TN: I know after reading this chapter some of you might think, “it can’t be that bad” but in China there is a HUGE problem with discrimination against the disabled. They literally have terms (can fei (殘廢) and can ji (殘疾)) that are commonly used as an insult towards the disabled meaning “useless” or “crippled”. In China disabled people are constantly being discriminated against, and most schools don’t even accept disabled children. It’s really tough being a disabled person in China, and it may seem outrageous that some of the kids in this novel could act in such a way but in China it’s actually quite common.

*****

On the weekend, Second Sister Kim came to see Father Kim and Mother Kim. After talking to Mother Kim for a while, she went to Jennie’s room and took a look. Currently Jennie’s room was messy and filled with clutter.

Sister Kim bit her lip and went to the kitchen to help Mother Kim cook. When the whole family sat to eat together, she asked Mother Kim, “Mom, has Jenjen not contacted the family?”

“What contact?” Mother Kim’s tone changed instantly. “I called her class teacher last time and asked her to call me back, but there was no news at all. If she doesn’t love us anymore, then I’d rather she never come back. Even if she’s starving to death and wants to come back. I don’t want her either.”

Seungmin gnawed on a piece of ribs and murmured vaguely, “She won’t be starving anytime soon, my third sister got first place in the exam last semester and got a scholarship of 5,000 yuan.”

Old lady Kim took his words as an opportunity to criticize Jennie, , “We spent all these years raising a white-eyed wolf yet when she gets even a bit of benefits she doesn’t remember her family at all.”

“Yes,” Seungmin wiped his oily hands and agreed very much. He thought about what happened at the sports meeting, he just wanted Jennie to go see his classmates with him, but Jennie didn’t go. Because of that, many people in the class thought of him as a joke and thought that he was lying, and in the end it cost him 200 yuan to invite them out to dinner.

Speaking of this, Seungmin suddenly remembered something. He grabbed his chopsticks and asked Mother Kim, “Mom, have you seen third sister again since the semester began?”

“No.” She hasn’t seen Jennie for over half a year, but Mother Kim wasn’t worried at all, as of Jennie wasn’t her own child but a stranger.

Seungmin was a little excited, “You should have seen her then, she has changed a lot, and her whole person is different from before.”

“How is it different?”

“She turned pretty, she’s very beautiful now, I almost didn’t recognize her. At the beginning, there were so many people who chased her in the school. A few days ago, a rich boy at the school gave her flowers. The whole school knew.”

Mother Kim finally got a little interest when she heard this.

After eating, Seungmin took out his mobile phone, went to the school website, and found the photo of Jennie at the sports meeting, which had been the top post a while ago.

“Look at her you could barely recognize her!”

______

When the new week came, Jennie and Lisa changed seats and moved to the seats in front of Gaeul.

Gaeul was at the same table with another boy. The two used to be in the same class in their first year of high school, and even now they were still very close friends. They had the same carefree personality and looked like a pair of siblings.

The two of them welcomed the arrival of the two “xueba” in an overly exaggerated tone.

[TN: Xueba is a term for students who do really well in school, top students. It also means the boss of students.]

Jennie grabbed Lisa’s arm and reminded him, “Smile.”

The young man was taken aback for a moment, and his delicate and deserted facial features were stunned for a moment but then he smiled.

The two people in the back row had never seen Lisa have any other expression, let alone such a nice smile, Gaeul clutched her heart and grabbed Jennie exaggeratedly, “Jenjen I’ve been attacked! It’s a critical hit!”

Lisa had never encountered such a situation before. Seeing such an overly exaggerated closeness, for a while, he did not know how to react. Seeing his stiffness Jennie whispered in his ear, “I told you a long time ago that you looked good when you laughed. I didn’t lie to you.”

Lisa turned his head to look at her again, and for a moment there was a smile in his eyes.

But Lisa’s smile was always different from other people’s. He does not smile from the heart when he is happy, but instead only after a short and rapid analysis, he would smile when he concluded on whether or not it was appropriate..

So even Jennie sometimes couldn’t understand what was hidden behind Lisa’s smile.

She doesn’t know that the more Lisa looks at her, and the more he talks to her, the more he struggles under the torment of Nancy’s two sentences.

How could you two ever match? How dare you.

When he was alone, he held his mobile phone and paused for a long time before entering the three characters of the word “disabled” with difficulty.

He admits that he is a disabled person, physically disabled, mentally disabled, but he liked someone.

After struggling to enter the three words characters, he then carefully typed in the two words “love”, and then clicked search, but after just a glance, Lisa’s bloody wound was stabbed again in an instant.

The bright headline below said, “I like someone, but the disabled should never have love and desire”.

Lisa suddenly closed his eyes, and dropped the phone on the table, his shoulders fell and he leaned his back against his wheelchair for a long time, before finally picking up his phone again.

He wanted to find some different voices between all of these remarks, but he spent nearly an hour reading through each one, but couldn’t find one that could refute the words stuck in his head.

He had sifted through many stories and countless comments, but he failed to find a situation where a normal person and a disabled one were able to be together in satisfaction. Even those couples who at first insisted on staying together despite the opposition of their families, in the years that followed, they ended up in tragedy.

Just like a girl had said, she once had a boyfriend who was blind. She loved him so much. She once severed all relations between her family for him. She thought that such a love would last forever.

But later, it only lasted three years.

