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The fingers that were gripping his neck suddenly loosened, trembling uncontrollably.
Milo gripped the other man's iron hand with both hands, pried open the gap, and gasped for breath.
He didn't want to kill himself.
This information was like a ray of dawn shining into Milo's mind.
Yes. Jesse mentioned that his face was good enough to be a body double.
Milo mustered his courage and tried to squeeze out some pitiful tears, but unfortunately he had no talent for it, so he could only force out an ugly and ingratiating smile.
The other party remained frozen in place without reacting.
The gunfire outside grew closer, and Milo prayed it was Jesse and the others. But unfortunately, he was always unlucky. The new volley of bullets was exceptionally fierce, clearly intended to raze the funeral hall to the ground.
Back and forth, a burst of gunfire.
A bullet whizzed through the air, pierced through flesh, and struck the wall behind Milo.
Milo stared in disbelief at the black wheat blocking his way.
Beneath his open suit jacket, a patch of his white shirt was soaked with blood. Yet, the man seemed oblivious, shoving Milo's head to the ground before turning and retaliating. A series of crashes followed, and several men fell to the ground opposite him.
Looking at the ruins of the funeral hall and the ruthless madman in front of him, Milo knew that the only way to survive was to tie himself to the large ship in front of him.
He cherished his life and didn't want to die.
Milo grabbed Rye's arm, provoking an instinctive counterattack. He was slammed to the ground with a thud, the pain making him see stars.
"Help me, help me!" Miloch persisted, hugging her again, his cries coming from the bottom of his heart, feeling he had never been so sincere in his life.
Rye remained silent, and Miluo felt a pang of sorrow.
The next second, Milo felt his body lighten as Rye reached out and wrapped her arms around his waist. Milo didn't know what position it was, but it made him completely unable to move, so tight it was suffocating. Rye was practically pressing his body against the bleeding wound on his waist.
Wandering through the corpses, Blackie fought and retreated, bending down to cross the back door, turning back to aim his gun in a certain direction of the mourning hall.
Seemingly remembering something, Blackie paused, then used the butt of his gun to smash Milo's eye.
The force wasn't strong, and Milo closed his eyes, not understanding why.
The next second, scraps of paper flew everywhere, and an explosion rang out, as if something had been detonated. The collapsed beams burst into flames, cutting off the pursuers' route.
Milo's ears were ringing, and he struggled to open his eyes, choking quite badly. He belatedly realized that if he hadn't latched onto this person, he would probably be burned alive by now.
There are countless ways for a person to die a tragic death, but being burned to death is the one he least wants to choose.
As night fell, a lavish opening ceremony unfolded. The funeral home, located in the upscale urban area of Wudong Port, hosted countless banquets. Due to the explosion, the driveway was cordoned off, and the stranded luxury cars, honking their horns, created a spectacular traffic jam.
The rain pattered softly, and the neon lights of the streets were reflected in the dirty puddles. A single footprint was enough to crush the city's illusory image.
Milo was caught in the middle and they ran around. Rye didn't seem to have any intention of driving. They walked and looked around, weaving through hidden alleys, looking back from time to time, being overly vigilant.
The route gradually moves away from the upper city and closer to the urban villages, where poverty and chaos are the norm, and people dying by jumping off buildings due to heavy debt are common occurrences.
Milo felt a chill run down his spine.
At another street corner, fluorescent uniforms dotted the way; it was the police conducting a check.
A group of traffic police on motorcycles came towards them. Blackie obviously saw them too. He stopped, covered Milo's mouth and nose, and hid in the dark and damp alley.
The police car sped past and gradually faded into silence, but Blackie showed no sign of letting go of him.
Time ticked by, each second feeling like an eternity, with only a few shops at the alley entrance flashing their neon lights, indicating they were temporarily closed.
Milo steeled himself and whispered for the other man to let go, but there was no response. Raising his voice didn't work either. In desperation, Milo bit the arm that was binding his chest, and this time there was a reaction.
Milo didn't dare look at Rye's face, but pointed in a direction across the street, expressing his loyalty through words and gestures.
"Go there."
Rye's eyes were unreadable as he looked in the direction Milo was pointing.
A 24-hour adult products store, with a long string of light bulbs in front of the door still flashing red and purple.
There has still been no response.
This silence gradually made Milo lose patience. He pointed to the wound on Rye's waist, made a painful expression, and said, "You'll die if you bleed any more."
Amidst the wailing of sirens, Rye's gaze finally softened.
*
The gun barrel pressed against his abdomen constantly reminded Milo that there was a devil behind him.
Milo slowly moved his hand to the mouse, clicked it, switched off the surveillance, turned off the main lights, and pulled down the roller shutter. In an instant, only a dim pinkish-purple light source remained in the store.
After doing all this, Milo felt the restraints around his waist loosen.
Milo took several steps back, realizing that the person in front of him was more than a head taller than him.
