Chapter 146
Mu Nan woke up and found himself eaten before his meal. He lay exhausted on the bed. Qin Huai was wiping his body with a towel. Mu Nan lay on the bed with his face sideways looking at him. The main light in the room was not on, only a bedside lamp. Under the dim and soft light, even Qin Huai's cold eyebrows revealed a different kind of tenderness.
Mu Nan stretched out his hand and hooked Qin Huai’s little finger with his index finger: “Brother.”
Qin Huai held his hand and said softly, "Hmm?"
Mu Nan moved, turned over and rested her head on Qin Huai's legs: "Are you feeling happier?"
Although he didn't know what kind of nightmare Qin Huai had, he could feel that Qin Huai's emotions were not right, as if he was on the verge of losing control and being restrained. So Mu Nan gave Qin Huai what he wanted. It was also good to have a way to help Qin Huai divert his attention or vent the emotions that were pent up in his chest.
However, the nightmare seemed to have a great impact on Qin Huai. Even the first time, Qin Huai was careful not to let him bleed. This time, there was a slight tear. It was naturally very painful, but he was more concerned about whether Qin Huai was feeling better.
Qin Huai lowered his head and looked at him, his bright eyes full of worry, dependence and concentration, forming a sharp contrast with the pair of eyes in his dream that gradually lost their warmth and color.
Qin Huai took advantage of the situation and gently stroked Mu Nan's soft belly while he lay there. His palm gently rubbed the place where Mu Nan's life was taken in his dream. His voice was barely audible with a slight tremor: "Does it hurt?"
Mu Nan thought Qin Huai was asking if the intense fight just now hurt him, so he shook his head: "It doesn't hurt anymore, the medicine is cool, it doesn't hurt at all."
After a long silence, Qin Huai spoke slowly. His voice was so soft that it was like a needle piercing Mu Nan's heart: "Nan Nan, I'm sorry..."
Mu Nan climbed up and sat on Qin Huai's lap, hooking her hands around his neck to carefully look at his expression: "Brother, you are really weird, what's wrong?"
Qin Huai hugged Mu Nan tightly. Some things cannot be thought about too deeply. Once you think about them, many things will have nowhere to hide.
Qin Huai is not stupid. It can even be said that he has been a person with high IQ since he was a child. He can analyze various information from many details that others would not even notice, not to mention Mu Nan, whom he almost brought up. Just by a slight frown, he can analyze why Mu Nan is unhappy without thinking. So even if Mu Nan didn't say anything, there are some things that he can never really hide from him.
Qin Huai always knew that Mu Nan was hiding something from him, including when he first came back and Mu Nan was both resistant and close to him. Perhaps Mu Nan himself didn't even notice it. At that time, he was completely tense, like an overloaded string that could break with the slightest touch. So Qin Huai didn't dare to ask, and didn't even dare to touch him tentatively. He could only coax him carefully and follow his wishes, pretending to know nothing.
This nightmare connected together many details that he could not piece together into a complete story. He still remembered the first day he came back, when Mu Nan woke up from a nightmare holding his stomach, and then told him various prophecies about the end of the world. His dream, Mu Nan's prediction, stopped just before the apartment building collapsed.
These details simply cannot stand up to scrutiny, and a little recollection can connect many things together, but Qin Huai did not dare to think about it. That was a conjecture of the truth that he could not bear at all. For him, when he woke up from a dream, the person in the dream was still by his side, lying in his arms with warmth and vitality. What about Mu Nan, what did that nightmare mean?
Why was I not in the dream? Where was he in the dream?
Qin Huai restrained these emotions very well. When he let go of Mu Nan again, a smile appeared on his face again: "I am still a little scared of that nightmare, so I want to hug you. Hugging you makes me feel that I am awake."
Mu Nan looked at him: "What did you dream about? It's so scary?"
Qin Huai smiled and pinched his face: "You dreamed about insects, do you want to listen?"
