episode 15
Ding Xiabing's face suddenly turned deathly pale, but she refused to admit it.
He turned his head away, avoiding He Xun's face: "What do you mean? I don't understand."
"Does it have to be this way?"
He Xun chuckled and slapped the clearly marked syringe into Ding Xiabing's hand. Then, he grabbed Ding Xiabing's arm and rolled up his sleeve.
Two pale, slender arms covered in needle marks were suddenly exposed to the air. Ding Xiabing's body trembled violently. He subconsciously tried to break free, but He Xun gripped him tighter and tighter.
"Then explain to me what these pinholes are."
"And look at your face, your complexion." He Xun clicked his tongue twice, patted it, and stared at Ding Xiabing with a half-smile. "How did you suddenly become so pale? Don't tell me you've been getting IV drips every day after work."
"Did you lose because of the skin whitening injection?"
Ding Xiabing's breathing became noticeably rapid. He took a deep breath, pushed He Xun's hand away, and said in a strangely sorrowful voice, "You really aren't my fan."
“I can be,” He Xun said.
Ding Xiabing was taken aback, seemingly incredulous, and turned to meet He Xun's eyes.
As the sun shifted, its rays gradually penetrated the gaps in the wall, scattering across He Xun's head.
With her lowered eyebrows, thin lips pressed into a straight line, and slender figure, she seemed to overlap with the Guanyin statue in the temple.
Ding Xiabing's heart skipped a beat for no reason. He could clearly feel a hint of pity in the other person's seemingly ruthless eyes.
After what seemed like an eternity, Ding Xiabing finally managed a wry smile and asked, "What did you say?"
"As long as you can explain why you used banned drugs."
He Xun closed his eyes, crossed his arms, and said in a tone that even he himself did not realize was a little pity, "Otherwise, I will have no choice but to post it online and expose it."
— Five minutes later.
The two sat down in a secluded private room at a small restaurant.
He ordered a basket of xiaolongbao as a token gesture. After the waiter left, He Xun took off his baseball cap and poured a glass of warm water for Ding Xiabing, who was clearly very weak.
"Thanks."
Ding Xiabing placed her hands on the table, forced a bitter smile, and said to He Xun, "I asked the director for fifteen minutes off. Ask me what you want to know."
Why use banned drugs?
Would you believe me if I said that?
"I'll believe you if you tell me."
Ding Xiabing paused abruptly, then looked up a few seconds later and asked, "Do you have any cigarettes?"
He Xun didn't say anything. He took out a half-pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pushed it with two fingers, and the smooth cigarette pack dented instantly.
"Thank you." Ding Xiabing thanked her again, then took out a cigarette and held it in her hand.
He Xun flicked the lighter and lit it for him. The blue flame disappeared, followed by a flash of scarlet.
Ding Xiabing put the cigarette in his mouth and took a drag. The smoke he exhaled obscured his delicate yet haggard features. In this dreamlike scene, he continued what he had been saying, "To numb myself, I guess."
He Xun looked at him in silence.
Do you think I look like a woman?
Ding Xiabing coughed violently, but then took a deep drag of her cigarette as if torturing herself. Her white teeth snapped open and closed, making a crunching sound as she bit the cigarette butt, as if she were talking to herself, "I don't like men, but those people insist on using me as a woman. Every time I'm pinned down on the bed/fucked by different people, I wonder if I'm a man or a woman."
“I can’t accept it, so I have to numb myself with this.” Ding Xiabing tapped the syringe on the table with her finger. As her fingertip moved, the syringe rolled to the ground and then hit the corner of the wall with a thud. “What else can I do? I don’t dare to kill them, and I feel that why should I die? So I can only numb myself by deceiving myself.”
There is no way out.
If you walk too slowly, you'll get heatstroke; if you walk too fast, you'll sweat and catch a cold when you get to the church.
We're caught in a dilemma; there's no way out.
He Xun couldn't help but think of the book "The Outsider" that he had read in the library late at night, and it fit the situation perfectly.
