The Hand of Confession – Chapter 428
by Little PandaExtra
Shen Xuecheng
Surviving a great disaster means future blessings are in store.
Once a person gets on in years, their memory doesn’t seem to be what it used to be.
Shen Xuecheng felt this quite deeply.
Ever since crossing the sixty-year-old threshold, his memory had been getting progressively worse. His wife often scolded him for messing things up. Today, for instance, he had forgotten the groceries he’d just bought at the market.
“Tell me, what are you even good for anymore?” his wife chided angrily. “You can leave the groceries at the market, so why don’t you just leave yourself at the market?!”
Shen Xuecheng adjusted his reading glasses and retorted, displeased, “So I forgot to bring them back. What’s the big deal? Stop nagging.”
His wife wiped her hands on her apron. “Forget it, I can’t count on you. Go rest. I’ll go buy some more.”
With a stern face, Shen Xuecheng sat on the sofa and looked at his phone, muttering under his breath, “If you look down on me so much, then have the guts to never ask me to do anything again!”
But his wife had already walked off and couldn’t hear his feeble protest.
Less than two minutes later, however, his wife returned from her grocery run, carrying two large bags of vegetables. She threw them down by the entrance as she came in, asking while changing her shoes, “Did you buy winter melon and pork ribs?”
Shen Xuecheng thought back for two seconds before answering uncertainly, “I think so…?”
“Look at that memory of yours,” his wife said. “You left the groceries right by the door and still forgot?”
He put down his phone, scratching his graying hair. “Huh? I left them by the door?”
His wife sighed. “Forget it. Go watch your TV shows. I’m going to cook.”
Shen Xuecheng pressed, “Where by the door? I’ll go take a stroll and have a look.”
His wife was washing vegetables in the kitchen. Without looking up, she said, “By the metal gate. Go see for yourself. And feed the rabbit while you’re at it.” Then she started nagging again. “It’s a waste for you to be raising that rabbit. You feed it once every three days. If I didn’t feed it occasionally, it would’ve starved to death long ago. Are you raising the rabbit, or am I?”
“Alright, alright, I’m going right now.” With his hands behind his back, Shen Xuecheng quickened his pace toward the door, escaping his wife’s muttering without a backward glance.
In the small vegetable garden in the yard, lush green bok choy grew, their leaves dotted with crystal-clear water droplets. He couldn’t remember the last time he had watered them; it must have been his wife, he thought. He bent down, plucked one, shook off the dirt, and ambled over to the rabbit hutch nearby.
A small, long-eared white rabbit was napping in its hutch. Hearing his approach, it twitched its ears, revealing a pair of ruby-like eyes.
Shen Xuecheng squatted down and noticed two half-eaten bok choy leaves in the food bowl.
He picked them up, puzzled. They were definitely from their garden—but when had he fed the rabbit?
He placed the vegetable in his hand into the food bowl alongside the other two leaves.
The rabbit twitched its three-petaled mouth, turned away disinterestedly, and presented its owner with its backside.
It had indeed already eaten.
Shen Xuecheng stood up, hands behind his back, and thumped his old waist. He looked at the rabbit and murmured to himself, “When did I feed it? Aigh, look at this memory of mine.”
He shook his head and walked away, hands still clasped behind him. He took a turn around the gate but found nothing, so he could only trudge back inside to wait for dinner.
His terrible memory affected him in other ways, too, particularly in how he managed small, miscellaneous items.
His drinking had led to high blood pressure in his old age, so he had to go to the nearby pharmacy every other week to pick up Chinese medicine.1
The next day was his appointment to pick up the medicine, but he had once again forgotten where he’d put the prescription slip.
The old couple searched frantically all evening but couldn’t find it.
Shen Xuecheng was a stubborn man. After being nagged by his wife again, he was so angry he couldn’t sleep for half the night.
The next morning, he woke up according to his biological clock. He figured he would first go to the pharmacy to see if they had a record, and if not, he’d contact the doctor. But as soon as he got out of bed, he spotted the missing slip on the cabinet.
What was going on??
Shen Xuecheng was momentarily stunned.
Had he actually found the slip yesterday and just forgotten about it?
He took the slip to his wife in the kitchen and asked, “Did you find this?”
His wife replied, “I found it by the bed when I woke up this morning. You didn’t look by the bed yesterday?”
“I did look… I think?” Shen Xuecheng said.
He couldn’t be sure, so he just had to assume he’d been bleary-eyed and missed it. He took the slip and shuffled out.
On the way, his mind was elsewhere, constantly thinking about the prescription slip.
This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. From missing keys to misplaced reading glasses, was it true that lost things would only turn up on their own when you stopped looking for them?
Or did a Snail Girl move into his house?2
At this thought, he couldn’t help but chuckle and shake his head, thinking he might be getting a bit obsessed.
After buying the medicine at the pharmacy, he strolled back, plastic bag in hand, and waited for the light at a crossroads.
It seemed someone had once told him to always wait for the traffic light when crossing the road and not to rush those few seconds.
But he had forgotten who told him that.
There weren’t many cars on the road. A few people next to him glanced left and right, then ignored the signal and stepped onto the crosswalk.
With someone taking the lead, those who were still hesitating decided not to wait any longer. They followed the main group, swarming into the middle of the road.
In the end, Shen Xuecheng was the only one left standing under the traffic light.
