Since Z wanted to see Xie Lin kill him, it was better to actually “kill” him.
If they were going to put on a show, they might as well go all the way.
The moment he spoke those words, Xie Lin’s pupils dilated involuntarily, as if saying, Are you crazy?
Chi Qing stood with his back to the river. The rapid current behind him was whipped against the shore by the wind; the waves surged up and crashed back down. He was completely enveloped by the murky river water and the pitch-black sky, but none of it was as deep as the color of his own eyes.
Chi Qing repeated, “‘Kill’ me.”
Xie Lin was capable of recklessly ramming his car into someone else’s, running all over the place to become a “murderer,” and he wouldn’t even blink if asked to plunge a knife into himself—but the tip of this blade was not pointed at him.
In the end, shielded from view, Chi Qing’s hand gripping the hilt suddenly exerted force. Before Xie Lin could even react, he made his move—
The river current was exceptionally swift that night.
After Chi Qing fell backward, that patch of river water was stained a deeper hue by fresh blood. Before long, the waves carried the dark red blood into the deeper reaches.
Chi Qing was very cautious. He got off the taxi a kilometer away from the new residence the Chief of Police had arranged for Xie Lin. Holding his umbrella, he walked through the long, narrow, old-fashioned alleyways and stopped in front of a certain building. He then closed the dripping black umbrella and walked up the stairs, step by step.
In the continuously spiraling stairwell, he heard a parent lecturing a child on the first floor for not doing homework. The stairs of this building were made of concrete, rough and unpolished. Further up, a man who had failed in business was binge-drinking in broad daylight.
He walked up to the sixth floor, took out the key from his pocket, and opened the door.
No one would ever discover that two people with highly suspicious identities were living in this building.
Xie Lin had originally been sleeping soundly, until he dazedly reached out to his side. Finding the space next to him empty, he couldn’t fall back asleep.
When Chi Qing walked in, Xie Lin was smoking. Fearing that Chi Qing would smell the smoke, Xie Lin put it out.
Chi Qing was somewhat repulsed by the smell of smoke, so he stood at the doorway for a moment to let the odor dissipate before entering the room: “Why aren’t you sleeping? Were you woken up by the noise?”
Xie Lin didn’t answer. He narrowed his eyes and asked, “What did you run out for? Does it hurt?”
“I wanted to see the funeral,” Chi Qing’s preferences remained as unpredictable as ever. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“…”
Xie Lin didn’t know what to say about this person’s hobby of watching his own funeral.
“Why watch a funeral for no good reason?”
Chi Qing thought about it and said in all seriousness, “After all, you won’t be able to see it once you’re actually dead.”
There was absolutely nothing wrong with that logic.
Xie Lin carefully checked the wound on Chi Qing’s body. Only after confirming that the knife wound hadn’t split open did he refrain from saying anything more.
Chi Qing felt that there should be more communication between the two of them—mostly because he felt a bit guilty for slipping out without telling him. So, he proactively shared his observations from today: “That coffin wasn’t bad.”
“…”
“The portrait for the deceased was alright too. Although, if I remember correctly, that photo should be the ID photo I took back in university. But it’s fine, I don’t mind it appearing in the memorial hall this way.”
“…”
“The wreaths were quite nice, but it would have been better if fewer people showed up,” Chi Qing began to critique his own funeral as he spoke. “Why did so many people who aren’t even close to me come?”
Xie Lin sighed. Avoiding Chi Qing’s wound, he pulled him into his arms: “Since you observed so thoroughly, are you planning to write a funeral investigation report later?”
Chi Qing could not only write a funeral investigation report, but he could also personally feel what it was like to be mourned.
Chi Qing’s daily necessities, including his phone, had been delivered by a dedicated person from the General Bureau. Compared to last time, their living conditions were much better. After Chi Qing turned on his phone, the once-silent notification icon on his social media account suddenly flashed a striking “99+”.
The people sending him messages varied wildly.
There were those who had been buried deep in his contact list for years, and he had long forgotten who they were:
Your voice and smile will live on in my heart forever.
Xie Lin happened to catch sight of this line: “Who is this? Have you ever smiled at them?”
Chi Qing couldn’t remember who it was either, but he had absolute confidence in himself: “Impossible.”
Some people are dead, but they are still alive; some people are alive, but they are already dead. Assistant Chi, we will always remember you.
Xie Lin glanced down at it from the side and remarked, “A prophet.”
This person had stumbled into the truth entirely by accident while quoting famous prose.
Chi Qing expressionlessly scrolled past these unfamiliar people. After scrolling down several pages, he finally found a few familiar names.
Wu Zhi, who was still at the temple:
Life is truly so unpredictable… I still remember the first time we met at the bar. Even though I felt back then that you didn’t really look like a living person, I didn’t expect life to be this volatile. Sigh, to suddenly lose two good friends at once. Rest in peace.
“…”
These people all sent just a few brief sentences.
The one who sent the most messages was Ji Mingrui.
The first message he sent was:
I must be dreaming, right?
The second one came half an hour later:
When I wake up, you must reply to me.
Just a couple of sparse sentences. No words of mourning, nor did he say much else.
Yet, Chi Qing stared at these two sentences for a long time.
He recalled many years ago.
He and Ji Mingrui had known each other for a really long time. When they first met, he didn’t want another friend; he just found him noisy. But for some reason, this guy possessed an abundance of righteousness, and he just had to tell Chi Qing about everything that happened in class.