Mu Nan shook his head repeatedly. That was too scary. He didn't want to listen. He couldn't help but ask, "Did you come into contact with too many bamboo insects recently, so you dreamed about insects?"
Qin Huai smiled and said, "Maybe. Are you hungry? Get up and eat."
Mu Nan was already starving to death, and his stomach growled more than once.
Qin Huai let him go, and said, "Sure enough."
Mu Nan: "Really what?"
Qin Huai gently grasped the soft flesh on his waist: "Last winter was the last time I saw your little abdominal muscle."
Mu Nan couldn't help but pounce on Qin Huai: "You took advantage of me and even attacked me personally!"
Mu Nan had been so exhausted before that he really experienced the feeling of being unable to get out of bed. His waist was almost broken.
Qin Huai massaged him, set up the small table for him, and put the small basket of snacks on his bed: "They are all at Yu Zibai's house to discuss the next trip to collect bamboo worms. Yesterday's account has not been settled yet. I'll go over to take a look. You stay at home obediently. I'll go out directly later."
Mu Nan looked up at him: "Where are you going?"
Qin Huai said: "Wang Xiaoli is looking for me. The transportation from his place is not very convenient, so I will go out to look for him. I may be back a little late. If you are hungry, eat by yourself and don't wait for me."
Seeing Qin Huai was going to the outer city, Mu Nan was a little worried: "I heard it's very chaotic outside, you should bring some weapons."
Qin Huai: "Okay, I'll be back soon." Qin Huai walked into the cloakroom and came out with a bag on his back. Mu Nan glanced at him and said, "Remember to bring self-defense items, go early and come back early, don't fight with others, and run away quickly if something goes wrong."
Qin Huai smiled and said, "I understand, little housekeeper."
Qin Huai has lived here for quite some time, but he has never really been to the outer city. He just used to drive to work and look at the dirt and disorder through the car window and the cleaned driveway. This is the first time he has actually walked in.
There were two or three tables in a simple shed, with playing cards but no dice on them. Some shirtless or ragged men were gathering together and making a lot of noise. Their shouts and curses could be heard everywhere in this shabby shed with poor sound insulation. The winners were jubilant and their gambling nature became more intense. The losers were dejected and even bloodthirsty. They had no money or food but were reluctant to leave, so they went to the man who ran the place to try to borrow money to make up for their losses.
But he was kicked to the ground by a rough-looking, fat, and fierce man. While eating soybeans, the man kicked the man who was kicked to the ground and couldn't get up, and said angrily: "If you don't have money, find a way to get money yourself. You haven't paid back the money you borrowed last time, and you still want to borrow. How many lives do you have?"
Ma San was kicked to the ground but didn't dare to get angry. He apologized in a nice voice: "Brother Ma, please lend me some money. I'm going to be lucky today, really! Lend me some money, and I'll pay you back as soon as I make a profit! Brother Ma..."
Before Ma San could finish his words, the man called Ma Ge gave him a look. The two thugs next to him immediately stepped forward, picked up Ma San and threw him out.
Ma Ge walked to the door while cracking soybeans, and pointed his index finger at Ma San on the ground: "I'll give you three days. I don't care whether you steal or rob. If I don't see the money in three days, I will take your life."
Ma Ge said this lightly, without even a hint of ferocity or intimidation in his tone, but it still made Ma San's heart skip a beat. He knew that this was definitely not a verbal threat. In the past, if he made a big fuss, at most his hands and feet would be broken. But now, if he said he would kill him, it really would.
It's a mess out there. One person starves to death today, and another falls to the ground tomorrow. No one cares how the person died, whether it was suicide or homicide. If no one calls the police, who will bother to investigate? Now there are a lot of people dying of illness and starvation. People like them who have no home or family don't even have someone to collect their ashes.
