Chapter 109
Chapter 109
What exactly happened on the seventh day after Qin Song killed someone?
Let’s start from the first day.
On the first day, he took a six- or seven-hour flight and fled to Singapore.
When he checked into the hotel, Qin Song said he wanted a single room.
The girl at the front desk apologized to him in Chinese and told him that only twin rooms were left.
Qin Song gave a cursory nod, took the key card, and went upstairs.
Once he entered the room, he threw down his suitcase and collapsed face-first onto the bed, his eyes aching sharply.
He tried to force himself to sleep for a while, but his overactive mind kept spinning, refusing to let him drift off.
With no other choice, Qin Song took off his clothes, crawled under the covers, hugged a pillow, and stared blankly into space.
He looked around the room.
It didn’t seem any different from a chain hotel back home: two simple single beds, a television, a small round table, and a sofa. The floor was covered in a dark carpet, crisscrossed with white lines.
There was nothing strange about the place. The only thing that bothered him was this – there were two beds.
Qin Song’s state of mind had become deeply withdrawn. When he walked outside, he had to wear a mask and a hat, otherwise he felt uneasy, always feeling as if people were staring at him.
He wanted to shrink himself into some narrow space, far away from crowds.
To him, the second bed meant there was one more thing in the room that he had no use for, and that made him deeply uncomfortable.
He stared dazedly at the other bed, his mind filled with the image of Huang Yuanrui lying on the floor.
At the time, a great deal of blood had spilled from her forehead, running along her hair and temple onto the plush carpet.
The carpet was quickly dyed red, then gradually turned brown.
One of her legs had been stretched out straight, the other bent. Her head had rested crookedly against the floor, as if she had only fallen asleep.
Then he thought of the first time he had seen her. Her legs had been so fair, with two red marks pressed into them by the seat.
He thought of the time Huang Yuanrui made spicy dry hotpot for him, only for smoke to billow out of the pan. Afraid he would choke, she shut him in the bathroom and refused to let him come out.
Another time, she had tried to pan-fry fish for him, but the heat was too high and she used too much oil, so pan-frying turned into deep-frying. In the end, everything was burnt.
She held that plate of fish and cried, while Qin Song laughed and snapped a candid photo of her with a Polaroid.
Qin Song thought of Huang Yuanrui’s little home in the south, of all the plush toys arranged at her bedside. Perhaps by now, those toys had long since been put away in some corner, covered in dust.
And the bedding in her room, blue and white, printed all over with little rabbits…
As he thought about it, a sharp ache surged through Qin Song’s nose, and two scalding tears spilled from the corners of his eyes.
He buried his whole face in the pillow, pressed it over his mouth, and began to sob uncontrollably.
He knew she had only taken the wrong path and loved the wrong person.
She was guilty, but not guilty enough to die.
Qin Song felt like a rubber ball. The more she forced him, the more he rebelled; the more she threatened him, the more negative feelings he developed toward her.
Those negative emotions multiplied like soap bubbles in a bathtub, piling higher and higher until they occupied his entire heart, covering over all the affection they had once shared. In the end, under the force of extreme rage and disgust, he had struck her down to the floor.
But as Qin Song frantically swung the shovel beside that deep pit, using dirt to cover the woven sack, those soap bubbles had cunningly dispersed.
They burst one after another in a rush, snickering as they shrank back into the bathwater, as if they had never existed at all.
Qin Song’s heart became a pool of clear water in a bathtub once more, calm but ice-cold.
His feet rubbed painfully against the bedsheets. He reached out from under the covers and pressed his hand against his temple, desperately trying to remember the things about Huang Yuanrui that had annoyed him. But no matter how hard he tried, all that surfaced in his mind was the way she smiled.
As the sky gradually darkened, Qin Song lay on the bed in a daze, crying for a while, then stopping for a while.
Just then, he suddenly heard a soft creak from the bed beside him.
He slowly turned his head toward the bed next to him, his soul nearly flying out of his body.
Huang Yuanrui was lying quietly on her side on that bed, her head tilted, her eyes wide open as she stared at him in silence.
And she was still in the same pose, one leg bent and the other straight, with blood on her forehead slowly dripping down along her eyebrow.
Qin Song cried out, “Oh God!” He rubbed his eyes hard and shook his head, and when he looked again, that bed was once more clean and empty, with not even the slightest trace that anyone had ever lain there.
He was already starting to hallucinate.
Qin Song felt that if he kept lying there like this, he was going to fall apart completely.
He panted for a while, then got up, turned on the light, picked up his backpack from the sofa, and tossed it onto the other bed.
He couldn’t stand that bed being empty all the time. He was afraid that if he fell asleep and then opened his eyes, Huang Yuanrui would appear there again.
He opened the backpack again, looking for a razor.
But no matter how thoroughly he rummaged through it, he couldn’t find one. God knew what kind of random junk he had packed in such a hurry before leaving. In the end, he had to ask the front desk for a plain razor blade.
He worked up some foam with soap and spread it over his cheeks and chin, then awkwardly shaved with the blade.
After checking the mirror, his face was clean, but his hair was still a mess, sticking out like straw.
He couldn’t be bothered with that much. Just getting out of bed and shaving had already drained what little energy he had left.
He didn’t want to look at his phone, and he didn’t want to know what time it was at night. Instead, he flopped back down onto the pillow.
His thoughts were as tangled as a ball of loose thread.
When he was lying on his back, he kept wondering whether there might be someone crouched under the bed, with that person’s back pressed tightly against the underside of the mattress… He remembered a ghost story a classmate had told him in middle school, called heart to heart, back to back…
He didn’t want to lie on his back anymore, so he turned onto his stomach. But then he started thinking: what if there were someone lying on their back under the bed, with the tip of their nose and forehead pressed tightly against the bottom of the mattress, making them face to face…
Qin Song turned over irritably and switched to lying on his side.
And then Huang Yuanrui from his hallucination appeared in his mind again: just now, on the other bed, she had been lying on her side like this too…
Qin Song glanced at that bed nervously. Aside from his black backpack, there was nothing on it.
At last, he truly couldn’t stay lying down anymore. He sat up, propped the pillow behind his waist, and decided to sleep sitting up.
Drowsiness slowly crept over him. His head drooped left, then right.
He dreamed that he was back on that train from years ago.
That was exactly how he used to sleep on the train – his head drooping left, then right.
Footsteps came from behind him, as if someone in a short skirt and high heels were clicking along behind him. The owner of the heels also seemed to be wearing a bracelet or necklace, producing a faint, crisp jingle.
Even with his eyes closed, Qin Song could vividly imagine what kind of legs those heels belonged to. They were fair and smooth, with two red marks left where the seat had pressed against them. The only flaw was that one leg was straight and the other bent, and they looked as if they had already stiffened…
Qin Song jolted awake with a start.
He had gone nearly forty hours without eating or closing his eyes.