The old man shook his head and sighed.
This was the so-called Chinese-style road crossing.3 He had no idea what today’s young people were in such a hurry for.
The road was wide, and the group had just made it halfway across when a car suddenly came speeding around the corner.
The driver seemed distracted and only noticed the crowd in the middle of the road after making the turn. His pupils contracted as he slammed on the brakes. But because the light was green and there were no cars waiting ahead, he hadn’t slowed down. Even with the brakes engaged, the vehicle continued to surge forward uncontrollably, about to plow into the group of jaywalkers.
In this critical moment, the driver’s brain made a subconscious calculation—there were seven or eight people in the middle, other vehicles to the left, and only one old man on the right. Swerving right would minimize the damage.
So he wrenched the steering wheel. With a piercing screech of tires, the car, like a roaring beast, charged toward the elderly man who had trouble moving quickly.
Shen Xuecheng never expected something like this to happen. As the car rushed toward him, he was scared stiff, his legs too weak to move an inch.
In that hair’s-breadth moment, he suddenly felt a hand push his back, shoving him forward a couple of staggering steps and out of his original spot.
The car roared past, practically grazing his back, and then, with a THUD, crashed into the flowerbed on the roadside.
Shen Xuecheng sat down hard on the ground, his heart nearly stopping.
He thought to himself that it was a good thing he didn’t have a heart condition, or he might have been frightened to death on the spot.
Even so, his blood pressure was now skyrocketing. He probably needed to go to the hospital.
The few pedestrians who had caused the accident quickly fled the scene, afraid they would be held responsible if they lingered.
Shen Xuecheng scrambled to his feet and only then felt a chill on his back. He reached back to touch it and found that his shirt seemed to have been torn open by the car, but his back was completely unharmed.
A wave of lingering fear washed over him. If a kind soul hadn’t pushed him just now, he would probably be dead under those wheels.
But from that angle, could his savior have escaped?
Someone on the roadside had already called the police. He turned his head and scanned the area, but within a five-meter radius, he couldn’t find a single other person.
Where was his savior??
He spun around again, even starting to think he’d lost his memory again or was hallucinating.
Later, he went to the traffic police station to look at the surveillance footage. He saw that in the video, he had suddenly stumbled forward two steps on his own—from beginning to end, there was no one behind him.
Cold sweat broke out on Shen Xuecheng’s brow with a shua.
He was forgetful, but he definitely didn’t have senile dementia. The current situation meant either he had a mental problem, or he had seen a ghost.
As a materialist, Shen Xuecheng felt it had to be the latter. Otherwise, he couldn’t explain the sensation he’d felt.
His wife had called him several times. At first, he was afraid of worrying her, so he lied and said he was outside watching some old men play chess. But his wife knew him too well and immediately sensed something was wrong from his hemming and hawing. She soon learned everything that had happened and rushed over from home.
The two of them were busy for a while, running up and down. The traffic police suggested they contact their children to handle the matter. Shen Xuecheng just smiled and said, “They’re too busy. They don’t have time.”
For elderly people of their age, not having children or younger relatives seemed to be a very strange thing. So whenever someone asked about it, Shen Xuecheng would say they were too busy or not living nearby. That way, the other person would show an expression of “unfilial descendants” rather than uncomfortable pity, as if not having children was some great tragedy.
Hearing this, the traffic police indeed stopped asking.
Since he was just an innocent bystander who was nearly harmed, the police let him go after confirming he was okay. They asked for his contact information, saying they would get in touch later regarding compensation.
Shen Xuecheng refused. The number in his bank account was very large, so large he couldn’t count it, even if he had forgotten where all that money came from.
He didn’t need money. He only hoped the jaywalkers would receive the punishment they deserved.
Although they would probably just be fined fifty yuan.
The better part of the day passed just like that. By the time the couple emerged from the traffic police station, supporting each other, it was already afternoon.
He recounted what had happened, and his wife’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You’ve met a noble ghost!4 If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be seeing you right now.”
Shen Xuecheng spat “Pah” three times. “What unlucky things are you saying!”
His wife pressed her palms together and bowed. “Surviving a great disaster means we’re bound for future blessings. No, this won’t do. When we get back, you have to take a bath to wash away the bad luck. Then I’ll go buy some joss paper, and we’ll come back to this intersection to burn it for them! We have to thank them properly.”5
Shen Xuecheng said, “Fine, we’ll do as you say.”
Shen Maomao: “…” Perhaps social death and actual death were only a step apart.6
Footnotes
- Traditional Chinese medicine often involves complex prescriptions of herbs, roots, and other natural ingredients that are boiled to make a decoction.
- The Snail Girl (田螺姑娘) is a character from a Chinese folktale. She is a magical being who secretly emerges from her shell to cook and clean for a poor farmer, helping him without his knowledge.
- ‘Chinese-style road crossing’ (中国式过马路) is a popular term describing the common phenomenon in China where pedestrians cross the street in large groups, often ignoring traffic signals.
- A pun on the term ‘贵人’ (guìrén), which means a benefactor. The character for ‘person’ (人) has been replaced with the character for ‘ghost’ (鬼).
- Joss paper, also known as spirit money, is papercraft burned as an offering to deities or ancestors in many East Asian cultures.
- ‘Social death’ (社会性死亡) is a popular internet slang term for a situation of extreme public embarrassment.
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