Chapter 31: Everything Is Fine

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“...There is only one true heroism in the world: to see life as it is and still love it...”

“...Excerpt from Romain Rolland’s The Life of Michelangelo...”

When Hu Biao finally woke once more from his tangled thoughts, it was already past seven in the morning. The young man from Handan, Ma Kui, came stomping into the rented room, cursing as he went, his body wrapped in the chill of the outdoors.

After sitting down on his own bed, he took off his shoes and began warmly greeting certain people.

The substance of those greetings was nothing more than this: the manager at the parcel company where he had done casual labor the previous night was a damned grandson who had nearly worked him to death; from now on, he would rather sleep in a park and rummage through garbage bins than ever do casual labor there again, and so on.

Hu Biao, who had spent more than a year scraping by in Ma Juqiao, naturally knew very well that working odd jobs at a parcel company was no good.

Normally, he would only go there when he had absolutely no money left. Whenever there was any other way to get by, he would never set foot there.

Why? Because the managers at those parcel companies were viciously crafty. Afraid that workers might leave early, they would arrange only easy tasks during the first half of the night, sorting relatively light packages.

It gave you the illusion that you could coast through the night without much effort.

But once the second half of the night arrived, all the heavy work would come piling down at once—moving refrigerators, washing machines, and the like. There had even been one occasion when Hu Biao spent half the night hauling packages filled with dirt.

Did you want to quit and run away? Go ahead. They would never stop you. But you would not receive a single penny. If you wanted your wages, you could only grit your teeth and keep working.

By the end of the night, every bone in his body felt as though it had come loose.

Yet compared with everything Hu Biao had endured on the Songhu battlefield, if the circumstances of the two places could have been exchanged, people would probably have fought until their heads split open for these jobs, would they not?

Then again, even so, that was no excuse for the unscrupulous capitalists of the modern world to exploit people like draft animals.

The fact that everyone in the modern world could avoid starvation and enjoy the most basic education and medical care was absolutely not due to the merits of those unscrupulous capitalists.

It was the achievement of generation after generation of forebears who, when China was on the verge of falling completely into the abyss, abandoned everything and risked their lives in resistance.

It was also the great work of the countless pioneers who had labored to build the nation over the decades since its founding.

So here was the crucial question: What should he do with his future? Should he continue drifting along, working odd jobs and lying flat, or should he do something else?

Instinctively, Hu Biao knew that continuing to lie flat was probably the wrong choice. But as for what he should do next, or how he ought to change, his mind was a complete blank.

As these thoughts crowded into his head, Hu Biao’s mind grew terribly muddled.

He felt that something was wrong somewhere, yet he could not put his finger on what it was.

Fortunately, at that moment, his stomach began to growl. The sound suddenly brought him to his senses.

Eat first. Think later.

Whether in the modern world or on the Songhu battlefield, this body had gone at least a dozen hours without food. He needed to eat immediately.

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Otherwise, he might well faint from low blood sugar.

The desire to eat became overwhelmingly urgent. More than anything, he wanted scallion-oil noodles and rou jia mo, with a clove of garlic between every mouthful of noodles.

The moment he thought of it, Hu Biao hurriedly put on his clothes and went out. He made his way eagerly toward a noodle shop in his memory that served both dishes.

******

The moment he stepped outside, a cold wind of barely a few degrees above freezing swept through the capital city, instantly sharpening his spirits.

That was also what made Hu Biao notice details he had usually overlooked: the little shopkeeper greeting customers, the eager workers watching every passerby and waiting for a job to come their way, the office workers hurrying along, the students, and the elderly men and women rushing off to buy discounted eggs.

They might each have had their own troubles, but none of them needed to fear for their safety. None of them had to worry that invaders might one day break in and enslave them.

All these familiar scenes, which Hu Biao had long taken for granted, now entered his eyes. After experiencing the Songhu battlefield, he found this ordinary, bustling life so beautiful.

And even more beautiful were the details he noticed as he continued walking.

For instance, on Bus Route Two, the driver loudly shouting, “Move farther inside! There’s plenty of room!” looked exactly like Big Bared Teeth, the light-machine-gunner from the Special Duties Company.

