The King of Curses

The first decade of the twenty-first century had passed, and for those living back then, it seemed to have happened in the blink of an eye.

The height of summer had arrived, the sunlight was scorching, and gusts of hot wind blew through the port, weaving between the streets, alleys, and the glass curtain walls of high-rise buildings in the center of this coastal city, heating the tar roads until they were as hot as a steaming basket.

The temperatures in the urban area gradually became unbearable, and pedestrians on the roads sought shade under the eaves of houses and shops as they trudged along. By the time it was nearing noon, the streets were eerily quiet, not a single person in sight.

Cen Dongsheng rode a Phoenix-brand bicycle, avoiding the fierce sunlight beating down from above. He weaved left and right and entered a residential community in the heart of Jinjiang City. Casually, he pushed his bike into the shed, locked it up, grabbed the package from the rack, and hurriedly dashed upstairs.

"Thump, thump, thump!" His sneakers kicked up dust on the stairs, and the young man's figure quickly vanished into the dark entrance of the residence building.

This was a community composed of more than a dozen old residential buildings, all over twenty years old. Each building had a name, such as Reformation Building, Open Building, Common Prosperity Building, etc. The place where Cen Dongsheng lived was called Xiaokang Building.

After several renovations, Xiaokang Building no longer resembled its original appearance. It was originally designed as a so-called tube building, a product of a specific period in the domestic housing distribution system, modeled after the Khrushchev Building in the Soviet Union. Such buildings typically had a long corridor on one side, with rows of individual rooms connected on both sides.

Xiaokang Building was the largest in volume within the community, with an overall structure resembling the shape of the Chinese character for "return"—hallways on all four sides and staircases in the shape of the letter "Z" connecting the floors together. In the middle was a spacious courtyard, where someone had planted various flowers and plants and set up sheds for parking bicycles.

One feature of the popular tube buildings back then was that the places for washing vegetables and doing the dishes, as well as the toilets, were shared. In the evenings, every household would come out to wash clothes and cook. While the housewives busily tended to household chores, they would chat with each other, creating a bustling scene.

The environment of seeing each other often led to a closer relationship between neighbors here than in other places. This mode of coexistence had its pros and cons:

The advantage was that in times of difficulty, one could ask for help from the neighbors on either side, and no one would refuse. For instance, working parents would entrust their children to the care of elderly neighbors, and a few families with good relationships became as close as real relatives. The downside was that there was essentially no privacy—at the slightest incident, the news would spread throughout the entire building by the next day, and idle gossip was unavoidable.

Each floor had a long corridor that was ventilated from both ends, with some places piled up with luggage, pots, pans, and buckets. Some even hung their wet laundry in the center of the corridor, making the already cramped walkway feel even more confined.

The mess was visible everywhere, on first glance making it seem hard to find a foothold; at night, walking through the corridor without turning on the lights, one had to be constantly wary of stumbling over something.

From the 90s to the early Millennium, following the renovation of the urban district in Jinjiang City, several buildings in the community began to have separate sanitation systems. The walls had been repainted several times, and externally they no longer looked like dull pigeon cages, but the people living inside barely changed, so the interior environment remained the same.

On the peeling handrails of the staircase and the dirty walls, all kinds of small advertisements were stuck—from fake certificates and traditional Chinese doctors to desperate pleas for children—no matter how they were torn off, they never came off completely. Some had been directly painted over with white oil paint.

It was just after his first year in university that Cen Dongsheng had moved to this place. However, the environment of the welfare home he had been born in wasn't much better, so he quickly got used to it.

Compared to the outside, the temperature inside Xiaokang Building was several degrees cooler, pleasantly cool and shady.

As he passed by the corner on the second floor, Cen Dongsheng saw a few elderly men and women lying on chairs, fanning themselves. The old folks greeted him enthusiastically as soon as they saw him, and he stopped to politely respond to each one.

In less than two months, Cen Dongsheng had become acquainted with all the dozens of families in the building. Everyone knew him as an enthusiastic good fellow who volunteered at the community center, often taking care of the elderly and children free of charge.

Arriving in front of room 303, he took out his keys to open the door. Inside, the furnishings were simple yet exuded a warm feeling of home, and the floors and walls were cleaned meticulously. The glaring sunlight streamed through the window, brightening the entire room.

He tossed the package onto the table, poured himself a glass of cold water and drank it down with a "gulp, gulp," then took a long breath and sat down on the sofa to rest. After a while, as if remembering something, he picked up the watering can and went to the balcony to water the potted plants in the shade.

In any case, Cen Dongsheng was feeling a little anxious, an unease that even he had not noticed.

Even though he had hurried back...

He raised his head to look at the wall clock.

"Is it still nap time; would I disturb people if I go knocking now?"

He couldn't help thinking this as his gaze fell back on the bag.

After a while, feeling parched again, he poured himself another glass of water, drained it, and then stood up, slapping his face.

"Alright, what am I hesitating for, just deliver this and I can come right back... Let's go!"

Cen Dongsheng picked up the bag, intending to leave the room. However, as he was about to reach the door, he suddenly lifted his sleeve to smell his own t-shirt.