Chapter One: Berlin or Kiel (Three)

  In the pitch-black wooden shed, the fire in the small coal stove was burning fiercely, with boiling water churning up and down in the kettle, and scalding steam constantly squeezing against the lid, making a loud rattling sound. Annie was still cheering and jumping for joy, but Wang Haitian snatched back the letter, stuffed it deep into his breast pocket, and plunged headfirst into the darkness.

  A spark of fire flashed through the darkness, accompanied by the pungent smell of white phosphorus. Wang Haitie lifted the lampshade off the kerosene lamp and lit the wick with a match. In an instant, the dark little room began to have a faint glimmer of light.

  And there's no more kerosene. Looking at the almost empty kerosene lamp, Wang Haitie couldn't help but take out a few nickels from her pocket and fiddle with them anxiously. Thanks to the 1889 strike that left countless dead and injured, the Empire compromised with the workers and established a relatively well-off public welfare system, allowing Wang Haitie to receive a meager relief fund.

  Wang Haitie, who has a accounting certificate, counted with her fingers and patiently calculated these arithmetics that even elementary school students would not bother to do, allowing the hard life to continue.

  "It seems like another considerable expense..."

  "Heidi, child, aren't you going to school?" A weak and aged voice came from the depths of the wooden hut, followed by the creaking of the bed boards.

  That was the voice of Heidi's ailing mother Hettie Sellem, and King Heidi hastily picked up the kerosene lamp and walked over.

  "Heather, I've already graduated from high school."

  As the candlelight drew nearer, Hester's gaunt figure gradually emerged from the shadows. In less than three months, Hester's illness had taken a drastic turn for the worse, and she was now in the terminal stages of cancer. She lay bedridden, gasping for breath, her body sunken from lack of nourishment, with every rib and vertebra visible beneath her skin. Her hair had fallen out completely, leaving only a bald skull, and in the dim candlelight, Hester looked like a specter risen from the depths of hell.

  When Wang Haiting first crossed over, Heather was already in the middle stage of cancer. She hid her illness from her family and took good care of Wang Haiting, who had severe head injuries from saving her. She left the best food and expensive medicine for Haiting until she could no longer get out of bed. Affected by the pain, Heather had long been blind and was often confused. However, as a mother's instinctual love for her son, she still cared about Haiting's studies.

  Wang Haitian crossed over and inexplicably occupied the body of Heidi-Xi Laimu, inexplicably enjoying the pure love of Hester and Freesia. Since she couldn't go back, Wang Haitian also regarded Hester and Freesia as her own family members, determined to take good care of them and fulfill the obligations that Heidi-Xi Laimu should have fulfilled.

  "Oh, is it dinner time already?" Heather asked with a mumble: "Time to eat, huh."

  Wang Haitie nodded, pulled over the small dining table covered with a piece of cloth, and placed on it a cup of brown sugar water and a dry black bread. Hester did not have the strength to eat by herself, so Wang Haitie helped her up, broke the hard black bread into small pieces, and fed them to her one by one with the brown sugar water.

  "Heidi, why aren't you eating?" Hester asked, looking at her son who hadn't touched his bowl, knife or fork from start to finish.

  "I've eaten." Before long, the small piece of black bread disappeared from Wang Haidi's fingertips. Wang Haidi hid in the shadow of the lamp and rubbed her growling stomach, explaining: "Recently I've been helping Mr. Schweikart take care of his fruit stand, and as payment I get two meals a day."

  Heather was the second daughter of the fisherman Schneider family in Haikendorf, who had only attended a few days of church school and knew little. She didn't understand Treitschke's pan-Germanism or Hoffmann von Fallersleben's idealism. She simply wanted Heidi to learn more with her limited life experience, being single-minded and stubborn. In Heather's view, which spoiled the child, Heidi shouldn't be buried in Kiel Harbor. He should go to Berlin University, where he was interested in psychology, and compete with Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche.

  Wang Haitie didn't dare tell Hester that he was working as a dockworker, nor did he dare tell her that he had secretly signed up for the entrance exam at Kiel Naval Academy and might be admitted. Wang Haitie didn't want to upset the seriously ill Hester, so he had to use the kind-hearted Mr. Shrek as a shield.

  "Mr. Shrek is a good man, they helped us a lot, Heidi, you must repay this kindness in the future." Hester said, half sitting on the bed, holding Heidi's hand and entrusting her.

  Wang Haitian nodded, although Hester couldn't see him, but he believed that with the tacit understanding between mother and son, she must have understood Wang Haitian's choice. Wang Haitian brought over a basin of water, helped Hester wipe her body clean, grabbed the medicine box from the table, and supported Hester as she took the medicine.

  The painkillers in the medicine box are almost gone, another hefty expense. Thinking back to the days when he splurged money on Taobao and JD.com like water, Wang Haitian, once a rich and handsome man, felt so humiliated that he wanted to cry.

  Hathaway was bedridden, and no medicine could stop the approach of death. It's worth noting that even in a technologically advanced future, cancer remains an incurable global disease. All that Heidie can do is prepare enough painkillers to make her final journey less painful. Unfortunately, even this simple wish was something that Heidie, who had vowed to save the world, could no longer support.

