Atlas Studios

  Atlas Studios

  That man put down the things that he had been holding as he straightened up. She finally saw what he looked like as the man widened his eyes. “Lina! Why are you…… aren’t you dead?”


  Xia Qingyi did not have an impression of him as she merely stared at him in suspicion.

  That man immediately touched his arms as he circled around her to check her out. He finally laughed when he saw that she was in perfect shape, “You’re still alive…… that’s incredible……”


  He asked, “What are you doing here?”


  Xia Qingyi did not know how to reply to him. She had originally walked over here using her instincts, and did not know what she wanted to do after coming over. She thought for awhile, before she asked him, uncertainly, “Can I go in…… and take a look?

  “Of course you can. You’re one of our regular customers after all…… no-one would be able to go in and take a look if you can’t.” He pulled her into the shop. The lights in the shop were a little dim, while there were a stack of cardboard boxes messily placed in front of the entrance. The boxes were obstructing the entrance a little, and he pushed them to the side. “This shop…… can’t be sustained anymore…… we’ve already found a buyer. We’ve been packing these few days, which is why it’s a little messy.”


  The basic interior of the bar was still in place, though the small intricate things on a few of the tables had been kept. There were still musical instruments placed nicely on the singing platform at the front of the bar.

  There was a drumkit, an electric guitar, an electric piano and a standing microphone. Together with the lights on the floor, everything was in perfect shape.

  He noticed that Xia Qingyi’s eyes kept returning to the front, around the place where people sang. He walked over and patted the instruments on the platform and said, “There was a niche singer that came a while ago and sang rather well. I had thought back then that if Xiao Ye and you were still here, the both of you would definitely have liked that singer.

  “However, it’s a pity……” he was talking to himself again.

  “Do you have a picture from last time? I want to take a look.”


  He jumped down. “I do. It’s just that you don’t have a lot of photos taken here. You know…… it’s not too convenient…… we didn’t really dare to keep them.”


  He walked into a small cubicle in the bar as Xia Qingyi continued to look around outside. He had another small box in his hands when he came out. He walked towards Xia Qingyi as he opened it.

  “I don’t have a lot…… you can take all of them if you want……”


  Xia Qingyi took the photos from his hand and she looked through them one by one. She could tell from the photos that there used to be quite a crowd here. It looked really lively at night, at least.

  As she flipped through the photos, she reached a group photo and her gaze stopped on it.

  She was in that photo. It was her side view as she smiled with a hand resting on the shoulder of the man next to him, though it was not really accurate to call him a man. He looked rather young and inexperienced, eighteen at most. Judging from their poses, she was definitely still talking with that boy in the photo, and she was still not ready after the photographer had called them. That was how this photo had been taken, Xia Qingyi thought.

  They were smiling. She was smiling very happily together with that boy.

  The shop owner noticed that her gaze had stopped on this photo for a long time. He glanced at the photo as well and he sighed, “Xiao Ye and you were so good…… back then…… it’s such a pity……”


  He said again, “You came here wanting to go to the cemetery in front, didn’t you? Your boss buried Xiao Ye in the cemetery near here, probably because Xiao Ye had said that he didn’t want to leave this city. I visited Xiao Ye’s grave and paid my respects to him a while ago. Don’t worry, he’s in a good place now.”


  Xia Qingyi did not know how to describe how she currently felt. It was as if she was in a rapidly spinning typhoon, that she was standing in the middle of the typhoon with this photo in her hand as she felt the wind that came from every direction.

  She breathed heavily as she stared at this photo. She breathed in and out with her mouth open, as if she was a fish that had been washed ashore by the waves and was desperately trying to breathe. However, she was unable to remove the fear from her heart as she felt herself shivering all over. She was almost losing grip on this photo.

  Everything spun even more intensely around her.

  Xia Qingyi gripped anything that could support her as she started to stumble out of the shop. The shop owner was worried about her as he kept following behind her, wanting to go and support her.

  “Lina! What’s wrong with you? Where are you going?” he asked.

  She merely walked out as she bumped into things here and there. She was trying hard to breathe.

  “Lina! Are you not feeling well?” he grabbed her arm, afraid that she would collapse on the floor.

  She looked up at the light after she had walked out. She had never seen such a bright sun.

  She kept staring at it, as she breathed slowly. Sweat trailed down her face. She could taste the sweat faintly, and then she suddenly dropped down on the floor.

  She could not feel that pain in her body. All she could hear was her heavy breathing and the faint sounds around her. There was someone shouting, “Are you okay? Ambulance! Ambulance!”


  She could hear that person’s panicking footsteps right before she had lost consciousness.

