The dryness in my throat was like a rising tide, and my hands were shaking from extreme nervousness.
Without having to look, Gu Hezhi knew that he must be looking very bad right now.
The sudden smell of alcohol instantly brought back vivid memories that he had forcibly suppressed in the deepest part of his heart.
The last time he met Que Bai, Gu Hezhi was already half drunk.
In fact, if he thought about it carefully, Gu Hezhi could probably guess that he might have developed a tendency to alcoholism.
Before meeting Que Bai, Gu Hezhi had always been a strict self-disciplined person. His health wasn't particularly good, and he suffered from an unfortunate allergic reaction, having never touched alcohol since childhood. However, after becoming entangled with Que Bai, the immense mental pressure not only made Gu Hezhi a frequent visitor to the psychological counseling room, but also turned him into a heavy drinker who frequently needed to numb himself with alcohol.
Last year, Gu Hezhi escaped three times, and each time, no more than a month passed before Que Bai found him again.
He had clearly changed all his phone numbers, had completely given up working, and even when renting an apartment, he was very careful to use the identity information left by the previous tenant with the landlord...
Gu Hezhi had tried every possible method he could think of, but Que Bai still found him.
No words could describe the despair Gu Hezhi felt when he saw Que Bai's face through the peephole after the doorbell rang. Sometimes he even wanted to believe Que Bai's ramblings—perhaps the man truly possessed special abilities beyond the physical world, and no matter where Gu Hezhi fled, he could easily catch up with him.
"We agreed to be together in our previous life."
"Look, there's a red line between us..."
…
The boy with a strange look on his face stretched out his hands countless times, signaling Gu Hezhi to look at the non-existent, cursed red line in the void.
There was indeed a circle of red marks at the base of Que Bai's finger, but after the accident in college, Gu Hezhi learned from Que Bai's crying mother that the red marks were simply the traces left after Que Bai cut off his little finger with a knife and repaired it. It was not the so-called destined red line mark at all.
"Wow... He said something about using his pinky finger to perform a ritual... We've been living in constant fear since we were little, thinking he might harm himself if we weren't careful..."
Que Bai's mother's crying perfectly proved everyone's opinion of Que Bai, that he was simply a madman living in a delusional world.
But Gu Hezhi's life was completely ruined by such a madman.
That's why I was so impulsive that day.
Gu Hezhi still vaguely remembered how he opened the door of 1401 with an expressionless face.
Seeing how decisive he was, Que Bai, who was curled up at the door, even looked surprised.
"Azhi, why did you open the door so quickly?"
The slender young man stared at Gu Hezhi in surprise, with pink spreading from the base of his neck to his cheeks.
"Come in."
Gu Hezhi just spoke to him in an extremely calm manner.
Que Bai seemed to be completely unaware of Gu Hezhi's abnormality that day. Just like a little girl entering her date's private space for the first time, he followed Gu Hezhi into the house with a look of joy on his face and a loss of what to do.
That day was before the Chinese New Year, when everyone was at their busiest. In Room 1401, only Gu Hezhi was home alone because he couldn't go out to work.
"Ah, Ah Zhi, you're drinking again. Don't you feel uncomfortable every time you drink? The doctor told me that you metabolize alcohol poorly and shouldn't drink—"
Gu Hezhi stood in the kitchen with his eyes lowered, listening to the man muttering with unconcealed joy, while reaching out and picking up a long kitchen knife.
In the memory that had become extremely blurry due to alcohol, he seemed to have turned around, walked directly into the room, and then stabbed the knife into Que Bai's body.
His movements were obviously very slow.
Even though all his memories are so vague now, this is the only thing that Gu Hezhi is extremely sure of.
Que Bai didn't dodge at all.
Blood gushed out, and the smell of rust, along with a sickening sweet smell, rose in the air.
The man lowered his head and covered the wound with his hand. The bright red liquid flowed out from between his fingers, wetting the ring on his finger.
"Ah, I'm sorry..." Facing Gu Hezhi who raised the knife towards him again, Que Bai's pale face was full of panic, "Did I make you angry again..."
*
Gu Hezhi's memory was completely interrupted here.
No matter how hard I think about it, all that comes to my mind is the constantly surging red color, deep and shallow.
It's like a person lying on a hot beach, closing his eyes and looking at the dazzling and scorching sun. The bright light passes through the thin eyelids and falls into the retina, which is also warm and inescapably bright red.
It's the color of blood.
The next day, when the irresistible dizziness from the alcohol gradually faded from his body, Gu Hezhi staggered to his feet, holding up his head, only to find that the kitchen was filled with black plastic bags, neatly arranged in order from large to small.
