Sentry booth (2)
My head hurts.
I woke up in bed, my mind still a mess and confused.
The sour, spicy and tingling sensation all over my body, and the faint smell of disinfectant after my limbs and head were bandaged, made me feel like a piece of ginger mixed in a chicken leg.
"Oh, you're awake. You're lucky."
A strange voice said from directly above.
This is the second time I have heard this sentence. The last time was when I was accidentally hit by a broken flower pot from my neighbor on the sixth floor and got a concussion.
It took me a while to stop cursing, and I opened my eyes with difficulty, and found that it was already dawn.
A fluffy, warm thing was next to my hand. When it felt me move, it immediately limped and moved under my neck, looking aggrieved and starting to arch its back.
I was almost hit on the metal railing of the bed by the sudden push, and I reflexively held down the cat's head hammer. Seeing that it was just a little scared, I breathed a sigh of relief, but also felt helpless and funny.
The bed creaked, and the strange and overly burly man sat down, pressing down on the folding bed and causing it to sag a little. "Tell me, do you remember what you did?"
The burly man had a diary spread out on his knees and was reading a few pages.
He was casually looking at his notes, waiting for a reply. His brows were hard and he looked a bit like a gangster. He looked to be in his early 40s or 50s. The neat black jacket he wore matched his body shape, and the oppressive feeling it brought made me feel a little suspicious.
I shook my head. “Thanks. Yesterday…?”
"It wasn't yesterday. You've been unconscious for several days. But your business is really not that good. You closed the shop and lost contact with you for several days. No one came to ask about it. This business is worse than selling ass."
I immediately shut my mouth and suppressed my gratitude, thinking that it was normal to block him in the first place.
Seeing that I didn't say anything, he steadily held a cup of hot milk and handed it to me, pulling his muscles and smiling: "I remember that it was you who contacted me again and asked me for help."
After hearing this, I really ignored him. I sat up awkwardly, and he stuffed a pillow behind my back. It was then that I was surprised to find that there was an acquaintance squatting on the ground, looking at us with a sad face.
The security guard, Brother Li, was not dead. He was alive and well without a single scratch on his skin.
It's not that I was expecting bad things to happen, but based on my limited understanding of this wild and strong man beside the bed, he should have killed the witness to silence him.
There were too many questions I wanted to ask at once, so I sorted out my thoughts and decided to start with the most important question:
"Xu You, what happened that night?"
"I didn't look closely." Xu You didn't care much and pushed the corner of my quilt back. "I told you, there are a lot of dirty things in this world. Young master, your luck is not very good, it's normal to run into a few occasionally."
Brother Li opened his mouth wide, looked at me, then at Xu You, and seemed to slap himself in the face.
"I've already told you that you recognized the wrong person. What era is this? You're still a young master... Never mind. What next?"
"It smashed the streetlights, cut through the sentry box, and dragged you to the flowerbed. Then it licked you all over with its barbs like eating ice cream."
Xu You sneered: "When he was about to bite you into pieces, the guy on the ground remembered that his phone was fully charged, so he urgently flashed you a light."
Damn, no wonder my whole body aches, I was scratched. Then Xu You must have arrived and rescued us.
But I didn't even react to the phone incident at the time. I just knew it was out of battery and forgot to ask Brother Li. It seems that no matter how hard I tried to stay calm, I was still scared.
When Brother Li was called out, he forced a smile at me with a look of injustice on his face, then stood up and was about to step back.
Xu You forcibly pushed Brother Li down, wrapped his hands around most of his shoulders, and said politely, "The young master didn't let you leave."
Brother Li’s face turned pale on the spot.
I sighed, feeling that there was no end to such simple questions. Xu You was taking advantage of my curiosity, trying to use the word "young master" in his words and brainwashing me.
Forget it, anyway, I just encountered some dirty creatures on the road at night, but I survived the disaster. The most important thing is to thank Brother Li and Xu You.