Knowing that it was impossible to borrow money today, no matter how much he begged, he would only be beaten. After Ma Ge went in, Ma San slowly crawled up, covering the place where he was kicked and hurt. After taking a break, he could not help cursing under his breath, then walked back home with his head down.
Before the end of the world, he was a poor man. He had a wife, but she ran away with someone. He had no children and slept in a scavenger station. That's why he was not killed by the earthquake. He thought that the world was in chaos and that good days would come for him. No one would care about his stealing and kidnapping anymore, and he could pick up valuables from the ruins. But he didn't expect his luck to be so bad. He lost every time he gambled, and almost all the valuables he had found before were lost.
He was poor and destitute, and when he thought about the time when he delivered bricks to the rich area and saw people living in air-conditioned rooms and having no worries about food and drink, he felt even more jealous and resentful of the injustice of the world.
After passing through one extremely dirty, fly-infested alley after another, Ma San finally returned home. That house was not really a home. He could not even afford the cheapest shed built by the government. He would have gone gambling with that money. So he found a corner to shelter from the wind and rain and built a shelter with a waterproof snakeskin bag. At least having a place to sleep was enough, which was better than sleeping on the street.
But I had a place to sleep but no food or drink. When I was gambling, I didn’t feel hungry at all. Now that I was hungry, it was even more unbearable with an empty stomach.
With no money to gamble and no money to eat, thinking about the foreign debts he still owed, Ma San thought about doing something stupid. There was an old blind man at the corner of the street. He had a seven-year-old granddaughter. Girls could be sold for a higher price than boys now, but he had to live here and the old blind man might make some noise. So he had to think of a way to avoid people and sell his goods far away. Although no one was watching here now, if he called the police, they would definitely come to go through the motions and they must not investigate him.
While he was thinking about it, Ma San heard some noise outside. Before he could get up from the ground, a man wearing a hat, a mask and a black waterproof coat lifted the curtain covering his door and walked in.
Without waiting for him to speak, the man took out a pack of instant noodles and said directly: "Ma San, right? I want to ask you something."
Ma San's eyes turned green when he saw the instant noodles. He didn't care that the man was hiding his face and looked like a bad guy. He got up and snatched the instant noodles. He was overjoyed when he got the thing. Instant noodles are not cheap now. A bag can be exchanged for at least five yuan. It contains oil, salt and noodles. If he finds someone generous, he might be able to sell it for six or seven yuan.
While calculating in his mind, he said, "What do you want to know?"
He was not too wary of this man. What was there in his place which was not even a house, so what was worth robbing? The entire house, including the clothes on his body, were not as valuable as this half pack of instant noodles. So he never thought that the other party had any intentions. He just thought that he was lucky that someone actually came to him to inquire about something.
Thinking that he might be able to get more things from this person, Ma San said, "There is nothing in this alley that I, Ma San, don't know. If you want to know anything, just ask!"
The man seemed to glance at him, but the room was dark and it was still dark outside, with only the faint light of street lamps in the distance. Ma San couldn't see clearly. Just when he wanted to take a closer look at what the man looked like, he heard the other party say, "I want to ask you about three people. They owe me money, but they lied about their names. One is 180 cm tall, burly, with a scar on his left eyebrow. One is thin and has a big black mole on his neck. The other is neither tall nor short, with a pointed face and a hunched body. They often gamble in this area. You are also a frequent visitor to the gambling house, so you should know them. Tell me their names and addresses, and I can give you two bags of instant noodles."
Ma San licked his dry lips and looked greedily: "Really?" This was truly pie in the sky, these three people were really people he knew!
Ma San didn't have the concept of not betraying friends, not to mention that they were just a group of like-minded collaborators, not even friends. They were just like him, they had no money, so they looked for someone to rob them of money and food. Now that they were being chased by their creditors, it was none of his business, so he gave out their names and addresses, and then looked at the man: "It should be the three of them. I've told you everything I know, that instant noodles..."
