My neck was tightly tightened by a thin rope. Unlike the hanging tool I carefully selected, the severe pain when the thin rope was tightened immediately brought great stimulation.
Honestly, if there was a hanging competition, I could definitely represent the Chinese team and secure a place in the top three in the global group. Being strangled by the rope was a daily occurrence. I deftly found the knot and inserted my fingers to secure it, preventing it from tightening further.
Xu Tuo noticed something was wrong. He covered my mouth and put me on the ground. "Do you like playing with ropes?"
It would take a few seconds to recover from the slight suffocation, and my mind was still a little fuzzy: "...Can you...change the rope..."
"Um?"
"Slow down...use a thicker rope...No, why are you trying to kill me?"
As I got closer, I could smell his scent. Besides the faint scent of men's perfume, there was also a familiar smell.
Ah... that's what I smelled in my nose when I was trying to commit suicide. When someone is near death, their brain secretes a strange informational smell. If I had to describe it, it smells a bit like baby powder.
I was so addicted to the taste that I was distracted at this moment. In Xu Tuo's eyes, my expression at this moment seemed magical.
"It's a bit disgusting to be looked at like that," he said.
"...Um, that's real blood, huh?" I weakly raised my hand and pointed at his collar. "Could it be that you were responsible for both dismemberment cases...?"
"Yeah." He admitted it straightforwardly. Then, something about me caught Xu Tuo's attention. He was stunned for a few seconds before bursting into laughter. "What the hell...why does this atmosphere excite you? You're dangerous, aren't you?"
——When I was strangled just now, the idea of "death beyond my control" really excited me.
No, no, no, come on, how could I not be excited? It's like a luxury car enthusiast who usually only rides a bicycle near his home, and suddenly someone named Xu Tuo comes along and gives him a Rolls-Royce...
"Can you control your emotions? According to normal thinking, a serial dismemberment murderer is your tenant. Can you be a little scared?" He patted my face.
I regained my composure. It was hard to connect the serial dismemberment case with Xu Tuo's image; he was the textbook example of a "likable" person. In comparison, my quiet self might have been more like a high school student driven mad by the pressure of college entrance exams, turning to indiscriminate killing.
I asked, "Will you kill me?"
"Will you tell anyone?"
At that moment, a tacit understanding suddenly formed between us. I hesitated for a few seconds between telling and not telling - mainly because if I told, my dad would catch me, and maybe I could get a bonus from my company, which would secure money for my summer study tour.
However, Xu Tuo had already caught up with my strange train of thought: "Are you calculating how much bonus Uncle Dai will get if he catches me?"
"How much do you know?"
"I don't know, but I really don't want that to happen, Xueming." Xu Tuo was half a head taller than me. He pulled me up, squatted down, and looked me straight in the eye. "Look, if I kill you to silence you, I'll have to move. Yours is the best rental in the same area. And besides, I really like your uncle's cooking."
I also like the food my father cooks, so I can understand his pain.
"I won't tell anyone. But you are not allowed to do anything to my parents."
"I'm not a murderer."
"...Your words are very unconvincing."
"To change your mind about me, how about I treat you to Coke and fried chicken again?"
I rubbed the wound on my neck. "No. Where does your money come from? Are you really an IT company employee?"
"This is a matter for adults."
We went home. He bought some fried chicken on the way home, and we ate as we walked. I bumped into my mom at the door, and she scolded me for a long time: "Xiao Xu, don't buy him junk food."
My dad works seven days a week, and if he's busy, he sleeps in at work four days a week. On Friday, he finally gets to go home for dinner. My mom heats up the food she's prepared for him, and he devours it in the living room.
I leaned over and said, "Dad, I want to ask you something."
"What's wrong?"
"You said there was a dismemberment case in the old town two years ago. Has the murderer been caught?"
"No. I've suspected the recent murders were committed by the same person from two years ago, but something just doesn't add up... Never mind, I won't tell you about this. Have you finished your homework?"
"No."
I returned to my room. As soon as the door opened, a hand reached out from inside and pulled me in.
——The window was open, and Xu Tuo climbed down from upstairs through the window and into my room.
"What are you doing?" he whispered. "You idiot."
"I didn't say anything!" I opened his hand. "I just asked my dad. I was wondering why you hadn't come to this city two years ago."
"Please don't pin every case on me, okay? I'm very meticulous in my work."