When I touched it through the thin plastic bag, the flesh was even still warm.
*
From that day on, Gu Hezhi never drank again.
*
Gu Hezhi staggered. After staying in the room for so many days, even the cold winter sunlight seemed unusually dazzling to him, as if it could melt his entire body.
He rushed back to the building where the rental house was located as if he was being chased by a ghost, and as soon as he got out of the elevator, he walked quickly towards home.
As one of the first high-rise buildings built in this city many years ago, the internal structures of the buildings here are poor. The U-shaped corridors always look narrow and dark, and the only natural light comes from the narrow ventilation windows on both sides of the corridors.
While looking for the key, Gu Hezhi accidentally glanced at the end of the corridor and was stunned.
A man was standing by the window at this time, his back straight, but his body was slowly leaning out of the window, his posture looking a little dangerous.
The man's back looked very, very familiar. It was Dong Ruiming.
"Old Dong, what are you doing——"
Gu Hezhi's forehead jumped and he shouted quickly.
However, before he could reach the window, he heard the elevator door open again and heavy and rapid footsteps rushing towards him.
Immediately afterwards, Gu Hezhi felt a weight on his shoulders.
"Hey, you!"
The man who came pulled Gu Hezhi in frustration.
"Are you the resident of 1401?"
She was a woman with dark circles under her eyes and an angry face.
"Ah? I... I am..."
Gu Hezhi suddenly met her red eyes, not being able to explain too much, and responded subconsciously.
When the woman heard Gu Hezhi admit his identity, anger visibly gathered on her face.
"Are you crazy?"
She started scolding Gu Hezhi directly in a sharp voice.
"You're walking around the room in the middle of the night. You don't want to sleep and don't want others to sleep, right? Damn, you look young, but you have no sense of public morality. You're making so much noise, don't you know that?!"
Hearing the other party cursing continuously, Gu Hezhi was a little surprised.
He was stunned for a long time before he found a pause and managed to squeeze out a "sorry".
"There's been a rat problem at home lately... My roommate is quite afraid of it, so he's been having trouble sleeping at night..."
Gu Hezhi subconsciously thought that Qiao Liang's behavior of banging around the house with a broom day and night looking for mice these days had disturbed the rest of the neighbors downstairs.
However, before she could finish her words, she heard the woman's next yell: "If it's just one or two days, I can bear it reluctantly. Quarreling during the New Year is unlucky, but your family is really going too far. They've been quarreling from before the New Year to after the New Year. It's been almost a month. They've been quarreling upstairs every day. Are you forcing us to use the vibration device?"
Gu Hezhi's face turned pale.
He stared blankly at the exasperated woman in front of him and repeated in a low voice.
"...They've been arguing since before the New Year?"
When the woman heard this, her eyes widened and she glared at Gu Hezhi fiercely.
"What else?"
"It's New Year's Eve, and I'm the only one here."
Gu Hezhi said with difficulty, his breathing gradually becoming heavy.
A chill slowly climbed up his spine and then gradually spread to his entire body.
After that incident, Gu Hezhi spent almost every day and night curled up in bed.
He didn't dare move, and he didn't want to face what was in the freezer in the living room.
But now, the neighbors downstairs told him so aggressively that they heard noises coming from the house every night.
What exactly is that sound...
"Hey, you guys don't intend to admit it?"
The woman's voice suddenly rose an octave, and her willow-shaped eyebrows were raised high.
"I'm telling you, don't talk nonsense here, saying the building structure is the fault of someone else's noise - I've been to your house several times! I knocked on the door and you didn't answer, just banging around the room. I heard these noises while I was leaning against your door, and you were still here crying and howling in the middle of the night! You have no shame!"
As she spoke, the woman took out her cell phone and held it directly in front of Gu Hezhi.
As the video played on the phone screen, noisy sounds were heard through the shaky camera.
"Crack… crack…"
It sounded like someone dragging their feet on the ground.
The video then recorded a woman muttering angrily to herself.
She just held up her phone and ran angrily upstairs to Room 1401 where Gu Hezhi lived...
The peephole on the door was dark.
However, when the woman put her phone against the iron gate, a clear noise came from the phone's speaker.
"Dong-dong-dong-dong-"
It's hard to pinpoint what the sound is.
Like knocking on something.
It also seemed like someone was constantly chopping the chopping board.
Faintly, there seemed to be faint crying and indistinct murmurs in the noise.
Gu Hezhi stared at his phone blankly, his face completely drained of color.
"Yes, I'm sorry..."
Gu Hezhi's body couldn't stop shaking.
The cold air in the gloomy corridor seemed to have concentrated on him, making the cold seep out of his bones.
He clenched his palms tightly to prevent himself from losing composure, because he squeezed too hard that even his joints began to turn white.
"I'm really sorry, I, I didn't mean it, I..."
The thin young man's eyes turned red and his body began to sway, as if he would faint to the ground in the next second.
"Hey, you, what the hell are you doing? Don't try to blackmail me. I'm recording this."
The originally aggressive neighbor stared at Gu Hezhi's shaky appearance, and his heart was startled. He involuntarily took a step back to keep some distance from Gu Hezhi.
She didn't know if it was an illusion, but when she looked at the young man who was so thin that his bones were just visible, like a skeleton, she felt as if this guy was going to die suddenly in the next second.
As he spoke, the neighbor's voice gradually faded.
Gu Hezhi kept mumbling apologies to her.
"... Come on, your apologies are worthless." The woman pulled her lips unnaturally amidst Gu Hezhi's apology, "I'll be thankful if you don't make such a fuss again in the future."
As she spoke, she walked towards the stairwell. The small conflict seemed to have been resolved.
However, before leaving, the neighbor paused and remembered something. He turned to Gu Hezhi and said, "Oh, by the way, there's one more thing. The air conditioner in your second bedroom must be broken. You should either fix it or stop using it. The weather isn't hot these days, so why turn on the air conditioner? It's making a constant clicking noise every day, just like knocking on windows. It's so noisy. We who live downstairs are almost getting annoyed..."
Second bedroom?
Gu Hezhi was in a daze for a moment.
House 1401 is a partitioned room. According to the original floor plan, the second bedroom the neighbor mentioned is probably Qi Wei or Dong Ruiming's room, but Gu Hezhi is not sure which one the woman is talking about. He nodded at the woman nervously and responded in a daze.
"I'll tell them."
He murmured.
The woman's back disappeared in the corridor, and when she left, Gu Hezhi looked up at the window at the end of the corridor, but there was no one there.
...However, just as Gu Hezhi was about to enter the room in a daze, he found a pair of old shoes lying messily under the ventilation window.
"Um?"
Gu Hezhi was just surprised, and the next second, he heard a loud "bang" coming from that direction.
It was a dull, wet sound, like the sound of a thermos bottle's inner lining exploding inside its plastic shell.
Gu Hezhi's heart skipped a beat.
Someone jumped from a building.
The plastic bag in his hand fell to the ground with a thud. Gu Hezhi rushed to the window and looked downstairs.
However, downstairs there was a normal bustling traffic.
There was no noise, no screaming, and no bodies of people who had jumped from buildings, lying limply on the ground like cloth bags.
Obviously, looking at the scene downstairs, it didn't look like someone had just jumped off the building.
But...
The awning of the shop downstairs is crooked.
Gu Hezhi stared at the crooked awning downstairs with his eyes downcast. He was in a daze for a long time before he gradually brought his mind back to reality.
He stood there, stunned for a long time.
Am I crazy?
It was as if I could hear a voice asking myself.
But Gu Hezhi couldn't give an answer at all.
*
When turning around, Gu Hezhi kicked the pair of shoes under the windowsill.
Gu Hezhi looked closely and was stunned for a moment.
If I remember correctly, this pair of shoes should belong to Dong Ruiming.
Gu Hezhi still remembered that after Dong Ruiming got the shoes, he showed them off to everyone in the rental house.
At the time, Dong Ruiming seemed to have deliberately let Gu Hezhi look at him a few more times. After Gu Hezhi thought about it, he realized that Dong Ruiming was showing off. In fact, Dong Ruiming's subtle jealousy had started back in college. Back then, Gu Hezhi was the school's most famous beauty, while Dong Ruiming was just an ordinary college boy. But now, Gu Hezhi was a jobless loser who'd been pestered by someone and lived on drugs all day, while Dong Ruiming was an "elite white-collar worker" with a good job who could change girlfriends as easily as changing clothes. The man was proud and finally had the capital to show off in front of Gu Hezhi.
Gu Hezhi carried the shoes to the door of Room 1401.
The moment he unlocked the door and walked in, Gu Hezhi felt that the house was very quiet, so quiet that he felt a little dazed.
strangeness...
Where are Qiao Liang and Qi Wei?
Gu Hezhi frowned, and a hint of doubt flashed through his heart.
However, what his downstairs neighbor had just told him now filled all his thoughts. Gu Hezhi didn't care too much about whether his roommate stayed or left.
He came to the freezer with a pale face.
