In the dimly lit ward, the person lying quietly on their bed suddenly opened their eyes. They were bright without a shred of drowsiness. An Jie quietly turned to look to his side; Mo Cong slept soundly with his head crooked.
He didn’t know whether it was out of guilt or a refusal to face Xiao Jin, but Mo Cong had stayed by his sickbed the entire time he was here. An Jie had to admit that the young man was quite moving when he put his mind to it. Even the nurses knew that An Jie had a diligent carer that saved them quite a bit of trouble.
An Jie carefully sat up and pulled the needle from the back of his hand. Blood flowed out immediately. He scrunched up his nose in an exasperation. This IV drip business… his hand was about to be poked into a pinata. Quietly changing out of his patient’s gown, An Jie’s wound on his abdomen protested a little when he tried to stand. He frowned, then sighed inwardly. After a brief rest, he smoothly pulled Mo Cong’s quilt off his waist, then lightly chuckled at the empty glass stained with milk on the bed stand.
Then, he turned and left the ward.
He finally managed to drug the brat. Took a while.
An Jie was a little gloomy. Sometimes he had to agree with Zui She that Mo Cong seemed to be naturally more clever than others, and naturally stand out from them. Even after all this time where they were practically inseparable, and An Jie being personally tended to by him, An Jie still couldn’t find the right chance to sedate him for many days.
It was only when Mo Cong was called out by a phone call from Song Chang’an during a walk outside was he able to sneak in some tranquilizers into the milk. Thanks to He Jingming, a small dose couldn’t do anything to him, so An Jie took a few sips from it, pretended he didn’t like the taste, then pushed it to Mo Cong. Mhm, the one meeting Morpheus next to him was the fruit of his hard labor.
An Jie snuck out of his ward, his steps light like some sort of panther. His expression was unclear in the darkness, and his movements nothing like someone who should be heavily wounded and lying in bed. The young nurse on shift seemed extremely tired. She pushed her head up with one arm, her head drooping down every once in a while like a chick pecking at rice. An Jie looked at her and couldn’t help but curve his eyes cheerfully, thanking her.
A light wind breezed past the nurse. The young woman seemed to notice something as she opened her sleepy eyes and looked around in a daze. There was nothing to see. So she stretched her arms, yawned, and gave up on the fight against sleep. She slumped over the table and decided to slack off, just for a little while.
The night air was quite cold, especially for someone who had just lost huge amounts of blood. An Jie gathered his jacket around him, signalled for a taxi, thought a little, then gave an address. The driver looked at him in confusion and ignited the engine reluctantly. “I’m going home soon; this’ll be my last trip. You’re off so far away, lad. What are you doing going to school so late at night?”
“My professor is in hospital and suddenly remembered he forgot something in the labs. He wants me to grab it for him,” An Jie said, grinning.
The driver glanced at him through the rearview mirror. “What a terrible professor. Look how late it is, and he’s asking his student to run his errands? Can’t it be left ‘til tomorrow?”
An Jie shrugged grudgingly.
The driver drove An Jie there at lightning speed with a heart of pity. Before letting him off, he asked, “How long will you be there for? Do you want me to wait outside and send you back? Look at how late it is, and this place is quite out of the way; it’ll be pretty hard to fetch a ride back.”
An Jie was a little shocked. He didn’t expect to be met with such kindness on his way to do misdeeds. He leaned on the car door with one arm and bent down slightly. “Sir, don’t you need to go home soon?”
“Ahem! I’m this old already, it’s not as if anyone will care if I get home a little late. It’s quite the distance, and it’s not as if you won’t pay me. I’ll earn more, you’ll have an easier time about it, it’s a win-win, isn’t it?”
An Jie laughed. He looked up at the peaceful campus and shook his head, his expression unreadable. “That’s fine, you should leave first. I have no idea how long it will take for me to find the professor’s things, I don’t want to trouble you.”
“Alright, if you insist.” The driver waved his hand casually. An Jie shut the door and watched him reverse, then leave.
In this city, some left early to return late; some were constantly on the move; some lived for their family; some for their passions; there were the great, and the plain – but they all stood unknowingly under the sun, they were all people who followed the rules of this world, the rules of society.
Life might be difficult, but it was real. Whether happy or unhappy, even if every family had their hardships, it was something to wish for.
People rarely looked forward to such a life in their youth because it was trivial and philistine. Youths filled with boiling blood who had just left the protection of school all felt that the routines of daily life were something that could drown out one’s passions and lights. They looked down on such things. Those bright, rebellious hormones made them even distrust the morals and values of typical society.
What was important? Ten years ago, An Jie would say – whether or not he could retreat safely with honor, the important thing was to enjoy the process. Fame wasn’t important, money even less, only power was something that could be held firmly at hand; only power could protect who he wanted to protect, and let him do what he wanted to do.
Ten years later, An Jie suddenly understood what Mu Lian had said. Be a kind person, only kind people could have happiness. But it was too late.
Killing for goods, seeking revenge for the thrill, gang fights, conspiracies, tricks; no matter how good one was at such things, they were things dealt under the table. Even if one was strong enough to shake all of China at their will, to command life and death with a word, they couldn’t change their identity – the fact that they were but a rat in the gutter, a mongrel in the dark.