"What the hell is this?" I muttered, running to the desk. The desk was next to the window, and when he climbed in through the window, he stepped on the papers on the desk, crumpling them into a ball.
Xu Tuo had no choice but to help me clean up the papers that had been trampled. He found a rope hidden behind the desk and picked it up to examine it: "This one is too thick..."
"I'm not trying to strangle myself."
"Is it comfortable?" He put the rope around his neck. "I want to try it."
I walked behind him, adjusted the rope to the correct size, and hung the other end on the door handle. "Alright, just sit down."
He glanced at the rope on the door handle, untied it, and took it to the window. Outside the window was the air conditioner's outer casing. Xu Tuo hung the other end of the rope on the chassis and stood by the window.
I suddenly understood what he was trying to do, and I rushed over to grab him: "Are you crazy? You're really going to die!"
"No, with a rope this thick, I'm only two meters away from falling, and I still have about five minutes to struggle." He smiled and tightened the rope around his neck. "Are you afraid I'll die?"
"Don't die in my bedroom! How am I going to explain this to anyone else?"
"No."
He squatted on the windowsill and patted my head. I heard a sigh of relief, as if he had been working hard for a long time and could finally sleep peacefully.
——Xu Tuo jumped down from my windowsill, the thick rope was instantly stretched straight, and the air conditioner's external chassis frame made a metallic bang.
I grabbed the rope and pulled upward. For a man my age, I wasn't very strong, and pulling another grown man back from the air was a stretch. Should I call my dad for help? No, I might as well just let him hang!
I tried my best to pull him back in, but I couldn't. He was still breathing, but the force of the fall had tightened the rope, turning it into a giant hand around his neck.
This was the first time I witnessed someone's death.
Xu Tuo's complexion had changed, turning blood red from the congestion. I leaned halfway out the window and grabbed the rope around his neck, but I couldn't get my fingers in no matter how hard I tried.
At this time, he raised his hands and grabbed the windowsill.
"Xu Tuo!" Following his own strength to climb up, I also tried to pull him back. Half a minute later, Xu Tuo finally returned to my room, his legs hanging out the window, and he lay on my desk.
I used the scissors to cut the rope that was embedded in his flesh. Because the rope was so strong, the tip of the knife stabbed his neck several times. He moved his head, took the scissors from my hand, and cut the rope neatly himself.
"Not bad for a first time, huh?" After coughing for a while, he asked me with a smile, "Why are you panicking? Wouldn't you feel more at ease if I died?"
I was sweating profusely. A serial killer was about to hang himself from my window. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? I could still find a way to tell my dad about his identity, so he could close the case and stop juggling all the hustle and bustle… But when I thought about Xu Tuo dying, for some reason, a wave of despair settled over me.
——If he dies, my life will go back to normal.
Go to school, go home, do homework, eat, make up lessons, and occasionally resort to suicide to spice things up...
The only interest that is beyond my control is Xu Tuo.
He rubbed my neck, sat up, and threw the broken rope into the trash can. My mother came in to deliver snacks. Seeing him in my room, her eyes widened in surprise: "Xiao Xu, when did you come?"
"Just now. Xueming opened the door for me. I was helping him with math."
"Oh... maybe I didn't hear it in the kitchen." She didn't suspect anything and placed the sliced fruit on my table. "What's wrong? Both of you are blushing?"
"I just can't learn the questions I've been taught," he said.
"Xueming, you should also pay attention. Xiao Xu will come over after work to help you with your homework." My mother twisted my neck and took the garbage bag from my room. "You guys continue. What do you want for a midnight snack? We have yellow croaker wontons at home. Xueming's father made them himself."
Finally, he broke one of my hanging ropes, ate a bowl of wontons my father made, and left feeling satisfied.
A week later, my dad's work became less stressful and he was able to come home on time more often.
One day, Xu Tuo was at the table. My dad, reading the newspaper, mentioned something about work: "Xueming, didn't you ask me about the dismemberment case in the old city?"
My mother put down her chopsticks and said, "Don't talk about this while eating!"
"What's the big deal? We need to train the child to be resilient." He put down the newspaper and said, "I'm telling you, the murderer of the serial dismemberment case in the old city has been found."
"Huh?" My first reaction was to look at Xu Tuo. He was incredibly strong, and he just stared at my dad with curiosity, like a normal person waiting to hear some gossip.
