The chubby boss wore a string of prayer beads on his wrist. He leaned against the counter and looked out the window, today was another sunless day.
He had once read in a book about the skies of another planet, and it was the first time he learned that the sky could be such a beautiful shade of blue. From that moment on, he had a wish: once he saved enough money, he would leave this place and go see the sky outside for himself.
But money was never something he could save enough of. The chubby boss took a delicate little round silver mirror out of his drawer and looked at his increasingly round face.
The door was pushed open again. The chubby boss quickly hid the small round mirror and put on a standard business smile. Through that smile, an old man wearing a pointed hat walked in, carrying a dark gray canvas sack on his shoulder.
The chubby boss chuckled and said, “Old Pan is here. Looks like today was a good haul.”
The old man set down the sack with a weary expression, lifted his hand to massage his shoulder, and said self-deprecatingly, “I’m just an old bones now, can’t compare to the young people these days.”
His voice was hoarse and rough, as if his vocal cords had been sanded down with sandpaper, carrying the feel of desert sands, lone smoke, and a setting sun on a vast frontier.
The chubby boss said, “That child asked me about you.”
The old soldier raised his head. His tattered clothes, messy hair, and skin covered with wrinkles and age spots gave him an air of approaching death, like a tree on the verge of withering away. His eyes were gray, just like Jiang Yue’s, but there was a subtle difference.
Jiang Yue’s eyes were a misty gray; cold, sinister, sharp, mysterious, and filled with gloom, like the leaden clouds that never disperse over the sky of the garbage planet.
The old man’s gray eyes were like a faint mist of ash; soft, calm, with a hint of numbness and indifference within them.
“That was a child full of curiosity; very young, very strong, and very gifted,” the old soldier said. He covered his mouth and coughed for a while. His pointed hat tilted to the side with each bout of coughing. He reached up, adjusted it back into place, and carefully poured the contents of his bag onto the counter.
The chubby boss put on gloves and began sorting through the electronic scrap the old soldier had collected. When it came time to settle the payment, he gave a little extra money and reminded him, “Go buy some medicine. Coughing like this all the time isn’t good for you.”
Pan Bu’en shook his head. “It’s an old illness. I’ll just keep wearing it down.”
The chubby boss also shook his head. “How long can you keep that up? There comes a time when the oil runs out and the lamp goes out.”
“Then I’ll just keep wearing it down,” the old soldier replied. “When the lamp oil is exhausted, that will be the moment I go out.”
His expression remained unchanged, without the slightest ripple of emotion. There was even a hint of indifference in his eyes, he did not seem to care at all about his own life or death.
The chubby boss once again showed that look of frustration mixed with disappointment, as if he was exasperated by someone beyond saving.
Some people simply had no attachment to survival; for them, life and death were nothing more than trivial matters, not even worth a frown.
The old man pushed the door open, and the worn iron hinges let out a creaking sound. The chubby boss’ gaze drifted toward the window. Outside, the wind stirred the old man’s ragged clothes, making them flutter like a tattered cloak.
The chubby boss’ thoughts drifted far, far back into the past.
Back then, he was still a fifteen-year-old boy. The first time he met Pan Bu’en, it was raining. Someone was chasing him, and he was running for his life. A not-yet-aged version of the old soldier suddenly appeared before him, holding a long black blade.
The soldier said, “Kid, hide behind me.”
He held the long blade horizontally across his chest, like an invincible war god from myth, one man standing against a thousand troops.
Now, they had both grown old.
The iron door of the shop was pushed open again, and an indescribable stench rushed in.
It was like the smell of socks left to ferment in a latrine for a week. The chubby boss instinctively held his breath and looked at the newcomer with a polite smile.
This person was impossibly filthy. The chubby boss had already seen all kinds of scavengers before, he had seen scavengers who wore bark as skirts, scavengers whose hair grew five meters long without ever being cut, and even scavengers who came into his shop naked except for a stocking over their head, trying to tie knots in it, but even so, seeing the appearance of the person before him still gave the well-traveled shop owner a brief moment of shock.
He was wearing a huge blue garbage bag, and on his head was a piece of pomelo peel. His mouth and hair were covered in gray animal fur, which the fat shop owner immediately recognized as rat fur.
There were plenty of rats in the junkyard, but all scavengers avoided eating them, because the rats here carried deadly pathogens, any infection could lead to blood plague.
