He Qinghong stopped in front of room 511, then he knocked twice on the door.
“Xin Hexue, did you get a dog?” he asked.
Behind the door, Xin Hexue was hurriedly fastening the buttons on his diagonal collar. His black hair was still slightly messy and sticking up, all from the earlier commotion.
The slightly warm identity card printed characters with ample ink.
[It’s time for the live stream audience’s beloved prime time program, catching the adulterer at midnight.]
[Seeing this, we can’t help but ask, what is a dog? A carnivorous mammal of the family Canidae, genus Canis, also known as “canine,” one of the “Six Domestic Animals.” If this refers to a biological dog, then this late-returning lover guessed completely wrong. But from an ethical perspective, his lover was secretly raising dogs behind his back, and not just one.]
[For a human being to be so infatuated they act like a dog for another human is truly an emotion this AI editor cannot comprehend.]
[While it’s unbearably amusing, we can’t help but recall that thought-provoking philosophical question: If you are not a dog, how do you understand a dog’s happiness?]
[The above is the report brought to you by this station’s AI editor.]
[Advertisement: The internal system for the game “Who Can Survive” has launched a new feature. Just sign your name on the identity card to adopt a virtual pet dog. You can carry it with you, it can sing and dance, and there is no need to feed or walk it…a blessing for lazy people!]
[Signature area: ….. ]
“Are they placing ads even here?” Xin Hexue murmured.
He shook the identity card. He now had 30 points. The first five questions were worth 5 points each, and the sixth was 10 points. There was one question in the middle he hadn’t answered.
His thin eyelids lifted, looking towards the door.
Because there was no sound or answer from inside for a long time, the person outside had already taken out a key.
The brass key was inserted into the keyhole.
Xin Hexue had indeed given He Qinghong a key to 511 earlier.
The diagonal collar buttons were neatly fastened, but after thinking, Xin Hexue undid the top one.
………..
The moment He Qinghong opened the door, the young man behind it crashed into his embrace, clutching him as if grabbing a lifeline.
His large hand touched the narrow waist. The cheongsam’s cut fit the curve of the waist closely. Through the delicate fabric, the body heat seemed to scorch He Qinghong’s palm, making him jerk back as if burned, and he didn’t know where to put his hands.
He quickly noticed that the young man clinging tightly to him was trembling uncontrollably, fine sweat dampening his temples.
He Qinghong, who had originally hidden his left hand behind his back, brought out a bouquet of flowers and handed it to Xin Hexue. He carefully lifted his chin and observed his pale complexion. “What’s wrong?”
Xin Hexue held the bouquet in his arms. It was a bunch of white lilies, their trumpet-shaped petals were spread out, tinged with a bit of bluish-green and brimming with glistening night dew.
Pure, unblemished white…this was how he saw Xin Hexue in his heart.
Because he was thinking of him, He Qinghong stopped by the flower shop on his way and bought a bouquet.
The pale pink lips trembled slightly, and Xin Hexue looked up at him. “I killed someone.”
He Qinghong was stunned.
He tilted his head, his gaze moving past the young man to look at the room behind him.
……..
Dismemberment, disposal, burial…
He Qinghong didn’t ask anything. He just helped his neighbor, who had “accidentally killed someone,” with the cleanup.
Even though the corpse seemed to have been dead for a long time, the fat in the skin and flesh had long since drained away.
It was a withered, dried up corpse with only a layer of skin left.
Perhaps the little monster had eaten all the eyeballs from the centipede part, and the eyeballs happened to be the containers storing the strange being’s power. The strange creature was now “dead” again, completely lost of its power and returned to its original state.
By the time He Qinghong saw it, it was a corpse with limbs no different from an ordinary human’s, without the eerie thousand feet.
The last part of the corpse was finally buried.
He Qinghong put away his tools. The moon happened to show its face from behind the dark clouds, its light clear and dazzling.
When he went to a row of public sinks to clean and disinfect, Xin Hexue followed quietly behind him.
“Qinghong.” Xin Hexue’s voice was very soft. The form of address had naturally transitioned from the distant “Mr. He” to his given name.
