Xu Tuo had done the same thing before, and it looked so easy that he could even hold on to the windowsill and climb back in. I was hanging outside the window, and the rope instantly stretched straight, and I heard it make a soft "bang" sound.
My consciousness was being strangled by the rope. Because the rope was thick enough, before my brain could even feel the pain, the intense feeling of suffocation knocked me to the surface of the sea.
What was approaching at this moment was real death, and I was completely powerless to struggle.
My vision gradually darkened, the city's nightscape shrouded in darkness becoming the last remaining point of light before my eyes. My body relaxed from its extreme stiffness, and my mouth opened uncontrollably—I could feel it opening, but I couldn't control it, and there was no way I could get more oxygen from this movement.
Then, I suddenly started to hear voices.
——The doorbell rings.
When people are unconscious, they often hear many sounds. I used to hear a child singing, but this time it was the doorbell. Just as my consciousness was drifting, trying to hear more clearly, my body suddenly began to be lifted upwards.
...Is he really dying?
I thought it was all an illusion. A few seconds later, my body fell heavily to the floor. Xu Tuo, looking helpless, tossed the scissors to me and walked out of the bedroom. The doorbell rang again. It wasn't an auditory hallucination; it was my savior.
I lay on the floor, gasping for breath, trembling, groping for the knot that had cut into my flesh, trying to pull it free. After the tinnitus gradually subsided, I could barely hear the voice coming from the living room. It was my mother's voice.
"...Anyway, everything's fine now... Well, that person might have been drunk... It's okay, Old Zhou will handle this for you..."
I couldn't make out what she was saying. The sound of Mom and him talking in the hallway wasn't loud, but I could still hear my own heartbeat, and it felt like there was a pile driver in my eardrum, frantically blocking the sound from reaching me.
"Where's Xueming? Is he asleep?"
"He also drank some wine and fell asleep." Xu Tuo told her.
I stumbled over to the bedside table and dug out my spare phone. From the living room, I heard a door close and lock. Whatever my mom had come to tell me, she was gone now.
I clutched the backup phone tightly and hid in the closet. My fingers were still shaking, and I couldn't tell if it was from fear or lack of oxygen.
Soon, Xu Tuo's footsteps echoed outside the bedroom. He didn't see me in the bedroom, so he paused for a few seconds before heading straight for the closet. I tugged at the closet door, and it trembled under the stalemate of the two forces inside and outside.
Xu Tuo sighed and let go of his hand.
"—Stop making trouble, okay?" he said. "Xueming, be obedient."
My hand tried to hold onto the door, but it slipped because I lost strength. He opened the door, and Xu Tuo saw the backup phone in my hand and reached out to me.
"Give it to me. As long as you don't make trouble, I won't kill you."
He pulled the phone out of my hand and threw it aside; then he pulled me out and checked the wound on my neck. I glared at him fiercely.
Although my mind was still groggy, I forced myself to stand up, dragged the suitcase out from under the bed, and shoved my belongings into it. He watched me packing and closed the windows and curtains one by one. "Qi Mengzhu just called the police."
I stopped, glanced at him coldly for a moment, and continued to work on my things.
"...It seems the police who received the report knew your home and passed it directly to Captain Zhou. Captain Zhou had someone settle the matter because the parking lot surveillance made it look like he was drunk and attacked you first..."
I ignored him, quickly packed a few days' worth of clothes and supplies, and slammed the suitcase shut.
The police profession is actually much more interconnected than outsiders realize. After my father's accident, many nearby police officers knew my family.
With Uncle Zhou's care, Qi Mengzhu attacked me in the parking lot after a drunken fight, and my roommate, who saw injustice, hit him with an iron bucket, causing minor injuries to the back of his head. This kind of drunken fight was easily settled.
Uncle Zhou wanted to call me to tell me about this, but found that my call was not connected, so he called my mother and asked her to come upstairs and tell me - it was her doorbell ringing just now that saved me.
Xu Tuo was in the living room cleaning up the remains of my phone. I pushed my suitcase out of the bedroom and walked straight through the living room to the entrance.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"None of your business." I spat.
——I stayed at my mother and grandmother's place downstairs for a week.
My grandmother was using my bedroom, so I slept on the sofa in the living room. I told my mom that I had a fight with Xu Tuo. "I couldn't stand him rushing up and hitting me with a bucket," I said.
My backup phone's speaker wasn't working, so my alarm didn't go off that morning and I was late for work. I'd never been late before, and my team leader even teased me, "What's wrong, Xiao Dai? Hey, there's something on your neck..."