The man seemed to smile, put down the backpack on his shoulder and said: "Thank you for your cooperation, the instant noodles are in the bag, come and get them."
When Ma San came over happily, his mouth was instantly covered by a gloved hand and something cold was placed on his neck.
Ma San knew exactly what it was. When he owed gambling debts to others, he was often threatened to have his fingers chopped off by this thing. Before he could react to this sudden change, he heard the man whisper in his ear in a sinister tone: "I forgot to tell you, you are also the person I am looking for."
Qin Huai came out of the broken shed and walked away without looking back.
Ma San in the shed was not dead yet, but his wound was too deep. The knife seemed to have cut off his trachea. So even though he was not dead yet, and even tried to struggle out while covering his wound, he could no longer breathe, and death was only a matter of moments.
The review before death that the old people often talked about did not happen to Ma San. He just felt so painful. Why was it so painful? The temperature was obviously suffocating, but he actually felt so cold. The air gradually became thinner. When he could no longer breathe fresh air, his whole body struggled and spasmed. No one knew what kind of pain he went through in this short time of less than a minute before he died.
This shack was built randomly without house numbers, so one could only judge the location by the surrounding environment. Fortunately, most of these gamblers and gangsters lived in this circle, so it was not difficult to find. Looking at the rag curtain without a door, listening to the snoring inside, Qin Huai lowered his hat slightly, lifted the curtain and walked in...
The outer city is in chaos, even to the point of being completely disorderly. Some people simply don't have the ability or conditions to leave. If they leave, they don't even know where to go. They don't know what the situation is like in the city center. There's no one in remote areas, and green plants are almost all sun-dried to death. Even the grass roots can't be dug up, so they can only stay here and use their meager strength to earn a little food to survive. If they want more, they really don't have the ability to improve their lives.
Some people have the ability to leave here, but do not want to. This place is a mess, a paradise for crime and also a paradise for criminals. No one cares about prostitution and gambling. You can find a woman for a night of pleasure with half a tortilla. It was not so easy to get such a cheap deal in the past. If you leave here, you will not be as good as those rich people and you will be controlled by the government. It is so uncomfortable. It is better to stay here and enjoy the happiness and freedom that you have never had before.
When the government first built the city, according to the original plan, it would be developed one district at a time, and then the living facilities and surrounding business districts would be slowly rebuilt. Unfortunately, the authorities failed to anticipate the occurrence of disasters one after another, and the speed of reconstruction could not keep up with the number of people affected, which led to the current situation in the outer city.
Qin Huai had never been here, but he followed the impression in his dream and walked all the way to the shed that suffocated him in his nightmare.
The windows were blocked and he couldn't see what was going on inside. There was silence all around because it was almost dawn. Everyone, whether they were working outside or just hanging out, had to go home to avoid the scorching sun.
Qin Huai stood at the door in a self-abuse manner, and even wanted to push the door open to see if it was the person in his dream, until he heard a voice talking in the shed.
There were three people in the family. The woman was whispering that the family would run out of food tomorrow. The man was saying that the construction site would get paid tomorrow, and rice and flour would not be available for the time being. So they would buy some beans and grind them into powder, which could be used as staple food for a few days.
There was also the voice of a child in the room. He should be very young, but he said sensibly that he would eat less in the future so that his father wouldn't have to work so hard.
Although the people in the house spoke very quietly, this kind of roof had almost no sound insulation, and Qin Huai was standing outside their window, so he could still hear their conversation clearly. However, it was these conversations that dispelled some of the haze in Qin Huai's heart. The person living here was not his Mu Nan, and everything was different.
Although street lights have gradually been installed in the dirty outer city, cameras have not yet been installed. Qin Huai walked out, taking off the black waterproof coat he was wearing, rolling it up and throwing it on the garbage-filled roadside. When he was almost at the parking lot, Qin Huai threw his hat, mask, and gloves into the stinky ditch before driving home.
