The Rental Shop Owner - ch2+3+4

Translator: ayszhang

Proofreaders: krabbykabbi, Luzo & Red

 

Happy Mother's Day! For any mothers out there reading our blog :)

The Rental Shop Owner ch 2, 3 & 4



02

Ding Hongmei looked afraid with her aged face scrunched up while she cowered on an ink-black bench. It seemed like she was really delighted to see me but did not know what to say.

There was a woman in the house, all right, but the place could not even compare to a pig sty. Aside from the disgusting, sour and rotten smell in the air, the table was coated with dust and on top of it was half a bowl of instant noodles from who-knows-when, manifested with a green film of mould. The original red brick floor simply could not be seen. It was plushy beneath my feet—a carpet woven from peanut shells, sunflower seed shells, cigarette butts and some unknown substance.

I kind of understood why Shen Bin had reminded me of trash. It is hard not to become trash when you live in trash.

The old woman looked shamefaced and grabbed something from the kitchen that might be called a washcloth of sorts and started wiping the table and chair.

“Comrade Qian, sit, sit! How ‘bout a glass of water?”

Comrade again, ugh. And where could I possibly sit in this tiny place?

“It’s all right. I’m just dropping by. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be out in a jiffy.”

She stopped wiping and faltered before stuttering with her grey lips, “In a jiffy? Oh, but…”

Now she looked more like how she usually does, a sorry, pathetic face. I sighed. Why had I punched him again? With a mom like this, he didn’t even need me to teach him a lesson.

“You know, Comrade Qian, our lil’ ‘un always talks about you!” Her smile was awkward: it was more like a frown. “He said you’re a good man. Lets him watch films for free. He learned a lot, I tell you, even wanted to give you something for New Year’s. I don’t know why he’d hit you though. He couldn’t have. Must’ve been sick or something. It wasn’t on purpose. Could you find it in your heart to forgive him?”

I suppose she didn’t even know that her son had assaulted another person.

The rascal said I was a good man and let him watch films for free as if it were actually the case. But it must have been a waste of my world-class films watching them in this pig sty.

I didn’t feel too comfortable and left fairly soon.

A while later, I heard the hulk that Shen Bin had beaten up died.

I really regretted it. I mean, why had I stooped to the level of a kid? My old man kept sighing, saying that we had collected bad karma. My old lady might have said one thing but she was more or less uneasy inside as well. Especially after knowing that the big fellow was a bastard who trafficked children, she became even more worried that they would take revenge. However, we didn’t hear anything from Shen Bin’s lackeys and Shen Bin’s mom never showed up again.

Some time later, it was the court hearing.

I sneaked in to listen.

When the rascal was brought out, I was astounded. He was healthy as a buck, as if nothing had happened. And there I was, prepared for the worst case scenario—say insanity or disability, or at least depression or despair—but he looked to be in even better shape than he had before. Better looking, too. I think steam was coming out of my ears.

Afterwards I realised, no matter how bad prison food was, it was better than the pig sty trash; no matter how uncomfortable prison was, it was better than the pig sty. It was no wonder that he gained some weight and livelihood. Also, his hair was shaved short, his clothes were cleaner and sharper and he had a more proper expression, too. He actually looked like a human being for once.

Surprisingly, he became a man only after being locked up. I wondered what his ma, Ding Hongmei, had to say about that.

I spotted her sitting in the gallery with her shoulders curved inwards, sobbing, and I started feeling bad again. Yet that damn jerk did not look one bit remorseful. He totally deserves the punishment, I thought.

But I was still shocked when the judge found him guilty of manslaughter and sentenced him to ten years in prison.

Shouldn’t it be justifiable homicide out of self-defense?

The big fellow was…

It should be justifiable homicide!

Ding Hongmei bawled her eyes out, crying for mercy to the judge, and lunged forth to hug her son. Then, I finally saw him do something. He tilted his head back, closed his eyes and then he was brought out by the police.

He did not look at me once from beginning to end.

As if I wasn’t the one who did this to him.

