Garbage Devourer

In a junkyard baking at 43 degrees, Zhang Ergou has been doing the math for five years, and it still won’t add up. His mother’s dialysis is short by 8,000 yuan. His younger sister’s school fees are 120 yuan. His monthly salary is 4,200. The moment he collapsed from heatstroke, his nose woke up first. He could smell a roll of old gauze, hidden ten years ago, fifty meters away. And things got even stranger: A rusty scrap of iron from a heap of junk melted as soon as he put it in his mouth. He punched through a half-centimeter-thick toolbox without leaving so much as a mark on his hand. It turned out he could only swallow things people had thrown away. Swallow iron to gain strength, swallow aluminum to toughen up, swallow a mirror and see an old woman combing the hair of the daughter she’d lost twenty years ago. He thought he was the chosen one, until Old Zhao opened a drawer: Thirty years ago, his son Zhao Han had been exactly like him. Before leaving, he’d left behind six words: Dad, I’m fine. In the organization that had been hidden for thirty years, someone said that this kind of ability was already obsolete. But Zhang Ergou isn’t here to be a hero. He hasn’t felt the cold air of an ATM booth in five years. He keeps the old things he can swallow for those who have been forgotten. The things he can’t swallow: his mother’s dialysis bill, Xiaoyu’s report card, the half a steamed bun Tietou gave him… He’ll protect with his life.