Of course Dong Quanming was dead, completely dead.
But Ji Yuyi's movements froze for a few seconds because of this sentence. I smashed the hammer into his temple without hesitation.
The man just swayed.
I tried to strike again, but my hand was firmly grasped. A sharp pain shot through my throat—his teeth bit directly into my skin, like a beast severing an artery in its prey. My neck bled. I finally managed to break free, but the hammer flew, sliding out of my reach. In a panic, I pulled some fabric off the wall, and suddenly, the entire gray wall was transformed—it had been covered in gray cloth, but now it had fallen away, revealing the wall itself.
If I hadn't been chased by Ji Yuyi, I would definitely be stunned in front of it.
This is a photo wall.
Unlike the small, cozy photos in dessert shops, these photos all have similar compositions—the same person sitting in the same pose, with a numb expression and pale skin, the only difference being the location of the scars. The photos are all the size of newspapers, and every detail is clearly presented.
These are all young Xia Mo.
The photos were densely covered on all four walls here like wallpaper. I even envied Ji Yuyi for being blind and unable to see this scene that made people's hair stand on end.
I didn't have time to worry about the photo. Ji Yuyi chased me, intending to repeat his trick and drag me over by the chain. But he couldn't see the drape in my hand - the thick and wide drape quickly wrapped around his head. I tightened the gap between the drape and his neck, cutting off his oxygen.
When watching TV dramas, you would think that strangling or suffocating someone is a very quick process. The other person would just kick their legs a few times, and the whole process would take less than a few seconds.
In reality, the dying process can last a long time, five minutes, fifteen minutes, or even twenty minutes.
I tightened the fabric until the fingers of both hands were bruised and numb.
His struggles finally subsided.
I don't know how long it took before Ji Yuyi collapsed to the ground, his body still twitching occasionally. I held the cloth quietly until I was sure the body had no heartbeat.
He is dead.
I untied the cloth. The 19-year-old boy still had his mouth wide open, struggling to breathe. I took one look at him and then covered him with the cloth.
The shrill sound of the radio turning on rang out again.
"The key is with him." Xia Mo reminded me.
Ji Yuyi's clothes were covered in blood, and his pockets were sticky. I checked but couldn't find the key to his shackles.
Could it be...
I lifted his shirt, exposing the man's abdomen. I'm not a very compassionate person, but it still took a lot of mental preparation for me to open his body and look for the key.
In this prison, I stayed for a long time with Ji Yuyi's body and the photos on the wall.
When people are isolated and imprisoned, they gradually lose their sense of time. I used my hunger and sleepiness to estimate the time, and at least thirty-six hours had passed since Ji Yuyi's death. I tried my best to sleep, avoiding Xia Mo's gaze in the photo.
In these photos, he is still very young, looking no more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
The quality and condition of the photos also indicated their age. Some were moldy or faded, making Xia Mo's youthful, almost breathtakingly beautiful features appear somewhat distorted and deformed.
Under what circumstances were these photos taken decades ago?
Sometimes I'd examine them closely. In the photos, Xia Mo's body was rarely intact; most of the time, he was covered in wounds. You could tell the photos spanned a period of time; his mental state, as evidenced by his eyes, was steadily deteriorating, and correspondingly, the bruises and blood on his neck were becoming increasingly vivid.
Among the hundreds of photos, there are a few with the participation of others - in those photos, a strong male hand would tightly pinch his neck and force him to look up for the photo. In some cases, he had been beaten shortly before the photo was taken, and blood was flowing from his nose.
About forty-two hours later, the first meal was delivered through the small window at the door. The shackles restricted my range of movement, and the key was still a problem that I had to deal with.
The body was rotting. Perhaps dissecting a rotting corpse would be less emotionally taxing than dissecting a fresh one, so I found an old fountain pen in a drawer and sharpened the tip on the floor, using it as a makeshift scalpel.
Half an hour later, I got a disappointing result.
The key was not found in the stomach.
Because I'm suspicious of the ventilation system here, I don't want to touch the intestines of the corpse - the dissection just now has made the smell in the cell very bad.
"…No way…"
I looked at his face, shrunken from dehydration, and thought of another possibility. Ji Yuyi's eye sockets had become two dark, wrinkled gaps due to the shrinkage of his eyeballs. I hesitated for a moment, then finally inserted my finger into his left eye socket. It was dry and had a strange, fuzzy feel, like touching a dried flower.
No.
Then, the right eye socket.
——The fingers probed inside for a few seconds and touched the texture of metal.
After my shackles were removed, I had my first meal in two days.
There must have been drugs in the food. After eating, I quickly fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up, the place had been cleaned up. Ji Yuyi's body and the mess on the ground had all been restored to their original state.
As prison cells go, this place is quite spacious, and almost a luxury room, with a shower and toilet, uncomfortable tables and chairs, and a TV.
I had no choice but to watch TV for entertainment. But this TV couldn't receive any signals, and since it was connected to a DVD player, I could only use it to watch DVDs.
Nowadays, I rarely have the opportunity to use optical discs. I still have a DVD player at home from ten years ago, and I don't know how long it has been gathering dust.
The plastic case was filled with discs. What was inside? Curious, I picked up the first disc and put it into the player. Could it be that Xia Mo knew I was bored and prepared complete series of Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory for me?
The screen lit up, and the young Xia Mo still appeared on the screen.
This definitely wasn't recorded by Xia Mo himself—the camera was shaky and there was no sound. Then I realized what I was watching was ripped from a videotape onto a disc.
Recording videos is easy these days, with anything from a digital camera to a cell phone. But when Xia Mo was eighteen or nineteen—twenty-four or twenty-five years ago—he needed a video recorder and blank tapes to record, and some videos didn't even have recordings.
