'Ahh!! What a klutz!' She thought.
Lu Jingfei sighed after seeing the scattered mess, while the stranger with a doll face kept excessively apologizing to her.
After Lu Jingfei dismissed her apologies, she helped to pick up all the papers on the ground. She picked up each paper promptly and neatly. She halted after a conspicuous paper caught her attention, and she wondered whether it was a tattoo design or the mysterious symbol she had recalled, which was associated with a recent bizarre death case.
'Very pretty! Better be a tattoo design and not some nut job gang or cult symbol based on what it looked like' -she mused.
She was fascinated by the symbol, yet somewhat perturbed by how closely she could resonate with it on a spiritual level. Realizing she was being rude, she hurried up her pace, and one paper flew close to the middle of the traffic light. She went to pick it up, but a few cars impatiently kept honking at her. Annoyed, she held up the infamous special batch and crossed the street to pick up the rest of the papers.
"I'm so sorry! Thank you very much for helping me pick it up! Thank you! Thank you!" Lu Jingfei looked at the stranger's countenance as she delivered her thanks and apology.
'Heavenly beautiful' was the first thing that came to her mind after taking a good look at the stranger.
Can a person look this beautiful? Did she eat a magic beauty potion smoothie for breakfast? With the thought of breakfast, she hadn't had anything solid today yet. Her stomach growled in protest. She rarely skipped any of her three meals a day, unless she was assigned a critical case. After learning that her past life was in a novel, her days had become an anomaly. Despite the acceptance, she couldn't quite adjust to her feeling of astonishment just yet.
"Thank you so much for your help, again, I'm so so so sorry for bumping into you. Let me honor your help with lunch across the street?" Said the stranger sincerely.
"Don't be so courteous, it's alright!" She replied.
Lu Jingfei smiled at her and thought to herself, 'Did this beauty have a screw loose in the head? Is this what people mean by beauty with no brain? In this thriving city, what makes her think I'd accept her invitation to dine with her? Her sense of survival instinct is quite concerning.'
"How could that be!? These papers are very important to me! Especially this one!" She exclaimed excitedly.
The stranger was showing Lu Jingfei the same tattoo design she had seen earlier, but this one seemed to be an improved version of it. It was intricate and extraordinary to say the least.
"It's alright, thank you for the offer. Late for a meeting! By the way, nice tattoo design." Lu Jingfei beamed at her and checked the time as she told the beautiful stranger she was running late.
The drivers kept honking at them for using public space in a leisurely manner. It's the weekend to indulge in one's interests, and they wouldn't want to waste a minute of their precious time. The traffic light was green for too long without any vehicles moving forward. Inpatiently, a silver car came toward them in the middle of the lane, skipping the other vehicles in front. Failing to realize the light had turned yellow, the owner of the silver car continued to berate them with foul language while urging them to move out of the road indiscriminately.
Lu Jingfei was riled up by one honking car after another, not realizing it was the standby cars alerting them of the dangerously approaching cargo truck. The blare of unusual cars honking got her attention, but it was too late for her to remove herself and the beautiful stranger to safety. Thinking she could maneuver herself to minimize the injury she'd receive by pushing away the beautiful stranger to safety, alas, this stranger defied her understanding of saving oneself first in the event of a dangerous situation. Obviously, Lu Jingfei seems to be more than enough to save herself if she didn't have to save another. She does not need to be saved, especially by someone who is panicky and frail.
As luck would have it, both of them tumbled together by the sidewalk with dislocated ankles. A sigh of relief fell upon both of them. But as if fate were playing jokes on them, the silver car was backing up in haste, trying to avoid the cargo truck. Knowing that accidents were unavoidable, some onlookers had already started calling the police and ambulance when they saw that the cargo truck's driver was unconscious. Understanding the fact that a wrecked vehicle is better than a wrecked life, the driver of the silver car failed to notice that the two people in the middle of the road were no longer in the same spot.
Thus, he reared as fast as he could and suddenly stopped when he felt a jolt. He looked through the rear mirror, and he saw nothing but blood splatter on the cracked glass building by the sidewalk. Everything happened in a span of seconds. But for the onlookers, time seems to have stopped for a moment, and comes the howling of screams and cries. Traffic was once again blocked, and people were getting out of their vehicles. Some called the police, and some couldn't stop taking photos or streaming.
.....
"Shit!" Cursed Lu Jingfei.
Amidst the pain and struggle, she tried to help and pulled the beautiful stranger to her feet. Feeling that she wouldn't be in immediate danger, Lu Jingfei relocated her ankle.
Suddenly, there was a crash! She couldn't tell if it was the sound of her cracked ankle or her bones. She felt suffocated by everyone's screaming. Lu Jingfei's ears seem to ring nonstop. Searching for the thing that flashed by her eyes earlier, she looked around and found a bloody angel on the ground with a steel pipe pierced through her upper abdomen. The beautiful stranger, now almost dead, flew a few feet away by the impact.
Realizing she couldn't take a step toward the now bloody stranger, she felt even more suffocated. Looking down at her abdomen wedged between a car and a glass building, she only noticed a small, broken glass latched deep into her rib through her back. She coughed and threw up a mouthful of coagulated blood.
The now bloody stranger turned her head toward Lu Jingfei and mumbled something. Something about paper? Lu Jingfei slowly looked down at her hand and saw half of the ripped, crumbled-up tattoo diagram. The other ripped piece was in the stranger's hand.
"S...s..sorry..." Whispered the stranger.
Shaking her head, Lu Jingfei coughed up a mouthful of blood again and gave the stranger a bitter smile void of blame. Feeling heat rushing through her brain, she couldn't stop the urge to cough up more blood. Lu Jingfei didn't break eye contact with the mumbling stranger until her eyes turned lifeless. If it's her time to go, at least she'll have a companion on the way to the other side, she thought.
'Uhh! Life and death are so unpredictable!' She reflected on her life.
Scene after scene of familiar and unfamiliar life flashed through her dull eyes. In the end, she couldn't fathom why she even existed in this unfamiliar world. She felt bitter and indignant, but how far could fate have to push a person to the extent of acceptance of unfairness? She is unwilling. Very unwilling.
The silver car, now with a touch of red, looks gruesome to say the least. Panicked by what had happened, the driver drove forward, not knowing it would result in Lu Jingfei's immediate death. With a loud thud, her body fell, and because she fell face down, the broken glass that pierced through her lung from her back was pushed out by the impact of the fall, resulting in even more blood loss.
'Two lifetimes of death caused by a car collision....' Lu Jingfei bellowed in pain and anger as the last scenes of her past life resurfaced again.
Before she completely lost her consciousness, the face of an unfamiliar man flashed through her mind. And thus, the existence of an unknown man has become her newfound obsession on her way to drink the soup of oblivion.
"Heyy hey!! Stay awake, help is coming!" A passerby shouted while making way for paramedics to help them.
His efforts were, to say the least, useless. There, in a bloodbath, lay two angels. Unbeknownst to mortal eyes, there were speckles of soft light flashing by the pools of blood. The wind carried away these speckles of soft light in the midst of screams and shrieks of the onlookers.
Everyone who stood by the curb witnessed the last moment of two people and their passing souls. Some onlookers prayed for the two souls to rest in peace, and some felt chilled by seeing the death of two people in a gruesome way, like a real-life Final Destination movie. Who would have known that the moment Lu Jingfei and the beautiful stranger took their last breath, each piece of the tattoo diagram completely disappeared into light dust. There's a saying that if the obsession and resentment are strong enough, heaven could grant those with a second chance to start over.