V3C10

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“Be careful!” Lin Jue only had the time to shout out a warning before the monstrous giant raised its metal ruler and slashed out in Song Hanzhang’s direction.

A deafening roar sounded in the dimly-lit room. The ground shook. Lin Jue stumbled but forced his eyes open through the dust and debris, fearing that Song Hanzhang would have been rendered into a corpse already by that one strike. His fear in that moment was even greater than when he had first seen a zombie.

The moment the metal ruler struck the ground, Song Hanzhang rolled away, his nimble figure like an assassin in the midst of the flying dust. Without waiting for the monster to realize that it had missed, he got up and shouted at Lin Jue, “The top of its head!”

Lin Jue felt his heart calm.

Song Hanzhang said to attack its head, but the monster’s body was so big that unless it bent down or fell, there would be no way to reach it. What should he do?

As Lin Jue racked his brain for an idea, the monster realized that its little insect had escaped its attack and waved its ruler through the room in anger. Song Hanzhang concentrated purely on avoiding its attacks, but even so, he was almost struck several times.

The ground of the room had already become packed with dents after continuous blows from the ruler, so now, not only did he have to evade the attacks, he also had to be careful not to trip on the ground. Seeing Song Hanzhang’s situation become more and more dangerous, Lin Jue was unable to think properly, let alone find a reasonable way to strike its head.

Song Hanzhang had been forced into the corner with the wall lamp, the only desk in the room blocking his retreat. The giant monster approached him, its neat uniform creased from the game of cat and mouse- Song Hanzhang wasn’t sure why he was still noticing such details in such a dangerous situation; he could only say that in the ten or so years he was reared by this person, the need to observe and judge had been hacked into his bones, becoming part of his instincts.

He couldn’t break through from the side, it was blocked off by the desk. Then he would have to go straight ahead.

Song Hanzhang’s brain worked at full speed; even in this fatal moment, he was still calculating the chance of success of taking a risk, instead of battling with his instincts.

On this matter, he really was the complete opposite of Lin Jue.

The huge ruler was already high up in the air like a giant metal sword, falling, falling, falling…

It was judgment and punishment, an undeserved authority, an abuse of the power given to the guardian; it was the belief that it was saving a child born damned, a person who would inevitably walk down the path of evil.

So its ears should be cut off, so it could never listen to hearsay;

Its eyes should be gouged out, so it could never monitor his actions;

Its mouth should be sewn up, so that it could never spew out righteous, ridiculous allegations;

It should die, because it was already dead.

The metal ruler fell down, scattered dust from the wall to the ground as it swung. Song Hanzhang seized his opportunity, leaned forward, and rolled, escaping from the monster’s right leg, leaving the dagger in his hand in its calf: a ‘memento’.

The monster let out a ‘roar’ of pain. Without a mouth, it was like a man in a sack, its voice forced dull and hushed.

“Xuezhang!” His vision blocked by the monster, Lin Jue couldn’t see Song Hanzhang’s figure through the dust and smoke. Something bad had happened to him. In his fear, in his anger, Lin Jue lost sight of his reason. Acting purely from instinct, Lin Jue’s speed exploded as he sprinted to the corner where the monster was, leaping onto the table next to it and then making another jump, his left hand grabbing onto that hazy wall lamp and swinging up as if grabbing onto a bar, landing firmly on the monster’s shoulders.

The monster let out a muffled snarl, the sound rolling in its throat but unable to come out. It felt the weight on its shoulders and twisted its body to throw Lin Jue off.

Kneeling on the monster, Lin Jue roared with anger, his legs clamped around its neck. With one hand, he grabbed onto its head, and with the other, gripped his spear and stabbed into it madly- the sharp spearhead pierced through a layer of soft flesh, then plunged into the monster’s brain!

His eyes red with murder, Lin Jue didn’t have the time to wonder why it didn’t have a skull. The spearhead twisted in its brain as the monster struggled frantically, falling onto the ground and rolling around everywhere. Lin Jue, perched on its shoulders, fell down hard; in its mad thrashes, he was thrown off. He tumbled along the ground before skidding to a stop.

The monster’s muffled roar had already weakened, its rolling also slowing- the monster, its brain mashed, was dead.

Dazed from the fall, Lin Jue was unable to see anything through the pain, not a single part of his body not screaming at him to give up. His forehead was still on the ground, blood flowing down from his scraped brows; hot and salty liquid clouded his eyes, and all that he could see when he opened them was a world of red.

A figure appeared behind the layers of blood and crouched down in front of him, calling out his name as they patted his face.

Lin Jue was still conscious, but his body was unable to move. This sluggishness alerted Song Hanzhang; he felt at Lin Jue’s neck, checking if his heart was still beating, then checked if he was breathing. He peeled his eyelids back, the light from the phone piercing through the blood film across them, flashing continuously. Lin Jue’s lips trembled as he tried to speak, but no sound came out.

“It’s fine. Your vitals are stable, your photopupillary1 reflex is also fine, and there was no damage done to your nerves.” Song Hanzhang felt at his head for a while. “There is a hematoma2 on the back of your head, but it’s not very serious, so you probably won’t die.”

A milky white light shone in front of him, the healing power Song Hanzhang received from round two. Even though it wasn’t enough to return Lin Jue to full health, it was more than enough to heal the wound on his head. After that depended on how long it took for Lin Jue to recover his breath.

