Chapter 18
I remember him.
Although his appearance was blurry at the time, I could still confirm that he was the son of the woman in the wheelchair.
Now, he is still tall. You may not notice the exaggeration from a distance, but I was surprised when I saw him up close.
He was estimated to be half a head taller than Teng Zheng. When I looked at him straight in the eye, I could only see half of his pale collarbone exposed under his loose gray sweater, which protruded like a chain wrapped around his body.
I noticed that he had changed his clothes in just half a day. He was no longer wearing a blue-gray hoodie, but a light gray long-sleeved sweater paired with loose white trousers that were as soft and droopy as paper. The waistband of the trousers was pulled up to his waist, but the trouser legs still did not cover his slightly dirty and worn black boots, and a layer of ink-black was simply smeared around the trouser legs.
I didn't pay much attention to his appearance, because as soon as the boy stood in front of me, I smelled a strong, cold woody scent like the winter wind blowing on my face.
Feeling uncomfortable, I raised my hand to cover my nose, but suddenly realized that this action might cause misunderstanding, so I looked up and observed the boy in front of me.
It seemed that the boy had never smiled since he entered the door, and he was even unwilling to raise his lips to express his feelings.
Before my eyes, he stood like a weary pine tree enveloped in pride, stiff and distant, standing in the middle of the doorway. His face seemed covered in a layer of snow, cold and white. His narrow eyes, high nose, and flat, pale lips, hidden by his messy, slightly longer black hair, had a hint of bluish-gray green.
He is not nice to anyone, and his whole body exudes a coldness that keeps strangers and acquaintances away.
While I was looking at him, he was also staring at me. He neither frowned at my rudeness nor said a word. He stared at me through his black eyes like a dead man.
But he is so good-looking that people cannot feel disgusted with him. They will only label him as a depressed boy or a cold male god.
I muttered: "Who are you showing off to? I don't owe you any money or touch your porcelain. Are you here to collect a debt?"
He had a cold face, and I also had a gloomy face. We stared at each other, and it was Teng Zheng who helped introduce us.
"Brother Sui, why are you here so early? Isn't it time to go to work yet?" It was just an ordinary smile, but compared with the boy in front of him, Teng Zheng looked particularly bright.
I like sunny people, so I stayed close to Teng Zheng.
The boy did not respond to Teng Zheng. I had heard Teng Zheng say that there were always some disabled people among his brothers. I thought about how Teng Zheng addressed the boy and guessed the relationship between the two.
I wondered if this boy was also mute?
"Isn't the rule here that only staff members can enter?" the boy asked back.
His voice was clear, his timbre was clean, and his words without ups and downs sounded like still water without ripples, which made them tasteless.
Even I could hear the meaning behind his words. Of course, Teng Zheng understood it immediately, but he didn't care. "I just saw that the door was open. Besides, we've both registered."
The boy finally turned his dull gaze away and walked towards his work station in the rescue room with sound steps.
"But then again, Brother Sui, you left at noon without closing the door. Even though there are surveillance cameras, isn't that too reassuring?"
The boy pulled the chair behind the table away, glanced at Teng Zheng indifferently, and simply said, "I was not here this morning."
"I see..."
Teng Zheng murmured, not wanting to delve into personal matters. He realized he had been silenced, but he was unwilling to keep his mouth shut. In the blink of an eye, he saw that I was still observing the stranger in front of him, so he simply put his arm around my shoulders and let me continue talking. "I forgot to introduce you. This is my new friend, Li Feng. You should get to know him. You may see him again in the future. He works with my aunt." Teng Zheng deliberately spoke the last sentence in a very low voice.
But the boy could hear me clearly, because he looked at me again, having just moved away: "Are you disabled?"
Teng Zheng answered first: "My voice was born without the ability to speak."
The boy lowered his eyes as if nodding, indicating that he already knew. There was no trace of sympathy in his eyes for the fact that I was mute at my age. It seemed that in his eyes I was just an ordinary person who did not need others to deliberately give me a condescending look, because I was the same as everyone else.