"Maybe it's because I come from a remote mountain village and don't quite understand the mentality of people from big cities. He Xun, do you think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill?" Ding Xiabing's face showed genuine doubt, like a student earnestly seeking answers from a teacher. "Shouldn't...shouldn't we just accept all of this?"
"It's not your fault." He Xun's expression remained unchanged, but his tone carried a hint of helpless, compassionate firmness. "It's not any of it."
But he understood that telling Ding Xiabing whether it was right or wrong at this point was pointless.
The skin had been cut open and could never be restored to its original state. Blood was gushing out, and what was being filled in was not the original blood, but blood mixed with fine dust.
Ding Xiabing was clearly aware of the situation, and he laughed self-deprecatingly: "You might think it's no big deal, what's the big deal? So what if someone sleeps with you? What's a grown man doing being so coy? But He Xun, do you know, when those unfamiliar faces took off their clothes and took turns entering my body on the same night, I felt like I had already died at that moment. Lying on the bed, kneeling on the ground, I would always see the birds that had been flying over the fields every day since the moment I was born."
“I was thinking, how wonderful it would be if I were that bird.” Ding Xiabing looked up at the dry and dilapidated ceiling, without tears, just a faint smile, “I wouldn’t have this shamelessness, and I wouldn’t have to be a frog in a well in the mountains forever.”
He Xun suddenly closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, his well-defined knuckles gripping the edge of the table. "Who are they?"
“It’s not important anymore, He Xun.” Ding Xiabing composed herself, her expression somber. “You know, ordinary people like us can’t pose the slightest threat to them, no matter what.”
Yes, that has been the case since ancient times.
“It’s alright, leave it to me.” He Xun didn’t continue from Ding Xiabing’s words, but calmly took out his tablet, even managing a smile. “The culprit is Mo Wenjin, right? Hmm… let me think… how to get rid of him.”
Ding Xiabing's gaze froze as she met He Xun's almost indifferent yet ruthless eyes, and she immediately got goosebumps.
He suddenly understood, and realized where the strange feeling that He Xun had been subtly giving him since last night came from.
A sense of madness.
A kind of madness, believing oneself to be doing a righteous thing, wanting to judge and punish the heinous villains oneself; beneath the tranquil lake lies an unknown yet chillingly turbulent sea.
Fearing that He Xun might do something impulsive, Ding Xiabing hurriedly grabbed He Xun's wrist and asked in a hoarse voice, "What exactly is your purpose?"
Distracted from his train of thought, He Xun frowned, clearly displeased, but the next second he turned off the tablet and patiently looked at Ding Xiabing, "I'll just ask you one question: were you with Mo Wenjin willingly or forced?"
Ding Xiabing was taken aback, then murmured, "Do I even have a choice?"
For some reason, Ding Xiabing suddenly realized something, stared at He Xun, and said with certainty, "You threw that dart last night."
"It's a pity we didn't kill him." He Xun said regretfully.
"Actually, I really don't understand why you're helping me." Ding Xiabing stared at He Xun's excessively beautiful and radiant face, her expression suddenly changing. "Could it be that you also..."
"That's impossible."
He Xun knew he had misunderstood, and smiled lightly, revealing two cute tiger teeth, but what he uttered was bloody and violent words: "Even if there were such people, they would have disappeared after I broke their ribs."
"......"
"So why are you helping me?" Ding Xiabing asked.
Why should I help you?
"Yeah...why..." He Xun repeated Ding Xiabing's words, but his thoughts drifted back to when he was in second grade...
"Back then, I lived with my grandparents in a remote village where information was scarce."
Every day after school, I would have nothing to do, so I would sit on the big rock at the entrance of the village, clutching the Chinese textbook that I had read countless times in advance, lost in thought.
I've always been this strange person. While other kids were playing house and mud, I spent every day observing the infamous madwoman in the village.
They all say she's a crazy woman, even the children say so.