Then there was the man now loudly arguing with him over the fare.

It was none other than Bao Fugui, the sturdy fellow from Lu Province who could not feel full even after eating three bowls of rice, the heavy-machine-gunner.

During the argument, both men were spraying spittle, seemingly ready to come to blows at any second. Yet to Hu Biao, compared with everything at Position Seven, the scene was almost warm and intimate.

A dozen or so steps farther on, in a small roadside park, a handsome young man was loudly proclaiming, “Thanks for the supercar, old buddy! I’ll dance the Number Three Routine for you!”

It was none other than Bao Fugui’s assistant gunner, the man nicknamed Little Wife.

With pounding music blasting around him, the young man—whose looks and manner were no longer mocked in the modern world and were even admired by many—was radiant and full of life.

Not far from the site of Little Wife’s livestream, a group of middle-aged men were squatting or sitting on the ground, watching the spectacle. Much of what they shouted was along the lines of:

“The girl livestreaming here yesterday was prettier. Those pale thighs of hers—doesn’t she feel cold in this weather?”

Among the crowd of lecherous old men, two men constantly chewing sugarcane were none other than the middle-aged deputy company commander who had arranged for them to join the kitchen unit after accepting their watches and other gifts, and the company commander of the Third Reinforcement Company of the Jiangsu Provincial Security Corps, who had died in an air raid.

When Hu Biao saw the two of them, he instinctively glanced at the watch on his wrist. It was still ticking away, precise to the second.

Still in the little park at the street corner was the old squad leader from the kitchen unit—the kindly elder brother who had given Hu Biao and the others warmth on the Songhu battlefield.

Now he was happily dancing in the square with a group of middle-aged women, his old face shining with indescribable vitality.

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But if there was one sight that affected Hu Biao most deeply, it was what he encountered when he casually accepted an advertising flyer during his walk.

The flyer advertised a nearby housing development offering a massive discount: buy now and you were guaranteed to profit.

Of course, that part was not important. Which housing development was not offering a huge discount these days? They were all advertising zero down payments, too. Sign the contract and move in immediately, as though the apartments cost nothing at all.

What mattered was the young man handing out the flyers with an ingratiating smile. He wore a sharply pressed suit, and his hair was so slick and shiny that a fly landing on it might break its legs.

That young face was identical to Young Master Feng’s.

Hu Biao also saw a man in a security guard’s uniform. His appearance had been captured on the phone of Little Henan, the third squad leader, who was squatting nearby and scrolling through it.

One of the girls appearing on the screen was Annie—the very woman who, at the moment he had believed he was about to die, had still regretted that they would never get drunk together.

In short, Hu Biao saw face after familiar face. In this peaceful age, when the nation had grown powerful, each of them had found a life of their own.

They might no longer be wealthy, but they were certainly living in the kind of world and environment they had once longed for with all their hearts.

It should be noted that among all these familiar faces, Hu Biao did not see Zhou Kun, Wang Peng, Gao Yi, or Zhang Wei.

The people he saw were all familiar faces from the Third Reinforcement Company and the Special Duties Company—either the ancestors of his comrades or the brothers he had known himself.

Each time he recognized another familiar face, his emotions surged violently. Yet he did not disturb a single one of them.

Nor did he intend to tell them about the experiences from his dreams and disrupt their lives.

Knowing that they were living well, with entirely new identities and entirely new lives, was enough.

He did not even go closer to see which platform Annie was using or what name she went by, despite the thought that he might occasionally look her up.

The only thing he did was smile at them.

Meanwhile, his footsteps grew faster and faster as he walked. He seemed to have caught the aroma of scallion-oil noodles and rou jia mo.

It smelled wonderful.

When he crossed an intersection, an older man waiting for a casual job to come along turned the volume on his phone all the way up.

One line of the background audio drifted faintly into Hu Biao’s ears:

“...Rolland once said, there is only one heroism in the world, and that is...”

“Yes!” Hu Biao shouted inwardly. “That Rolland really knew how to put things. He should say more like that from now on.”

Without realizing it, the shoulders and back he usually carried with a slight stoop straightened all at once, standing tall and erect.

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