Revenge

Lao Lu is 68 years old, yet still wishes to find any jobs to reek in some income. Entering the winter season, he is naturally unoccupied with any farm work. One day he was walking near his field, when he received a phone call regarding a possible job offer that originated from the city of An Yang, Henan Province.

It was a security guard position, and the monthly salary was RMB 2800, inclusive of boarding and lodging. Lao Lu was making further queries on the phone on the details of the job, when a young man in his early 30s wiggled his way on the narrow muddy road on a motorcycle. His motorcycle rode over his right foot which had been put slightly toward the centre of the road.

A searing pain shot through Lao Lu’s foot and he realised that it could have been crushed by that motorcycle on which the youngster still waddling his way a few metres ahead of him.

Lao Lu yelled and urged the youngster to stop, saying his foot was trodden over by him. The young man stopped and lazily looked back over his shoulder at him, asking what was the matter. Seeing the man showing an indifferent attitude over his misery, Lao Lu thrust forward his injured foot, saying “See, your wheel’s prints still remain on my my foot!”and he requested him to take him to the hospital for a checkup, for which he inadvertently blubbered out to be in need of a brain scan.

The young man believed that the old man was not severely hurt but might have suffered at most just some bruises or cuts. He grew furious hearing of the brain scan, replied that Lao Lu was blackmailing him. He retorted that Lao Lu could have just stepped back a bit and not stood in the way. Then he dashed away, saying “you could have been crushed to death but then it was entirely your fault.”

A few metres away, his motorcycle met with some mound on the road, which jolted his mobile phone out of his shirt pocket. The phone slipped down and landed on the road behind him, barely being run over by the hind wheel and crushed. Lao Lu made a few steps trying to catch up with him, but noticed the black mobile phone lying on the road.

Lao Lu picked up the phone in glee, but just then the phone’s WeChat app rang and he swiped down the green Accept button to answer it, and said Hello.

On the other side of the phone was a young woman who was shocked to find a stranger answering her WeChat call, and asked in alert who he was.

“Who am I? I’m the hotel manager,” Lao Lu said. “Who are you then?”

The other end said she was the wife of the phone owner.

Lao Lu asked surprisingly, “How can you be his wife? Haven’t you and him just left the hotel together? He left his phone in the room so you could talk to you.”

“What?” The woman on the other end exploded: “Look how I will handle him when he is home!”The high-pitched voice pierced through his ear and his ear rang. He began to wonder if he had gone too far in the joke, and tucked his ear to the phone, eager to say this had been a prank, but it was dead silent.

Just then the youngster came back to Lao Lu on his motorcycle, asked smilingly if he had noticed a mobile phone dropped on the road.

Lao Lu was just holding his mobile phone then, and he immediately handed it over to him. And he muttered that finally someone was to revenge for him on this wayward young man.

“What did you say?” The young man thought Lao Lu was speaking to him and asked him to repeat. Very likely, he was still insisting on him being taken to the hospital, or alternatively he would be requested to pay a handsome sum of money in lieu of medical checkup and treatment, he thought.

Lao Lu said: “I was saying.... Hurry home lest you get caught in a downpour.”The young man looked up at the sky and saw that bellows of clouds were tumbling and expanding, imminent of a rain.

The young man agreed, saying, “Oh! It may soon be raining. My quilt is still left in the open air for airing. I need to be home this minute to take it back.” 

“Thank you Sir" With that he dashed away.

Watching him disappearing in the distance, Lao Lu said: “when you are home, see what is awaiting you! No manners at all!”Lao Lu limped back toward his home. 

-- Wrote on 1 January, 2023, in a hotel near the Shanghai Railway Station, serving a five-day quarantine after returning from a trip to the US and Hong Kong.

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