It’s too hard, she said, sometimes when she couldn’t take it, she would ask herself over and over again, why is she so tired, why couldn’t she live a normal life like a normal person.

She used to be a normal person.

Many people wondered from the beginning whether people with disabilities should fall in love with normal people. With the passage of time, their bodies become more and more serious, and when there are thousands of things putting pressure on them, could people with disabilities live like normal people?

He wanted to see if he and Jennie could have a future, but with each answer he received it only ended in more and more disappointment.

Lisa both eagerly and anxiously wanted to find a happy case, and wanted to find a happy possibility that would make him less desperate. Finally, he saw someone saying that they had found love. But after reading it, Lisa only felt more desperate.

The person wrote that she had once met a very beautiful and good boy. He couldn’t speak, but he was very good. In the end, he married many years later and his wife was a beautiful girl who also couldn’t speak.

It was the simplest but also the cruelest way to say, “Dragon with dragon and shrimp and shrimp”, or find a person as imperfect as yourself. For the sake of yourself and others, it is better to find a person like you. Lower your standard, and maybe you might have hope.

[TN: Dragon with dragon and shrimp with shrimp basically means it’s better to find someone similar to you and that those who are similar should stick together.]

For a moment, Lisa thought, if he really received treatment, he could stand up again, but that thought was quickly pushed away as he became sober, he suddenly understood that he was just deceiving himself.

Some people are physically disabled, and some are mentally disabled, but mental disabilities are much more fearful than physical disabilities.

Even if he stood up and looked like a normal person, he knew better than anyone how terrifying his mental and spiritual mutilation was.

Lisa suddenly understood the meaning of the last two lines in the poem that he could never understand before.

Had I not seen the sun

I could have borne the shade

But light a newer wilderness

My wilderness has made

She was the salvation in his life, she brought him warmth and light, but because he had seen the beauty of the sun, he could never return to loneliness and darkness. But the sunlight couldn’t save him from the darkness, instead it made him want the luxury of its warmth even more.

On Wednesday afternoon, in the Chinese classes, the Chinese teacher made the students watch a the classic movie, “Edward Scissorhands”.

They were asked to watch the film carefully, and give the teacher a copy of their impression after watching it.

Edward was a robot created by the inventor who lived in a castle. As he was preparing a pair of human hands for Edward as a Christmas gift he accidentally fell to the ground and died. Because of his creator’s sudden death, Edward was not able to have hands like normal people, and in their place was a pair of sharp scissors.

After being taken home by Pegg, he fell in love with the beautiful Kim, but he was finally alienated and hated by the small town and hid himself in the castle again.

Because Edward was a monster, his feelings for Kim were entirely based on temperament, without any utilitarianism. He could create art for Jin, use his scissors to cut food for others to eat, endure the hatred of the neighbors, and even cover his conscience, conceal the truth, and steal for her.

When Kim asked him why he did it, Edward would tell her, “Because you asked me to.”

This movie had a regretful ending. “I can’t hold you when I pick up the scissors, and I can’t protect you when I put down the scissors”. Many girls in Shanghai shed tears at this line, with most of them moved by Edward’s form of love. He protected his beloved but was misunderstood, he felt so powerless that he could only run away.

Most of the thoughts expressed by everyone that submitted their assignment that day was very consistent, the theme of this movie was social indifference and isolation.

The Chinese teacher selected the best of the responses and projected it on the projector for the class to see.

Someone wrote, “Deep love doesn’t have to mean a happy ending where they end up together. Even if parting is extremely sad, even if after everything they are now strangers, at least there are memories left. I believe Kim’s feelings should be along the lines of, ‘I am still very happy that you remember me, I’m glad that your memories of me were when I looked the most beautiful in my times of youth.’”

Edward always remembered the most Kim when she was the most beautiful, but Lisa never understood it.

He didn’t tell others that when he saw the ending of the film, saw how after Edward returned to the castle alone, and saw Kim live out her own life, got married and had children, at that moment, Lisa felt that if he were Edward, he might’ve chosen to die.

Love in his world had always had only two answers, either one hundred points or zero points.

The teachers didn’t ask Lisa for the assignment, but Lisa also wrote about his thoughts this time, but he didn’t give it to the teacher. He watched his classmates criticize the society, but he remembered that when he was writing this answer, the feeling of empathy for Edward came from the bottom of his heart.

Everyone said that this movie was about social indifference, but Lisa wrote that it was because aliens were not allowed in the world.

Just like Edward, just like him.

Edward had a pair of scissors hands that were different from people. Lisa had two legs that could stand and a brain that could not understand emotions.

Edward was once popular for this pair of scissors hands, but after falling in love with the heroine, he was suspected and rejected by everyone; Lisa was looked up by everyone because his IQ was beyond ordinary means, but if they learned that he also liked an excellent girl like Jennie, maybe they would be like Nancy, and feel that he was weird and disgusting.

Edward’s scissors hand is just a symbol. It represented an alien that was out of place. It couldn’t really be regarded as just a pair of scissors. The pair of scissors represented autism, poverty, disability, etc. things that normal people did not accept.

One day many years later, he and Jennie would end up just like Edward and Kim in the film. One would be alone for a lifetime, and the other would eventually live out her own life.

Lisa closed his eyes and didn’t say a word for a long time. He didn’t know how long he stayed like this but afterwards, Lisa tore his homework in half and threw it into the trash can.

He clenched his trembling hands and tried his best to remove all of his emotions.

To suppress everything.