Hong Xiang, lucky like water—
but the truth was not so simple.
On the day he was born, his mother was dying.
People in the village talked about it for years. In the end, it always came down to the same few sentences: that Hong Xiang had carried misfortune with him from the very first day he entered the world. That his birthday was his mother's death day. Such things were not unheard of here—but what made it strange was this: when his mother died, even the sky seemed unwilling to leave him a proper memory.
No one could agree on what the weather had been like that day.
Some said it was overcast, the sky hanging low, thick clouds pressing down as if rain might fall—but never did. Others insisted it was bright, the sun glaring down, the old locust tree in the yard casting a shadow so dark it looked almost solid. Still others remembered the wind—not a steady wind, but something broken, coming and going, like someone trying to speak and swallowing the words back.
All three versions survived. None could convince the others. In the end, people stopped arguing and settled on a single conclusion:
The weather that day had been unclear.
Unclear.
The word suited Hong Xiang well.
He was born on the earthen kang in his own home. The midwife was Old Wang from next door. Whenever she spoke of that day, she would always shake her head first, and only then begin.
She said Hong Xiang's mother had never been strong. By the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, she had grown so thin she barely looked human—her belly thrust forward, her back curved like a drawn bow. From behind, you might not even have guessed she was carrying a child.
On the day of labor, she endured the pain for an entire afternoon. Her cries grew weaker and weaker, until at last she could no longer cry at all. Her mouth remained open, and from her throat came only a faint, thin current of air—like a lamp burning through its last drop of oil.
Hong Xiang was born at dusk.
When he came out, he did not cry.
Old Wang lifted him by his legs and slapped the soles of his feet. Only then did he let out a sound—a short, sharp cry, brief as a cough. After that, he fell silent.
She laid him beside his mother.
His mother turned her head and looked at him.
Just once.
Old Wang said she saw it clearly. There were no tears in that woman's eyes, nor much of anything else—only that gaze, steady and quiet. She looked at him for a moment, and then her breathing slowed, growing lighter and lighter, until one could no longer tell whether she was inhaling or exhaling.
And then—nothing.
The room fell into a silence so heavy it felt pressed down by something unseen.
Old Wang later said that standing there, holding the newborn, she had the strange feeling she should not be there at all. The woman's death had not looked like a person dying. It was more like something simply… stopping. No struggle. No sound.
The news spread through the village faster than wind.
Within an hour, nearly everyone knew: the woman from Hong Xiang's house had died after giving birth.
At first, people spoke with sympathy. They said she had been unfortunate, dying so young, leaving behind a newborn who had not even tasted a mouthful of milk.
But as the words passed from mouth to mouth, they began to change.
Someone—no one remembered who—remarked that the child might be inauspicious. That he had killed his own mother the moment he entered the world. Such things, after all, were not without precedent.
The idea took root quickly, like a seed falling into soil.
Some said the child was a remnant of fate's mistake. Heaven had intended to take both mother and child, but something had gone wrong, leaving him behind. And so he carried with him a trace of something dark—whoever came too close would suffer for it.
Others said that final glance from his mother had not been meant for him at all. That she had been bargaining with Heaven, trading her life for his. A life bought at such a price, they said, was too heavy—too heavy for anyone to bear.
These whispers lingered in the village, never loud, never fully gone.
There was pity in people's faces when they spoke of him. But beneath it lay something else—something harder to name. A quiet wariness, hidden in their eyes, in the pauses between words, in the smallest gestures.
When Hong Xiang grew older and walked through the village, that wariness followed him everywhere, like a shadow he could not shake off.
For the first few days of his life, he survived on rice broth.
His father, clumsy and desperate, dipped scraps of cloth into the thin liquid and brought them to the baby's mouth. Hong Xiang sucked hard, his tiny lips working again and again, like a fish stranded on land.
But rice broth was not milk.
He ate, then emptied himself, then cried from hunger again. His cries were thin and sharp, like a kitten's, enough to fray anyone's nerves.
There was a woman in the village named Niu Feng.
She had just given birth to her third child. Her milk was abundant—so much so that her breasts often hardened with pressure, damp patches spreading across the front of her clothes.
She was not particularly clever, but she was kind.
When she heard what had happened, she could not sit still. Taking her own child in her arms, she went to Hong Xiang's house.
Later, she said that when she first saw him, he looked like a skinned rabbit—thin, wrinkled, his skin so translucent that the bluish veins beneath showed clearly, like a net.
She opened her clothes and took him in her arms.
The moment he touched her, it was as if something struck him. His mouth latched on instantly, and he began to suck with desperate force.
It hurt. She said it hurt badly.
But she did not push him away.
She lowered her head and watched him.
He fed for a long time. Only when he was full did he release her, milk still at the corners of his mouth, falling asleep as if nothing in the world had ever threatened him.
In that moment, Niu Feng thought:
there was nothing ominous about this child.
He was only hungry.
A child who wanted to live.
And survival had nothing to do with fortune or misfortune. It was a simple thing. It needed milk. It needed arms to hold him. It needed a mouth that would not let go once it found something to cling to.
From that day on, Niu Feng came every day to feed him.
One side for her own child, the other for Hong Xiang.
Sometimes both children fed at once. She would look down at them, first one, then the other, and feel there was no difference between them at all.
People warned her.
They said the child was unclean, that she might bring harm to her own.
She said nothing.
The next day, she came again