I told him to release him immediately. If Brother Li didn't go back to work, he would be unemployed. If we had anything to say, we could talk behind closed doors.
Xu You still liked to hear this, so he let go of his hand and patted Brother Li's shoulder calmly. "Get off at the next checkpoint."
“……?” What checkpoint? What get off the bus?
I touched the bed and looked around, confirming that this room was my grocery store. The folding bed I was lying on was originally stored in the attic. I was a little confused.
However, since I met Xu You a few months ago, he has never done anything that made me understand.
All I know is that he seems to be a high-level personal bodyguard, who was commissioned to protect a second-generation Zhang family member who came from a prominent family and ran away from home.
But I don't know why, he just recognized the wrong person and insisted that I was the target he was looking for.
At that time, he told me a lot of stories about the grudges between wealthy families and wanted to take me back. I could only say one sentence to him in silence: "Brother, my last name is not Zhang, my name is Xu Ranxing."
The next day he came back and had changed his original name to Xu You. I was stunned and admitted that this name sounded very loyal. I asked him to treat his illness.
In this way, we kept talking and talking in different ways for two weeks. Finally, he took out his phone, bought everything I had bought that day, and asked me to add him on WeChat. I could block him after adding him, and he said he would never bother me unless it was something life-threatening.
I was spineless and turned on my phone right away. He was very decisive and after he had managed to earn me half a year's worth of sales, he left without hesitation.
It wasn't until I saw a ghost in the middle of the night that I remembered that he had said some weird things, so I gritted my teeth and released him from the blacklist.
Now we were staring at each other, but Xu You was very calm. He nodded and said to me, "We will be back to Zhang's house in another hour's drive."
Oh my god, what is he talking about.
Soon my questions were answered.
Xu You walked to the door of my shop, opened the glass door, and then opened the electric rolling door outside.
The rolling shutter door hummed as it rose, and the light and wind from outside rushed in all at once.
There was also the scenery that kept receding, the colors were rolling rapidly, and the backflow of wind was blocked tightly by Xu You, leaving only a little blowing my hair.
In an instant, the landlord turned into a screaming chicken and rushed into my mind.
Xu You, damn it! He dug out my entire grocery store, the walls and the floor, and loaded it into a huge carriage. Now we are speeding on a deserted winding mountain road.
Then many car horns sounded, and I saw dozens of black cars following us, with horns honking in the front to clear the way for us.
"I think you will be happier in a familiar environment," said Xu You.
Seeing me struggling to get out of bed in disbelief, he came over, grabbed my legs, pressed them on his knees, and naturally picked up my shoes beside the bed.
The action was very faithful, the scene looked like a murder, and with his size, the whole segment looked like something that had just been released on Today's Statement. It gave me the illusion that he was handling a corpse and faking a murder scene.
The iron-like hands could not be freed at all. It was obvious that this guy used grappling techniques out of habit.
I slapped myself suddenly and looked at each other with Brother Li.
"Dad, I don't really want to be a security guard." Brother Li said dryly, swallowing his saliva, "I won't leave, okay?"
The shoes are on.
I felt dizzy and had goose bumps all over my body.
It happened so suddenly that I didn't know whether I should complain about this extremely embarrassing feudal dregs first, or immediately get on my knees and beg Xu You to wake up. He really recognized the wrong person.
I was afraid that in an hour I would arrive at some secret base, see things I shouldn’t have seen, and then realize I had made a mistake and would be chopped into pieces.
"Xu You, I am out of touch now, not losing my memory."
I said, trying to use my eyes to make the crazy Xu You understand how sincere I was.
Xu You looked at me.
Time was running out, and I couldn't care less about Brother Li who was about to escape from the sea of suffering. I immediately recalled all my life experiences from childhood to adulthood to prove that I was who I was.
It was weird, after listening to me, Xu You actually carefully corrected a few details that I had mentioned incorrectly because my memory was fuzzy due to the long time ago.
