About an hour later, the boys who had been taken away were brought back.
Each one looked as if he'd been thrown into ice water and pulled out again.
Their skin was pale with a bluish tint, their legs shaking, their eyes drained and hollow.
"What happened to them?" Wei asked in a low voice.
"They're worn out from giving blood food," Minnow said.
He watched the youngest boy in the group, pale as paper, yet still holding up another thin boy who could barely walk. The two looked like brothers. The older one stood a full head taller.
Wei kept his eyes on the older brother.
Tall, handsome, but his irises were so thin and pale that the whites of his eyes showed more than the black. It gave his face a quiet, shadowed look.
Minnow was the only one who stepped forward. He went up to them with two bowels of cold water.
He turned to the older boy. "Hua. Drink some salty water. It'll help."
The younger boy nodded with appreciation, took a cup with both hands. But he glanced at his brother first.
Hua shoved the cup away, grunted, and dropped onto the straw. His eyelids lowered, his arm hung loose beside him, empty of strength.
Minnow only smiled a little, set the water down, and walked back without a word.
When he returned, Wei couldn't hold back anymore.
"You two… have some kind of problem?"
Minnow shook his head and shrugged, weary but calm.
"You mean Hua? No. We came in on the same day. He's just upset after the blood feeding. Happens."
Another hour passed.
Footsteps came again at the door. They came fast, almost eager, but the tired shuffle beneath the speed gave them away.
Four more boys were brought back.
Wei saw the red scratches on one boy's face and neck. Thin marks, the kind a cat leaves when it's scared and strikes in a hurry.The boy didn't bother to cover them. He carried himself like someone who had forgotten what pain was, or what it was for.
Most of all, Wei noticed the oiled paper bags each boy held. They clutched them close, as if the bags were the only warm things left in the shed.
From one bag, a bit of bone poked through the opening.
The meat inside was cold, but its smell drifted out anyway. The fat smell moved slow through the air until it settled in everyone's nose.
They had been eating on the way back. You could see it in the grease on their mouths, the quick breath between bites.
They tore at the meat with big, hungry teeth. Now and then one of them laughed, sharp and sudden in the dim light, like a spark catching dry wood.
The sound of it—crack, rip, teeth on bone—echoed too clearly in the wooden shed. Too alive for a place like this.
The smell made many boys swallow hard.Their eyes shone with a hungry, unnatural light, like wolves starving in the dark.
A few couldn't help but drift closer, gazing at the four boys with open envy, trying to look friendly.
"Hey, was the rich lady pretty today?" someone asked.
"She was all right," the boy said with his mouth full.
"Next time you get a good job like this, take me with you?"
"Look at you, crooked nose, crooked face. Who'd want you?"
The shed burst into laughter.
They had eaten quickly on the road. But now that they were inside, they slowed down, as if afraid someone might not notice their reward.
Hua's younger brother slipped between bodies and squeezed to the front.He hadn't seen meat in a long time. His hunger showed.
He looked up with a small, careful smile.
"Big brothers… could I have one tiny bite? Just a tiny..."
The four boys looked at each other. Their expression was the same, like seeing a small dog pawing at a door.
One of them dug a strip of meat from between his teeth, half-chewed, thin as a dry worm, still warm with his breath and spit. He flicked it into the boy's palm.
"Here. Eat it."
Wei's stomach tightened at the sight of it.
But Hua's brother didn't hesitate. He put it in his mouth and closed his eyes, chewing slowly, as if trying to press the taste deep into his tongue.
When he swallowed, he looked up again, eyes shining, waiting for more.
The four boys kept eating, glancing now and then at the hungry eyes watching them.
There was pride in their faces, not mockery, not quite. More like they were waiting for someone to beg.
No one spoke.
The only sounds left in the air were the soft chewing of meat and the dry rustle of oiled paper bags.
Soon the meat was gone, leaving only a strip of bone.
One of the boys tossed it aside.
The bone hit the ground with a "thud".
A signal.
No one knew who moved first.
Arms and legs tangled. Shoulders pressed together. Like a nest of pups suddenly woken.
The four boys leaned against the wall with their arms crossed, laughing hard as they watched the scramble.
Hua stared too, his eyes complicated, then touched his own cheek as if checking something he couldn't name.
A boy hurried up to them and pointed at their oiled paper bags.
"Bro… be kind. Give me the empty bag?"
"Sure," one of them said. "Kowtow once, and it's yours."
The boy dropped to his knees without a second thought and knocked his head on the ground.
A few others groaned, annoyed. "He's fast," one muttered.
Like this scene was something familiar, something they waited to watch.
Wei felt something cold pinch inside his chest. Even the ones still alive here had been starved, frightened, and trained into something close to beasts.
Minnow looked over once, then turned his head away.
Wei caught a flicker of disgust in his eyes.
"Why do they get meat?" Wei whispered.
Minnow opened his mouth, then shut it again. The only answer was a thin, tired sigh.
The shed went quiet.