King of Reverse Scales

My name is Wang Kaixuan and I am sixteen years old. If fate is a card table, then I will definitely get bad cards that no one wants. My father broke his spine at a construction site and was bedridden for three years. The medical expenses ate up the last bit of the family's savings. My mother worked on a sewing machine in the town's garment factory during the day and stringed beads for people at night. The money she earned in a month was not enough for my father's painkillers for a week. I get up at four o'clock in the morning every day, feed the chickens, cook, help my father turn over and scrub, and then run the five-mile mountain road to attend classes at the middle school in the town. That's not even the worst. The landowner named Zhao in the village looked at our family as if he were looking at a piece of meat that he would have to swallow sooner or later. His son Zhao Dahu was my classmate, and he was also the gangster who blocked me in the toilet every day to "borrow money." His father, Zhao Youcai, was even more ruthless. He had long been eyeing my two acres of land by the river and tried every means to force us to sell the land. After school today, Zhao Dahu and his gang of followers stopped me again. But this time was different. I saw something I shouldn't have seen in his schoolbag - a photo of my mother that was secretly photographed while bending down to work in a garment factory. The photo was taken at an obscene angle and had disgusting words written on the back. I know that some things can no longer be tolerated. Even if I am a rural child who is so poor that I don't even have a pair of complete sneakers, even if I am so thin that I can be blown down by the wind, even if everyone says "accept your fate, boy from the Wang family"—but I don't. I want them to know that even the humblest grass has the strength to pierce through stones. This is my story, the story of a young boy fighting against the whole world with his flesh and blood.