On the screen, he appeared to be preparing a speech, but his preparation was clearly inadequate. The young man stood uncomfortably on the stage, glancing down at his manuscript every few seconds. He wore a wrinkled white shirt, tie, and black trousers. The background was blurry, and I carefully discerned the decoration on the curtain—it was the logo of a university. The abbreviation was CIIU. I knew it because the university closed in 1998 and became the School of Psychology at Intercontinental University, which was one of my application options at the time, so I had noticed its history.
Behind him on the stage was a line of people waiting, all of them about the same age, mostly white. I guess this scene was probably college students doing a class report.
The screen went dark, and the disc had finished playing.
I picked up the second disc. The screen was no longer showing the school, but a spacious, ornately decorated living room. The image quality was the same as a video camera, shot from a high vantage point. The camera showed the long dining table, with two sets of white place settings at each end. Xia Mo sat at one end, but the seat at the other was empty.
After he ate something, he became curious about the deserted environment, so he stood up and walked around the dining table.
I don't know why, but the Xia Mo in these two videos makes me feel different from the Xia Mo now. He is smart and clear, and full of curiosity and anticipation for everything.
The videos that followed were scattered: Xia Mo writing in the study, sitting cross-legged in front of the bookshelf reading, playing tennis with other young people on the lawn, and swimming in the pool alone...
So far, these videos can be considered normal.
The second disc finished playing. I put in the third one.
The camera shot a dim bedroom. Moonlight from the window fell on the bed, where Xia Mo was sleeping peacefully.
The camera position is fixed, but it shakes occasionally, probably because someone is filming it with a video camera.
The bedroom door was open, and a tall man in a nightgown entered the frame. He approached the sleeping Xia Mo. The photographer zoomed in, and Xia Mo slept soundly until someone grabbed his neck in his sleep.
He struggled in panic. He struggled for a long time. I suddenly realized that this wasn't an act, nor was it a joke between Xu Tuo and me—this person really wanted to strangle Xia Mo.
The video wasn't recorded, but I could imagine the action from his terrified expression. They practically wrestled, until Xia Mo broke free and tumbled off the bed to the cameraman's feet. The camera shook violently for several seconds, then the screen went dark.
I stared at the dim screen, my consciousness still not recovering from the shock.
The disc hadn't finished playing yet. The screen went dark for a long time, a full five minutes, before it came back on—and this time the scene was familiar.
This is the prison where I am.
The arrangement was slightly different, but the basic structure remained the same. Xia Mo, looking pale, sat in a chair in the center of the frame, his face and body covered in bruises, and his neck still etched with rope marks. He was speaking, his lips trembling, but since there was no recording, I couldn't hear him.
The subsequent videotapes, like the photos, repeatedly recorded the time Xia Mo spent in this room.
Starting from the tenth disc, his mental state began to deteriorate rapidly. He would suddenly cry or laugh at the camera. At this time, the cameraman would put down the camera, grab his hair, take him to the basin of water in the corner, press his head into the water, and force him to calm down.
If an average male's hair grows about thirty centimeters a year, taking into account malnutrition and psychological factors, then Xia Mo has spent at least a year and a half in prison, from his short hair in the first video to his medium-long hair in the seventeenth video.
But I also noticed changes in his body. Perhaps due to lack of sunlight and nutrition, or perhaps because he had been in a state of extreme anxiety and fear for a long time, he was gaining weight.
But I quickly dismissed this argument. It wasn't weight gain, because only his abdomen was growing. Could this be some kind of pathological change, like ascites? After all, the hygiene here isn't very good. Perhaps he's infected with parasites or something...
I forced myself to press pause, eat, and sleep. Assuming the worst case scenario, I might have to stay here for a long time, so I had to keep sleeping and exercising to avoid going crazy.
With that drug added to my diet again, I fell into an uncontrollable sleep again.
After a tiring forced sleep, I woke up with a splitting headache and heard the sound of water.
Sound of water?
After getting up from the ground, I looked around. The sound of water came from the direction of the rain, and there was also steam coming out of it.
I stood up immediately and cautiously dug out the hammer from the drawer. Because of the medication in my diet, all my strength seemed to have been drained away, and I could only barely hold it.
The sound of water stopped. The shower door opened, and out walked someone I had never expected to see.
——Xia Mo.
He was wrapped in a yukata, fastening his belt as he walked towards me. Seeing my wary face, he smiled and said, "Good morning."
"…Why are you here?"
"Is it weird that I'm here?" He walked over to me and picked up the remote control on the chair. The dormant TV screen lit up again. "I occasionally come back here to stay for a while...ah, you've seen this far."
I didn't answer.
He continued to play the discs and looked at himself on the screen - Xia Mo's abdomen was getting bigger and bigger, but his other limbs did not become thinner. This did not look like liver disease or parasitic infection.
"You're not the only one who's raised that question. Xu Tuo and Xiao Jie have asked me many times before," he said. "'Who is Xueya's mother?' 'Who is my wife?' ... and so on."
Then, he slightly pulled open the hem of his yukata. On his flat, softly contoured abdomen, there was a trace of stitches from a wound.
"Hermaphrodite."
He said this word during the time when I completely lost the ability to think.
"Biologically, a very rare developmental deformity and chromosomal abnormality resulted in two complete gender systems. Pregnancy itself is an extremely rare occurrence, but it happened. It was the second year of my imprisonment here. He promised to release me—but in fact, no matter how far I escaped, it was useless. I was completely imprisoned here."
"...Who...is he? Is he the real controller of Class L?"
Facing my trembling voice, Xia Mo nodded.
"Then, I'll take you to see him." He picked up a set of clothes on the table and handed it to me. "I guess when he sees you, he will definitely say something...
...'You remind me of Xia Mo when he was young.'"