  After the faint and weak sound of breathing, she could not hear anything else and her world finally ended in silence and darkness.

  It was as if she had a very long dream.

  There was not anything in her dream as she was merely walking on a road. There was white snow all around her and as far as she could see, there was only white. There were no houses here and she could not see anything else apart from snow.

  She did not know how she knew that the white thing around her was snow. She had a feeling that this was snow from the moment her dream had started. She stepped on the snow-covered ground, hearing the small cracks of the snow. She kept walking forward, even though there was nothing in front of her. She merely continued to walk forward.

  And then, she saw that man. It was the man that wore a baseball cap who had told her stuff in the dark. He seemed to be waving for her to go over.

  She was very happy as she ran over. There was the sound of the wind in her ears and slowly, she saw the snow under her feet melt away. It quickly turned into water around her feet. She saw the water flooding towards her and she started to run, wanting to get away from here and to where that man was.

  When she ran, she started to see her memories from the past. Those scattered bits of memories sparkled and circled around her like stars, as they slowly surrounded her.

  She stopped running, and she slowly started to regain those memories. It seemed as if she would remember what happened in the past once they touched her. She stared at the fragments of memories as her body sank deeper while the water drowned her.

  Her body started to sink slowly into the water. She was suspended in the water, spreading her limbs apart so that she would not sink unendingly. It felt like that dream that she had in the hospital a very long time ago.

  Xia Qingyi could understood faintly why she had that dream initially, Xia Qingyi thought.

  She was in the water, in the deep ocean as time returned to the time when she had just left her house.

  When an 11-year-old Song Nianmu followed those men who were loan sharks out of her house, she knew then that her world would be different from that of a normal person from then on.

  Her thoughts back then were really naive, thinking at the most those men could do was to kill her. She did not have any losses if nothing had happened to her family and that there was nothing bigger than death.

  However, the 11-year-old her did not understand that there were things that were scarier than death in this world. This was also the reason why some people had thought of using death to end everything after they had grown up.

  It seemed like death was always the fastest and most effortless solution to a problem.

  Song Nianmu did not know then that the hardest thing in the world was not death, but to persist in living.

  Those men did not kill her, nor did they touch her. They had merely brought her in front of a man. They kicked Song Nianmu once to make her kneel in front of his legs.

  That man was Third Young Master. A large part of her next eight years of life was spent standing on his right with her head bowed.

  Third Young Master was known in the mafia triad as ‘Poison Three’, because he was the third amongst the brothers in his gang and was also the youngest one. As a result, everyone in the mafia triad, regardless if they were close to him, would all respectfully call him, “Third Young Master.”


  Third Young Master was the most handsome amongst the three brothers, which was why there was never a lack of women next to him. He would always bring different women to different occasions, embracing the waist of different women as he spoke and laughed in front of different people and when it was needed, he would go to bed with them. To Third Young Master, they were merely an accessory that could be discarded anytime regardless how infatuated those women were for him.

  If they were not sensible enough, Third Young Master would immediately change his expressions and show his ability as ‘Poison Three’. He would use small tricks to make those women suffer for the rest of their lives.

  “Third Young Master, do you think she is the person you’ve been looking for?” The man that had kicked Song Nianmu from behind spoke.

  Third Young Master used his leg to lift up her face. He looked left and right, as if he was checking out a good. His voice was sombre yet hoarse, “How old is she?”


  “Eleven.”


  “She’s too young. I don’t have that much time and energy to discipline her.”


  “Don’t you want to hear about where she came from?”


  Third Young Master glanced at him. “Say it.”


  “Her father owed us money. Her entire family had been begging while she was the only one who did not shed a single tear. She asked us very calmly about what she can do in order to spare her family.”


  Third Young Master was a little interested now. He perked up from his seat on the sofa as he listened to that man speak.

  “I said to pleasure us and she asked us what she could do to pleasure us.”


  Song Nianmu was rather worried as she knelt on the floor. With her head bowed, she heard them start talking about what had happened to her earlier so easily. She did not dare to look up, until that man next to her used his fingers to grab her chin and made her look up forcedly. He looked at her closely again and Song Nianmu gazed straight at him, trying to use her straight gaze to make herself more bold.

  “Her appearance is not bad.” He started to judge and asked her, “Little kid, do you know the meaning of pleasure that we mentioned earlier?”


  “Are you going to sell me or kill me?” She asked without fear.

  He smiled. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to sell you to old men to make them torture you. We want to buy you, using the amount that your father owed. Don’t you think this is a losing transaction for us since you alone are exchanged for such a large sum of money?