The second brother actually came over afterwards to explain this to my old man. He said that the security bureau, the control yuan and the court were all managed by the Party and they were just, but the fellow had acted up and insisted that the two of them were fighting and it had only gotten out of hand. There was no way for the judge to say it was self-defense!

My heart skipped a beat for some strange reason.

Shen Bin’s lackeys came once after that. They didn’t wreck my shop or steal anything and only said, “Shen Bin’s the real deal. Busted Ol’ Wu up with three punches. His name’s big on the streets now!”

Fuck. Who did they think he was? Flowery Monk, Lu Zhishen? On the streets, my ass. Obviously someone had been watching too much Young and Dangerous.

03

The whole thing ended just like that and I went back to running my little rental shop.

Summer came in the blink of an eye. Students went on summer break and business was good.

The girls liked reading romance novels so I stocked up on pirated pocket books from Taiwan despite the strict watch on piracy from the ministry of commerce. I mean I could not just let money slip through my fingers. I hid the pirated books in the back room and only regular customers could go in. If people came to investigate, I would lock the back room door. I made it through quite a few surprise checks and built a good reputation. Many girls would come from the other side of town to borrow books.

Later, some of them asked me to get some manga. There actually was manga in the shop—Slam Dunk, Case Closed, Saint Seiya, all the ones airing on TV—but they pouted and complained. “It’s 1998 for god sakes!”

Are those out already? I wondered. To be honest, my generation grew up watching martial arts movies and movies from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the only cartoon we had were Havoc in Heaven, Astro Boy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers and the like. All I knew about these things they called manga was that they were like comic strips, thus the manga books I bought were not up to par with my videos. The girls kept nagging me about Zetsuai 1989, Ranma ½, Rurouni Kenshin, RG Veda and other stuff I had no knowledge of, but kids were the biggest market for my business so I had to keep learning. I bought Zetsuai 1989 and some of their so-called classics, as well as a set of Japanese romance novels they recommended countless times to me.

In the end, business was absolutely great. Wave after wave of girls lined up to rent my books.

I was utterly puzzled. We had not been this excited back then to read about Qiao Feng, Chu Liuxiang or Xiao Qiushui! Tsk, tsk.

My little shop was small but busy and became an oven in the summer. I considered getting an air conditioner but it seemed like a waste of money too. The money I earned in a month would go entirely to pay for hydro.

That day was scorching hot and no one was coming in during the middle of the day.

I wiped myself off, stretched for the sky and turned on the TV. I could only watch TV. My second-hand Shinco VCD player had finally gone to its last resting place so I was also considering getting a DVD player.

Ah, it all cost so much money!

“Oi, Qian!” Three thugs came into my shop. I took a good look at them. They turned out to be Shen Bin’s buddies.

How long has it been now? And they’re here again?

“What, you don’t recognise us no more?” They didn’t look friendly but they didn’t sound too bad either. I let out a sigh of relief.

They were kids after all. There was nothing I could do but I could not help but think that the rascal would not have ended up behind bars if it were not for me. I mean, ten years! He was eighteen and would be twenty-eight when he came out. There was no way that prison life would be nice. All the naughty pups that went in came out as big bad wolves. I had a wild imagination and immediately thought of a lot of prison-themed novels and movies.

Sigh. I just felt like I had wronged him.

Therefore, I said in a rather kind tone, “Of course I do. You’re Shen Bin’s bros. How is he doing in there?”

Only the leader of the three was okay to the eyes; he looked like a mini-sized “Chicken” Chiu. The other two had not yet even hit their growth spurt, yet they were acting all high and mighty with a half-burnt cigarette in their mouths. I wanted to laugh so badly.

“Yer not such a bad person. He’s doin’ fine!” The smallest one bragged.

“What can I do for you? You want to rent videos? I can give you a dis—.”

“Fuck your movies. Only Shen Bin likes that shit!”

They shared a look with each other and then Mini-Chicken spat, “Hey, you Qians made Shen Bin go in the slammer for ten years. Shouldn’t you at least show some goodwill?”

Were they trying to wring money out of me?

I closed the shop and got dragged along by them. It was so damn hot that I was sweating too much to keep my eyes opened.

