Raising the Top Alpha as a Beta - Chapter 2

The dormitory buildings of the Nest Silk Factory were among the oldest in the city, an entire area seemingly forgotten by the last century. The aging parks and facilities were as neglected as the elderly and infirm who lived there.

Year after year, the government set targets for renovation, only to shelve them for various reasons. Sometimes, after reading the news, Si Ye wondered if he might one day receive a sudden demolition payout. If he did, he could afford to get Si Qing’s eyes treated and take her to see the world, to experience all the sights she’d never seen.

Next to the community security booth was a convenience store that had been open for over a decade. Its prices were affordable, and the owner’s son was a childhood friend who had grown up with him. Every so often, Si Ye would slip the owner a few hundred yuan so that when Si Qing came down to buy things, she wouldn’t have to fumble with a handful of small change.

“Xiao Ye’s back,” the owner greeted him warmly during the dinner hour, having just cooked a pot of pork and vermicelli. “Grab a pair of chopsticks and join me for a bite.”

“No need.” Si Ye placed a few banknotes on the counter. “Where’s Dunzi?”

“He went to pick up stock with his dad. He’ll be back in a bit.” The landlady’s eyes fell on the money on the counter. “This is too much,” she said quickly. “Besides, if it weren’t for you, those thugs almost smashed the place up last time.”

The Nest Silk Factory Community had no security guards, and hoodlums occasionally caused trouble. The ones who’d come last time had been taught a lesson by Si Ye, and they’d been laying low ever since.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other.” Si Ye waved her off and ran toward his apartment building. Not only did he spend money here regularly, but whenever he was away, the landlady would call Si Qing down to eat. Such matters of human connection were impossible to quantify.

Having won money today, eaten cake, and even helped a little beggar boy, Si Ye was in a good mood. He bounded up the stairs three or five steps at a time and called out from the entryway, “Mom!”

No one answered from inside.

Si Ye’s heart sank. He ran to the communal kitchen at the end of the hallway and saw Si Qing groping around, trying to get something done.

A few pieces of green leafy vegetables lay on the cutting board, but an egg had been cracked on the stove. Si Qing was now nearly blind. She raised her head, her unfocused eyes darting around anxiously. “Xiao Ye?”

The brief flicker of joy was utterly crushed by the immense weight of their reality. Si Ye grabbed her hand. “Mom.”

Si Qing smiled awkwardly. “It’s your birthday today. I wanted to make you longevity noodles…”

The woman was barely over thirty, but the corners of her eyes creased deeply when she smiled. Years of chronic illness had hollowed her cheeks, and her once-prominent nose no longer seemed a striking feature, merely a fragile support for a face perpetually shrouded in sickness.

“Mom, I’ll do it.” Si Ye led her to the tap, washed her hands, and then guided her back into the room.

When he returned to the kitchen, he had cleared away the trash and flowerpots cluttering the hallway. Their apartment building only had a communal kitchen and restroom. Si Ye had bought a urinal for the home, but Si Qing had never used it once.

Back in the kitchen, Si Ye swept the broken eggs into a bowl, carefully picked out the shells, and put them in a pan to fry.

As the eggs sizzled and bubbled, Si Ye thought expressionlessly: Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the day I met my mother.

Excluding his early infancy, Si Qing had always been young and beautiful in his memories. Though she was a Beta, her beauty was no less striking than any Alpha or Omega.

She always wore a long white dress and spoke softly. Despite her limited schooling, she loved to read and would tell him stories she had collected every night to lull him to sleep.

This relatively warm life continued until Si Ye finished first grade. During that time, Si Qing’s belly swelled like a balloon. In the tenement building, secrets couldn’t be kept. Everyone who came and went would mock her with a sneer: “Oh, pregnant again. Maybe it’ll be an Alpha this time.”

Even Si Ye’s biological father, who had never bothered to live at home, finally moved back in. This Alpha, whose own rank was not very high, had always considered fathering a high-ranking Alpha child his lifelong goal. He was too dense to hear the mockery in their words. Every time he heard someone say it, he would straighten his back and shamelessly boast, “That’s my seed, alright!”

To realize one’s value through reproduction, for a higher being, this could only be described as pathetic.

Si Ye paid more attention to Si Qing than to the elusive younger sibling. His young, beautiful mother rapidly wasted away. With no help from her husband, Si Qing had to trudge to the Nest Silk Factory every day with her swollen belly. After all, she still had a child to raise.

Finally, one day, Si Ye was urgently called out of class by his teacher during a Chinese lesson. He rushed to the Nest Silk Factory, only to see Si Qing being carried into an ambulance by a crowd. Splatters of blood trailed from the factory all the way to the main gate.

Screaming “Mom!” he ran all the way to the hospital, only to be kicked against a wall by his father, who had just arrived.

“You worthless scum!” the man roared, unleashing his unfocused rage on him. “Just like your mother! A bastard! You couldn’t even protect a child!”

Si Ye scrambled to his feet without a word and charged at the man. They grappled and wrestled in the hospital corridor.

Only after that day did Si Ye learn that Si Qing’s second child was gone, and her uterus had been removed with it.

Si Qing spent the following year recovering, unable to work. The man squandered the family’s savings, turned to gambling and loan sharks, and tried to drown his failures in alcohol.

