48 Hours a Day

Chapter 57: Welcome to China!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Zhang Heng noticed his housemates craning their necks at something, so he too turned around to look.

His eyes fell on the Maneki-neko 1bracelet around the girl’s wrist and were immediately taken aback!

Back when he was in Tokyo, he had visited the Sensō-ji temple with Ameko, who gave him a teru teru bōzu 1; in return, Zhang Heng bought her a bracelet that was exactly like the one this girl was wearing.

So, Zhang Heng approached the girl and said something in Japanese. The girl’s eyes lit up at that as if he had just thrown her the lifesaver, quickly explaining to him in fleeting Japanese that she was in trouble!

Her name was Hayase Asuka, an exchange student at a university nearby who had only just arrived in China and was curious about everything here. So, before she could even learn enough Mandarin, she snuck out and wandered around on her own.

She did not know who the two other black men were. While she was out that night, taking pictures, they grabbed her phone! No matter how much she begged them, they refused to return it to her, and she panicked. Her Mandarin was terrible, and she could not understand what the people around were saying. If she went to the police for help, she was afraid that by then, the men would have been long gone with her phone.

Worse still, she had a profound sense of direction. Without her phone, she did not even know how to get back to school.

Zhang Heng felt that this girl must have been too humble when she said her Mandarin was awful—she had been here for almost three months already, yet she still did not know how to ask for help. She clearly paid no attention in class at all.

But as he had come to know about the situation, he felt that he could still be managed.

Zhang Heng turned to the two black men and said, “Give her phone back to her.”

Both of the men played dumb, shaking their heads like rattle drums, repeating, ‘I don’t know’ over and over again. Hayase Asuka was so mad, she wanted to lunge at them only to be held back by Zhang Heng! Yet, he patiently repeated what he said earlier in English.

More and more eyes were drawn to the commotion, and the black men were starting to get ticked off while hissing at Zhang Heng, “Mind your own business, chink!”

“There will always be idiots who won’t remember until they’ve been taught a lesson, right?” Zhang Heng muttered to himself. He had heard that derogative word the black man uttered, but instead of arguing with them, he threw a punch right at the man’s face!

He held nothing back, letting his fist break the man’s nose, which also sent a slight, sharp pain up his knuckles!

When the other guy saw his friend getting attacked, he was furious. His angry eyes and muscular physique looked menacing in the dark of the night.

Hayase Asuka took two steps backward, but Zhang Heng remained where he was.

The black guy raised a curled first, but before he could even swing it, all the customers sitting at the tables nearby got up.

The food street was mostly populated with university students, generally hot-blooded and unafraid, unlike the old and the middle-aged, who were more concerned about international relations. Most of the guys were already agitated when they saw Hayase Asuka’s eyes redden, and after hearing the conversation between Zhang Heng and the black men, especially that vilifying term the black men had used, they were even more outraged.

Ma Wei and the others got up from their seats to support Zhang Heng. They did think that their actions would lead to a chain reaction—when the other students saw that someone had taken the lead, they followed suit and stood up as well.

The outburst was so big that it drew even more people’s attention. It had everyone jabbering, trying to find out what was happening. More and more people joined in until the entire half of the alley was standing up!

Having never seen such a show of force before, the black exchange students were beside themselves.

The pressure of standing in the middle, surrounded by a mass of people, was unimaginable. Tonight, even if it were Tyson who was in this situation, he would have been terror-stricken too. The black man finally realized what a big mistake he and his friend had made.

Many of these exchange students were not exactly model citizens in their own countries. Only when they were no longer welcome there, did they escaped to this ancient, Eastern country, choosing whichever school they wanted, free accommodation, and could even apply for subsidies! With their pride and glory being part of the face-saving culture, whenever they had any sort of conflict with other students, the school would always stand by them for the sake of the bigger picture. So, eventually, after a while in this foreign country, they began to lose their bearings and became conceited.

Tonight, the both of them were out looking for fun, and when they spotted the Japanese girl, they thought of a heinous idea—grabbing the girl’s phone was not their real motive; what they really wanted to do was to use the phone to trick her into getting a room with them! They never expected there to be any impending problems, at least not running into Zhang Heng, who spoke fluent Japanese.

In their anger, they used an expression they often used back in their country.

Outraged by their slur, Zhang Heng had taken the first move and knocked one of them down. He could easily take down the other one even if they had to fight mano y mano.

He did not expect his roommates to get up from their seats and also the rest of the people who were eating along the streets to join in as well. Coming completely as a surprise, it was the first time he had seen something like this! He could only presume that because these assholes had been kept unchecked for too long, many people were wary of them.

In the end, Zhang Heng said to the other black man who was now petrified, “Welcome to China!”

The culprit then quickly returned the phone to Hayase Asuka, then ran away from the scene with his bloody-nosed friend.

Someone started to cheer, and the rest of the street followed.

Wei Jiangyang ran to his roommate, exhilarated. “That was incredible! We will be bragging about tonight ten years down the road! Did you see how, when everyone stood up together, that black men nearly wet his pants?!”

Ma Wei stuck out a thumb and said, “Virtuous macho men!”

The ecstatic one was Chen Huadong. He fumbled excitedly, “Since when did you learn how to speak Japanese? When did you learn Japanese?!! My god! Is that even natural? Is that even natural?! Is there anything you don’t know? Damn! That punch to his face was really cool! You have to teach me how to do it!”

Hayase Asuka did not understand a word of it, but she caught on to the atmosphere and was grinning ear to ear.

Zhang Heng said to her, “You better go back while it’s still early, and don’t come out alone late at night. But if you have to, at least learn some Mandarin.”

Hayase Asuka’s face flushed red as she answered in a small voice, “I have a few classmates from Japan. Their Mandarin is pretty good, and we usually hang out together. Are you an exchange student from Japan as well? Your Mandarin is so good, and you even know how to speak English as well.”

When Zhang Heng realized that she was mistaken, she shook his head, “I’m Chinese, but I’ve spent some time in Tokyo before.”