He was not worried at all that these things would be discovered. Not to mention the current technological means and whether anyone would seriously investigate, even his own anti-reconnaissance capabilities were enough to erase all traces of his presence.
Before I got home, I received a message from Mu Nan asking why I hadn't replied yet. I smiled and replied with a voice message. I stepped on the accelerator, leaving the darkness of the dirty alleys of the outer city behind, and drove into the morning light of the rising sun.
Hearing the sound, Mu Nan hurried out to open the iron gate. After Qin Huai parked the car in the garage, she waited for him to go upstairs together: "Why is it so late? The sun will be bright in a while. If you are close, it will be fine. But if you are far away, even if you are in the car, it will be dangerous if the temperature rises."
Qin Huai said: "I calculated the time. When you sent me a message, I was already at the gate of the community."
Mu Nan knew that he knew everything he did, but she couldn't help but nag at him. Seeing that he had been busy outside all night, she asked, "Are you hungry? Do you want to take a shower or eat first?"
Qin Huai looked at him: "You didn't eat? Didn't I tell you not to wait for me?"
Mu Nan sighed, "Then you have to come back before dawn. I just waited for you for this meal. I didn't even wait for you when the clock struck 9. I ate by myself."
Qin Huai said: "I'll go take a shower first."
Mu Nan flipped through his menu, listening to the noises in the bathroom. He had already selected the dishes, but he hadn't waited for Qin Huai to come out. Just when he was about to get impatient and was about to knock on the door, the sound of water stopped. He immediately shouted, "Brother, hurry up, you're taking so long."
Qin Huai put on a pair of shorts and walked out while wiping his hair: "If you are hungry, eat first. I washed my hair today, so I was a little slow."
Mu Nan held up his homemade menu: "Are we going to have vegetables or fish today?"
The fish is a big one, weighing three or four pounds. One pot with some side dishes is enough to fill two people up, so you can either eat the fish or the stir-fried dishes, otherwise you won’t be able to finish it.
Qin Huai said: "Let's eat fish. We haven't eaten it for a while."
Mu Nan quickly took out the fish pot, and put some green vegetables and some fatty beef and shrimp into the pot. While waiting for the side dishes to cook, Mu Nan asked, "What did Wang Xiaoli want to see you for?"
Qin Huai said, "He was having a hard time with his insane wife, so he asked me if I had a job that could make more money. He thought that since I lived in District 2, I might have more connections."
Mu Nan: "Why don't you just ask it online? Why did you specially call you over?"
Qin Huai said: "I want to go and see his current situation, and take a look at the situation in the outer city."
Mu Nan didn't ask what was going on outside. He had already experienced what the situation was like outside a year ago. Now the situation outside was either slightly better or worse. He was more concerned about how Qin Huai was going to help Wang Xiaoli: "So are you going to take him to sell bamboo worms?"
Qin Huai, who had never met Wang Xiaoli, said, "Don't worry. He doesn't know Yu Zibai and the others. It's not a good idea to suddenly bring someone who is a stranger to both parties. Besides, although we have agreed with the Cai family on the bamboo worm matter and will go there once a week, it's not a stable thing after all. I'll see if there is a chance to introduce him to a stable job first."
Mu Nan felt that what Qin Huai said made sense. Anyway, his brother was more meticulous than him and always thought things through more carefully. After waiting for the pot to finally boil, he poked the fish face with a chopstick and put the piece of fish meat into Qin Huai's bowl: "You've worked hard today, let me give you some fish face meat to make up for it."
Qin Huai picked up the piece of fish cheek meat and put it into his mouth, his eyes dark and his tone grim: "Well, it seems that I didn't serve you well enough, and you have to make up for it. It's my fault. I will try harder next time."
It was obvious that he had worked hard outside all night, but Mu Nan deliberately misinterpreted his meaning and he almost choked to death on a mouthful of fish!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
