I was in the bathroom washing the wound on my neck. I had just gotten a razor blade slash on the side of my neck.
Xu Tuo and Jackman were talking quietly. I wasn't particularly curious about the content of their conversation, only the conclusion.
The bathroom door suddenly opened and Xu Tuo walked in.
"It's just a scratch." He looked at my wound, "--we're done talking. What do you want to eat? Ajie wants a midnight snack."
We squeezed into the small space between the sink and the door. I sat on the sink and stared at him.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
Xu Tuo looked into my eyes for a long time, then he sighed.
"Xueming, you have to know that I can't stay here forever. We already had a fight over this issue last time, right? Are you going to have another fight?"
My eyes drooped gloomily.
"How can I make you happy?" He smiled and moved closer, his palm covering my neck. "Like this?"
His hand slowly tightened, gripping my neck.
"...You like this. You prefer this to a blade." His voice was soft, lingering in my ears. My mouth opened slightly, unconsciously making a soft sound as I strangled him. Xu Tuo still didn't let go of his hand, "I knew you liked this."
The light from the ceiling light gradually dimmed and spread, and I couldn't hear what I was mumbling. Until he finally let go, I collapsed from suffocation.
Xu Tuo hugged me and patted my back gently. "Are you feeling better?" he asked.
I was silent for a moment, leaned on his shoulder and nodded.
The bathroom door was kicked in from outside. Jackman's voice came in: "Stop hanging around in my bathroom. Come out."
I tried to get down from the sink, but Xu Tuo locked the door. "Let's stay in here a little longer," he said.
A series of curse words were heard from outside, and finally the door was kicked, and the whole door shook.
He put his forehead against mine and said, "Xueming, just remember, I will protect you. You can live until the day you want to die."
"If it's the same as last time, I'd rather call the police than let you go."
"Then I will kill you, silly boy."
We smiled at each other. Jackman kicked the bathroom door open with a loud bang and gave us the middle finger: "Go upstairs and eat."
The basement of the internet-famous restaurant houses one of Jackman's residences, his emergency shelter. The restaurant is closed, empty of customers and waiters, and the black curtains on the glass walls have been drawn.
He took us upstairs in the elevator, turned on a small chandelier in the lobby, and then went straight to the kitchen to cook. Xu Tuo went to the freezer to get some beer and put it on my sleepy face.
"I'm not hungry. I want to go home."
"Ajie's cooking is very good. Have some. You didn't eat much tonight."
After a while, Jackman brought two plates of midnight snacks, surprisingly normal dishes, fried beef tenderloin and seafood fried noodles.
He simply divided the food among himself and said, "Brother Yan, go get two more cans of beer."
"These are all yours. We two can't drink alcohol these days." He pointed at the wounds on his body. "Not counting the ones that didn't penetrate, there are three in total."
"Old Xu is still as ruthless as ever. Did you beg for mercy?"
"He didn't even give me a chance to beg for mercy... His students are exactly like him. I was half unconscious, and he just stabbed me."
I now roughly understand that the "friend" Xu Tuo first mentioned he was going to meet was the "Old Xu" mentioned by Jackman. After the two met, the talks somehow broke down, and both wanted to kill each other. In the end, Xu Tuo won, although he was injured.
Old Xu also had a "student"—I can only speculate that "student" might be his assistant. Old Xu had probably already investigated Xu Tuo's whereabouts and connections in the city. He went to meet Xu Tuo and sent this "student" to test me. So, that young man deliberately rode his bike away from Qi Mengzhu's car, using it as an excuse to strike up a conversation with me.
The question is, who is this Old Xu? What exactly did he and Xu Tuo discuss that caused the discussion to fall apart?
At the dining table, Jackman was smoking a cigarette. When he saw my disgusted expression, he deliberately blew smoke rings at me.
"There are some people... you could call them 'old friends.' These old friends don't want me to stay here any longer," Xu Tuo said. "They'll do whatever it takes to get me back to the life I deserve."
"I don't understand. What do you mean by the kind of life you should return to? What's wrong with your current life? Eat, drink, sleep, kill when you're in a good mood, and kill when you're in a bad mood. Isn't that a comfortable life?"