"You've done a good job making a resume for the young master, but you have to be more careful when you are out there." He thought about it very carefully, made a phone call, and asked his subordinates to help me fill in the gaps and polish some of the life experiences that were not natural and reasonable.
My face turned pale and my neck felt hot when I heard this. I thought he was humiliating me in a sarcastic way.
Damn, what do you mean by unnatural and unreasonable? Isn't it normal for an ordinary person like me to have a miserable and stupid life occasionally? The only unnatural thing in my life was that I saw a ghost that night!
I was thinking about hanging this evil feudal remnant under the street lamp, and I saw that Xu You had completely entered the state, immersed in his own logic. I don't know how much information he had filled in his mind to make sense of it.
I had no choice but to turn around and ask Brother Li for help. Brother Li is from my hometown and has met my parents before, so he can definitely testify for me.
I almost got my nose crooked when I saw it. Brother Li was even more devoted than Xu You, he believed it completely, and now he was solemnly praising the cat.
The tabby cat looked at me, as if it had nothing to do with me, and raised its hairy legs and started licking.
After a while, it was probably not an auditory hallucination. A huge shadow was cast down like a thunder above my head and began to move synchronously with the carriage.
"It's okay, helicopter."
Xu You said, holding the glass of milk I put on the bedside. Because it was cold, the milk quickly cooled down.
Next, maybe I'm crazy.
The liquid in the cup instantly began to bubble and boil. As the steam rose, Xu You picked up the milk again and brought it to me.
I instinctively grabbed his wrist to block Brother Li's sight, and a cold sweat broke out. Looking at the milk that was heated out of thin air, my heart was completely cold.
"So, don't worry about that little thing before."
He said, handing me the diary he had been holding.
I took the black cover, looked grim and asked him in a low voice, "With such a big commotion, if there is someone who is not from the Zhang family here. I don't mean a petty official like Brother Li... For example, for example, an irrelevant person. How would you deal with it?"
"To silence them."
I shut up and drank the milk. The scalding hot glass made my eyelids twitch.
After a long and silent period (mainly because Brother Li kept making faces and trying to speak, but I glared at him), I insisted that Brother Li get out of the car at the checkpoint, stuffed all the cash in the grocery store cash register into his pocket, and told him to get out immediately.
Brother Li was still a little reluctant to leave, hugged my thigh and said that we would never be apart. I angrily said, "Get out of my way!" I wanted to kick him twice, and I watched his figure gradually disappear on the side of the road with mixed feelings.
The car started again. I couldn't explain myself to a lunatic like Xu You. As we got closer and closer to our destination, I silently sentenced myself to death.
There is really nothing to say. As I am about to die, I will change the topic back to the only "little things" we can talk about.
"Anyway...thank you for saving me that night."
Xu You glanced at me.
"It wasn't me. You killed it yourself."
"ah?"
He took out a photo from his lining pocket, and his expression was surprisingly serious.
The inexplicable warning and uneasiness that I had that night came back to me again.
I subconsciously held my breath, feeling that something might be happening beyond my control.
"The flesh and blood of the Zhang family is extremely poisonous."
Xu You clicked on the photo. It showed a blood-red human figure with skin peeling off, the size of a child, almost overlapping me. I was seriously injured and covered in blood. My skin was turned outward inch by inch, and it was covered with dense cracks.
"Li turned on the flashlight, but before he could see clearly what it was, he fainted from your injuries. At that time... I had just rushed under the street light, and saw that thing had licked too much of your blood, and it went crazy, wailing, and melted into blood mud."
I was completely stunned and my mind was in a mess.
"You just said that the previous ones were all trivial matters."
"Li was here just now."
Xu You patted me on the shoulder and said, "You don't want me to silence him, that's easy to say. As the heir of the Zhang family, you should relax a little and be a little willful. There are still many rights and responsibilities you need to get used to."
What's the point of saying so much? What went wrong here?
I drank the last sip of milk with difficulty: "...How long will it take? Tell the truth."
"Twenty minutes."
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