The Creatures That We Are-Chapter 1210: Little Fox

“Wah...I hate Brother! I don’t want Brother anymore!” The girl with twin tails knocked over the castle of blocks and ran out of the living room while wailing.

The lightbulb above swayed, providing only a dim yellow light. An old calendar and a few certificates covered the walls. The interiors were weathered, but warm. The black and white television was playing a cartoon.

A seven-year-old Gao Yang stood frozen in the living room, a little dazed.

The brother and sister had fought over something trivial again. Gao Yang had had enough of being the bigger person and didn’t want to yield to his sister this time, and as expected, she got angry.

His sister cried just like he had expected, but he didn’t feel happy at all. He regretted it a little, actually. And his mother was going to scold him once she knew what happened. It gave him a headache.

It was dark outside. He couldn’t just let his sister run around on her own. He had to find her.

“Gao Xinxin, so annoying!” he grumbled as he rushed out of the house.

Fortunately, the moon was there to light his way. He searched through the front yard, backyard, alleyways along the town’s streets, the stacks of hay in the field in the back, below the stone bridge over a small creek...his sister was nowhere to be seen.

“Gao Xinxin!” Gao Yang was getting anxious. He called out, “Where are you, Gao Xinxin?”

“Stop hiding! Come on out!”

“Come home with me, or Mom’s gonna be angry!”

He yelled in no direction in particular. Then he remembered the secret base his sister had found a few days ago. He ran, quickly arriving at a small solutional cave at the foot of the mountain.

The cave was pitch black inside, as if terrifying monsters would rush out at any time. Gao Yang couldn’t help but shudder when he faced the black mouth of the cave.

Still, he mustered the courage to approach it and shouted inside, “Gao Xinxin, are you there?!”

“Go away!” Indeed, his sister’s voice came from inside.

“Gao Xinxin, come on out and return home with me!” Gao Yang hardened his voice. “If you don’t listen, I’ll never play with you in the future.”

“So? I hate you! Go to hell!” Gao Xinxin got mad as well.

A stone flew out and hit Gao Yang in the forehead.

“Ow!”

Gao Yang gasped in pain. When he touched his forehead, he felt blood.

“You...you hit me?!”

Enraged, Gao Yang grabbed a small stone and hurled it inside. He didn’t hear the sound of the stone hitting a wall or Gao Xinxin’s voice. It was as if the stone had fallen into a deep abyss.

Gao Yang immediately regretted it. He shouted again, “Gao Xinxin!”

No one responded.

Gao Yang panicked. Had his sister been eaten by the fish inhabiting the darkness?

Their granny always told them that they must not run around outside at night; there were fish in the dark that would eat unruly children.

“Gao Xinxin!”

Gao Yang rushed in, his anger forgotten.

Once inside, his eyes adjusted enough that he could see. He sighed in relief. His sister was still there, pressing herself into a corner, back against the damp rocky wall. She sobbed, “Brother hit me...you hit me... I’m telling Mom...”

“Sorry, sorry...” Gao Yang rushed up to hold her. “I didn’t mean it. I wasn’t trying to hit you. I was trying to hit the fish in the dark. Let’s go, or the fish is coming to eat us...”

“Go away! I don’t need you!”

She shoved him away. He fell to the ground and scraped his palm against the rough surface. It stung.

Gao Yang lifted his hand to find his palm bleeding, too.

He got angry again. Why wouldn’t she listen? Why wouldn’t she just return home with him?

Gao Yang was about to lose it when he saw the sunflower doll in Gao Xinxin’s arms. It was his birthday gift to her—actually, his mother had bought it secretly and told him to give it to Gao Xinxin on her birthday.

Gao Xinxin was beside herself with joy when she got it. She always carried it around, holding it in her sleep, too. When it got dirty, she would ask her mother to give it a bath. When it tore, she would ask her granny to sew it up. When it got thin, she would ask her father to feed it cotton.

The doll bought with only a few yuan was a patchwork of new cloth and cotton, no longer the doll it had been. Yet it was still Gao Xinxin’s greatest treasure.

Gao Yang softened. He wiped his bloodied hand on his shirt and put his arms around his sister again, speaking in a gentle, earnest voice, “Brother’s wrong, Sister. Come on. Let’s go home. I’m not building a vampire castle again. I’ll make you a princess castle, alright?”

Gao Xinxin didn’t push him away this time. She sniffed for a while before looking up at him petulantly, her big bright eyes glinting slightly in the dark. “You-you promised...”

“I did!” Gao Yang extended his hand. “Pinky promise.”

“Yeah...pinky promise...”

Gao Xinxin hooked her pinky with his.

“Come on! Let’s go home!”

Gao Yang took her hand and led her out of the dark cave. They walked across the field with stars sparkling in the sky and night wind kissing their faces. The cicada and frogs provided the background ambiance. The world wasn’t scary after the night descended. However, the moon had taken a hiding somewhere.

The siblings returned home in a cheerful mood. The stacking blocks were no longer on the living room floor.

“Mom must have put them back in the box.” Gao Yang let go of Gao Xinxin’s hand. “Wait here. I’ll find it.”

“Brother,” Gao Xinxin stopped him. “Let’s play tomorrow. I’m sleepy.”

Gao Yang thought for a moment. “Okay.”

He was getting tired after the ordeal. He took her to their granny’s room. Gao Xinxin had always shared a bedroom with their granny, but she wasn’t here tonight.

Gao Xinxin climbed onto the bed meekly, holding the patchwork sunflower.

She stopped Gao Yang before he could leave, “Brother, I’m a little scared. Would you wait until I fall asleep?”

“Alright,” Gao Yang said. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

Only then did she close her eyes.

Then she said, “I’m a little cold, Brother.”

Gao Yang looked around and realized that there wasn’t a blanket on the bed. Nights could get chilly in the rural area even in summer. A thin blanket was necessary. He looked around but didn’t see the blanket. He took off his shirt and placed it on his sister.

“Is this warm enough?”

“Yeah.” Gao Xinxin gave him a meek smile.

After a while, she asked sheepishly, “Brother, wouldn’t you read me a story? Granny read stories to me every night.”

“Alright, I’ll read you one.”

Gao Yang opened his mouth and realized that he couldn’t think of any story. He frowned and racked his brain for something, finally remembering a disjointed piece he had read. He told it:

“The fox said, ‘You were just a little boy, no different from the other tens of thousands of boys.’”

“I don’t need you, and you don’t need me. To you, I’m only a fox, too, no different from the other tens of thousands of foxes.”

“But if you tame me, we’ll need each other. To me, you’ll be the one and only boy in my world, and to you, I’ll be the one and only fox in your world...”

“Brother,” Gao Xinxin quietly stopped Gao Yang, sounding sad. “Is that a fairytale?”

Gao Yang paused. “Yeah, it is.”

“But...I don’t like fairytales,” Gao Xinxin said sadly.

“Why?”

“Because...I’ve grown up.”