Silent Crown

Half an hour later in a downtown alley, a child covered in dirt was hiding behind the trash can, panting. The sound of shouting with the threat to kill was farther and farther away.

“Whew! Scared me!” He wiped cold sweat off his forehead. “How did these fools get so smart? They even caught me switching the cards…Good thing I ran fast and got out early, otherwise I’d have died in that awful place. For only a few hundred bucks, was it really worth it?”

Muttering to himself, he took out a bunch of silver coins from his pocket. He counted them one by one, wiped the sweat off with his sleeves, and grinned. “More than three hundred pounds, ha ha ha! Made it! My first pot of money, how should I spend it?”

“How about you pay your medical bills with it?” someone next to him said with a low voice, whispering in his ear. “Or exchange them for your life?”

“AHHHH!!!”

The child was so scared he fell on the ground. He rolled over and saw a young man sitting on top of the trash can. In the dim light, he recognized him as the fool he ripped off earlier. Right away he managed a smile.

“Oh, you’re my older cousin?”

“Yes, little cousin.” Ye Qingxuan sneered at him, throwing the bag of waste the kid gave him earlier on the ground. “Little cousin, you ran pretty fast, I almost couldn’t catch you. Here’s your stuff.”

“Sure, sure.”

The kid smiled and walked backwards, then suddenly turned and ran.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

Ye Qingxuan watched while he whispered the countdown, motionless, as the kid ran towards the end of the alley. When he got to three, the trembling kid walked backwards from the alley, his face terrified.

At the end of the alley, a mud stained dog grinned, two rows of bad teeth exposed, a dead rat tail still left on one of its teeth. Old Phil was blocking the exit. No one could leave!

“Little cousin, what’s the rush?”

Ye Qingxuan pulled out a rope from his suitcase and pushed down on the kid’s shoulder, “Let’s talk.”

“I was wrong, big brother. Please, let me go…”

Five minutes later, the kid was tied up. He curled up in the corner of the alley and blinked his big watery eyes, as if he was going to cry. He seemed so pitiful.

Ye Qingxuan just quietly watched him cry until he stopped.

“Done crying?” Ye Qingxuan smiled and asked. “Are you hungry? I can make you a bowl of noodles.”

The kid looked like he ate a fly. “Hey! Don’t you have any compassion?”

“No cousin, I do not have compassion. What you did today just wasn’t right.” He reached out and pinched the kid’s face, “Since you call me cousin, let this cousin teach you how to do the right things.”

He started cracking his knuckles and sneered.

“Hey, what are you doing?” The kid was scared. Curled up, he raised his voice and shouted, “I’m warning you! I’m really powerful. Watch, I’ll get someone to teach you a lesson!”

“Ha ha,” Ye Qingxuan laughed. “Old Phil.”

Old Phil came over, grinning as well.

There was no telling what the big dog had eaten earlier, its mouth was so stinky. Its tongue was still licking the blood on its teeth, chewing half of rat tail.

“Well, okay, you got me! You got me!” The kid’s face turned pale. He pointed to the silver coins with his chin. “Here! Rules of the brotherhood, you see it, you get half.”

Ye Qingxuan did not take it, and just looked at him.

The kid’s face turned sour. “Hey, we are all from the streets, be appreciative. Fifty-fifty is a good offer! Never mind, forty-sixty!…Still no? Do you want thirty-seventy?”

“Sorry, I don’t want things that were stolen or cheated.”

“What do you want?” The expression of the kid suddenly became angry. “I can’t give you all of it!”

Ye Qingxuan sighed. “Apologize to me.”

“What?”

Ye Qingxuan looked at him with no expression and repeated himself. “Apologize to me.”

“I will not!” The kid turned his head to the side.

“Apologize,” Ye Qingxuan repeated it again.

“Do not even think that I’d ever say-” The kid stopped halfway, unable to go on with Ye Qingxuan glaring at him.

Ye Qingxuan did not say anything. He silently watched him, without a word. For some reason, the kid felt guilty under that gaze. After a long time, his head turned a little bit, and he bowed his head.

“…S-sorry,” he mumbled.

Ye Qingxuan sighed and reached out to loosen his rope. Watching him curled up in the corner he suddenly felt sorry for him. “Well, I was going to give you a beating, but never mind now since you apologized.”

“What else do you want?” The kid stared at him. “Pervert.”

“I know it’s very tough to be hungry. Stealing and cheating aren’t that big of a deal.” Ye Qingxuan reached out and patted on the kid’s hat. “But once you’re used to stealing, one day you’ll realize that some things cannot be stolen or cheated. Don’t do it again,” he murmured.

