IPT 7.2

Wang Zhusheng, who was standing next to them, looked at him hatefully. The tears on Shen Qianqian had not dried up, but he also stuck out his tongue at him and made a grimace. He raised his chin proudly and his fingers flicked the butt of the paper ball that he exposed outside his nostrils.

 

The kindergarten students had already eaten a lot of yams, and they had only returned four iron buckets, many of which had been gnawed.

 

The management had to break the whole potatoes in half and divide them among the students in the Nursery and Kindergarten classes. When the manager saw that Shen Qianqian’s face was full of tears and blood, and his nostrils were stuffed with two balls,  he picked a large yam that had only been gnawed a few bites and handed it to him.

 

“Is that enough?” The chief manager asked.

Shen Qianqian smiled from ear to ear: “That’s enough. That’s enough, haha……”

 

After lunch, it was free time, and Shen Qianqian went to the playground with a few children in the same dormitory. He didn’t finish his yam, and he held half of it in his hand.

 

“Why don’t you eat it?” Lin Duozhi asked.

Shen Qianqian solemnly and said, “I’m going to work.”

Lin Duozhi was shocked: “Are you going to sneak away to the garbage dump again? You’ve just been punished.”

“But what I was punished just now was not for sneaking, it was for running out, and now I am sneaking.”

“If you sneak around now and get caught, you will also be punished.”

“Just be able to have dinner.” Shen Qianqian said and didn’t care.

 

Although his nosebleed stopped for a long time, he still had his nostrils plugged. When the other children looked at him curiously, he took out the paper ball and stuffed it back in.

 

The other children asked, “Shen Qianqian, why are you doing blocking your nostrils?”

“Nosebleeds, nosebleeds, just like that.” Shen Qianqian replied with great pride.

“The time I saw the senior students also plugging their nostrils, it turned out to be a nosebleed.”

 

This different nostril immediately won the envy of other children for unknown reasons, and it also made Shen Qianqian very satisfied.

 

Shen Qianqian and Lin Duozhi pointed to them to say goodbye, walked to the back of the pump room, and saw several senior students standing sneakily next to the fence.

These senior students obviously recognized this junior class repeat offender, so they only relaxed for a moment, ignoring Shen Qianqian’s existence, moving a loose iron rod on the fence to the left, and then drilling out in turn.

 

The last senior student told Shen Qianqian before drilling the hole: “Remember to put the iron rod right later, if it is discovered by the management, we will not be able to get out in the future, and you will wait for our revenge.”

 

“I’ll put it on.” Shen Qianqian hurriedly promised.

 

He stood at a distance, waiting for all the seniors to get into the hole, and only after another half a minute did he follow, drill out of the hole, and straighten the crooked iron.

 

Ten minutes later, Shen Qianqian walked on the road in a good mood, holding a small half of a sweet potato in his hand, and kicking the stones on the road from time to time. He walked for about twenty minutes when a building appeared in front of him.

 

It’s a lifeless town and it’s not half lifeless. All the buildings were in a state of long-abandonment with the wind pouring in through the windows of the black holes and whistling through the broken walls.

 

There is a tall and long metal mesh erected outside the town, but because of its age, no one has managed and maintained it, and there are many broken gaps in the rusty net. Shen Qianqian walked along the metal mesh until he walked out of the building complex and picked a gap to get into.

 

Inside the net is a large open space with collapsed cement bricks stacked on the edge of the clearing, and the remnants of a few steps indicate that it was once a lively football field.

 

On the left side of the pitch are cubes of the same size, mottled in different colors, like blocks of metal that have been forcefully compressed. On the right, it’s full of garbage, and a driverless forklift is loading it into a concrete house built next to the stadium.

 

There are also a few large letters printed on the cement room: Molna No. 3 Garbage Treatment Plant.

 

The first few senior students were rummaging through the garbage in the garbage-forming hills, laughing loudly. Shen Qianqian didn’t dare to go over. He only ran to the right.

 

He traveled across the field, and after making sure he couldn’t hear the seniors, he began shouting, “Puppy, puppy.” Then he raised the small half of the sweet potato in his hand: “Puppy, I’ve brought you food, puppy.”

