I. Zhu Weichang
Zhu Weichang, the Mayor of Berlin, liked nothing more than staying in his villa and inviting friends over to hold forth on grand topics. These friends were all Infernals.
He wore black-framed glasses. He was fat and tall. Red skin, yellow cheeks—these were his most distinct features. Even someone who had met him only once could never forget him.
He was born in Tianjin. His father, Zhu Changbo, then the deputy mayor of Berlin, met an Infernal woman in Tianjin and fathered him with her.
During his childhood, he was often ridiculed by classmates for his appearance. “The yellow-brown pig.” He was abnormally obese from birth, gaining weight even from drinking water. Tianjin at the time, restricted by the Infernal Control Act, prohibited diagnosing Infernals.
It was not until Zhu Changbo secured his position in Berlin that he brought him and his mother to Berlin to care for them. Though Berlin at this time was still human-supremacist, because his father held power, Zhu Weichang could legitimately receive higher education and advanced medical care.
Zhu Weichang suffered from congenital obesity. He relied on daily medication to sustain himself. Even after reaching Berlin, he was still frequently mocked by classmates. This mocking lasted his entire student life.
Until he got to know Hubery Phillip.
II. Hubery
He was five years older than Hubery. He regarded Hubery like a younger brother. Hubery was one of the few people who did not discriminate against him.
Hubery was an important figure in his path into politics. The early acts—those repealing the discriminatory clauses in the Act—were carried out under Hubery’s push. At times, Zhu Weichang even felt that Hubery was the elder brother. He often felt he lived in Hubery’s shadow.
That shadow was warm. An infant picked up from a trash heap, walking all the way to the History Department of Humboldt University, and then onto the squares of Berlin to give speeches. Zhu Weichang stood behind him like a shrub shaded by a giant tree. But shrubs could grow too.
After the Great Purge in Prague, Infernals remained the dominant race in Prague. Though the new mayor was a human, he could hardly command authority. Under Hubery’s matchmaking, Zhu Weichang became the acting mayor of Prague.
This was an unprecedented case in history.
Zhu Weichang governed Prague “from the air,” while remaining in Berlin himself.
He did not return to Prague. He was afraid of the cold.
III. The Medicine Bottle
His father had already passed away when he was in university. In the beginning, he hated his father deeply—why marry an Infernal? If he hadn’t married an Infernal, this situation wouldn’t have arisen. He also hated his mother intensely.
His mother suffered from asthma. Her death was also extremely unexpected.
At the time, asthma medication was controlled. Only eight- or nine-year-old Zhu Weichang was at home. When he saw his mother having an asthma attack, he searched the house top to bottom for the medicine but couldn’t find it. He went out to buy it and even had a rib broken.
After returning home battered and embarrassed, he discovered there was actually a bottle inside the cabinet.
But before it was handed to his mother, she had already passed away.
Of course, this was his own account.
His father did not blame him either, considering it merely an “accident.”
With Zhu Changbo’s death, Zhu Weichang finally mentioned this matter to Hubery after drinking.
“She kept coughing. Like she couldn’t breathe.”
Zhu Weichang held his wine glass. His fingers slowly stroked the glass wall.
“I just clutched the medicine like that. I just wouldn’t give it to her.”
He took a sip of wine.
“She begged me. But I just wouldn’t give it to her. Quite funny, really.”
He spoke as he drank. His tone was flat. Like telling someone else’s story.
Hubery was already drunk by then. He didn’t hear clearly what Zhu Weichang was saying at all. His head rested on the table, one hand still holding the empty glass.
“How did your mother actually die?” Hubery used to ask him that all the time.
“Died of illness,” he would always reply as well.
IV. Sara
Hubery’s mother was named Sara.
Sara died on the same day as Zhu Weichang’s mother—in a different year.
Sara was an ordinary Infernal woman. She was oppressed by the government her entire life. However, she did not suffer too much pain. She died of old age.
At the funeral, Hubery sobbed. He did not close his eyes all night.
Publicly, he claimed his mother Sara lived to be 98 years old. In reality, she was only 61. Infernals were not a long-lived race either.
Bray attended the funeral. Aie Koichi did not come—because he had already passed away the previous year.
This old man who had once slammed the table and pointed toward Quila at the Third Global Workers’ Congress, this worker leader who had repealed several pages of the Act, this old man who had sat in the corner at banquets watching table after table of people with sharp eyes—was dead.
No obituary. No monument. No one knew how he died.
V. The Person in the Room
After Sara’s death, Hubery seemed like a changed man.
He locked himself in his room, reading historical works.
Some said he was crushed by grief. Some said he had gone mad. Only he himself knew what was wrong.
Zhu Weichang did not understand why he had become like this either. Hubery no longer drank wine. Nor did he care about politics. All day long, he just read books.
When awake, he read. When tired, he slept.
He was not married. Nor did he have children.
What books he was reading, no one knew. Zhu Weichang once pushed the door open and entered, seeing the room stacked full of books from floor to ceiling. Hubery sat in the middle, like sitting inside a well.
“What are you reading?” Zhu Weichang asked.
Hubery raised his head. His eyes were red. Not from crying. From going too long without sleep.
“Reading how we got to this point.”
He turned a page.
“Reading from the very first page.”
Until one day, Zhu Weichang called to him from outside the door. He did not respond.
Later, he went to the hospital.
Later still, he was buried in Berlin.
The funeral was small. Zhu Weichang stood before the grave. The wind blew past, dusting off the ashes on his black-framed glasses. He looked down at that gray granite—the same color as those tombstones in Prague.
He said a sentence in his heart. No one heard those words.
Epilogue: The Son
Every year, Zhu Weichang went to sweep the grave with his son, Zhu Zhongzheng.
His son was a pure-blood Infernal. Red skin, no yellow cheeks. He looked like his mother.
“Uncle Hubery was an outstanding liberator,” Zhu Weichang squatted before the tombstone, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder. “He fought for a great deal on behalf of us Infernals.”
He always instructed his son this way.
Zhu Zhongzheng nodded. He looked seven or eight years old, wearing a small black coat. He looked at the inscription on the tombstone, then raised his head to look at his father.
“I will become a person like Uncle Hubery too.”
His voice was still childish.
“Driving the humans out of our homeland.”
Zhu Weichang looked at his son.
He said nothing. He pulled his son close, holding him in his arms.
The wind blew through Berlin’s cemetery. Engraved on the tombstone was the name Hubery Phillip. Beneath it were no dates of birth or death—Zhu Weichang had paid for it, requesting it to be kept simple.
The row of tombstones beside it bore earlier names. Beside those were earlier ones still.
Beneath every stone was buried someone who had once hated another.
—End of Chapter 9.