The kid looked at him, his eyes complicated, and whispered something softly. Ye Qingxuan tilted over to hear what he had to say. The kid took a deep breath, grabbed his ears, and screamed, “Not your business!”

Like lightning striking the ground, Ye Qingxuan’s mind was blank for a moment. The kid suddenly jumped up from the ground, bitterly stepping on the back of Ye Qingxuan foot. He fled as fast as he could.

Ye Qingxuan subconsciously reached out, but only caught a knitted hat in his hands. The kid was gone. Old Phil was gloating on the side, panting with its tongue sticking out, showing no signs that it was going to chase the kid.

Ye Qingxuan was also stunned. He stared at the empty alley, remembering the kid’s reflection while she ran away. He grabbed her hat, her long silver-white hair falling off of it like silver stars.

“That was a girl?”

Ye Qingxuan looked down at the hat. After a while, he sighed softly and stuffed it into his pocket. “That’s really bad luck. I finally found someone from my hometown but it had to be here.”

–

Half an hour later, the original pub was in a mess.

Two bulky men stood guarding the front and back of the pub, arms crossed, coolly staring at anyone who dared to get close. Each man had a dagger branded with a silver emblem peeking out of their belt. The passersby sped up their pace, trying to avoid them.

In the pub, everyone was lying on the ground, or more specifically…was beaten down to the ground.

Only an old man was sitting in a chair, silently smoking a pipe.

The bartender, who had hidden behind the bar, was now tied to a pole, his face bloody. He was moaning in pain. In front of him, a half-naked man still kept going, punching his face like a hammer.

The fists were already covered in blood.

“Okay, Marvin, stop.”

The old man with a pipe waved his hands. He looked at the bartender who was barely breathing. “Jason, I know you are a tough guy, a good guy… Every month, you always pay the Shaman well, so I did not break your neck like I did everyone else. But you have to tell me the truth. Where is the kid that gambled here?”

“He, he escaped, and I swear, I do not know him.” The bartender could barely open his mouth; his teeth about to fall from his mouth.

“I know you do not know him.” The smoking old man sighed. “Tell me something I haven’t heard, otherwise I cannot make a report.”

“I really do not know. Someone saw him run away with another kid. No one has seen them since.”

“A kid? Avalon is full of damn kids!” The smoking man frowned. “Do you want me to dig each one of them out to question them?”

“Someone saw him. He was an Easterner with a dog!”

The bastard begged, “Mr. Ghosthand, this is all I know. In Mr. Shaman’s name, I dare not lie, please just let me go…”

“Another Eastern kid? What a day, it’s really worrisome.”

The smoking man grunted, waved his hand, and gestured for Marvin to walk away. He got up and patted Jason’s shoulder. “Thank you for your honesty, my friend. Mr. Shaman will pay you for your loss today.”

He kicked aside the broken table, and turned to the corner. “You see, Mr. Chang, our people are not with the kid you are looking for.”

At the corner, where the light could not reach the darkness, a thin figure walked out.

It was an old man from the East, wearing a seemingly cumbersome and luxurious robe, with hair as white as any ordinary aging man. His eyes were sharp. He had no presence when he stood in the corner.

Mr. Chang kept his hands in his sleeve. His face, covered with age spots, was expressionless. “The Shaman assured us that he would find him.”

“Yes, yes, Shaman said to find him. We will find him and return him to you without a single strand of hair lost. Maybe we’ll also do a buy one, get one free deal with the other white haired kid, but you’ve got to give us a little time.”

“I will,” Mr. Chang said dimly. He took a step back and disappeared into the darkness.

Ghosthand watched him disappear. He sighed after a long time. “Damn, that’s trouble. Notify everyone and tell them to work harder. Find him.”

Outside the door, someone who worked for him walked in and whispered, “Mr. Ghosthand, Mr. Shaman has a few words for you.”

“What is it?”

“He also wants you to find a missing person. It’s for another group we cannot refuse.”

“Deep sh*t.” Ghosthand scratched his white hair: “D*mn, we’re gangsters, not a nursery. Who is it this time?”

“A kid from the east, with a dog.”

Ghosthand held back an impulse to spit out blood. “Let me guess, there will be someone else who’ll ask us to find a dog?”

–

Having wasted a whole afternoon, Ye Qingxuan finally finished following the road as complex as a spider’s web and found the north side of the city.

When the bell rang from a distant church, it was already dusk.

In the square where people came and went, Ye Qingxuan sat on a bench next to the fountain, tired. He looked at the tall building not too far away with a sense of satisfaction on his face.

“The Royal Academy of Music. I have finally found you.”

He smiled.