Arrival

It was the tail end of summer. Though autumn was almost here, the weather remained hot and muggy, and the roadside cicadas made an irritating racket. Even the lush green mountains beside it could bring little coolness to this remote little town.

Most people on the streets were elderly. Few young people wanted to stay in such remote countryside; even those who came back only stayed for summer vacation before returning to the city. So every old person here seemed listless, as though nothing could interest them. Anyone who had looked at this same unchanging, worn-out scene for decades would have grown tired of it.

The occasional hippies passing through on motorcycles were something that could count as a novelty, but they did not merit so much as a smile. The only interest the elderly showed was to frown from their position as elders and curse them a little for being good-for-nothing, damned drug-addicted vermin.

Even that had to be done quietly, for fear these locally notorious Black hippies would come looking for trouble, smashing their car windows or throwing rotten eggs at their doors. Those fat-bellied police officers could not be bothered with any of that.

They let little things like these slip through their fingers. And what counted as a major case? Someone dying? They would only investigate for a few days, submit a reasonably presentable report, and ultimately let it go unresolved.

What could count as something new? Oh, right! A young, yellow-skinned Asian man had arrived recently. An Asian? To these white people who considered their race superior, he was somewhat better than those hippies, but they still looked down on him. Besides, this Asian young man, who looked so frail, was a cripple.

He had arrived a few months earlier in a fairly nice black Chevrolet Chevette, a respectable car by the town's standards. At first, they had guessed that no rich person would be moving to this little town. Had Mrs. Arson's son come back to see him, or had their neighbor John's eldest daughter found herself a rich boyfriend?

No one had expected an Asian young man to get out. He was fairly good-looking, though he did not quite match their impression of Asians. They whistled. Was he mixed-race? Or of Chinese descent? But after he took a couple of steps, the people on the street no longer looked at him that way.

Though he did everything he could to steady himself, trying to make his left leg bend as freely as his right, everyone's gaze inevitably went to the crutch on his left. He was a cripple.

He moved into the forest no one wanted to approach, tucked away at the edge of the dense woods. Even so, one had to follow a barely visible new driveway around three bends before seeing it. On a clearing close enough to the edge, a pretty little villa had been completed a few months earlier.

They had no inclination to venture into that notorious forest, though a hunter had gone close to take a look. The rough hunter had few fine words to describe it with, offering a brief summary: logs coated in fine varnish, a basement, and a little attic. Even the fence had been carefully smoothed with a sander and sandpaper of several grits.

Oh, a rich person's diversion. Perhaps someone was keeping a little blond, blue-eyed lover there?

Then the hunter added, with a hint of mockery, that it was not far from the little cabin in the middle.

Everyone consciously cut the subject short, as though there were some plague over there.

The little villa had been built without even using workers from the town or the surrounding area. A crew from elsewhere, who looked as though dogs were chasing them, had built it in less than a week, then vanished without a trace. In any case, the local workers had plenty of complaints about it.

There was simply too much to talk about, so people who were close still whispered about it in each other's ears.

Many people speculated about who would move into that pretty little house: someone wealthy enough to bring her beautiful wife and adorable children for a vacation, an unknown artist who had tired of the bustle and wanted to find inspiration, or perhaps some high-ranking government official... They were all wrong. It was a frail, young-looking Asian cripple. Oh, and he was fairly good-looking. Quite a few people in the tavern lost a good deal of money betting on it.

The town's shabby tavern gave off a foul smell. A few drunks, lost in a haze of drink and reeking of vomit, alcohol, and sourness, banged on the tables with flushed faces and shouted at the tops of their lungs that he was definitely the kept lover of some high-ranking official or rich person with peculiar tastes...

Old ladies watching television with delicate little teacups in hand, or holding two steel knitting needles and tirelessly knitting sweaters or scarves even in summer, considered his fine features and bearing and wondered what school of art he belonged to...

Everyone had a different opinion.

If I knew, I would definitely grin and tell them they had all guessed wrong. I was no rich man, much less an artist, and government official was even further off the mark. Then I would smile and say, "I'm a monster..."