  Before Fritzi left, the money he had given to Haidi was almost gone, and Haidi's meager salary was not enough to support the expensive medicine. Haidi hesitated and whispered: "The chemical plant in Catherine's house is recruiting workers, thirty fen a day, and they also provide a meal, Heathrow, I think I'll go..."

  Katherine was Heidi's classmate at Timm Krueger Middle School, her father being Dirk Keil, a business magnate in Kiel with many factories and trading companies. Since Katherine's mother, Vera, found out that Heidi started hanging out with her only daughter, she has been trying to break them apart.

  Vilani wanted to let go of Haitian, in exchange for a decent job introduction, but Haitian refused. It wasn't because Haitian had fallen in love with Catherine, but rather Vilani's icy tone offended the last bit of Haitian's pitiful self-respect. But now, Haitian couldn't care less about this self-respect that can't be eaten as food. In the face of a loved one's life and death, how much is a boy's dignity worth?

  "Westphal, don't go! Your future is not in Kiel's dirty and dark factories, but in the spacious and bright classrooms of Berlin University!" Hester wiped her head with force, grasping Heidi's sleeve, a weak and pale face with a hint of anger. "If you're short of money, ask your uncle Schneider to lend some; he'll definitely do it for the sake of his deceased father."

  "Uncle Schneider..." Wang Haitian snorted. It's better to believe in Andersen's fairy tales than to expect Schneider to lend money, because Schneider had come to his door several times to collect debts, and Wang Haitian was forced to put aside his dignity as a rich second-generation son and an official second-generation daughter-in-law, and deviated from the behavior of a house man, going to the dock to "move bricks".

  Wang Haitie decided to let the facts rot in her stomach, gazing at the broken ceiling and mocking herself: "Heather, I'm sorry, I didn't get into Berlin University."

  "Didn't get in......" Hester was slightly surprised, and then she began to comfort her only child. "The University of Berlin is the pride of the German nation, it's no big deal if you can't get in, going to Kiel University is just as good. Heidi, don't give up on your ideals, don't give up on reading, once you put down your books, you'll really have no chance of making a name for yourself in this life."

  Heidi Wang had heard this many times before, and it was a phrase that her nagging mother would tirelessly repeat. Unfortunately, at the time, Heidi was young and arrogant, blinded by her family's wealth, and didn't understand the depth of those words. Now, after having suffered enough, Heidi has begun to appreciate her mother's good intentions, but some things are too late to hear.

  Is it the ideal of marrying a beautiful wife because I liked my young kindergarten teacher when I was a kid? Is it the ideal of studying psychology because I liked watching "Detective Conan" when I was younger? Is it the ideal of replacing Ximen Qing because I crossed cultures and fantasized about it in my youth? Or is it the ideal of saving the world on a certain day and month, without wearing underwear inside out or spitting spider silk, just to show off, provoked by an old Taoist priest? Or is it now, because I couldn't shake off poverty and self-abasement, hoping to have a good meal and rest for a day?

  "To hell with the imperial ambitions, to hell with the lone hero, to hell with the passionate adventure!" Wang Haitian felt a surge of resentment in her heart, and let out a sigh without thinking. All sorts of promises and guarantees came to mind, which finally calmed down the worried Hester. After Hester fell asleep, Wang Haitian didn't want to waste lamp oil, so she quickly extinguished it, and fumbled in the dark to wash the bowls and chopsticks clean in the sink.

  Taking advantage of the faint light that seeped through the ceiling, Wang Haitie crouched over the small dining table and carefully picked up the remaining breadcrumbs on the table and pinched them into her mouth.

  "This is a small girlfriend who carefully cooked roasted chicken for me, sprinkled with sesame oil and scallions, added a little refined salt. The color is bright and the aroma is pungent but not greasy. I'll eat its thigh first..." Heiti closed her eyes, trying to emulate the optimistic spirit of predecessors like Kong Yiji, Xu San Guan, and Chaplin. The breadcrumbs melted in her mouth, leaving no aftertaste at all. Wang Heiti's face was filled with joy, pressing against her rumbling stomach, she picked up a large cup of water and gulped it down."

  A floor-to-ceiling mirror was placed behind a long coat rack at the entrance of a wooden shed. In the mirror, the boy's stuff looked quite comical as he grasped at air and puckered his lips. The Chaplin-style silent film had been playing for ten minutes before it ended. The boy in the mirror hugged a large cup of water and drank with relish, then burped contentedly and teased the air, saying, "Yeah, too much salt, too salty..."

  Note

  Heinrich von Treitschke: A German historian who coined the phrase "War is God's way of teaching the Germans geography" and had a huge impact on Germany, with some even joking that he triggered World War I.

  2. Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche: Richard Wagner was a great German musician and philosopher, and Nietzsche was also a great German philosopher, and the two were also sworn enemies who would stop at nothing to destroy each other.

  Hoffmann von Fallersleben: German poet who wrote the poem "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles".