chapter 1

We all have our quirks, and we call them love.

–

The night was thick and heavy as the bus rolled to a slow stop. Darkness swallowed both the road ahead and the road behind, leaving only the platform lit by a cold, white glare.

Qiu Rongrong sat by the window in the back row. Without thinking, her gaze drifted to the man waiting at the stop. He was dressed with care-neat, almost refined-but in his hand he dragged a bulging burlap sack that didn’t match his polished, white-collar air at all.

She lifted her eyes-

And met his gaze head-on.

Qiu Rongrong jerked her eyes away as if she’d been shocked.

The doors opened.

The man boarded, dragging the swollen sack behind him.

Not wanting a repeat of that awkward moment, Qiu Rongrong kept her head down. Her eyes landed-unfortunately-right on the sack.

Something inside seemed to move.

Qiu Rongrong froze.

She snapped her head up and saw the man hunched awkwardly at the front of the bus, apologizing to the driver. “Sorry. The trash dirtied the bus.”

Only after that did he haul the heavy sack down the aisle. It scraped along the floor, leaving behind a dark streak.

Like rust.

And she really did see a length of rebar poking out of it. That movement just now… she must’ve seen it wrong.

Qiu Rongrong lowered her head again. Her black hair fell forward, and her fingers clenched the cuff of her sleeve so hard it hurt. She didn’t dare make a sound.

The next second, the man sat down right beside her.

“You’re heading to Guixu City too?” he said, striking up a conversation as if it were the most natural thing in the world. His voice was unexpectedly gentle-nothing like what his appearance suggested.

Qiu Rongrong shrank back anyway. She didn’t know why, but she could’ve sworn she heard faint, thin panting coming from inside the sack.

And there was that sharp, choking smell of disinfectant.

Maybe it was another hallucination.

No. It had to be a hallucination.

Qiu Rongrong forced herself to stay calm. She couldn’t let herself be sent back to the psychiatric hospital.

Three years ago, her entire family had been murdered. The killer kept her locked in a basement and abused her for a year. She escaped on her own.

Afterward, the severe trauma response landed her in treatment at a psychiatric hospital for a long time.

Not long ago, the case was finally solved. The murderer had already been executed, and Qiu Rongrong’s psychologist had issued a certificate declaring her recovered. The community helped arrange foster parents for her. She was on this bus now, on her way to her foster parents’ home, to start a new life.

She forced the corners of her mouth up. “Mm.”

“Where do you live?” The man immediately pressed, seizing on her response.

Qiu Rongrong tried staying silent for a few seconds.

But for some reason, the quieter it got, the worse her hallucinations seemed to become.

She felt his gaze-sticky, damp, and crawling-wrap around her like a snake. It was as if he were licking over every inch of her skin with his eyes.

His breathing grew heavier.

Warm breath brushed her neck. A thread of cold seeped down through her collar.

The ringing in her ears came back.

And again she heard someone sharpening a knife right beside her ear.

“Near Xinghui Plaza!” she blurted, voice sudden and too fast.

The tension snapped in an instant.

The man didn’t react strangely at all. He only lifted his tone a little, sounding almost pleased. “My apartment’s rented near there too.”

He seemed like he wanted to say more.

But the bus let out a screeching cry and jolted to an abrupt stop-it had reached the station.

Qiu Rongrong hurried off.

She thought the man would follow her down, but he didn’t.

So everything just now really had been her hallucination. Qiu Rongrong finally let out a breath.
It was late summer. Even at night, the wind on the street still carried a lingering, stifling heat.

Qiu Rongrong’s body was covered in countless scars. Even in the hottest days of the year, she wore long sleeves and long pants, wrapping herself up tight.

But now she realized she was shaking with cold.

She forced herself to hug her arms and rub at them, when she heard a “Bang!” from the direction the bus had just left.

Her vision seemed to flip into slow motion.

The window was open.

A burlap sack had been tossed to the side. The mouth of it had come loose, and half a swollen hand had spilled out.

Dark red-not rust. Blood.

It snaked from the sack all the way to her feet.

Mu… murder.

There really was a corpse in that sack.

And then the man leaned his head out of the bus window, smiling as he met her gaze.

His eyes.

In an instant, every hair on Qiu Rongrong’s body stood on end.

Those eyes had unnaturally large black pupils, almost filling the entire eyeball.

They made her think of a horned frog.

A gloomy creature that lived in swamps and rotting soil, with jet-black eyes set in slick skin the same color as mud.

He tilted his head, smiling, and mouthed words at her.

“I’ll kill you.”

Even without a sound, Qiu Rongrong heard those three words with perfect clarity.

The chill deepened.

The pain from back then seemed to crawl out again from deep beneath her skin.

The wind was blowing in the direction she was running.

It shoved her forward, and she nearly fell.

Stumbling, she rushed from the bus stop into Xinghui Plaza and found a patrolling security guard.

“Sir, call the police, quick-there’s a murderer on that bus.”

“Over there by the road-there’s a burlap sack with a body inside!”

She gripped her wrist, forcing herself to stop trembling.

The balding, middle-aged guard looked in the direction she pointed.

There was no burlap sack on the ground.

It was clean-so clean there wasn’t even a fallen leaf.

–

By the time Qiu Rongrong finished giving her statement at the police station, it was already three in the morning.

An officer kindly helped her contact her foster family.

It was her foster father who came to pick her up.

The foster father the community had arranged for her was her dad’s old high school classmate.

They hadn’t been in touch for years.

The air-conditioning in the car was a little too cold.

Qiu Rongrong buttoned the top button of her shirt and turned sideways, edging away from the AC vent.

She wasn’t good at expressing herself. She was good at enduring.

Her foster father noticed and considerately turned the AC off.

To ease her nerves, he chatted on and off about his high school days with her dad.

Qiu Rongrong, meanwhile, kept thinking about what had happened at the station.

The cameras from the bus stop to Xinghui Plaza hadn’t caught any sign of a murderer.

And along that stretch of road, they hadn’t found the burlap sack she’d described.

As if everything really had been nothing more than something she imagined.

But.

Qiu Rongrong lowered her head and looked at her shoes. On the edge, there was clearly a smear of blood.

“If you’re not used to calling me Dad, you can call me Uncle Zhou instead.”

The man in his forties smiled, fine lines creasing at the corners of his eyes. He was a businessman-money had kept him well-maintained, but time still inevitably left its marks.

His words successfully yanked Qiu Rongrong’s wandering thoughts back.