"Look at how you're pretending to be?" Teng Zheng complained. "Forget it, I'll tell you. His name is Sui Yusheng."
It is really a name that is completely opposite to his personality. I think this name is more suitable for Teng Zheng, a chatterbox.
But I didn’t have time to think about it, because Xiaoju was still waiting for me.
I raised my hand and tugged at Teng Zheng's clothes for a while, out of Sui Yusheng's sight, signaling him to take me away quickly.
Teng Zheng had already sensed my little movement. Instead of leaving, he put his arm around me, flipped through his phone, and then took me to the front of the desk.
Just when I was about to get angry, Teng Zheng put the photo of Xiaoju that I had seen earlier in front of Sui Yusheng and said, "Let me ask you something. Brother Sui, have you seen this cat?"
Sui Yusheng glanced at him briefly and said, "Send him to the hospital."
"Oh," Teng Zheng put away his phone and relaxed his grip on my shoulders. "We came here just to find it."
Sui Yusheng asked nonchalantly, "Do you want to adopt him?"
"No," Teng Zheng said this with a teasing smile on his face. "That's his friend."
For no reason, I met Sui Yusheng's eyes again.
"……friend?"
Compared to Teng Zheng, Sui Yusheng's face was expressionless, but his tone suddenly became provocative, with a hint of mockery.
I didn't think my friend had done anything wrong, so I looked directly into Sui Yusheng's eyes without avoiding or avoiding her, and I didn't show any expression.
"Hey, aren't people online now raising kittens and puppies as if they were their own children? This isn't surprising."
Teng Zheng was quite perceptive. When he saw the air suddenly freeze over his joke, he tried to figure out a way to break it himself.
"If there's nothing else, then... we'll leave."
I didn't want to stay any longer, so I turned around and left almost as soon as Teng Zheng finished speaking, and Teng Zheng followed closely behind me.
"etc."
Suddenly, the silent Sui Yusheng began to speak again.
"I forgot to mention one thing. Today, a group of cats waiting to be neutered escaped on the way due to a cage malfunction. The cat you're looking for is orange, and it has a unique tuft of white hair on its back, right? If so, then this cat is probably among them."
Xiaoju ran away?
I turned around in surprise and looked at Teng Zheng for help.
Teng Zheng also expressed disbelief, as if a duck that had been caught in his mouth had flown away for no reason. "Run away? Are you sure?"
Sui Yusheng put the phone on the table: "Group message."
Obviously, he had no intention of showing it to us, but he also had no reason to deceive us, so the news might be true.
This made me very anxious. Regardless of whether Sui Yusheng could understand sign language, I just kept gestured: Where did it run to?
Unfortunately, Sui Yusheng didn't understand sign language either. His normally calm brows furrowed slightly at my gesture, but after a few seconds, he regained his indifferent composure. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"
The corners of Teng Zheng's mouth twitched, but eventually turned into an almost inaudible sigh.
He expressed helplessness.
The inability to communicate with words made me collapse and purse my lips, but I was illiterate and could not communicate with Teng Zheng through text.
After thinking it over, I could only force myself to express silently with my lips what I wanted to say. All my strength was gathered in my throat. The air wanted to break through the shackles. I even felt that my throat was covered with particles of all sizes. Every time I opened my mouth to speak, thousands of sharp thorns would overdraw my voice.
I'm becoming increasingly speechless.
Teng Zheng was an idiot. Even from this close to me, he didn't understand what I was saying with my mouth. It was Sui Yusheng, who was sitting in her office chair, who explained, "It escaped from the rescue room next door. The cage was open and the cats were kept indoors. Someone outside opened the door without knowing, and the cats in the cage all escaped. We caught it in a fitness equipment field south of Yingyuan Road. I guess it will run back."
This is the first time I heard Sui Yusheng say all this in one breath.
Now that I had a general understanding, I felt relieved.
As it was getting closer to work time, since Xiaoju had already escaped, there was little point in staying any longer and it would only cause trouble for others. I took the initiative to suggest to Teng Zheng that we leave.