But they would probably mock me, the kind of laughter that filled the whole room. Then I would laugh too, take a knife in front of them, and draw that sharp little blade across my throat, collapsing as blood spilled everywhere. There might be a brief moment of shock, followed by screams. I would wake up before the police and ambulance arrived, then wave at them, covered in blood.

Look! Surprise!

Their answer would be still more screams, rising one after another.

Of course, if that day ever really came, I would have gone completely mad.

Five years earlier, I had still been brimming with ambition. A twenty-five-year-old young man from China had fought his way through a capital market made up almost entirely of white people and established his own company. Money, fame, power, and status kept flocking to me like butterflies and bees around a flower.

Back then, I had hopes and dreams, and I truly achieved them. How high-spirited I had been. No difficulty could stand in my way, but a sudden car accident put an end to it all.

Late one night, a truck slammed into me. Everyone told me I was incredibly fortunate, because I had survived. Almost no one could have survived an accident like that. That expensive car had become a sheet of metal worth nothing but scrap, and even the truck, with its quite literal bones of copper and skin of iron, had been completely totaled. And me? I had only lost a leg and the ability to walk. That was incredibly lucky, wasn't it? Everyone said so.

But how could I possibly accept it? I was only twenty-five! I had gone abroad at twenty, even giving up the chance to attend university, leaving the place I knew to travel far from home. I had only just built something, only just begun enjoying my life! Was I supposed to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair? Then lie in bed howling whenever it rained or turned cold?

When I woke up, I questioned the doctor like a madman. Why had he amputated my leg? Why? Why? I could climb higher, I could face thorns and shoulder wind and snow, but I could not climb with a severed leg dragging behind me. It could not be like this. It should not be like this. But it was not his fault. From his perspective, which mattered more: a leg or a life?

But someone had to bear this rage, this sense of injustice, these immense emotions. I wondered, Was someone taking revenge on me? Was someone jealous of me? That had to be it. Someone must have wanted to hurt me. I investigated like a madman, spending a fortune, only to discover, to my sorrow, in the end.

It really was an accident. An exhausted truck driver had failed to notice a sports car coming around the corner. It had been nothing but an accident, and the driver could not even be sentenced to many years. Countless people looked at me with mockery or pity and sighed... It was fate.

What kind of bullshit fate was that? Why did something like this have to happen to me? I was not a bad person. At least, compared with them, I was not. I did not mistreat women or bully the weak. I even felt pity for a competitor who had stolen several deals from me and recently gone bankrupt. I even did good deeds, donating money to schools and social aid organizations. So.

Why me?

Every one of them deserved to die more than I did. Or I could simply have died in that crash, instead of ending up like this, living a life worse than death.

If, at first, I could still endure it, could still console myself that at least I had money, that at least I was not so wretched, then after leaving the hospital, I appeared at a business meeting in an expensive tailored suit with a fleece blanket over my legs.

I did not seem to have changed much, a little thinner, a little paler, but they still noticed something, something in my mind. When those subtle glances lingered on my face, or rather on the legs hidden beneath the blanket, filled with mockery, or perhaps pity, I wanted to see neither.

Of course, I did not win the bid at that meeting either. After I returned, I went mad. I smashed everything within reach and hammered like a lunatic at that wooden-feeling right leg. Then I looked at my remaining left leg, at the little piece of flesh left there like a worm. It even trembled as my emotions surged. I vomited uncontrollably, until there were traces of blood in the vomit along with the stomach acid.

I did everything I could to rehabilitate myself. I wore a prosthesis and used a crutch, but my still-unsteady body reminded me that I could not go back. I could never go back. I was no longer myself. All I was now was a broken shell.

Perhaps I could have recovered. Given a few more years, a little more time, perhaps I could even have cheerfully written an autobiography. But someone did not think so: my mother, my beautiful mother who was called an Oriental doll, that doll-like mother with a heart as cold as a doll's.

If modern science could not help me, what about the occult?

She spent a fortune arranging a ritual, a cult ritual, a ritual to make a deal with the devil, a ritual that would make my legs grow back, make me more obedient, and let me go on being her perfect son.