I arrived at the Shen pig sty on the old street once again.

“Stop it. I can walk myself,” I grumbled as I was pushed into the house.

Last time I had only gone into the living room. This time I was pushed into the room where you sleep (I couldn’t find it in my heart to call it a bedroom). There was a wooden bed that still had some colour on it with a black, grimy white canopy, and someone was lying on it, probably Ding Hongmei. I almost did not recognise her dishevelled hair, bloated stomach and thin, twig-like arms and thighs.

Apparently, she was about to die.

How could that be? I was dumbstruck.

This was none of my business.

But they also said she had had terminal breast cancer for a long time and did not have the money to treat it. Now the cancer had spread to the body and she was waiting to die at home.

Yeah. She got the disease herself. It had nothing to do with me.

But last time I saw her, she was only a bit old and dirty, not sick.

Maybe it had gotten worse because of the stress?

I became even more confused. Why had they made me come here when it had nothing to do with me?

The three of them were not shy about it either, shouting, “She’s gon die. Shen Bin’s in the slammer and they don’t got no family and we ain’t got no money. There should at least be a whatchamacallit—service or whatever! You or your family…shouldn’t you help out?”

Memorial service? I laughed. Who would come to commemorate a promiscuous widow like her?

It turned out they came to me to get money to cremate her and buy a container for her ashes. Mini-Chicken even became red in the eyes. I suppose they were still kids after all.

Ding Hongmei woke up. The final surge of energy kicked in and she was fairly conscious. She took a long look at me. “Comrade Qian, you came to see me. Our Lil’ Bin said you’re a good person. You have to look out for him! He’s not bad. It was my fault. I tell you, he’s not bad…”

Her claw-like hand clasped around my wrist. It was cold. I did not feel sweaty at all despite the burning temperature, and actually felt chilly.

I arranged her undertaking behind my mom’s back.

I stuck to the simplest options but even so I spent over one hundred bucks. It was enough for me to buy half an air conditioner, or over two hundred disks, or hundreds of books…

That widow actually had not saved a single penny! Even their house was state-owned. The department that the abuser worked for had not given them the boot out of pity. Now that no one was living here, they were going to take it back. I went through it again but there really wasn’t much except for garbage. It made me very curious as to how she had the money to get the fruits for me.

Wait a second. I felt something was off.

I searched through the dump again and finally found a flat cardboard box inside a beaten wood box underneath Shen Bin’s metal cot. Inside was some plastic wrap and inside that, was a half-new BBK VCD player. It was not dirty or dusty at all.

Shen Bin’s buddies started buzzing, “Oh man! How could we’ve forgotten about this? It could prolly sell for some dough!”

“You wish. Shen-ge treasures this shit. No way he’d let you sell it!”

“But it’s to bury his ma. Gotta sell it no matter what.”

“But what could we get for this antique?”

“Oh yeah. Qian-ge, how much could we get?”

They really were kids. They had started calling me ‘Qian-ge’ since I helped with the funeral.

I brought that player to my shop since I needed one. Now I did not have to buy a new one.

Huh! This junk’s pretty darn good. Can read all sorts of formats too!

04

The ordeal should have ended after that, but for some reason I felt… I did not even know what I felt.

Anyhow, the days went by just the same: lots of dates set up by the parents. And wouldn’t you know, I got lots of yes’s. If I had a dollar for every time I rejected someone, I would have been rich. Gradually, the word got around that the Qians’ kid had high expectations and the recommendations decreased too. Of course, that was the better way to put it. Maybe in a few more years, they would say I have some weird illness—the kind you can’t show anyone.

I thought I would just see where it goes. My parents were crazy for a grandkid. Maybe I should just get married. But I couldn’t just cheat the girl. Maybe I should just ditch this place and go find some man. But I just got my business running (Who was I kidding here. But really, I wanted to start my own chain of record stores called ‘Qian Jr.’s Records.’). Ugh, I guess I should just go become a monk!

There was no point for me to waste more effort thinking about it. I’ll just figure something out when the time comes, I thought.