During a noisy lunch break, Ji Mingrui had leaned over to his desk to talk to him: “Hey, do you know what the ‘speedster’ of our class did today?”
“Don’t want to know.”
Ji Mingrui said regardless, “He heard that the cafeteria had chicken drumsticks today, but they were limited. He literally treated the path to the cafeteria as a 500-meter sprint track. Even though our class ended a few minutes late, he was still the first to reach the cafeteria.”
“Oh. But what does that have to do with me—” what’s the point?
“—But there were no chicken drumsticks in the cafeteria at all today, Hahahahaha!”
“…”
Chi Qing had been solving a problem at the time, and he almost broke the tip of his pen out of sheer boredom from this story about the speedster, the chicken drumsticks, and the cafeteria.
Why did he remember these trivial, boring things so clearly?
The scene in front of Chi Qing’s eyes flashed back from the classroom to the funeral. He suddenly felt that the black and white colors he saw while standing by the roadside didn’t seem so cold after all. After his “death,” what he felt wasn’t coldness, but warmth.
Chi Qing continued to scroll through the chat history.
The next day, Ji Mingrui had probably woken up. He hadn’t slept for more than five hours, and his sleep must have been restless.
Waking up from his dream, he found himself still lying on the hospital bed. None of this was a dream. He had no choice but to face the reality that his best brother had passed away.
To be honest, you’re actually a pretty annoying person.
When we first split into classes, I heard a lot of people saying there was something wrong with you and told me not to get too close to you.
But what choice did I have? My mom is a teacher, and once I found out about that mess in your family, I just thought, fine, given that kind of living environment, it’s understandable if there’s something wrong.
Later, I found out you’re actually quite good. You might not have noticed it yourself. I’m not saying this just because you’re gone, okay? This is truly what’s in my heart.
I still have so many, many words I didn’t get to tell you. Actually, that time we were called over by Old Jiang who asked if we copied each other’s homework? I said no. In truth, I copied yours… and then I thought you got a few questions wrong, so I corrected them for you, but it turned out I was the one who was wrong.
And that other time, do you remember…
…
He sent one message after another, reminiscing all the way from when they first met.
But these messages were destined never to receive a response.
Xie Lin asked, “He sent that many? What did he say?”
“Reminiscing about the past,” Chi Qing said after reading them one by one. “He has already reminisced up to the second semester of our sophomore year in high school.”
The funeral had ended. Ji Mingrui, who had lost his brother, treated the remaining people who came to help to a meal while he silently drank alone. He rarely drank after he started working, and even when he did, he wouldn’t drink much, fearing that being drunk would mess up his duties.
But today, he couldn’t control himself and downed one glass after another.
Half-drunk, he pulled out his phone, wanting to make a call to Chi Qing, but his finger hovered over the call button and then moved away.
Then, he clicked open their chat box and typed out a sentence, word by word. He really wanted to say, Xie Lin is a lunatic, he is a murderer, was it because you found him that he killed even you? But in the end, he didn’t want to defile this chat interface:
That day, I saw your body lying in the morgue. You said before that you liked the morgue. Now, you’re finally lying in this quiet place you once longed for.
“…”
For a moment, that rare emotion called ‘being moved’ felt awkwardly stuck in Chi Qing’s chest.
It was true that he quite liked the morgue.
But he didn’t want to live inside it that badly.
Beep beep—
Right at that moment, in the small living room, a computer placed on the desk chimed twice.
The notification sound rang out clearly.
Both Chi Qing and Xie Lin knew what that sound signified.
“He” had sent a message.
Z: [Image]
Z: Didn’t you go take a look at your friend’s funeral?
Chi Qing, who had just experienced the first funeral of his life, stood in front of the computer with a cold face.
Z: Haha, I heard he was battered beyond recognition by the reefs. He really ran out of luck.
Looking at the screen, Xie Lin typed two words with one hand:
L: Is that so.
He sounded completely indifferent.
Z: You should have gone to send him off.
L: It’s not convenient for me to show my face.
Z: What’s so hard about that? Do you know how I saw him?
L: ?
Z: There is a method that won’t get caught by surveillance, nor will it attract anyone’s attention.
Z: Just find a bus that passes by that street. Sitting inside the vehicle and glancing toward the intersection isn’t a hard thing to do. With so many vehicles coming and going on the road, who would notice me?
Xie Lin and Chi Qing looked at each other, both seeing a trace of surprise in the depths of each other’s eyes.
—A bus?
On the other side, Ji Mingrui, having drunk too much, walked out to get some fresh air. Leaning against the door, he lowered his head to light a cigarette. When he looked up again, he saw a bus station across the street directly facing the entrance of the memorial hall. Bus 714 slowly pulled into the station. Before long, the doors opened and a crowd of people came pouring down.
Ji Mingrui exhaled a puff of smoke. The bus was quite a distance away from him. He could vaguely see that half the seats on the bus were empty, while many people still remained in their seats. From his angle, he could only see blurred silhouettes. He watched for a while and then averted his gaze.
After the passengers finished getting off, the doors quickly closed.
The bus carried the remaining passengers and continued to drive forward.
Z was only online for that brief moment before his avatar turned gray again.
Before going offline, he said:
Z: Let’s meet up.
Before Xie Lin could ask how they were going to meet, Z sent another sentence.
Z: Can you find me?
