At 9:00 PM.
Typhoon Rodney indeed passed over North Island right on schedule.
The outermost ring of high-rises in the Walled City was submerged, swaying in the vast ocean of the rainy night.
The Ju’an Building, located in the inner ring, was relatively better off.
Rainwater meandered on the windowpane, flowing like rivers and blending the neon lights of the distant city into a blurry impression of a painting of reds and greens.
He Qinghong stood by the window, adjusting the focus wheel of his handheld telescope.
About a hundred meters northwest from this window stood an old longan tree with lush branches and leaves. On sunny days, flocks of birds hopped about there, the dipping and vanishing pheasant tails peeking through the leaves, the patterns evolved by the male birds for courtship looking like strange spots of light under the sun.
Now, only a half-grown white munia chick remained.
Its parents probably hadn’t made it back in time during the typhoon.
The strong wind had overturned the nest, forcing the white munia that was still learning to fly to finally leave it. It spread its wings and flew into the distance until it crashed into a pane of brown glass.
He Qinghong put down his telescope. The plastic-cased landline phone on the round table by the window rang; he had been waiting for this call.
When it rang for the fourth time, He Qinghong sat down on the rattan chair and picked up the receiver with his left hand. For a while, both in the room and the other end of the phone were silent, except for the sound of breathing.
“The goods are yours. The wind is strong. Clean up yourself, don’t leave a tail.”
After saying that, the other end hung up.
He Qinghong lifted his cold eyelids, his gaze fixed on the black suitcase in the corner of the room. The suitcase was shaking slightly, its contents bumping softly against the corner wall.
……
The mirror above the washbasin reflected Xin Hexue in his simple, soft pajamas. He had washed his face with a towel, and after rinsing it, he wrung the towel dry and hung it indoors for now.
This room had no balcony; drying laundry required going out to the corridor, and that was only possible on sunny days.
At the far end of the corridor was the public kitchen for the entire floor. He and Liao had just moved in today, and over the whole day, they had only managed to clean and tidy the room to a habitable level.
Fortunately, although this room was supposedly a storage room, it was clear someone had lived here before. The shower room, toilet, and bedroom, although narrow, had all the necessary facilities like water supply and were fully decorated with finished walls. The interior layout had clear functional divisions. They had hired two workers to move out the old, dusty furniture, carry it downstairs, and throw it out, then bring in new beds, a sofa, tables, chairs, and some miscellaneous items.
As for everything else, they could only add them gradually while living here.
Even with the room initially organized, after a whole day, the surface of the washed oak floor was still covered with a damp sheen, let alone having the leisure to cook in the public kitchen.
Xin Hexue ate the wontons that Zhou Liao had brought back from a shop downstairs and put down the bowl and spoon.
He poured the goldfish in the bag along with the water into the newly bought fish tank.
When the shower room door creaked open, Xin Hexue stared at the swimming goldfish in the tank and spoke softly. “Zhou Liao.”
“I said I wanted a square fish tank. Why is it round?”
Zhou Liao, who was drying his hair, paused his movements, hurried over to Xin Hexue, and explained with hand signs;
—The shop owner said square ones are out of stock. Is a round one not okay? Round ones are very cute.
“But curved glass causes light refraction. The view for the goldfish is distorted. Continuous visual distortion increases their stress and affects their eye health.”
Xin Hexue didn’t expect Zhou Liao to understand the principles. This man couldn’t even write the character for “bay” and Xin Hexue suspected he had never received any formal education. So, simply letting Zhou Liao know that he was very dissatisfied was enough. He crossed his arms and looked at the fish tank. “And this round fish tank has such a small capacity.”
For some reason, Xin Hexue even inexplicably had a fleeting illusion that he and the goldfish in this tank were sharing the same plight. He felt trapped, his chest felt tight and suffocated, and there was an indescribable irritability.
His emotions were fluctuating wildly, possibly a mix of extreme anxiety, fear, anger, or depression. The debuff of paranoia was slowly taking effect, and the initial symptoms were beginning to surface.
Zhou Liao frantically made gestures:
—I’ll go buy a new fish tank tomorrow, okay?
Xin Hexue said expressionlessly, “What does that mean? I can’t understand it.”
Zhou Liao looked for paper and pen, wrote it down neatly stroke by stroke, and placed it in front of Xin Hexue.
This time, Xin Hexue simply closed his eyes.
This made Zhou Liao anxious and helpless, and he circled around him frantically.
[Acting like a bratty little cat, so cute…]
[Snow Cat is here to be an emperor, how dare you disobey openly and covertly, and defy the little cat emperor’s command! Someone, drag him out!]
[Just asking, are the ones in the fish tank the Snow Cat’s emergency food supply?]
Xin Hexue opened his eyes and suddenly said, “You are not allowed to wear clothes.”
Zhou Liao stood still, stunned.
Xin Hexue frowned. “Can’t you understand?”
A crimson color instantly climbed to the roots of Zhou Liao’s ears. Even though he couldn’t speak, his flustered demeanor gave off a sense of “stammering and hemming and hawing.”
Zhou Liao had just come out of the shower. Even in this cold, windy and rainy weather, he seemed unaffected, wearing only a tank top and shorts, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, a robust build. Now, after taking off his tank top as well, his lean and defined muscle lines were exposed fully before Xin Hexue.
When Zhou Liao reached for his waistband, Xin Hexue quickly stopped him. “Stop.”