 

He ran out of breath, his nose was so blocked that he couldn’t breathe, and finally took out the two paper balls and threw them away.

 

“Puppy, I’m here, you haven’t eaten today, I’ll bring you food.” Shen Qianqian walked through the cracks in the hill made of stacked metal blocks, and kept saying loudly: “I left you a lot of the sweet potatoes we ate today, you can taste them, they are delicious.”

 

After passing through this mountain of metal, a row of tin houses appeared in front of them. There are four rooms in total, one of which is stacked with empty cardboard boxes like a hill on the wall next to the door, and a line of large characters can be faintly identified on the rusty wall: shorten the construction period and pay attention to safety.

 

“Puppy, do you miss me? Are you waiting for me?

 

Shen Qianqian made his way infront of the room where the cardboard boxes were stacked and pushed the door open. The rusty iron door slammed against the wall, and the iron sheet of the wall was buzzing and trembling.

 

Gasping for air, he glanced around the empty room and opened the other three doors.

Then he turned to the metal pieces and shouted, “Puppy, where have you been? Are you hiding?”

 

“Puppy, come out, I’ll bring you something to eat.” Shen Qianqian waved the small half of the sweet potato in his hand, smiled with crooked eyebrows, and his voice was soft: “The best and most delicious sweet potato, half for you and the other for me. You’ll know when you taste it, come on……”

 

He rolled his eyes and looked around. He then changed his face in an instant and shouted fiercely: “I picked you up yesterday, and you are mine! If you don’t come out again, as long as I catch you, I’m going to beat you and smash your nose to pieces! You’ll die! You can’t stuff paper balls on your nose!”

 

The puppy still didn’t show up.

The ferocity on Shen Qianqian’s face was replaced by panic, and his tone was also pleading: “I won’t beat you, I’m scaring you and trying to scare you out.” 

 

The whole dump was silent, except for the shouting and laughter of the students on the other side. Shen Qianqian stood for a moment before slowly walking back to the first room with his head down.

 

Although the room is not large, it is supposed to be a single dormitory where the foreman lived, and it is also furnished with simple furniture found in a certain residential building.

On the left against the wall is an iron-framed bed, the bedside table is carved wood, and a couch rests opposite. The sofa was a little damaged, revealing the yellowed inner cushion, but there were also a few scratches that looked very fresh, and the inner cushion had been torn out in a few lumps.

 

Shen Qianqian leaned to listen to the small talk of the management, and heard the word work more than once.

 

“…… No more talking, I’m going to work…… The dean …… in his office, so it became his job to pick up the garbage. And this row of tin rooms was his office.”

 

The tin walls of the office are covered with colorful papers, not only torn book page illustrations, printed packaging bags, but also small colored paper advertisements for men’s inadequacy.

 

In the center of the wall is an advertising drawing with missing corners, and there are several cute anthropomorphic critters inside. The advertisement was placed in the most striking position, and the creases were carefully smoothed, making it an obvious favorite of the stickers.

 

The single bed has no futon but acts as a locker, with a stack of empty cardboard boxes of different colors, a yellow plastic stool with a missing leg, a pink mouthwash cup without a handle, and so on.

 

A mess of things and a splash of colors fill this small space.

 

Shen Qianqian inspected the room again, squatted down to look at the bottom of the bed, and saw a wide crack in the wall under the bed.

 

He stared at the crack for a long time, and suddenly said, “Oh, you can drill holes too, yes, you can drill holes here too.”

 

After making sure that the puppy had left on its own, Shen Qianqian no longer looked around, but sat down on the sofa with a calm expression. He bowed his head and nibbled on the remaining half of the yam.

 

He took a big bite and put it in his mouth, shook his head, and said with joy in his voice: “Let’s go, I’ll eat it alone when I leave, this yam is all mine, it’s all mine.” 

 

He made an exaggerated chewing sound and shook his two little feet hanging from the couch from side to side, but a layer of tears slowly formed in his eyes.

 

Shen Qianqian finally couldn’t hold on any longer and cried sadly: “Yesterday I asked you if you wanted to be my puppy, and if you didn’t want to, you should just shake your head. You didn’t shake your head, how can you not tell me no?”