Those born from knives will die under knives. Putting an ‘under’ in front of the ‘world’ so distinctly separated some people from the ‘people’ of society. This was a path that was hated and feared by most breathing animals. An Jie thought that ‘cool’ had always been a derogatory word.
He walked along the outside of the campus for a while, then flipped over the railings. Using the map he saw not long ago, he found his way to the history research center and quickly climbed into an open window on a third floor corridor. When he jumped down from the windowsill, his wound was tugged at briefly and immediately, cold sweat broke out all over him. An Jie leaned against the window and waited until his breathing became even again. That silly girl Mo Jin, unable to accomplish anything but liable to spoil everything.
After he recovered a little, he made his way through the corridor. The office at the edge of the top floor… facing the sun, facing the sun… An Jie took out a metal pick from his pocket, reached into the lock, and pushed a few times. Almost immediately, he heard a light click. An Jie was a little shocked as well. He didn’t expect for the locks in the history department to also be historical; they required almost zero technical skills to pick.
He carefully pushed open the door, looking through every nook and crevice of the room that he could see before walking in.
The office was in a mess, and looked even more desolated than a village after an invasion by the Japanese. A layer of dust wafted over the desk and the small shelf by it. An Jie bent down and picked up a thin booklet from the ground. Patting down the dust, then flattening out the curling corners, he read the words ‘Mo Yannan’ under the moonlight. Inside were the contents of the old professor’s lectures. The words were clean, tidy, and orderly, just like their writer.
It looked like this was what was left after the other side’s search; they had deemed it useless and thrown it onto the ground. An Jie sighed and carefully packed the booklet away. Old Mo was ‘number six’, according to Sixteen. It sounded like the name of an experiment. An Jie felt some sort of discrepancy.
Even now, when he recalled that wimp of an old professor, he could still see his cowardly but righteous looks. Why did Li have such a person next to him?
What was Old Mo’s purpose? A mascot?
A man who was looked down upon by his own son, what was special about him that Li needed? So much that… they turned his office upside down even after his death?
An Jie reached out and slowly felt along the edge and top of the messed-up shelf, but he didn’t find any indents or protruding parts – meaning it didn’t have that eerie German Iris. He looked through what little remained in the shelf with confusion; they were mostly useless to those not in Old Mo’s field of study.
An Jie hesitated, then slowly moved to somewhere else.
Suddenly, he jerked his head back and stared firmly at that shelf. Moving everything out, he took out a key from his outer pocket. The keyring was a miniature torch that lit up when it was pulled on, like a children’s toy… a toy that was running out of battery.
An Jie shook the thing a few times and carefully searched the inside of the shelf using the dim light. Some parts had deteriorated so much mold had started growing. An Jie’s eyes stared unblinking. Suddenly, his hand paused. He noticed a tiny section of abnormal looking paint in some unobtrusive corner of the shelf. He lightly scratched it with his key and the paint layer came off easily, showing off the base colours.
An Jie’s entire body was hunched into the shelf as he slowly scraped off the extra layer. The old color slowly revealed itself – an iris.
He stared at the iris, unmoving. Suddenly, the door was pushed open from the outside. An Jie reacted immediately; he turned off the torch and hid himself behind the shelf.
The person by the door stood unmoving for a long time. An Jie’s brows furrowed tighter, sweat slowly seeping out of his palms… There seemed to be an uneasy feeling, some sort of feeling as if he was facing danger.
Who was there?
The person chuckled from the back of their throat and pressed something in their hand. An Jie’s hearing told him that they had opened some sort of cassette tape. After the raspy rewinding noise passed, a low, sharp voice, as if it was speaking over an undertone of metal, rang out. An Jie felt his hair stand up.
“I was wondering how long it would take for you to find here, Yin Hu. You’re late by almost a week. I’m disappointed.”
The voice has changed, but the expression and tone, it was… it was that person. R • Li. An Jie’s eyes widened suddenly. The influence of that man on him was still immense.
“It must have been over ten years since we last met. Yin Hu, to be honest with you, if there was someone in the world that I didn’t not wish to hurt, it would’ve been you.”
It was just like a final boss: even their farts would have a reasonable excuse.
After a short pause, the voice seemed to sigh. “Why did you betray me? Yin Hu, you were my favourite child but it turned out you were the one who betrayed me. I’m devastated. Really… devastated.”
The final ‘devastated’ was extra soft, as if it was being breathed out right next to his ear.
“Disobedient children will get a beating, Yin Hu…”
Before his sentence finished, An Jie felt his muscles clench. He suddenly sprang out of the corner he was hiding in and shattered the glass in the office with his shoulder. As for the pain of the broken glass, that was something to be ignored. In his rush, he glanced at the open doorway. There was no one there but an old recorder.
He had been so nervous he hadn’t even noticed when they left.
An Jie smoothly climbed out from the window three storeys from the ground, clenched his teeth, and jumped. Underneath him was a wide stretch of grass… surely he wouldn’t die. As his body soared midair, a giant explosion sounded from behind him. The heatwaves crashed into each other, breaking all the glass in the windows.
An Jie’s body was pushed far away by the waves, then grabbed by the laws of gravity.
Author’s Notes: I need to lose weight… I can’t just keep repeating the process of ‘losing’ then receive the result of ‘weight’. Unless I’m not losing weight, I’m losing loneliness?
Vera & Luci Translations 