The already fragile family finally shattered. Si Ye never imagined that the unfinished Chinese class would mark the end of his school days, or that the half-memorized line”Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on this person”—would become the mantra for the suffering that defined half his life.

The egg noodles were done. Si Ye carried the bowl back home. His cooking was mediocre at best, just barely edible. Si Qing had already cleared the table and was sitting on the sofa, slowly eating a slice of plum blossom cake.

“Mom, dinner’s ready.” Si Ye helped her to the table, making sure she took her pre-meal medication before placing the bowl and spoon in her hands. He had become remarkably adept at caring for his blind mother.

“I got a bonus today,” Si Ye said. “I bought a two-week supply of your medicine. I’ll put it in the pillbox later.”

Si Qing chewed her noodles slowly, swallowing completely before speaking. “How’d you get a bonus all of a sudden?”

“My performance was good,” Si Ye said, feigning indifference. “I closed a big deal today… Besides, your medicine doesn’t cost that much.”

He hadn’t told Si Qing that he was fighting in the ring; he’d only said he was selling alcohol at Brother Kun’s place. The money from selling alcohol was nowhere near enough to cover the cost of her medication, and that job didn’t even require a Beta.

“Dunzi started school a few days ago,” Si Qing said abruptly.

Si Ye’s brow furrowed slightly. Just as he expected, she continued, “Xiao Ye, maybe you should go back to school too. My illness…”

“No!” Si Ye’s voice rose sharply. “What’s the point? Even with a degree, there’s no guarantee of finding a decent job.”

Having been out of school for so long, Si Ye tried not to think about it, even though he had a full set of middle school textbooks in the boxing gym’s lounge and had already self-studied through more than half of them, marking the pages with circles and dots.

Si Qing sighed. She was now entirely dependent on her son, who was still just a boy. Si Ye not only had to work but also had to return home on time every day to cook for her. At such a young age, he carried a burden of labor that even adults would find overwhelming. Every day that passed, the mother felt as if a knife were scraping her heart.

The boy couldn’t think that far ahead. The daily weight of life left him no room for other concerns. Si Ye only assumed she had become so obsessed with the Buddhist scriptures she listened to at home that she had started thinking such nonsense.

After dinner, he helped Si Qing downstairs to get some fresh air.

The Nest Silk Factory Community had no proper property management. Several streetlights were broken, and no one ever came to fix them. Si Ye kicked a small pebble, still thinking about what the manager had told him earlier that day.

What had happened with the matter Brother Kun had asked him to consider?

Before the Lunar New Year, Brother Kun had opened a new venue in the west of the city, specializing in “premium goods,” and had poached many workers from the boxing gym to go work there.

Si Ye didn’t yet understand what qualified as “premium goods,” but the west end of the city was several blocks away from their community. If he went to work there, he definitely wouldn’t make it back in time to cook for Si Qing. That was why he had been hesitating.

Not far away, another streetlight flickered and finally gave up the ghost. At the same time, a dark figure darted along the base of the wall.

Lost in thought, Si Ye was suddenly startled. He reflexively pushed Si Qing behind him. “Who’s there?!”

“What’s wrong?” Si Qing instantly tensed up, her grip on his hand tightening.

“It’s nothing. Probably just a weasel,” Si Ye frowned. The dark figure had seemed quite large. The dormitory building was now occupied only by the elderly, the young, the sick, and the disabled, and such a thing could easily scare them.

He told Si Qing to stay put and then treaded unevenly into the bushes. He had specifically trained his footsteps to be as silent as a cat’s when walking on his toes.

He crept forward and suddenly shone his flashlight. A dirty, smudged little face appeared in the stark white beam.

It was the same young kid with the broken arm from earlier that afternoon.

“You’re still here,” Si Ye said, flashing the light at him a few times. The child seemed dazed, staring back with wide, round eyes, too terrified to move.

“What is it?” Si Qing asked from a short distance away.

“A child,” Si Ye said, guiding her to turn back. “I saw him by the bike shed this afternoon. His arm is broken—it’ll take at least a week to heal. I’m taking him back with me.”

Si Qing stopped in her tracks. “How old is he?”

“Looks about six or seven,” Si Ye replied. “I have no idea where he came from.”

“How pitiful,” Si Qing said softly. “Take me to see him.”

Si Ye sighed inwardly. This was exactly what he had feared. Si Qing was soft-hearted and a devout Buddhist; she would even go home to fetch food for any stray cat or dog she encountered. What more for a child?

The little brat was still where he had been. His first encounter with Si Ye hadn’t been pleasant, but his small brain had still realized that Si Ye was helping him. After that sharp crack, his hand finally stopped hurting. Although it still felt a bit uncomfortable, it no longer tormented him to the point of keeping him awake every night.

So when Si Qing approached, he didn’t hide. The woman knelt down, reached into her pocket, and pulled out the remaining half-pack of small cakes. She held them out. “Are you hungry, child?”

The little brat swallowed hard. The half-bun he’d eaten in the afternoon had long since been digested; at this moment, he could have devoured raw meat. He had been following a plump rat just now, but when Si Ye shone his light on it, the rat had scurried away.

He tentatively moved forward, and after noticing that Si Qing’s eyes were unfocused, he hesitated for a moment before suddenly reaching out and snatching the bag of cakes, devouring them ravenously.

“You little brat! What are you grabbing for?!” Si Ye barked. The child flinched and turned, disappearing into the bushes.

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