Gift
The camera wobbled as it focused on the person lying on the concrete floor.
He stretched out his trembling forearm, and his bleeding palm trembled as he scratched the tiny protrusion on the ground. He exerted force little by little, and finally crawled on the ground, seeking a glimmer of hope towards the open door not far away.
The camera slowly moves back, gradually revealing the man's entire body.
The blood splattered on his trouser leg was almost dried, but the neat wound above his heel was still bleeding, leaving two long bloodstains on the ground behind him.
Following a dull sound of footsteps, the camera moved back to the front. After a brief period of blurring and blurring, the man's face became clear.
His face was covered in stains mixed with tears and dust from the ground, and his chin was stained with blood.
His lips were sewn shut with needle and thread, and he seemed to be begging for mercy. He looked at the camera in pain, his eyes full of fear, and made some vague sounds from his mouth. As he pulled, blood oozed out from the needle hole.
The person holding the camera outside the screen encouraged the man: "You're almost there, keep going."
Seeing that his pleading was ineffective, the man looked desperate and had to continue moving forward slowly.
The camera slowly retreated again, and after a slight shake, it stabilized, as if it was fixed on the shelf.
When the man's hand was about to reach the threshold of the door, a figure appeared in the camera from the side.
The man was wearing a pure white morning suit, but on his head was a crow hood made of jet-black bird feathers.
"Did I seduce you?"
She walked forward, kicked the man's arm away, and closed the door that symbolized life.
"Have I ever said anything nice to you?"
She unscrewed the lid of the white plastic bucket she was holding and poured the yellowish liquid inside little by little onto the violently struggling man, truly "cheer" him up.
"Didn't I tell you clearly before?"
She toyed with a metallic windproof lighter in her gloved hands, stepping back to a safe distance as she spoke slowly.
"I don't love you"
After the crisp sound of opening the lid, the windproof lighter was ignited with a "swish".
"And I can't love you either?"
The lighter fell along a parabola to the edge of the flowing liquid and ignited instantly. He rolled on the ground in pain, but the flames were like a layer of clothes that could not be taken off, burning tightly against him.
The person with his back to the camera folded his arms and admired the human-shaped object that was gradually charring and curling up in the flames, then slowly turned around to show his front.
In the last scene of the video, under the black mask, there is a pair of golden eyes.
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Zhou Yiting frowned and turned off the video. A strong feeling of nausea scratched her stomach wall.
Compared to the first case, the means this time were even more cruel. From the fanatical tone and the calmness in his gestures, it could be seen that the man seemed to be increasingly immersed in such acts of cruelty.
It is ultimately a luxury to remain untainted by the mud. The seeds rooted in sin will eventually only bloom into malicious flowers.
Zhou Min.
It was not until now that Zhou Qiting completely separated this name from the thin figure of the past, and replaced it with the bloodthirsty "Zhou Min" of today.
She took a deep breath to suppress the discomfort brought by watching the video, and her mouse cursor kept hovering over another attachment in the email named "Shuguang Welfare Home", but she was reluctant to click it.
In the past fifteen years, not only because of her mother's deliberate concealment, but also because of her own deliberate avoidance, Zhou Yiting never heard anything about the welfare home again, nor did she want to recall what happened there in the past.
But dreams always remind her of—
In the darkness of the night that was about to dawn, that skinny but warm hand held her tightly and jumped down from the half-person-high windowsill.
They entered the densely planted bushes, bypassed the security guards, and arrived at the dilapidated wall.
"We'll only be away for a while, it shouldn't be a problem, right?" The thin figure climbed over the wall first and reached out to Zhou Yiting to prevent her from falling.
"It's okay, just get back before anyone finds you." Zhou Qiting landed safely under steady support, "So hurry up."
She remembered how Zhou Min had shyly refused to accept the gift she had offered him the day before, so she pretended to be nonchalant and said, "Why don't you just give me something in exchange?"
I can't honestly say that I gave Zhou Min a gift just to make him happy, right? Zhou Qiting snorted arrogantly, waiting for her to exchange something for it.
In the end, Zhou Min pulled out a glass ball and shook his head. He pulled out half a pencil stub and shook his head again. He pulled out several odds and ends, but none of them could compare to the gift.
Oh, she's so stupid. Zhou Qiting was a little annoyed watching from the side. He had told her it could be anything, but why didn't she understand?
