June 2041.
Shanghai hot enough to cook you alive; the Huangpu stank of sweet rot.
Fu Zhijiang turned eleven the day they locked him in Shanghai Juvenile Reformatory.
Charge: intentional homicide.
Victim: the only son of the CSRC deputy who buried us eleven years ago.
Sixteen-year-old punk looked at Zhijiang the wrong way in a KTV.
Got seventeen stab wounds from a broken bottle for it.
Last one severed the carotid.
Visitation day I wore black, hair pinned tight.
Through the glass he sat in grey prison garb, already 1.80 m, dried blood still on his cheek.
He grinned, showing two tiger teeth:
"Mom, didn't disgrace you."
I pressed my palm to his handprint on the glass, voice soft:
"Silly boy,
seventeen stabs?
I only ever dreamed of seventeen."
He suddenly leaned his forehead against the glass, voice cracking:
"Mom, I dreamed of Dad.
He says the remaining sixteen are mine to collect."
I smiled; tears slid down the glass like broken beads.
"Zhijiang,
one last lesson from Mommy.
Knives aren't for stabbing people,
they're for cutting off every escape route.
You have no way back now.
So make the next cut beautiful."
That night I went alone to the abandoned Bund 18 rooftop.
Tang Shi sat in the dark smoking, cigarette tip glowing.
He looked up, eyes red:
"Sis, the day Zhijiang went in,
I wanted to take the fall for him.
He wouldn't let me.
Said,
'Uncle Tang, this is my mom's blade. I grip it myself.'"
I crouched in front of him, traced the scar under his eye:
"Little Shi,
remember when you clung to my legs crying?
Now it's my son's turn.
Shanghai, generation after generation,
the knives only get faster."
He grabbed my wrist, voice breaking:
"Sis, stop going darker.
I'm scared if you go any further,
even I won't recognise you."
I laughed until my chest hurt:
"Too late.
I've been drinking Huangpu water half my life.
The black is in my bones now."
Thunderstorm hit without warning.
I walked out onto the terrace; rain slashed my face like tiny knives.
I screamed into the storm, voice shredded by lightning:
"Fu Juanzhou!
You fucking listen!
I raised our son exactly the way you wanted!
Happy now?!"
Thunder answered,
a deep, heavy
"Yes."
I stood in the rain until dawn.
Rain and tears
washed eleven years of blood, seven years of snow,
and tonight's blade
straight into the Huangpu.