He gave the order. “Just like this is fine.”
Xin Hexue had K turn on the barrage and found that this level of nudity didn’t cause the live stream camera to cut to black or shift focus to a vase.
He looked at Zhou Liao, who was standing there bewildered. “…Let’s wash up and sleep.”
Even when Zhou Liao pressed him against the headboard and into the soft quilt on the spring mattress, Xin Hexue still faintly felt an uncomfortable sense of being watched.
But he had already ruled out the live stream factor now.
Was it feedback from the symptoms of paranoia?
The humid heat made a thin, glistening pink flush rise on his skin, like the flesh of a peeled lychee.
Thunder rumbled over the city, and rain pattered noisily against the windows, intertwining. They embraced each other like two tropical fish, washed together into the vast ocean.
…..
It seemed the neighbor really wouldn’t play the violin at night.
Because they had other things to keep them busy.
He Qinghong opened the brass clasp of the suitcase. The living creature inside abruptly lunged out, right towards his face!
What on earth was this thing?!
In the flash of an instant, he swiftly reached out and grabbed it. Without wearing gloves, the touch was immediately a slimy, disgusting sensation. With a “bang,” He Qinghong flung the creature to the other end of the room.
He used great force, and the creature hit the opposite wall heavily before sliding wetly down to the floor.
A reflective wet trail was left on the dark green wallpaper.
The shape it had when it first lunged at him could be compared to a fruit bat without its torso and head.
Now it lay limp on the floor, like a pile of mud, squirming.
He Qinghong was only responsible for the tasks assigned by the organization: kill the designated target. This stolen good was something he was required to take in an additional task. He originally thought they would send someone to collect it, but tonight he was told the goods were his, and to clean up quickly.
A flash of lightning from the night sky penetrated the curtains, illuminating the entire room with a white, glaring light.
The next moment, as thunder rumbled and exploded against his eardrums, He Qinghong fired three shots in succession.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The black, sludge-like creature stopped moving, no different from a piece of toilet paper soaked in a puddle of dirty water.
He Qinghong’s pistol was equipped with a silencer and sound-absorbing pass. Even so, the gunshots could still possibly travel through the walls to the other side.
……..
“Zhou… Zhou Liao…”
Xin Hexue’s whole body was flushed, and his semi-long satin-like black hair spread out on the pillow, sticky with the sweat dampening his temples.
Seaweed-like black strands, and a figure as graceful as a willow; he was like a harmless yet gorgeous water ghost from supernatural tales.
“Did you… hear gunshots…?”
His eyes were watery with unshed tears, looking at Zhou Liao in confusion and not fully processing what had happened.
Zhou Liao shook his head, remaining silent, but swelled another size larger.
‘Auditory hallucinations?’
Xin Hexue’s chest heaved violently, and his pupils gradually began to lose focus.
………
At midnight, He Qinghong appeared downstairs holding a black umbrella, his tall, straight frame like a long, shadowy ghostly figure.
The sagging shape of the plastic bag suggested it contained something heavy, like meat.
He walked towards the garbage station, his footsteps echoing in the deep, narrow alleys between the buildings.
“Plop.”
The pile of now unconscious, rotten meat with no nerve reflexes was thrown onto the mountain-like pile of garbage.
He Qinghong stared in that direction for a while, confirming the goods were thoroughly dead, before turning back.
By the time the typhoon had passed and the horizon was turning the whitish color of a fish’s belly, a drunk man holding a beer bottle staggered step by step from the bar alley towards home.
His teeth were yellow, and he slurred his curses, “Damn woman, such heavy rain last night, didn’t even know to bring an umbrella for your man! Just wait ’til I beat… beat you to death!”
He waved the beer bottle in his hand.
Swish…
Swish…
“Fuck!” The drunkard looked down at the black mud clinging to his calf like a leech. “It moves? What the hell is this? It scared the *** out of me!”
The pile of mud arched up, a deep, abyss-like mouth splitting open in its center, filled with densely packed, sharp shark-like teeth, all of which instantly sank into the drunkard’s flesh and blood!
Once swallowed into the mouth, the flesh and blood of the fat drunkard immediately dissolved as if in concentrated sulfuric acid, turning into a bloody, yellowish liquid.
Finally, the black mud retracted from the narrow path and hid back into the garbage pile, leaving only filthy water floating with a few strands of blood on the green bricks.
It coiled its formless body and squeezed itself onto a piece of soft velvet cloth.
The surrounding environment was so stinky even the small monster would disdain it, but only this soft cloth retained a faint trace of fragrance.
It was the soft cloth Xin Hexue had previously used to wipe his violin strings, but it was old and had been thrown into the garbage station.
The small monster looked towards the distant Ju’an Building.
Although it was born lacking a brain structure, its biological instincts told it that it couldn’t go there yet, and it was best not to leave this place that could mask its presence.
It could smell that within this city block, there was a same kind several times more powerful than itself, and it was very likely to be torn apart.
But it couldn’t stay here forever either. In fact, it wasn’t old enough to hunt independently yet. When those people dug it out, it was still feeding on the nutrients of its dead mother body.
Without a host mother body, it would soon die.
The little monster’s mouth opened, with rows upon rows of shark-like teeth filling the space, and moved as if mumbling.
“Mother……”
It held onto the soft velvet cloth, like holding a security blanket.