The marks on my neck from last night were now purple and bruised, and I couldn't hide them anymore. I smiled at him and said, "I had a fight with a friend."
"You had a fight and you even got physical? Why did you twist your neck like that?" He pondered for a moment, his thoughts drifting further and further away. "Did you have a fight with your girlfriend?"
A colleague chimed in: "Did you know that Dai Xueming's phone was broken? He must have gotten beaten up in an argument, and his phone was smashed."
The team leader smacked his lips. "Did I drag you to the social gathering? If you had told me you had a partner, I wouldn't have dragged you there. Your girlfriend has such a bad temper. Why would she start violence now?"
A female colleague at the back desk leaned over to look at the wound on my neck. I covered the back of my neck and dodged. She tutted and said, "Isn't this considered domestic violence? Regardless of gender, domestic violence is unacceptable."
The rumor that my girlfriend had abused me because I went to a sorority spread like wildfire, until even Uncle Zhou knew about it. He stopped by my office after work to make fun of me. We didn't talk much because he was in a hurry to pick up his daughter from cram school.
My car is in the corner of the company parking lot. Every day before I start the car, I rest in the driver's seat for a while. There is a plastic bag in the storage compartment. It is not noticeable and looks like an ordinary shopping bag.
After putting it on my head, my breathing quickly became constricted, and the feeling of suppressed vision and breathing completely eliminated the anxiety of a full day of work. I stayed in longer today than usual and even felt a little dizzy.
Suddenly, there was a sound of a car door being opened next to me.
Before I could even remove the plastic bag, it was firmly grasped by someone—the man opened the back door, got in, and yanked the bag from behind my head. As the air became scarcer, I struggled, grabbing his hands and tearing them apart. "Let me go, Xu Tuo!"
As I struggled, the push-button brake on my car had somehow been knocked off—I hadn't even realized my foot was on the accelerator. The next second, the car was launched, and the recoil flung the man back against the seat. After a huge crash, my car slammed into the car parked across from me, and the airbag deployed.
In the endless chaos, the broken and deformed rearview mirror reflected the face of the person behind.
——It's not Xu Tuo, it's Qi Mengzhu.
We spent three hours dealing with the accident and its aftermath. After briefly treating my injuries at the hospital, I went to a nearby convenience store to buy a box lunch for dinner.
My car isn't a good one; the front end is completely wrecked. The car that got hit was Qi Mengzhu's. Aside from a few dents on the front, everything else is intact. But looking at his car logo, I suspect the cost of repairing the dents will be higher than mine.
He followed me into the convenience store. Neither of us said a word. I didn't want to talk, and he didn't know how to start a conversation.
Along with the car, my spare phone, which was stored in the car holder, was also damaged in the crash. I could only wait to see if there was an Apple store on the way home so I could buy a new one.
After I sat down in the dining area with my hot lunch box, he finally spoke: "Do you really want to commit suicide..."
"none of your business."
"Why do you think the person in the back seat is a man named Xu Tuo? Who is Xu Tuo? The guy who beat me up yesterday?"
As he asked, he unconsciously grabbed the lunch box's packaging, folded it into a square, and placed it neatly.
I put down my chopsticks and stared at him impatiently: "What on earth do you want to do?"
He didn't answer immediately, as if he was experiencing great hesitation in his heart, his hands clasped tightly. After a long time, Qi Mengzhu's Adam's apple moved, and he whispered softly: "I really told you. Don't be afraid."
I'll wait for him to speak.
"I..." His voice became softer and softer, almost whispering, "I... want to kill someone."
I lowered my head, stirred the lunch box with chopsticks, and continued eating.
"Dai Xueming, did you... hear it clearly?" he asked hesitantly.
"Um."
"Did you really hear that?"
"Um."
I thought he was crazy and wanted to do something, but it turns out he just wanted to kill someone?
He sat across from me, stunned and silent for a long time, his hands suddenly trembling: "I was right... You're not afraid at all... Do you really want to die?"
I don't want to die, I just like the feeling of being near death. I'm not sure if I can explain this hobby to Qi Mengzhu.
"You can almost imagine my life. From birth, my life has been perfect," he said. "A good family, a good school, good grades...study abroad, get a master's degree, smooth sailing at work...I don't even bother with dating, because if I want to, I'm sure I'll find a woman of equal status, and our children will have the same perfect life as me."
I unscrewed the drink. It was a stupid way to escape reality, as if having something stuffed in my mouth would save me from having to answer his nagging.
"I've experienced it all, done it all. I have my own beach house and yacht as a present for my 18th birthday. One day I suddenly realized that nothing interested me anymore."