Silence mingled with awkwardness and fear. Milo tentatively spoke up, "This is my shop, nobody usually comes here... Do you want to go to the hospital?"
Rye stared at Milo's parting lips and frowned.
Milo quickly corrected himself: "I just remembered, I should have a first-aid kit here."
As he spoke, Milo groped his way and pushed open a hidden door.
He has a small room with birdcages partitioned off in the shop for him to rest in, and he usually keeps some emergency equipment on hand.
Milo opened the medicine kit and showed it to him.
Rye remained silent, but the expression on her face softened, as if she understood what Milo meant.
Perhaps noticing Milo's trembling fingers, Rye quietly put away his gun and took a step back to create a safe distance.
Rye picked up the clamps from the first-aid kit and took off his filthy work suit. The wound was a bloody mess, studded with shards of glass; Milo felt a pang of pain just looking at it, but he didn't blink as he clamped them out, biting the bandage as he bent down to wrap it around his neck.
He's not even human.
Seeing Milo's wandering eyes out of the corner of his eye, Rye hooked his toes, pulled over a swivel chair, put one foot on the chair and the other on the ground, blocking Milo's way out and trapping him inside.
Milo stood close to the wall, looking at it silently and obediently.
The shirt covered his body, but Milo felt that there must be a lot of fat underneath.
Thinking this, Milo felt a dull ache in his sternum from being constricted.
Rye, who had been bending down to bandage herself, suddenly looked up, and Milo's probing gaze could not escape her.
Milo quickly explained, but Rye only stared at his lips for a moment before looking away.
A bold idea suddenly popped into Milo's mind.
Milo quietly moved aside, picked up the first-aid kit, and inadvertently let it slip from his hand, the aluminum box unexpectedly falling to the ground. A normal person would have been startled as a physiological reaction, but this person remained completely unresponsive, or rather, his reaction was noticeably delayed.
He couldn't hear. Milo was certain of this fact in his heart.
No wonder she remained silent despite being seriously injured along the way and didn't react to his words at all.
He's probably mute.
A person being investigated and hunted by both the legitimate and criminal worlds turns out to be deaf and mute? Recalling the man's act of cutting wheat with a knife in the funeral hall, Milo felt a mix of disbelief and dread.
In an instant, his mind was racing, and he finally understood why Miles had said that it was appropriate for him to approach this person.
During his time at university, Milos volunteered for a year, learned sign language at a school for special needs children, and even won an award. Years later, he can still pick up that skill again.
In the dimly lit, cramped space, Milo slowly and awkwardly used sign language.
You need to go to the hospital.
This is a gunshot wound; you can't let someone die in his shop.
Rye stopped what he was doing and just stared blankly at Milo gesturing. After a while, he seemed to realize that the other man was using sign language.
In that instant, rage ignited in Rye's eyes. He snapped the bloody pliers into the first-aid kit and got up to walk toward Milo.
They change their minds faster than turning the pages of a book.
Milo quickly waved his hand to indicate that he meant no harm, but he soon realized that the man's change of expression seemed to have occurred after he used sign language. For a moment, he didn't know where to put his hands. He wanted to explain but realized that the other person couldn't hear him at all, and he felt like he had entered a dead end.
Milo was forced to the wall with his toes touching the ground, with nowhere left to retreat.
With tremendous force, Milo was forced against the cash register by Rye, like a hunched shrimp, his resistance pitiful and utterly futile. Rye's hand rummaged in his waist pocket. Then, that rough hand slipped through his clothes and reached his waist, like a giant python slithering into a jungle.
I touched it all over, from top to bottom.
The rough, calloused hands made Milo feel no sense of humiliation, only the fear of having his safety boundaries violated.
Those black eyes were finally close at hand, hot breath clung to his ear, and the smell of blood filled his nostrils, causing Milo to shudder.
Milo winced in pain as he opened his mouth, only to see Rye reach into his mouth and roughly grope his teeth.
Milo could only let the knuckles press against his tongue, inch by inch, sinking deep into his throat. He closed his eyes tightly, his eyelashes trembling, and saliva quickly soaked the other's fingers, some of which he couldn't swallow and could only dribble out from the corners of his mouth.
After confirming that nothing was found, Rye finally let go.
Milo got a chance to catch his breath. His eyes were red, his legs went weak uncontrollably, and he grabbed the corner of the table and started to retch. His eyes and nose were full of soreness.
He hadn't let his guard down at all; he was just checking him.
If Jesse had actually installed some kind of communication device on him today to infiltrate the organization, he would probably have been killed by Rye by now.
Milo's mind cleared. He suddenly realized that, given Rye's rumored abilities, how could he have fallen to the point where he needed Milo's rescue... all those convoluted hidings were just an experiment to see his reaction.
Rye is playing with his life.
It's just a cat catching a mouse.
What nonsense about looking only 60% like the real person, and only loving the stand-in's face. How many people in this line of work are truly not clear-headed enough to fall for a stand-in at first sight and mistake the stand-in for the real person?
