It was as if she was trying her best to suppress some emotion, afraid of losing control.
The melancholy in his eyes was not just the mourning of the living for the deceased, but more like the concealment of an unspeakable past.
A secret so heavy that even mentioning it requires courage, weighs heavily on one's mind, making it hard to breathe.
Intuition was like an alarm bell ringing incessantly in my mind, getting louder and louder, and my heart was pounding wildly.
This Xin Ziming harbors far more secrets than I imagined, so much so that she could overturn all my understanding of "life and death" and "the world".
The "other world" she speaks of is probably not the same as the "rebirth," "reincarnation," or "heaven and hell" that I understand.
That might be a real space, a hidden world I've never encountered before.
A place where the "deceased" can truly "live," a place Qianluo once visited and is now returning to.
Before I could voice my questions, she gently grasped my wrist. The grip was light, as if she were afraid of hurting me.
Her fingertips deliberately avoided the thin calluses on the inside of my wrists from years of handling scalpels—marks left from my interactions with the deceased. She even noticed this small detail.
The touch of my fingertips carried a cool temperature, yet it exerted an undeniable pull, leading me step by step away from the silence of the martyrs' cemetery.
The sounds of pines and cypresses and the wind behind me gradually faded away, and even the cool fragrance of soil and pine needles in the air became fainter.
Only the cool evening breeze remained, making my ear tips stiff and adding to my unease.
A dark gray minivan was parked at the entrance. The car was spotless, with dark tint on the windows, so no one could see inside from the outside.
It was as unassuming as a stone submerged in water; if it weren't for the faint light from its headlights, it would almost blend into the night.
When the driver saw us approaching, he simply turned to the side from the driver's seat, nodded slightly through the car window, and didn't even glance at us.
His fingers rested on the steering wheel, his knuckles steady without the slightest wobbling, his posture as composed as a guard waiting for orders.
He looks like someone who is used to following the rules and not asking or looking around too much. He doesn't seem like an assistant serving a celebrity, but more like a professionally trained bodyguard.
As I sat in the back seat, the leather seats felt slightly cool to the touch, clinging to my clothes which still smelled of the cemetery dampness.
The slight coolness seeped through the fabric, which actually cleared my muddled mind a bit.
I subconsciously looked out the window, and in the rearview mirror, the cemetery where Qianluo was buried was gradually shrinking into a blurry shadow.
The bluish-gray tombstones and dark green pine trees gradually merged into a dark mass, until even their outlines became indistinguishable.
Only the streetlights in the distance still shone faintly, like stars scattered in the night.
My heart feels like it's blocked by something; I can't quite tell if it's a sense of loss, unease, or anticipation for the answer that's about to come.
Feeling so stifled, one wanted to sigh, but was afraid of disturbing Xin Zimo, who was resting with her eyes closed beside her.
After getting on the bus, Xin Zimo leaned back in her seat with her eyes closed, her head slightly tilted, and her long eyelashes cast faint shadows under her eyes.
Even his breathing was very light, his chest rising and falling gently like ripples on a lake.
She seemed to be resting, or perhaps silently organizing her thoughts—perhaps, those past events concerning Qianluo were equally heavy for her, so heavy that she needed to process them alone for a while.
I opened my mouth, but swallowed the words back: Qianluo's identity was special; she sacrificed herself to infiltrate and combat a cross-border drug trafficking group.
Many details of the operation remain confidential to this day, and even her family only knows that she "died in the line of duty".
It is unknown how long she disguised herself deep within the drug den and dealt with desperate criminals.
Although this driver is Xin Ziming's person, I understand the rule of "don't listen to what you shouldn't listen to" better than anyone else.
If any word were to leak out, it would not only affect the anti-narcotics team's pursuit of the remaining drug traffickers.
Qianluo's family will likely never have a peaceful day again, and they will even have to live in fear during the Qingming Festival to pay their respects, worried about being retaliated against.
Perhaps she sensed my silence, or perhaps the quiet in the car softened her aura.
Xin Ziming's shoulder lines seemed softer, no longer as taut as they were in the cemetery. Even the wrinkles between her brows were shallower, like paper marks smoothed by the evening breeze.
The aloofness and coldness that had kept people at a distance in the cemetery had faded considerably, like a blown-away fog, and the aura around him was no longer so sharp that people dared not approach.
It has a more relaxing tranquility, like a calm lake in the middle of the night, with fewer ripples.
The car drove for a long time in the night, and the street scene outside the window gradually changed from the sparsely lit suburbs to the increasingly bright neon lights of the city.
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