"I won't tell anyone. We haven't officially determined the cause yet. The victims of the two recent dismemberment cases..."
"Stop talking!" My mother was so angry that she banged the table.
"—The two serial killers suspected of being responsible for the dismemberment case in the Old City district. They were a duo who committed the crime over two years ago." My father's eyes gleamed with excitement as he explained at the dinner table that dismemberment cases were a family tradition. "Two suspects in an unsolved case have subsequently become victims. We've found a new lead in this case, and we're investigating it as a vendetta. We've sent part of the investigation out of town to check with the family of the victim in the Old City dismemberment case. They have a son who's now working out of town."
"Xueming, just pretend you didn't hear me." My mother glared at my father and said, "Okay, go watch TV after you finish eating and stop nagging me."
Xu Tuo followed me into the house and pretended to flip through a few pages of a math textbook. I squatted on a chair, staring at him with a gloomy expression.
"Why?" He looked innocent. "I said what happened two years ago has nothing to do with me."
"You didn't tell me you were a serial killer hunting serial killers."
"Isn't it good? You should feel more at ease now, right?"
——But the original tension disappeared in an instant. His target is those fugitive criminals, not me!
Xu Tuo once again became a controllable danger, and controllable meant that it was no longer interesting.
"—and after you kill them all, what will my dad and the others do?"
"Come back on time to make yellow croaker wontons, isn't that good? I'm volunteering for them for free."
"There will be no reward for major cases this way!"
"Big cities don't have so many major cases. And don't I pay you rent every month? You little scoundrel...are you trying to get your mother to raise the rent?"
I'm debating whether to increase it by 2,000 or 3,000.
"By the way, why do you think I like killing ordinary people?" He complained to himself as he graded my English dictation. "It's neither fun nor challenging. If the average person's alertness is 10, then those fugitives have an alertness of at least 50. Have you ever seen a cat pounce on a motionless object? The more alert and lively an object is, the more likely a cat is to pounce."
I sulked for two days. As the female monitor put it, she thought she was reading a mystery novel, but it turned out to be a sweet, romantic story. I wasn't particularly interested in the novels she read, but she kept asking about Brother Xu, who picked me up from school.
"It's a pity that you, Dai Xueming, plan to go out after the college entrance examination." She wailed, "It's destined to be demolished..."
"It's not certain yet. If the tuition exceeds the budget, my dad might not send me out."
Excluding Xu Tuo, my life storyline is just that of an average international student. My family worked hard to scrape together enough money to send me abroad to study, I returned home and found a job that wasn't up to my expectations, then I started working, went on blind dates, got married, had a baby, and before the baby came, I had to evict that tenant.
"You think life is too boring." The squad leader laughed at me. "Life is always changing. No one can predict what will happen tomorrow."
Life is a straight line. No matter how many decorations are hung on it, it's just a straight line, boringly leading forward. The only variable is whether my father can save enough money to send me abroad, or if he can't and gives up on sending me abroad.
As for Xu Tuo, since he knew that this guy's hunting targets were limited to murderers at large, he became an ordinary pendant online, just a little brighter than other pendants.
I went home. My dad wasn't home that day, which wasn't uncommon, so everyone was busy with their own business. My mom and her sisters were discussing where to go for dinner this weekend. I was listening to an English listening test, and Xu Tuo was sitting on the bed behind his desk, researching on his laptop.
"Hey, if, I mean if," I whispered to him while leaning on the desk after finishing a paper, "if my family of three were ever murdered by someone who broke into our house, would you help?"
"Yes." He nodded with a smile. "Uncle Dai's wontons are delicious."
At this moment, the doorbell rang. I thought it was my dad coming back—my mom went to open the door and her tone was very surprised: "Why is Captain Zhou here..."
He asked, "Who is Captain Zhou?"
"My dad's boss."
Xu Tuo became alert, closed his computer, and moved closer to the window. I imagined the craziest scenario—someone discovers what this guy is doing, the police take it very seriously, the captain leads his men into my house, kicks down my door, and begins a chase...
Then I will definitely help Uncle Zhou because he gives me New Year's money every year.
"You little idiot, you money-grubber!" He lowered his voice and cursed me with gritted teeth.
But no one rushed in.
We waited for a long time, not knowing what conversation was going on in the living room. And just five minutes later, I heard my mother's heartbreaking cry.
——My father died while on a mission.