The chubby boss silently gagged, then stepped back without showing it on his face. His kind smile remained perfectly in place as he said, “Hello, may I ask what kind of trash you are?”
The scavenger covered in rat fur said, “Electronic waste.”
He carried a gray canvas bag on his back. He pulled the pomelo peel off his head and shook it slightly. Strands of hair and bits of rat fur around his mouth scattered into the air and slowly drifted down onto the chubby boss’ metal counter.
The chubby boss’ felt slightly suffocated.
The scavenger opened his bundle, revealing a pile of bloodstained electronic scrap. The chubby boss was already used to it; at the junkyard, the law of the jungle reigned. It was always survival of the fittest, and many of the items brought here were stained with blood. He had long since lost count of how many such loads he had taken in.
He put on his gloves, frowned, and said, “Next time, clean it up better. I don’t like things stained with blood, it’s bad luck. That’ll be 325 credits. Bring me more goods next time.” It was a habitual line from the chubby boss.
The scavenger curled his lips. “There won’t be a next time. I don’t like playing this trash-collecting game.”
He took the money and left. But just as he reached the door, he suddenly turned back and gave the chubby boss a friendly smile. “Boss, has a woman with gray eyes, a buzz cut, and a cold, snake-like aura, an Alpha, been here before?”
The chubby boss’ guard immediately went up, though his face still wore a cheerful grin. “So many people come and go every day. How could I possibly remember them that clearly?”
The scavenger smiled and said, “You must be joking. That person is very distinctive, once you’ve seen her, you’ll never forget her.”
“Don’t worry, I mean no harm. We were separated from each other. If she comes here again, please tell her one thing for me, tell her someone named Zhang San came looking for her.”
The name Zhang San was far too common. The chubby boss said nothing, neither agreeing nor refusing.
The scavenger smiled at him, tucked the cash into his pocket, and walked away in a casual, unhurried manner.
A small inn, 6:20 in the morning.
Jiang Yue pulled back the blanket and got out of bed. She drew open the curtains, letting the scarce sunlight of the Garbage Star spill through the window. Pressing her forehead lightly against the glass, she looked out at the street below, then drifted into thought again as she glanced at the overcast sky.
By her estimate, two months had already passed since the Federation Military Academy started its semester. She wondered how her roommates were doing.
She wondered whether the second half of their first year was heavy with coursework, whether the Zergs used in dissection class had become even more dangerous, whether the virtual fighters in holographic drills had become more ruthless in their attacks. She wondered if they were busier now; so busy that, little by little, they might forget her.
Time could wear everything down. Her roommates each had their own bright future ahead, while she was stuck on the Garbage Star picking through trash. Even if one day she managed to return to Beta Star, the gap between them would only grow wider. They would never go back to how things used to be, never again could they play and joke around so freely as before.
When Jiang Yue was in high school, she had a friend from a fairly modest background. Jiang Yue would accompany her to wholesale markets, bargaining a wool skirt priced at a hundred yuan down to thirty-five. On weekends, she would also go with her to the wet market to buy spare ribs and cook together in the kitchen.
Their friendship had always been very good; until one day, while they were out together, they accidentally ended up carrying the same bag. After that, their relationship gradually grew distant. Jiang Yue had tried to repair it, but it didn’t work.
Fortunes rise and fall like a wheel turning. Now reduced to scavenging through trash, she finally understood how her old friend must have felt back then.
Her future days would probably be like this, unless the Zerg came to trouble her, she might live a slightly better life. Maybe she would earn a monthly salary of three to five thousand credits, and on her way home from work, buy a scallion pancake and add an extra egg.
She rubbed her eyes and walked into the tiny bathroom, barely one square meter in size. Jiang Yue squeezed a pea-sized amount of toothpaste onto her toothbrush, filled her cup with water, and stood by the sink brushing her teeth.
The water on Garbage Star always had a strange taste. Clean water sources were extremely scarce, and most people simply couldn’t afford water without that odd, unpleasant flavor.
After finishing her wash-up, Jiang Yue changed into her scavenging clothes and rushed out again to pick up electronic waste.
A transport ship began dumping a fresh load of electronic scrap. As always, Jiang Yue was the first to arrive at the site. The old man in the pointed hat arrived second, as usual. The two of them exchanged a glance across the pile of debris, then each got to work.
Jiang Yue noticed that the old man’s movements had slowed. Just as he lifted his sack, his steps suddenly faltered, he stumbled and heavily collapsed to the ground.