A cold, subtle fragrance pressed against his side.
“You seem quite proficient at…burying a body,” Xin Hexue said, omitting the first two words of the phrase.
Just like before burying, the first step should be “killing”.
He Qinghong’s pitch-black eyes met the young man’s, his thin lips pressed into a straight line.
Sensing danger, the little monster tried to separate from the shadow at Xin Hexue’s feet several times, but was firmly stepped on by its Mother.
He Qinghong squeezed a pump of disinfectant hand sanitizer into his palm. “Mm.”
‘Was he admitting it openly?’
The identity card in Xin Hexue’s waist pocket grew warm.
“The thing we just buried, is it related to ‘dungeons’ or the ‘game’?” He Qinghong asked.
Their dark eyes met.
……….
That night, the rain continued to fall persistently. The door was suddenly slammed open once again.
He Qinghong had replaced the two goldfish in the square fish tank. At the sound, their tails swayed sharply as they dodged, creating ripples.
Then, curious again, they came forward to watch the room’s owner and his lover, their bulging fish eyes perched on their heads.
The bed groaned under the weight of two people with a “creak”.
This made Gu Mifeng, who was about to crawl out, stop again, his elbows propping up his body.
‘No way? After burying a corpse, they still had the mood for this?’
‘Is this He guy so perverted?’
Gu Mifeng’s expression changed repeatedly as he lay under the bed, unable to advance or retreat.
The bed wasn’t very high off the ground, and the space was cramped. Once someone lay down on the bed and started moving, the spring mattress would creak and groan.
He Qinghong was not unfamiliar with this sound. On the typhoon night when Zhou Liao moved in, he had bumped into Xin Hexue, making the bed creak along with them.
He Qinghong said in a low voice, “It might hurt a little.”
Xin Hexue: “…Mm, go ahead.”
Gu Mifeng scowled.
‘Isn’t this too much?’
‘And aren’t you pregnant?’
He inwardly cursed in his mind.
‘Will that He guy trick Xin Hexue by saying something like just rubbing without going in?’
“Ah!”
A soft cry containing a slight pain rang out, the soft tone like a kitten’s whimper.
Gu Mifeng slammed the bed frame.
He crawled out from under the bed like a malevolent ghost. “That’s enough, you two. Do you need me to hand you a condom?”
When he stood up, he was dumbfounded.
He Qinghong was kneeling on the bed. Xin Hexue’s feet were resting on his knees, one of his ankles swollen.
It was the bag of ice He Qinghong was holding against it that made Xin Hexue cry out softly.
“…You weren’t doing it,” Gu Mifeng said awkwardly.
He brushed the dust off his clothes.
He Qinghong’s cold gaze swept over him, glanced at the floor under the bed, and he let out a sneer.
Xin Hexue turned his head away, unable to bear the sight. He looked out the window, and sighed.
He finally understood why even though He Qinghong had openly admitted it, he only got 2.5 points out of a full 5 for the third question.
Turns out the other 2.5 would come from here.
………..
Once the sedative wore off, the suppressed panic flared up again and rushed in like a tide.
This caused Xin Hexue to fall while going up the stairs and he sprained his ankle.
Which was why He Qinghong carried him back.
Fortunately, reducing the swelling promptly and massaging away the bruise prevented Xin Hexue’s ankle from swelling badly the next day.
Generally speaking, the early stages of pregnancy require extra care, and a serious fall could easily lead to a miscarriage.
But perhaps it was because Xin Hexue was carrying a little monster in his belly, so the pregnancy was very stable. That night, Xin Hexue could even hear the little monster’s soft snoring after it fell asleep in the uterus.
When He Qinghong went out the next day, he carried him to Gu Mifeng’s clinic so that someone could take care of him.
It wasn’t because He Qinghong was particularly magnanimous or had the upbringing of a modern-era main wife, but because he understood that Gu Mifeng and Xin Hexue were both “players.”
Although he didn’t fully understand what the term exactly meant, he vaguely grasped that players were not people of this world, and for these people, this world was fictional.
