Truly, when misfortune rains, it pours. When a man is struck by ill luck, even a mouthful of cold water can wedge between his teeth and choke him.
Fang Yu knew with every fiber of his being that he was that very man.
From childhood, he had been taken in by this old man, trapped in a destitute mountain valley where even catching a glimpse of a female cricket was an unthinkable luxury. For more than a decade, he had waited on this eccentric old coot—a man with fully functional hands and feet who could not even be bothered to open his mouth to feed himself. He had finally thought his luck had turned when the old man told him to descend the mountain, saying he was grown now, and it was high time he went out into the world to make his own way. Yet no sooner had the words left the old man's mouth than he followed them up with a demand: that Fang Yu take up the post of a bodyguard.
What was a bodyguard, after all? To put it politely, a personal caretaker at one's constant beck and call. To put it bluntly, a human shield, meant to take the blade or the bullet meant for another. The moment his employer was in peril, he was to be the first to step forward. Danger would always be his to face first, a calling fraught with mortal peril at every turn.
What kind of rotten, unholy luck was this?
A bitter, hollow feeling welled up in Fang Yu's chest, leaving him on the brink of tears with none to shed. Was he born for no other purpose than to wait on others hand and foot for the rest of his days?
Yet for all his resentment, he had begun to resign himself to his fate. It was not that he had no desire to rebel, but that he dared not—he lacked the strength. For all his seventy-odd years, this old geezer possessed extraordinary martial prowess; every ounce of skill Fang Yu had, he had learned at the old man's feet.
Years prior, Fang Yu had believed he had fully mastered his craft, and had attempted to ambush the old man while he was using the outhouse. In the blink of an eye, the old man had landed a single casual kick, sending him sprawling headfirst into the reeking cesspit.
The mere memory of that humiliating plunge sent a violent lurch roiling through Fang Yu's stomach.
He spat vehemently onto the floor, three times in quick succession, before slumping back against the bedframe, closing his eyes and sinking into bitter contemplation.
Creak.
The bedroom door swung open, and the old man materialized soundlessly beside Fang Yu's bed. He was a gaunt, scrawny little man, his half-bald scalp glistening with an oily sheen, a few straggly white hairs clinging precariously to his pate. A pair of deep-set, beady little eyes were set into his heavily wrinkled, weathered face, and a wild, unkempt mass of beard clung in matted tangles to his chin and jaw.
The old man fixed Fang Yu with a smiling gaze, his eyes narrowing to thin slits, his hands clasped behind his back. He said not a single word.
"What do you want?" Fang Yu shot upright, fixing the lecherous old coot with a fierce, searing glare. With his preternaturally sharp senses, he had detected the man's presence long before he stepped through the door, yet he had no desire to acknowledge the old man's existence, let alone entertain him.
What underhanded thing had the old scoundrel done this time? The day before, a stranger had come calling, and after a hushed, private conversation behind closed doors, the old man had sprung this accursed bodyguard business on him.
Had the lecherous old fool peeked at the man's wife while she bathed? What other reason could there possibly be? For all his miserly, grasping ways, he would never willingly part with his free, unpaid labor. It had to be that. This rotten old man was nothing but a no-good scoundrel, through and through.
Even as Fang Yu railed against the old man in the confines of his mind, the smile on the latter's face only widened—though it was a grotesque, pinched thing, as if someone had squeezed his cheeks together by force. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes piled up, folding over one another like the delicate petals of a wild chrysanthemum in full bloom.
Abruptly, the old man's smile vanished entirely. The wild, straw-like whiskers around his mouth twitched faintly, and at last he spoke. "This is for your travel expenses." With that, he pulled a small handful of crumpled hundred-yuan banknotes from the pocket of his washed-out, faded Zhongshan suit, and laid them down flat in front of Fang Yu.
"Only six hundred?" Fang Yu's brows furrowed sharply as his gaze flicked over the meager stack of notes.
"Heh, what can I say?" The old man replied, his expression utterly unchanged, not a flicker of shame or guilt crossing his weathered features. "Prices keep soaring these days, but a man's income never does. I've done all I can—this is scraped together from my own private savings."