Chapter 111
Chapter 111
Qin Song found a barbershop and got himself a buzz cut.
After his haircut, he went to a restaurant. He was starving, and by himself he ate an entire pizza and drank two cups of Coke.
After flooding his body with sugar, he finally felt like he had come back to life.
He opened his phone and saw several WeChat messages from Hu Heng.
After the incident that day, Qin Song had been completely at a loss, and the first person he had told was Hu Heng.
It was Hu Heng who had told him to calm down and had bought him a plane ticket. That was how he had ended up in Singapore.
For the past few days, Hu Heng had been keeping a close eye on that construction site for him.
Over WeChat, Hu Heng told Qin Song that the pit had been filled in around two o’clock the next afternoon. The workers were all back to work as usual now, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
It wouldn’t be long before buildings rose one after another on that plot of land.
Even if one day those buildings were demolished and people dug up the land again, that would be decades from now.
Qin Song let out a small breath of relief and sat in the pizza place, gently rubbing his stomach.
He Qian had also sent him WeChat messages, asking where he had been staying these past few days and whether he was doing all right.
He simply replied, “Everything’s fine,” then backed out of the chat.
He tapped open his chat with Huang Yuanrui. No new messages would ever pop up there again.
Their conversation was still frozen at a few days ago, filled almost entirely with messages Huang Yuanrui had sent him. He had barely replied to any of them.
Qin Song remembered the years when everyone logged into QQ on their computers. If someone was offline, their profile picture would turn gray. There even seemed to have been a song called “Gray Profile Picture.”
But WeChat was different. No matter whether the other person was online or not, their profile picture stayed in color. That never changed.
Huang Yuanrui’s profile picture was in color.
Qin Song looked at her profile picture and desperately wished she were still alive.
He hoped to receive a WeChat message from her, and yet he was afraid of receiving one from her.
He turned off his phone, walked out of the pizza place, and slowly made his way back to the hotel.
When he was almost at the hotel entrance, he saw someone in the distance who looked vaguely familiar.
After taking a few more steps forward, he sucked in a cold breath. It was that girl named Jingjing. That lunatic!
She was sitting on the steps outside the hotel entrance, completely focused on sucking on a popsicle.
Qin Song felt as though he had stepped into some bizarre endless loop.
Jingjing was watching the melted syrup on the popsicle intently, and the moment it was about to drip, she quickly caught it with her mouth.
Qin Song tugged at the mask on his face and strode toward the hotel.
The instant he passed Jingjing, she drawled, “Back from your haircut?”
She was still acting far too familiar.
Qin Song gave a dry cough and mumbled, “Yeah.”
Jingjing looked up at him. “When are you planning to move to a different hotel?”
Qin Song craned his neck and looked around, but he didn’t see Jingjing’s mother anywhere. Right now, he sincerely hoped that middle-aged woman would appear as soon as possible and take this lunatic away.
Jingjing said, “Looks like you still don’t believe what I told you. Fine, then stay. Stay here and keep quiet forever.”
Qin Song suddenly asked her, “Did you make that story up yourself, or did you hear it somewhere?”
Jingjing laughed. “You think I could make up something that ridiculous? Of course I heard it.”
Qin Song said, “By the way, didn’t you go home? Why are you here again?”
Jingjing said, “What home? Why would I go home? I wander around outside every afternoon for fun. My house is right nearby. Look-”
She reached out and pointed at a cluster of small buildings not far away.
Qin Song said, “Wasn’t your mom calling you home back then?”
Jingjing rolled her eyes. “What mom? That woman is a lunatic! She lives around here too. She looks pretty normal, and she thinks she’s normal too, but if you talk to her for a few more sentences, you’ll realize how abnormal she is. She tells everyone she meets that they’re her child. I’m just too lazy to argue with her or pay her any attention, so I let her say whatever she wants.”
Qin Song’s eyes widened.
Jingjing said, “What did she tell you? Did she say I was her daughter?”
Qin Song nodded.
Jingjing said, “Don’t listen to her nonsense. My mom isn’t that old. My mom had me when she was twenty, and she still looks really young. She’s at a beauty salon right now getting a beauty treatment. I’ll go pick her up when she’s done.”
Qin Song watched her lips move up and down, trying hard to judge whether what she was saying was true.
Jingjing pointed at another hotel in the distance. “It’s not that much trouble to switch hotels. Why don’t you stay at that one? Why keep staying in a hotel where something happened? Bad luck.”
Qin Song looked up at the hotel Jingjing was pointing to and asked, “Is the price reasonable?”
Jingjing said, “About the same. The places around here are all pretty similar to stay in. You can search online and check the reviews. But the one I’m pointing at is a pretty decent value for money.”
Qin Song began to believe her a little. He didn’t think a mental patient would say something like “value for money.”
After thinking for a moment, Qin Song asked her again, “About the room you mentioned earlier today – the one where something happened…”
Jingjing said, “What about it?”
Qin Song said, “What room number did you say it was again?”
Jingjing said, “Does that matter? No matter which room number it was, it happened in this hotel, didn’t it? You’re way too hung up on details, you know that? Most people hear me say that and hurry to check out. You’re still worrying about exactly which room it happened in?”
Qin Song said, “I just want to make sure.”
Jingjing said, “Stop being so hung up on it, Big Brother. Hurry up and move. Do you need me to help you carry your things?”