Regardless, Gu Mifeng and Xin Hexue were probably teammates in the same camp, so when he had to go out, he entrusted Xin Hexue to this person for the time being.
However, he had greatly overestimated Gu Mifeng’s moral bottom line and his integrity against stealing what he was guarding.
Assistant Xiao Huang had gone out for purchases and there were hardly any patients.
Xin Hexue couldn’t stand the little monster that kept snoring all day, so he woke the little monster up.
He held the shadowy little black dog in his hand, kneading and squishing it. Its texture was somewhat similar to a stray puppy one might find in a haystack on a rainy night, a bit soft and damp, and it nudged him with its black nose.
“Mother.”
Having been shaken awake, the little black dog snuggled up to Xin Hexue without complaint.
By the time Gu Mifeng came out of the kitchen, carrying dinner amidst the swirl of cooking fumes, intending to win over his cheap stepson with his culinary skills and delicious food, the little black dog had already been forced to learn addition and subtraction within eight.
As for why it was within eight, it was because its front paws added up to only eight toes that could be used for counting.
There should have been ten originally, but the dewclaws on the inside were too small, Xin Hexue always forgot about them, so they couldn’t be counted.
“I just taught you this, how do you read it?”
Xin Hexue held a small colored card.
Gu Mifeng looked and saw a color-printed pattern…
“Xiangjiao…Banana.”
It was even bilingual teaching.
“Woof, woof woof!”
The little monster was so anxious it started barking, chasing and biting its own tail.
The model stepfather stepped in. “There’s no need to be in such a hurry, right? The child is still young.”
“Zero to three years old is an important stage for a child’s brain development and cognitive ability formation,” Xin Hexue said lightly.
Gu Mifeng: “Strictly speaking, it hasn’t been born yet.”
Xin Hexue glanced at him, and Gu Mifeng fell silent.
“I just want to test how stubborn Zhou Liao’s genes really are.” Xin Hexue frowned. “He couldn’t even write the character for ‘bay’, he thought Monet and Mozart were brothers, and he believed ‘The Great Gatsby’ was Bill Gates’s autobiography.”
Xin Hexue couldn’t bear the fact that the child’s father was illiterate.
He should have made Zhou Liao wear a condom.
Late birth, quality birth, a happy life.
The little black dog was grabbed by the scruff of its neck, and it whined and whimpered.
It was handed over to the free stepfather.
Xin Hexue said, “I’m going back to get something.”
Gu Mifeng looked at his ankle. “Should I carry you upstairs?”
After a few days of rest and bone soup morning and night, Xin Hexue glanced back lightly. “It’s almost better.”
……….
He found the file folder in He Qinghong’s room.
It still had the official seal of Beidao Police Station stamped on it.
He poured out the contents; it was a few photos taken at the port.
The sudden explosion of the ship left no survivors, and only this corpse remained unclaimed at the scene.
A corpse so charred by the post-explosion fire that its features were unrecognizable.
He Qinghong had told him that Zhou Liao was on the passenger list at the time, and he was the only one without relatives to claim him.
The old-fashioned telephone by the windowsill suddenly rang.
In the silent room, any sudden sound felt somewhat eerie.
Xin Hexue picked up the phone.
“Hoo, hoo….”
It sounded like the wind was very strong on the other end.
No one spoke.
“Hello, who is this?” Xin Hexue frowned. This was He Qinghong’s house, so he asked, “Are you looking for He Qinghong?”
“Hoo, hoo….”
Xin Hexue didn’t know if it was his imagination, but when he spoke, the sound of wind on the other end suddenly started blowing rapidly.
A faint smell of the sea and the odor of rotten eggs permeated the room.
Beep, beep, beep.
The call ended.
Xin Hexue put the receiver back.
‘Strange, who called?’
He would just tell He Qinghong when he got back.
Xin Hexue stuffed the photos back into the file folder. As he was sealing it, his movements suddenly froze.
A chill crept up his spine, as if someone with cold hands was stroking upwards from his tailbone, then lingered and rubbed at the back of his neck for a while.
It was not the wind on the other end; that sound of wind blowing was like a mute person driven to desperation.