Judging from her appearance alone, the woman was indeed not quite normal. She seemed crazy and would run naked from one end of the village to the other every day, her hair disheveled and filthy.
All the kids except me, a weirdo who doesn't like to play with others, hate her. They'll even throw stones at her bare back when they see her.
The women scoffed at her, especially when they caught a glimpse of her overly voluptuous, exposed genitals; their eyes always held a mixture of viciousness and a strange, envious look.
The men in the village, including the older ones, would often drag her into the cornfield.
I don't know what they did to the crazy woman, but I do know that every time they came out of the fields in groups, laughing and joking, there would always be a pool of blood along the path they followed.
Once, when those men saw me sitting on a big rock, they even gave me a lewd smile and invited me to come in. I don't know why, but I felt disgusted and turned and ran away. It wasn't until it was almost dark that I dared to sneak over and see how that crazy woman was doing.
She always glared at other children, but she always showed kindness to me. When I came over, she held a little white rabbit that she had gotten from somewhere, and said to me in a babbling voice, "Xun, little Xun, here you can play."
The setting sun cast its light on the golden cornfield. She lay on the ground, her body covered in filthy liquid, so dirty, yet her movements were so sacred.
I didn't dare answer it and ran away.
Actually, I don't know what I'm afraid of; I just don't want to look at her face from the bottom of my heart.
Later, two strangers, a man and a woman, came to the village.
The setting sun cast a golden glow over the woman's head.
She was wearing a white shirt, and she seemed to have come from another perfect world that I had imagined.
She bent down and touched my head, her press pass around her neck swaying in the wind. She smiled and asked, "Hello, little friend. We are investigative reporters from the city. Here's some candy for you. Could you show us around and tell us about your village?"
I don't remember much about what happened after that. I only remember that the crazy woman who used to crawl around the village every day now had clothes to wear, her hair smelled nice, she was in better spirits, and she could even call me by my full name when she saw me.
I saw footage of our village on a news channel on TV, and that's when I realized that the crazy woman had come from a big city.
She has a very poetic name, Fang Yulin.
Just like the beautiful and pleasant-sounding names I saw in the dictionary when I was a child, but under the dark blue news clippings, only the pseudonym "Xiaoyu" could be left.
Moreover, she also has a respectable job and an impressive master's degree.
But somehow, the news report fizzled out. My grandmother said that some county officials seemed to have been involved.
The female reporter who asked me about the situation was also stabbed dozens of times by a stranger who rushed out of the village on a bright afternoon. She didn't even have time to react when she was stabbed, and there was still a smile on her lips. Blood splattered on her snow-white ID and shirt like blooming plum blossoms.
She lay in a pool of blood, her eyes wide open.
I was also able to pick up the press card and see her name clearly—Xu Fei.
Reporter Xu Fei.
The other male reporter, whose presence in my memory was not very strong, hid in the panicked crowd the moment the knife-wielder rushed out. To protect himself, he even deliberately pushed Xu Fei.
I immediately felt nauseous.
That was the first time I had a concrete understanding of the word "coward".
I called him a coward, just like the protagonist in a TV series, but he suddenly looked up, drew his knife, and rushed over to slap me hard.
Later, the female reporter lying in a pool of blood in front of me was replaced by the faces of other classmates and colleagues, like an open-air movie being shown at midnight in a village.
They took their oaths one by one, and then left one by one.
Finally, the face in the pool of blood became me.
I rose into the air and saw my shattered limbs and scattered backpack...
"He Xun...He Xun! Are you alright?"
Ding Xiabing's voice abruptly pulled He Xun back to reality.
He Xun was startled, only then realizing that his forehead was covered in cold sweat. He took a few deep breaths and shook his head after a long while, "It's nothing, just think of me as sick."
Ding Xiabing was taken aback: "What?"
"Don't you know?" He Xun curled his lips in self-deprecation, his dark eyelashes trembling slightly. "Extreme altruism is also a serious mental disorder."
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