Around them, the scavengers who had been picking through the junk turned into creatures that had caught the scent of blood. Their greedy eyes locked onto the old man at once, like a pack of hyenas that had spotted an aged, sickly lion.
The old man struggled to lift the sack again and slowly rose to his feet, swaying unsteadily. The scavengers’ gazes stuck to him like glue, waiting for his next fall.
He took a step forward, dragging the heavy bag behind him, then another, three steps in total, before collapsing once more. This time he hit the ground hard. The sack slipped from his shoulder, and a pile of electronic scrap spilled out from its opening.
The scavengers around them became visibly agitated, surging in from all directions.
Jiang Yue clenched her fists.
Seeing the old man stumble and fall like that, she couldn’t just stand by.
Damn it, on Garbage Star, these scavengers really were trash who didn’t even know basic respect for the elderly and the weak.
Jiang Yue hoisted up her own sack and pulled out a metal rod from behind her. She breathed into her palm, rubbed her hands together to steady her nerves, then gripped the rod tightly and ran forward.
A burly scavenger stepped in. Boldly, he reached out his hand toward the old man’s sack.
A long time ago, he had tried the same thing, only to have one of his fingers sliced off by the old man’s black blade. This time, though, the old man probably didn’t even have the strength to draw his sword anymore.
The scavenger gripped the mouth of the sack and lifted it, feeling its heavy weight. As he did so, he idly considered whether it would be more satisfying to stomp on the old man’s fingers or cut them off, wondering which method would bring greater pain. A faint, self-satisfied smile hung on his face.
He still wore that smug, petty expression of someone who had just gained the upper hand. Then, suddenly, a sharp gust of force rushed in.
A heavy gray metal rod swung down toward the arm that was holding the sack. All he could see was a blur of gray, like wind itself. Only when the sound of bone cracking reached his ears did the searing pain hit him; sharp, immediate, and unbearable. The sack slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. His arm went limp, hanging uselessly at his side.
The scavenger looked up in terror and saw the rising newcomer of the junkyard, the gray-eyed female Alpha.
Still unwilling to give up, the injured scavenger staggered back two steps. Fear flickered in his eyes, but he forced himself to act tough as he clutched his broken arm and shouted, “Mind your own business!”
Jiang Yue picked up the old man’s sack and held her metal rod horizontally across her chest. Her voice was cold. “I feel like it. If you’re not happy about it, come at me. Stop wasting my time.”
The scavengers, all greedily eyeing the electronic scrap, began whispering among themselves.
“We go together. No matter how strong she is, she’s still just one person, she can’t possibly withstand all of us attacking her at once!”
“Exactly. Take her down first. I’ve long since had a problem with her.”
“Exactly, finish them while they’re weak. Take out both the old man and that female Alpha. They’ve already taken all the good loot and left us with nothing but scraps. Their easy days are over.”
The number of scavengers closing in had already reached several hundred. Jiang Yue’s palms were damp with sweat. She knew clearly that taking them on one by one, or even in small group, was not a viable option. A faint regret surfaced in her mind, for her recklessness and her poorly timed sense of justice.
Being a hero was never easy.
But she truly couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
She looked at the scavengers slowly advancing toward her, then spun the metal rod once in her hand.
With so many people, she really couldn’t hold them off. If she had a thermofusion blade, it would be different; against that kind of crowd, a cold weapon like a metal rod was far too limited.
No, she had to think of another way.
So she lifted the metal rod in front of the scavengers, gripping it at both ends and slowly bending it with her bare hands.
The approaching scavengers’ footsteps came to an abrupt halt. Jiang Yue seized the opportunity, coldly declaring, “I can’t fight all of you, but whoever charges first, I’ll smash their skull and let their brains spill out. I’m quite confident I can do that!”
So Jiang Yue quickly gripped the metal rod with her right hand and, like a martial arts master wielding a divine sword in a wuxia film, swung it in a flourish, forcefully projecting an aura of an unmatched expert.
Seeing that the intimidation had worked, Jiang Yue let go of the bag on her back and kicked it hard toward the crowd. The electronic components inside immediately burst out, scattering everywhere like a sudden shower of falling blossoms.
The group of scavengers no longer paid any attention to Jiang Yue. They instantly rushed forward, scrambling to grab the items.
Jiang Yue turned around and extended her hand toward the old man on the ground.
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152