"Your friend is very fierce." This was the last sentence Sui Yusheng said to me before I left. When I looked back at him, he stretched out his pale and slender right hand to show me.
Originally, it was a beautiful hand, with pale blue veins winding like streams under the cold skin.
But now, a scratch had appeared on this hand, and even though it had been patched up, it still looked hideous. It was like a trapped animal suddenly falling into a gurgling stream, dark red blood gurgling from its body, falling into the clear stream, and mercilessly dyeing the stream red into strange veins, which was truly shocking to the eye.
The long, dried marks extended all the way to the wrist, stopping next to the golden, leaf-shaped jewelry worn by Sui Yusheng.
Pale white, golden yellow and blood red, these three impactful colors are extremely unfriendly to my eyes.
I didn't say a word and ran out without turning my head.
I didn't ask Sui Yusheng for the exact time Xiaoju disappeared. I knew that since Xiaoju had escaped after being caught, he must have been unnecessarily frightened. And cats are likely to flee frantically after being stressed. Even if I could find out the time, given Xiaoju's speed, there's a good chance I wouldn't be able to calculate or find him.
So it's good enough to have a place for it to settle down.
Because I was preoccupied with urgent matters, I would occasionally lose focus during my afternoon work. Even my gaze was absent-minded while I was working at the cash register. I was waved away by customers several times. Some people even concluded that I was a minor based on my thin body and believed that the boss was suspected of employing child labor. I had to force myself to explain myself clearly.
I finally made it to the end of the day. I almost took off my work clothes and ran out as soon as the woman in the wheelchair walked in.
I ran deep into the deserted alley and transformed into my original form that ran faster. I had to race against time to get to Yingyuan Road, because every second I spent would put Xiaoju one point further away from me.
Unfortunately, cats mostly travel at night. It is now the rush hour and there are a lot of cars on the road. It is impossible for a smart cat to run around in such a situation.
There was not a single cat in the Equipment Square, but there were quite a few elderly people and children, and even people walking their dogs.
I returned to where I was, feeling lost.
Xiaoju and I got separated again.
In fact, it was expected that we couldn’t find it, but when our original hope was dashed, we still felt sad.
I walked on the path in a daze, the scent of nearby wild cats invading my brain. I tried to search for the scent of Xiaoju, but the results were all disappointing.
"Hey, dirty little wildcat, take my kick!"
I didn't expect someone to attack me so openly. By the time I reacted, the person's foot had already kicked me hard.
All the hair on my body exploded in an instant. In the eyes of others, I might have looked like a giant dandelion, falling to the ground, standing there blankly yet alertly. Only I knew how stiff I was right now.
My ears were folded, my whiskers were stiff, my paws were shaking, and my tail was cocked. It was no exaggeration to say that I was like a spring about to take off. If anyone passed by me again, I would attack him without hesitation.
The little boy who had kicked me had already run away. He was a typical elementary school student. He had kicked me on purpose, completely unaware that he was mistreating the weak. His smile was like the emerald green of summer ivy, covering his childish face.
Gradually, he shrank into a dot in my sight, and the burning pain gradually climbed from my legs to my brain.
I took two tentative steps forward, twisting.
I am lame.
Animals walking normally will be treated maliciously. I know very well what will happen to an injured cat walking on the road.
I came to a deserted place and transformed into a human.
Even if I became a human, I couldn't change the fact that I was injured. I was still the cripple whose left leg seemed half a length shorter than my right. Every step I took was slow, like a leaning tower. Even if I concentrated all my strength on my knees, I still swayed with an unstable center of gravity.
So when I passed the fork in the alley ahead, I was so busy that I didn't even notice someone riding a bike speeding towards me.
I was knocked to the ground again and my left leg was defeated.
The car braked suddenly, and the first thing that came into view was a pair of slender legs wrapped in black trousers.
I looked up along this straight leg. It was sunset and the boy was facing away from the setting sun. His face, hidden in the shadows, was made to look prickly by the soft golden light, making it difficult for me to see clearly for a moment.
“It’s you…?”
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