"Go take drugs." I spat out the word indifferently.
"No, it's not good for my health. I'm not a masochist." He shook his head. "Then I suddenly watched an American documentary, 'Millionaire Killer,' about a billionaire who killed his best friend just for fun. Xueming, when I finished watching it, it was like a light bulb went off in my head."
So Qi Mengzhu began to plan the murder.
He found a certain resonance in the documentary. His life was perfect, and he was already a maxed-out character with all attributes. This person longed for a kind of sublimation—to break away from the rest of the world and become a being capable of controlling the life and death of others.
When he told me this, his expression lit up: "But I'm not a bad person. I'm very idealistic. This plan must be perfect, without any negative pain..."
I really don't want to remind him that so far, the painful items in this plan have included his head being hit by a metal bucket, my car being half destroyed, the spare phone being broken, and both of us being slightly injured in the car accident...
As a business student, if he was rational enough, he would know that this investment project was unreliable and he should stop the loss in time.
Then, he finally got to the point.
"—I want to kill someone who wants to commit suicide," he said. "Suppose someone is living a very painful life and wants to end their life, but doesn't have the courage to do it. I can do it for them. Over the past six months, I've researched many ways to die. There are many methods that are painless and do not affect the appearance. I want to try them one by one..."
"Sorry, I'd rather do it myself." I gave him a polite fake smile, picked up my bag and walked away. After taking two steps, I remembered something important and called back to him, "Can you pay for the car repairs and my phone?"
Qi Mengzhu offered to take me home.
"Lately, the security situation has been bad," he said. "Did you know there was a skull-smashing incident in your area yesterday? A gangster was found dead in a trash can, his head smashed in with a hammer."
I know. I also know that if the cold war continues and Xu Tuo's bad mood continues, life will probably be difficult for the felons and fugitives with criminal records in this city.
That's none of my business.
He took me to the flagship store to buy a new phone, and I went home to take a shower and go to bed. Maybe because too many things happened today, I slept very soundly.
Until I felt someone touching my hand.
I opened my eyes. The living room window was open, the curtains swaying in the moonlight. Xu Tuo was squatting beside the sofa where I slept, holding my finger.
——He climbed through the window upstairs into the living room downstairs.
"Are you still angry?" he asked softly, "Auntie said you were in a car accident and came back very late."
"I need to sleep because I have to go to work tomorrow."
"Ask for leave. The National Day holiday is coming soon anyway." He took out a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. "I've bought the tickets. Let's go together."
It was an itinerary for a trip to Iceland.
"I hate long-haul flights."
"Pure tourism, no bloody activities."
I turned over, covered my ears with the quilt, and tried to get some quiet sleep. But Xu Tuo deliberately refused to let me have my wish and kept trying to persuade me to go traveling with him.
"—My grandma often gets up at night to drink water." I said, "If you don't want to be seen, go back upstairs."
But just as I finished speaking, I heard the sound of the door opening - grandma came out in a daze, glanced at me, and slowly walked towards the kitchen to pour some water.
——Xu Tuo hid under the sofa.
After my grandmother returned to the bedroom, he started banging on the sofa again, making so much noise that I couldn't sleep. I simply turned over and sat up to pull him out from under the sofa. But this guy was stronger than me, and he dragged me into the space under the sofa instead.
Only now did I see that his body and face were covered in dried blood.
"After venting my anger just now, I thought about what happened these past few days and realized that I was indeed a bit childish." He said with a smile, "I'm older than you. Can I take the initiative to make peace, little Xueming?"
The next day, I called in sick. My team leader, knowing I'd been in a car accident in the parking lot, granted me a few days off to recuperate. I moved back upstairs and started preparing my visa documents. His visa was already in place, and I had no idea how this guy had managed to get past facial and fingerprint verification with a fake ID.
On Wednesday, Xu Tuo said he would not come back for dinner and would go out to eat with friends in the evening.
It took me a while to react: "Your friend?"
This guy actually has friends? This is even stranger than telling me Xu Tuo has many children and grandchildren.
But I soon lost interest in his friends.
My colleague sent me a message. He knew I was on sick leave, so he left the documents on my desk.
"Weren't you curious about that suicide case before? The one with the woman who committed suicide and the unusual rope marks on her neck?" he said. "I saw you later asked the archives to review other hanging suicides, as you were interested in those marks. So I kept an eye out for you to see if there were any similar suicides."
As a result, just last week, a woman committed suicide by hanging in the suburbs, and the rope marks were exactly the same as the ones I had noticed before.