After searching for a while, he still found nothing. In the end, Zhou Min could only rub the worn and frayed edge of his trouser pocket and said, "Can I exchange it with something else?"
So the two of them got up early that day, and Zhou Min planned to secretly take Zhou Qiting out to the back mountain to watch the sunrise.
"What's the difference between the sunrise over the mountain behind and the sunrise through the window?" Zhou Qiting was puzzled.
"Yes, I'll take you to the back mountain to see it. It will make me..." Zhou Min paused, frowned slightly and thought, then pulled out a suitable proverb in his mind, "Even if there is no credit, there is still hard work."
Oh, you're not stupid now. Zhou Qiting curled his lips and agreed reluctantly.
It turned out to be a cloudy day.
The two returned to Zhou Qiting's temporary room before the servants discovered them. As soon as Zhou Min let go of her hand, Zhou Qiting grabbed her wrist.
"Here, as a reward for your hard work." She picked up the gift and stuffed it into Zhou Min's hand. "If you don't want it, throw it away. Don't give it back to me."
After feeling embarrassed for a while, Zhou Min finally accepted it. His golden eyes lit up with a smile, and he said to her seriously: "Zhou Qiting, I will definitely let you see the most beautiful sunrise next time."
Due to deliberate forgetfulness, Zhou Qiting, who has grown up, can no longer remember more details of the incident, and can't even remember what the gift was.
She only remembered the "next time" she received in exchange for her sincerity, which was the foreshadowing of a nightmare that she didn't want to recall but was still vivid in her mind.
Those once beautiful scenes and the later terrible scenes always appear alternately in dreams, as if my subconscious mind is deliberately using good memories to make the bad ones look worse.
As if committing self-torture, he repeatedly opened the wounds that had barely healed, using the painful festering to deeply engrave the image of Zhou Min into his mind.
Ever since Zhou Min disappeared with that woman fifteen years ago, Zhou Yiting never thought he would hear from her again.
If he hadn't accidentally seen that video, if he hadn't happened to hear that wrongly beat tune, Zhou Yiting would have completely missed the opportunity to erase the name "Zhou Min" from his heart.
Thank you fate for the long-awaited fulfillment.
Zhou Qiting finally made up his mind, opened the attachment, and began to browse the information related to the welfare home over the years.
The more he looked, the more solemn his expression became.
How could it be...
The cold, flickering light from the screen made her face paler, and the answer that was vaguely forming in her heart gradually drained her strength.
Her trembling hands tried several times to pick up the phone but failed. She removed the last bit of support from her back, leaned back in the chair, and closed her eyes deeply.
She suddenly remembered the question the man asked her with red eyes that day.
"Zhou Qiting, have you fulfilled all the promises you made?"
Looking back now, what confidence did I have in responding to “I mean what I say”?
Thinking of that person, a sudden guess flashed through my mind.
She opened a drawer beside the desk and took out an object the size of a watch dial. This was a disposable signal transceiver that her men had found in her original car when they were looking for clues left by that person.
Although there was no direct evidence, Zhou Yiting's intuition told her that the transceiver device for positioning purposes was installed by that person.
Add to that the person's irises that had been disguised, and her former bar owner friend who disappeared after injuring her bodyguard.
All these doubts combined forced Zhou Qiting to speculate in this direction.
Was this a long-planned revenge for her broken promise? But why hadn't that person taken so long to hurt her when he had so many opportunities to do so?
The unclear purpose makes the whole thing confusing.
But how could that person be Zhou Min?
Just as warmth is always the opposite of cold-bloodedness, Zhou Qiting subconsciously resisted equating the tearful and gentle person with the cruel person in the video.
She needed more clues to overturn this speculation.
After some thought, Zhou Qiting became calmer and began to be thankful that he had lost his composure just now and did not call his mother to question her about what happened that year.
If her mother knew that she had learned about the recent situation of the orphanage, she might increase her efforts to obstruct her investigation.
In order to sort out this tangled web of relationships, Zhou Qiting decided to personally investigate matters related to the welfare home.
Of course, I wasn't going to investigate directly on the scene, but rather trying to find out indirectly through various channels. If I really went there directly, I'm afraid I'd be stopped by someone sent by my mother on the way.
Her eyes passed over the words "project stalled" and "re-funding" in the document and landed on the "Ji Shi Charity Foundation" in the last paragraph.
There is a good opportunity right now.
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