As a mysterious illness ravages the population, one youngster goes on a journey in search of the terrible truth
Ah Wu
When Ah Wu’s mother died, he was still nursing. The sudden lack of milk had nearly killed him.
When his oldest brother and second sister died, Ah Wu had already begun to form memories. His father didn’t shed a tear. He simply turned his head and walked away. Ah Wu’s father took Ah Si and Ah Wu to a place far away, forbidding them to return home. It was as if he was afraid that his two dead children might carry the remaining ones away with them.
No one knew how much longer the epidemic would last.
Their new home was remote. Their father said that the farther they were from people, the better. People could only bring trouble—it was better to keep a low profile. Ah Si and Ah Wu never saw any people. They hardly talked to one another, while their father became less articulate with each passing day.
When Ah Si left in the morning and didn’t return all day, Ah Wu got an uneasy feeling. Their father was old, and was no longer sensitive to anything. He didn’t even care enough to brush away a fly landing on his whiskers. Ah Wu decided to search for Ah Si himself.
His old friend Hui Qi was the only one he could think of who could help. Even though they had not seen one another for a long time, Ah Wu still remembered clearly the way to Hui Qi’s home.
Born in 1981, Wei Guan is an editor of many years’ experience at a renowned publishing company in Beijing, who writes under a pen name. Writing stories is not her primary job, or even her secondary job, but purely a hobby. She calls herself a “low-yield writer”; she has written novels, as well as children’s books, but too few.
Translated By
George Dudley is a translator based in Beijing. He enjoys spending his free time watching Golden Harvest productions and searching for Chinese short fiction to translate.