A normal college student a week ago, and still a normal person now, Lin Jue was quite talented. There was resilience in his body, and a fighting instinct. Even in the moment as he was suddenly flung off the monster, the instinct embedded in his genes allowed him to protect his vitals. Though he was dizzy from the impact, he didn’t have any serious injuries.

Song Hanzhang sat down as well, leaning against a wall. Lin Jue laid next to him, gradually awakening. It felt like returning from the cold abyss of death and slowly waking up under the warmth of the sun, tired yet relieved, wanting to lie down for eternity.

The lamp in the corner lit up their confines. Lin Jue opened his eyes and looked up at Song Hanzhang who was resting with his eyes closed. As if sensing his gaze, Song Hanzhang opened his eyes and matched his gaze.

Lin Jue climbed up with difficulty and squirmed his way to Song Hanzhang, leaning against the wall like him. The movement was a little too taxing for him though and Song Hanzhang helped him up.

“How do you feel?” Song Hanzhang asked him.

“Alright, just a little exhausted,” Lin Jue replied.

Song Hanzhang looked at the time, 21:07.

“Rest for another half an hour. Even if something will happen, it should occur after midnight,” Song Hanzhang said lightly.

Lin Jue nodded, looking over that giant monster, and the other body wrapped in its straitjacket.

“There’s not a single window here. Is this a basement?” Lin Jue asked tentatively.

“What do you want to know?” Song Hanzhang immediately saw through his question, replying without a pause.

Lin Jue scratched his cheeks awkwardly, smearing it with half-dried blood. There was an extra strike across the back of his hand; they were the first two strokes of the “zheng” character, meaning he had already killed two monsters. “Just, think of me as curious… It’s fine if you don’t want to say anything.”

Lin Jue said it lightly but his heart was dying with the need to know. He knew that Song Hanzhang wasn’t someone who liked discussing himself; he would constantly observe those around him and probe at them through strong words or polite language; he had a drive to see everything, the unknown and the uncontrollable despicable to him; if he said “I’ll give you a choice”, then it meant to act according to his true desire, because the alternative simply meant “goodbye”.

Lin Jue also knew that Song Hanzhang was actually a very suspicious, apprehensive, arbitrary, and cold-hearted person, and definitely not a good companion no matter how one looked at it. Even though he was smart, sharp, cautious, and meticulous, with the courage to chase after the truth no matter what, these merits weren’t enough to make up for the flaws in his personality.

Whether it was from imprintation, or from the feelings built up in him from surviving death together, Lin Jue cared for this person. He tried to learn more about him, carefully peeling back that veil, revealing the real Song Hanzhang behind the curtains.

Song Hanzhang glanced at Lin Jue. From their current position, sitting side by side, he could only see the traces of blood on Lin Jue’s face, and that pair of eyes filled with curiosity.

Without needing to look, Song Hanzhang knew that Lin Jue was feeling like he was being scratched by a cat, waiting for him to start speaking.

The impatient curiosity didn’t make Song Hanzhang feel angry, and even he was surprised by that. He wanted to play around with Lin Jue a little, to make him more anxious, more curious, and then tell him that he wouldn’t say anything. And Lin Jue would definitely show disappointment, and embarrassment, and anger, but wouldn’t say a word of it to him, would bottle it up to himself. His anger came quickly and left as fast; in a few short minutes, he would start talking to him again, pretending as if nothing had happened and telling him he was ready to move on.

See? He understood Lin Jue so well. His every thought, his every action, and even his tone could be predicted. Lin Jue had almost no secrets in his eyes, and that was the one reason he was willing to trust Lin Jue; he made him feel safe.

But, Song Hanzhang wouldn’t do that. Sometimes a few desires to poke fun at Lin Jue would flash through his mind; these strange desires were like summer dragonflies, landing shining in front of him under the sun, a pair of glittering wings trembling in the wind, before disappearing from sight.

Interesting as it may be, there was no point to them, so Song Hanzhang didn’t act on them.

There was nothing wrong with explaining his past, and if he did, Lin Jue would only trust him more. It was just to satisfy his curiosity, nothing else.

With that in mind, Song Hanzhang spoke in the midst of Lin Jue’s trepidation.

“You’ve actually guessed some of it already. This is a basement, one I spent a lot of time in during my childhood. There was an interval of time where I liked being here a lot, until I realized there were hidden cameras monitoring my every move. The man in a straitjacket likely refers to me in my youth; the seamless straitjacket represents my constraints, and the bleeding hands, my struggles. As for the monster whose head you stabbed open: that was my foster father, Song Lü, a policeman. I was raised by him from a very young age, but we aren’t related by blood. The reason he adopted me was likely because he sent my birth father to the gallows. He said that my father was the most evil, sneakiest, and most sociopathic serial killer he had ever met, and he was worried that I had inherited his criminal genes. Yes, he was a supporter of the genetic theory of crime, and a very avid one at that.”

Song Hanzhang looked at the hazy wall lamp and let out a cold smile. “So he needed to properly educate me, and correct me, to use the next day’s lessons to change my inborn nature. He called it corrective education; I called it psychological abuse.”

***

1The dilation of your pupils in response to light.

2Localized bleeding under the skin or within the muscles due to a traumatic injury or a disease that causes a blood clot, similar to a bruise. Unlike bruises, a hematoma can occur on the internal organs or the brain, which is much more dangerous. (You can consider it a really bad bruise, roughly.)

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