Jackman shook the beer can in his hand and said, "Brother Yan, your kid has summarized your life in a very normal way."
Xu Tuo smiled bitterly. Maybe it was my illusion, but for the first time, his eyes revealed an unpretentious emotion, a real emotion that was not filtered through a mask.
"What we call a normal life is not staying in any one place for long and not getting entangled with any outsiders."
"'We'? Are there many of you?"
"As far as I know, there are over thirty of them... No one knows the total number of members."
"—there's someone who should know," Jackman said.
Xu Tuo interrupted him: "There's no need for Xueming to understand him."
The man shrugged and opened another can of beer.
It was so late that we didn't even have a car to drive home from the restaurant. Xu Tuo borrowed Jackman's car, a lightning yellow supercar.
"No need to return it," Jackman said. "I know you don't have a nice car."
Xu Tuo still agreed to return the car next week: "It's too conspicuous. We've already become sitting ducks. You're just adding a signal light to the target."
"I can live like this for ten years, why can't you?" He stretched, put on a shawl, and got into another sports car. "--Good night, dear."
The roar of the sports car's engine pierced the darkness as it sped away. Compared to him, Xu Tuo's driving was much more graceful, like a stroll in the countryside.
"—Can I understand this as a killer organization?" I asked, "Were you a member of such a group in the past?"
"Your understanding is borderline correct."
"Then I understand that the other members don't want you to get entangled with outsiders. But why is he able to live such a high profile? This guy has 20 domestic tours this year, right?"
Xu Tuo glanced at me out of the corner of his eye: "So he has the most experience in being hunted by his own kind, and hunting his own kind."
Xu Tuo didn't seem to be very worried about what to do next, but it is not ruled out that he was trying to pretend to be calm in front of me.
"How are your injuries?" I asked.
He nodded: "It's okay, I'll be prepared from now on."
"Weren't you on guard against that guy called 'Old Xu' before?"
"...He asked me directly if I had someone I liked, just like him." He was silent for a moment. "I almost told him the truth. I said that for someone, I wanted to stay here for a while longer."
"...Yeah."
"It was at that moment, a few seconds, that I wasn't too wary of him." He laughed at himself. "After he stabbed and beat me, I found a small jar of ashes in his bag. He was dying at the time and told me that it was his lover's ashes. He hoped that I could put it back in his hands. A few years ago, he fell in love with a girl and tossed and turned for a long time, and finally killed her with his own hands."
"Give it back to him."
"What are you thinking? I have three deep stab wounds in my waist and abdomen. I can only use bone ashes to stop the bleeding."
How could this person be like this! I glared at him fiercely.
At this time, my cell phone rang.
He stopped the car, his expression alert: "Who would call now?"
——Qimeng bamboo.
I swallowed. Xu Tuo didn't know it yet, but this guy was the one who helped me dispose of Old Xu's student's body.
"friend..."
"A friend who called at two in the morning? That's on the air." Xu Tuo frowned slightly. "You must be targeted too. The people around you will be in danger too."
I pressed reject and hung up: "Oh, wrong number."
Xu Tuo continued driving without saying anything. But a few seconds later, his phone rang again from Qi Mengzhu. This time, Xu Tuo was quicker, pressing the answer button and switching the call to speakerphone.
Qi Mengzhu's excited voice suddenly burst out.
"—Dai Xueming, I found it! Come to the Cancer Department Building of the Fifth Municipal Hospital right now. I've found someone who's willing to be killed!"
Those words carried so much information. Xu Tuo slammed on the brakes. I nearly hit the windshield. For a full half minute, I didn't dare look at his expression.
After saying that fateful word, Qi Mengzhu ended the call. Our car was parked on the main road for a long time late at night. Xu Tuo took a deep breath and pointed at his phone.
"His voice sounds familiar," he whispered. "Is he the one...who I used a bucket on...and then called the police..."
I nodded.
"It's not that I'm too neurotic, you should make some normal human friends, Xueming."
He turned the car around. I asked him where we were going. He said, "The Fifth Municipal Hospital."
"He went to the hospital on his own. Why not send someone home instead of escorting him directly to the morgue?"
His tone was a little gritted. Then, the supercar's engine finally roared to life, streaking across the deserted road like lightning.