Near the end of ‘98, I hired a young lady who was kind of related to me to look after the shop because I was preparing to open a second shop in the developing east side of the town. It got really busy and I had to buy more stuff to stock the new shop with.

There were only two places to do so at that time. You either went down south to Guangzhou or east to Shanghai.

I ended up going to neither this time, mainly because I was not too familiar with those places. There was more variety but I would not have gotten any good deals. At any rate, the most important for a new shop was Mainland stuff and they had that anywhere. So I ended up going to City N nearby.

To come back on the same day, I had to leave at four-thirty in the morning. After eating breakfast in City N when the sky was barely light, I had to rush to grab the disks and books and eat some quick lunch before rushing back in the afternoon.

That day turned out really well. I ran into someone I knew and got everything done in a jiffy. He even dropped me off at the bus station, no extra charge.

Seeing that I still had plenty of time, I wandered around with no particular aim. The wholesale markets were close to the outskirts so there was not much going on. I was just wondering if I should head into the city centre and–

Oh hey!

It was not my first time stocking up in City N but I noticed for the first time that the city prison was near the book markets.

Wasn’t the punk, Shen Bin, locked up there?

I had nothing on my hands so I went to visit him for some goddamn reason.

The correctional officers were pretty mild and down-to-earth, not how I had pictured them in my mind. I had thought that all the prison guards would look like those rapists in Sleepers, or that evil warden in The Shawshank Redemption. I admit I was fairly immature and had a wild imagination.

The officer said he thought Shen Bin didn’t have any relatives since the only ones to have visited were his delinquent buddies from before. He probably thought I was the only decent-looking person to visit Shen Bin.

He also said that Shen Bin was too young, that if he had been born a few months later, he would be considered a minor and would not even be locked up there. The prison was a complicated place and he told me to be watch out for him and guide him back to the right path.

I agreed profusely.

Turns out there were still nice people in this world.

But on what basis could I watch out for him? If it hadn’t been for my punch… I tasted a bitter tang in my mouth. Yeah, the kid was only eighteen.

The prison in City N was not as advanced as it is now. There were not a glass and a phone but instead a big room and a long row of tables. The prisoners sat on the south end and the visitors on the north end.

As I watched him come in, I had no idea what to say. Why did I even go in the first place?

It was actually the first time I had a good look at him.

He was a bit fatter than before and not as snazzy. He even grew.

Actually, his eyes and brows did look like Ding Hongmei’s, very clean. His eyes were less disgruntled but still impenetrably black.

He did not say anything. No expression, either. He just pursed his lips.

I couldn’t just sit there and not say anything.

“I, um, I didn’t bring anything. I would’ve if I knew…”

That was the first thing I said to him which he still laughs about after a long, long time. But it was pretty stupid.

He still didn’t make a sound.

I thought to myself, I don’t owe him anything and I even took care of his old lady’s funeral and…

“How’s everything? Did you get bullied?”

No reply.

“Study hard.” I remembered he was a hillbilly.

Still no reply.

I began to regret it. I must have been crazy to go there in the first place.

“Okay, I’m gonna go then!” Then I got up from my seat.

“Yo, I’m doin’ fine. What I got locked up for is this inside.”

Seeing the kiddo across from me stick his thumb up and smirk arrogantly, I felt kind of warm inside.

I nod. “That’s great. You study hard though. Your mom said you’re a good kid.”

His face darkened.

Did I say something? I thought Ding Hongmei loved this son of hers.

He stood up too and pointed his chin towards me. “Your videos ain’t half bad, bro. Can’t get them in the slammer though,” he said before leaving.

After coming out from the prison, I began to feel antsy.

He’s doing okay in there. Better than before.

I’m going to be thirty-something by the time he gets out. A poor, old man, hah.

_______________

ayszhang: >u< What do you guys think of the story so far?
And again, Happy Mother's Day! Don't forget to visit your momma or give her a call if you're away from home <3

Or she'll come and snatch you away!!! Like Momma Panther is doing here ^^



 

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The Rental Shop Owner - English Translation by ayszhang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.