your endurance and cardiovascular fitness."

"Okay." Vincent nodded and walked over cautiously. Lin Rui adjusted the incline and speed for him-beginner mode, 4.0 kilometers per hour. All he had to do was move his legs and jog.

Vincent stepped onto it, gripping the handrails for dear life. But before he had run for even a minute, his face turned the color of pig liver, and he was panting like a bellows.

Sweat dripped down from his temples. Finally unable to hold out, he pressed the stop button and plopped onto the workout bench beside him, his chest heaving.

"Am I... really bad?" With his head lowered, his voice sounded muffled, as though he were asking himself.

Lin Rui was on another treadmill. With the boost from Steel Lungs and Viscera, his breathing was heavy but steady. He glanced at Vincent and said calmly, "Do you want the truth or a lie?"

"The truth." Vincent raised his head, his eyes holding a hint of pleading, along with a vulnerability that feared being exposed.

"The truth is-you really are bad." Lin Rui didn't beat around the bush. "You're panting like this after one minute. Your cardiovascular endurance is practically zero, and you don't have much of a muscular foundation either."

The light instantly faded from Vincent's eyes, as though a bucket of cold water had been dumped over him.

He remained silent for a few seconds, his breathing gradually settling, then quietly stood and headed toward the door. His feet dragged, as though he were hauling the weight of an entire world.

Lin Rui didn't stop him. He simply kept running, his voice coming from behind Vincent. "Giving up this quickly?"

Vincent stopped at the doorway, his figure pitifully small and thin from behind. He didn't turn around, merely sighed softly. "I want to be as strong as Toby... or at least half as strong.

"But I'm not even one meter sixty, and I have a small frame. I'll never be like him."

Lin Rui finished his five-minute warm-up and walked over to the bench press rack. Gripping the barbell with both hands, he tested its weight. He sighed, his voice low but clear:

"That really is a shame. You already took the best possible step, yet you only lasted one minute. If that's all the perseverance you have, even God can't help you."

Vincent stopped in his tracks and asked a seemingly unrelated question. "Leon, why do you dare fight opponents who are bigger than you and outnumber you?"

Lin Rui answered quickly, with only a few matter-of-fact words. "I have no choice."