Milo rummaged through the table for anything he could use for self-defense, eventually grabbing only a lucky cat figurine, which he held in front of his chest.
Rye stood still, unmoved, as if Milo's behavior was utterly ridiculous in his eyes.
Milo's gaze fell on the gun at Rye's waist, and he understood the vast disparity in skill.
Just as despair was about to strike, the locked door was suddenly knocked on from the outside, and Milo was overjoyed.
"Milo? Milo!"
Upon recognizing Jesse's voice, Milo's heart sank into an ice cave.
If this madman sees that he knows the police, he's definitely not going to make it out alive.
Rye looked at the roller shutter door that was hanging up and down, not nervous at all. Instead, he looked at Milo, as if waiting for his reaction.
Milo didn't forget he still had a gun; he wasn't trying to outrun bullets.
A mental struggle raged within me, but in the end I called out through the door, "I'm here."
"Are you alright? I didn't see you at the scene, so I had to try my luck here. Are you injured? Were you frightened?"
The figure of rye gradually drew closer.
"I'm fine. I left right after talking to you. I was only halfway through my shower when I heard your voice." Milo was covered in sweat and just wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. He could feel Rye's hot breath rushing up from the back of his neck.
"I'm glad you're alright." Jesse's voice calmed down. "There was an explosion at the funeral home. Stay home for the next few days."
After a brief struggle, Milo finally managed to get Jesse to leave.
The tall figure in the cramped space looked like the shadow of a monster gradually spreading its limbs.
Milos was sweating profusely, his teeth clenched as he stared straight ahead.
When Milo realized his hand was light, the lucky cat had already fallen into Rye's hands.
Rye pulled a thick wad of cash from his pocket and placed it under the lucky cat's base.
Milo trembled, bewildered, but remained vigilant, watching intently for further comment.
But Milo didn't get to see it.
Rye was gone, leaving him only a stack of money stained with blood.
For several days, Milo remained fearful and refused all phone calls.
The bombing at the funeral home in Wudong Port became the most talked-about news in a week, with online posts causing a huge uproar. Milo spent several days huddled in a dark corner of a small shop, like a shadowy rat.
I went out again in the middle of the night, for no other reason than to stutter.
He can't let himself starve to death first.
Walking down the street, a group of motorcyclists sped past, shouting deafeningly. Milo turned around, but no one was following him.
I took two steps, stopped, and turned around, but there was still no one there.
Milo felt like he looked like someone who was having a fit of paranoia or was obsessed.
When they arrived at the restaurant, the outdoor area was already half full. Milo picked out some crackers and salad, found a seat, and opened a bottle of ice-cold beer.
The cold, bitter, cheap beer filled his mouth, and for a moment it eased his inner turmoil.
The shop owner, Lao Ruan, had a typical Eastern face. He smiled as soon as he saw him and served him a seafood rice.
Milo was stunned. He hadn't pointed to that, but the old man pointed in a certain direction.
Across from him sat a young man in a pure white short-sleeved shirt, his slightly curly brown hair gleaming under the incandescent light, like a sculpture. He met Milo's gaze and smiled shyly.
Milo paused for a moment, then nodded and smiled.
That was his former neighbor.
One of the biggest reasons Milo took over the adult products store was that there was a club next door where he could make a little money. Yuzhen had bought condoms from him a few times.
Yuzhen has a gentle and reserved face, with a quiet and melancholic air, completely unlike the energetic and energetic mixed-race people in Lanman. Every time Yuzhen comes, Milo can't help but take a few more glances, and only after striking up a conversation does he realize that she is indeed a foreigner.
After the club relocated, Yuzhen left. When Milo saw him again, he was a little surprised, and even more so, a little sad. He always felt that someone as beautiful as Yuzhen shouldn't end up in such a place; it was like he was returning to a hellish place.
Yuma raised her ice-cold beer and got up to walk towards Milo.
Milo's heart brightened at the sight of the beautiful woman, and a smile unconsciously appeared on his face. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of his eye, his smile froze, and the beer he hadn't finished swallowed got stuck in his throat, nearly choking him to death.
A new group of people entered the open-air barbecue stall, and the person at the very back just happened to brush past Yuzhen.
The man had a palm-sized plaster on his neck, covering his conspicuous tattoo. He sat down calmly, perfectly positioned diagonally behind Yuzhen, directly facing Milo.
He was dressed like a law-abiding citizen, with an earphone-like thing in his right ear, wearing a baseball cap, and his skin was pale under the incandescent light bulb. With his big, dark eyes, he looked like a paper doll.
Their eyes met, and they didn't look away, as if they were just waiting to be discovered.
It was rye.
Milo's hand holding the ice-cold beer trembled slightly.
Sure enough, he was followed from the moment he left home.
How long has he been watching him? Did it start when he left the house? Or even earlier? A week ago? Or...?
They never left at all?
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