C1 – Mysterious Fortune Teller (1)
Outside Isrinas High School, a teenager stood with a wooden sign held high, drawing a crowd of his departing classmates who surrounded him, snickering and jeering.
“I am a sex maniac!”
The words were bold and emphatic.
“Can you believe this guy? Who does he think he is, parading around like that?”
“That’s Wen Huaimu. Who’s picking on him now?”
“He gets bullied every day. Poor kid.”
Wen Huaimu was the subject of their gossip, his face a mix of sha and rage, dark circles under his eyes. His mouth twitched, his expression one of acute discomfort.
An ordinary person would have fled from such humiliation, but Wen Huaimu stood frozen, neither daring to run nor to lower the sign.
As the crowd of onlookers grew, a group pushed through. Their leader, a young girl with fiery red hair, was dressed provocatively and chewing gum. She looked at the sign above Wen Huaimu’s head, laughed heartily, and then said with glee, “Let’s call it a day. You’ve been quite the entertainer.”
With that, she sauntered off with her entourage.
Finally, Wen Huaimu let out a sigh of relief, quickly setting down the sign and slipping away through the crowd.
After navigating several backstreets, he paused to catch his breath, alone at last. He threw the sign to the ground and stomped on it, muttering bitterly, “Soday, I’ll make you pay a hundredfold.”
This boy, Wen Huaimu, could only express his frustration in solitude. At fifteen, he was a sophomore at Isrinas High School, tall and well-built among his peers. Despite being 1.7 ters tall, his timid nature made him an easy target for bullies.
He seed destined for misfortune.
Wen Huaimu longed to change, but every hostile stare sent a wave of insecurity through him.
When others insulted him, he would turn red with frustration but lacked the courage to talk back. When they struck him, his limbs would go weak, only emboldening his aggressors and diminishing his own stature—his height seed pointless.
Today, he found himself at Isrinas High School by the arrangent of the well-known Mu Jingbai. Despite her small stature, Mu Jingbai had a formidable brother, Mu Shuxin—the most notorious young mob boss in Anbubury. Mu Shuxin had made a na for himself by savagely attacking thirteen people with a re kitchen knife and now reigned as the mafia overlord of Anbubury.
Wen Huaimu, intimidated by such a powerful figure, dared not fight back. He silently hoped his family would remain uninvolved.
After releasing so of his frustration, Wen Huaimu glanced around nervously to ensure no one had witnessed him. He quickly discarded the wooden sign into a trash bin and slipped into a narrow side street.
He aimlessly road the streets, too afraid to return ho. The prominent dark circles under his eyes would be a dead giveaway to his parents, who would undoubtedly scold him once more.
As dusk fell, the night market began to swell with people, and small vendors gradually attracted a bustling crowd.
“Let read your fortune! I can help you avert disaster and draw in wealth. And if my reading is wrong, you can smash my stall!” The fortune teller’s sing-song call captured Wen Huaimu’s attention.
Wen Huaimu knew these streets well, yet he had never encountered a fortune teller here before. The mysterious arrival of this soothsayer piqued his curiosity.
He edged closer and discovered a stall at the crossroads, unmistakably that of a fortune teller. A table cloaked with an eight trigrams cloth was manned by a white-whiskered elder in a long robe and sunglasses, energetically hawking his services.
Intrigued, Wen Huaimu approached and took a seat. “Sir, how do you read fortunes?”
Perking up at the prospect of a client, the fortune teller replied with renewed vigor, “I can divine your future from your handwriting, feel your bones for insights, or even employ Positioning to chart your destiny!”
Wen Huaimu was taken aback and inquired, “I’m familiar with the first two fortune-telling thods, but what exactly is ‘Positioning’?”
The fortune teller gave a knowing smile and explained, “Given my level of skill, I can perform it only once per day. This technique costs six hundred and sixty-six RMB, and the price is non-negotiable.”
Wen Huaimu was astounded. Earning six hundred and sixty-six RMB for a single session ant that, even if he read fortunes just once daily, he could pull in nearly twenty thousand RMB a month. Fortune-telling seed to be quite the lucrative business!
“Old sir, fortune-telling is rely words of comfort for people, isn’t it? Don’t you think you’re being a bit too greedy?” Wen Huaimu montarily set aside his own gloom to chastise the avaricious soothsayer.
“Just words of comfort, you say?” The fortune-teller lifted his head with a hint of defiance. “Would you like to cast your fortune? If my predictions don’t co true, you won’t owe a penny!”
“Alright,” Wen Huaimu agreed, “use my writing for the reading.”
“Please write,” the fortune-teller requested, removing his glasses to reveal his complete blindness.
A pang of sympathy struck Wen Huaimu, prompting him to ask, “Old sir, what happened to your eyes?”
“I was born blind, nothing more. No need for astonishnt. Just write down the character and tell what it is,” the fortune-teller replied with an air of nonchalance.
With no other choice, Wen Huaimu bent down and penned a single character on the white paper spread across the table.
The ti was now past seven in the evening. Sumr nights arrived late, and the sky was dimming to a soft black.
Moved by an impulse, Wen Huaimu wrote the character “Mu.”
With darkness enveloping the sky and the character “Mu” on the paper, Wen Huaimu wondered, how would the fortune-teller interpret it?
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