Do Not Do Unto Others

Fate placed a rusted key in my hand, so I could open a door that had never known the light.

My name is Xu Wenzhuan, a name burdened with laughable expectations. The bruises from my father's fists and the sound of my mother's bottles shattering made up the only rhythm of my childhood. They wove violence and numbness into a net and imprisoned me in an abyss, where even going to school was a distant hope. But I was determined to carve out a path for myself: I did odd jobs for a traveling opera troupe, gathering the slightest hope amid heavy makeup, greasepaint, and wavering songs; I evaded the filthy hands reaching for me in the corners of the troupe at night; I traded the sweat- and blood-stained coins I earned for books, then stepped into school to face a new round of humiliation.

With my nails, my teeth, and a will that grew wild in silence, I crawled out of the mire. In the end, I became Xu Pei, a clean and respectable-sounding name, and a criminal investigator standing in the sunlight. I thought this was the beginning of my life turning around. Only when I met people I could trust with my back did I understand: fate's script is never easily rewritten. Just as I finally learned to love someone, just as I was finally loved in return, I had to face the ultimate choice.

Born human, I was subjected to everything I would never wish upon another. I crossed every darkness with my own flesh and blood, but was I trying to reach the light, or to become the light itself and illuminate others one last time?

Theme: What we would never wish upon ourselves should not be inflicted on others. We must bring it to an end within ourselves.