Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Once the truck got onto the highway, those noises really did stop.

Seeing that Wang Cheng was still tense, I could only try to reassure him. “I checked everything before we loaded up. They really were all fish. And they were all alive and kicking, too. Don’t overthink it.”

Wang Cheng nodded with a few murmured “mm-hmms,” but he still looked wilted.

Around noon, we pulled over by the roadside. As luck would have it, someone had a pushcart set up there selling boxed lunches.

The boxed lunches were a good deal-thirteen yuan each, with meat and vegetables, packed to the brim.

I called Wang Cheng to get out and eat. It was too stuffy in the truck, and there was still that faint fishy smell lingering inside.

After Wang Cheng got out, he seemed to perk up a little. He spent a good while picking through the lunches on the cart before choosing one with braised pork.

As I ate, I chatted with the man selling the lunches. He said business hadn’t been great lately either; there were fewer cargo trucks passing through this stretch of road now.

Then, just as Wang Cheng was eating perfectly normally, he suddenly let out a scream and flung his lunch box away.

“What is this? What the hell is this?!”

Wang Cheng collapsed onto the ground, digging the braised pork he hadn’t swallowed yet out of his mouth while shouting in panic.

The commotion scared the lunch vendor half to death. “My meat is fresh! I bought it at the market this morning!”

“No, that’s not it-” Wang Cheng was so frightened that snot and tears were streaming down his face. He shoved his fingers so far back they were nearly in his throat, then started retching uncontrollably.

I hurried back to the truck and grabbed him a bottle of mineral water.

Wang Cheng gulped it down, then let out a loud “bleurgh” and vomited it right back up.

Only then did I see it clearly: mixed in with that chewed-up lump of braised pork were several fish scales.

The lunch vendor was dumbfounded too. He had made fish today, sure, but where would fish scales that big have come from?

He wanted to refund our money, but I refused. In this freezing weather, the man was just trying to make a living.

Just then, another big truck pulled up. It was Luo Hong and his brother.

“Well, well. Don’t tell me he’s carsick?”

Luo Hong looked at Wang Cheng’s miserable state as he kept vomiting and burst into a round of mocking laughter.

Luo Gui stood by the roadside, his face flushed an abnormal red. His whole body looked as if he were drunk, and there was a faint excitement radiating from him.

I knew Luo Gui like this. In the past, every time we did a Chongsha, the stranger things got on the road, the more excited Luo Gui became.

He looked exactly like a predator that had locked onto its chosen prey.

The moment Wang Cheng finally finished throwing up, I immediately brought him back to the truck.

When I drove off, Luo Hong and Luo Gui were still where they were, leisurely eating their boxed lunches.