"Ka--"
If you listen carefully, you can faintly hear a slight scratching sound deep inside the freezer.
Gu Hezhi thought again of the noisy noises from the woman's cell phone a few minutes ago.
"Just be quiet."
As his lips moved, Gu Hezhi found himself mumbling to the freezer.
"Stop arguing."
As if Gu Hezhi's voice could actually be heard, the moment the young man finished speaking, the maddening noise inside the freezer suddenly stopped, leaving only the inevitable humming sound of the motor running.
Gu Hezhi's body swayed and he almost fell down.
He subconsciously supported the freezer, but the next second, he retracted his hand as if he had been scalded.
Then Gu Hezhi locked the refrigerator with an expressionless face, and then placed rat poison and mouse traps in every corner of the house.
After doing all this, Gu Hezhi slowly came to Dong Ruiming's door.
"Bang, bang—"
He knocked on the door.
"Dong Ruiming."
Then he shouted again.
The room was silent.
Dong Ruiming wasn't home either? Gu Hetong felt a little strange, but the glimpse he had just seen in the corridor suddenly surfaced in his mind... The shadow standing at the window, leaning over and looking down, really looked like Dong Ruiming.
Just as Gu Hezhi was about to leave, a muffled collision sound suddenly came from Dong Ruiming's room.
It's like...
It sounded like something falling.
Then, there was a thin whimper.
It's Xiaoqi's voice.
The drawn-out sound made Gu Hezhi's face stiffen slightly. He instantly retracted his hand that was knocking on the door in embarrassment and returned to his room with a clear mind.
It was the first time for Gu Hezhi to go out in so many days, and coupled with the severe mental shock, he retreated into bed as soon as he entered the room.
He desperately needed a quiet and dark corner where he could quietly digest the endless panic and helplessness like he had in the past few days.
However, he forgot that his room was only separated from Dong Ruiming's by a wall.
The soundproofing of the partitioned room was surprisingly poor. Not long after I lay down on the bed, I began to hear ambiguous sounds.
Gu Hezhi frowned, turned over, took out the earphones from beside the pillow and put them into his ears.
The volume was turned up to the maximum, and Gu Hezhi closed his eyes tightly while listening to the deafening rock music.
Gradually, I began to feel sleepy.
Half asleep and half awake, the familiar music began to change its tune...
By the time Gu Hezhi realized something was wrong, what echoed in his ears was no longer music, but a man's heavy and sticky breathing.
As if he had suddenly fallen into a deep icy lake, Gu Hezhi suddenly woke up -
However, the body seemed to be frozen and could not move at all.
"Huh...Huh...Azhi...Azhi is really great..."
"I'm almost dying on you... Ah Zhi... It feels so good... Huh..."
…
The disgusting low gasps and the shameless groans of a man, Que Bai's nightmarish voice kept washing over Gu Hezhi's eardrums.
*
Gu Hezhi was not willing to recall what kind of mood he was in when he went to bed with Que Bai.
Maybe to quiet the guy down.
Maybe just to exchange for even a little peace.
After all, at the beginning, every time after feeding Que Bai with his body, he could still steal a little breathing space.
only...
But no matter how much mental preparation he puts into himself, close contact with Que Bai will still be a nightmare.
That man was a complete mad dog in bed. Even though Gu Hezhi was as silent as a stone every time they had sex, Que Bai, who was lying on top of him, still behaved extremely lustfully, like the most lustful male prostitute in the world.
Sometimes, he would even get so excited that he would sob right in front of Gu Hezhi.
"I'm sorry... wuwu... Ahzhi... I know you don't like me calling you that, but I can't control it..."
"I really like you so much..."
"I like it so much, so much, so much..."
"I like Ah Zhi so much."
"It would be nice if I could stay in your body forever, Azhi."
…
The nausea was becoming more and more pronounced.
Gu Hezhi could almost hear every cell in his body screaming, screaming for that voice to stop.
But he couldn't even move a finger.
Is it sleep paralysis again? Gu Hejun thought so at first, but just as this thought flashed through his mind, he clearly heard Que Bai's laughter suddenly coming from the headphones.
"Azhi looks so cute now."
Gu Hezhi began to tremble.
The cool and moist touch was so vivid, coming from the earlobe. Even though he was wearing headphones, he could still clearly feel something licking his ear gently and delicately.
Finally, like a slug, the thing began to slide along the ear structure and slowly into Gu Hezhi's ear canal.
"Hmm... I like it so much... As expected, Azhi is the best..."
"Zizizi…"
As the mollusk's mucus continued to rub against the ear canal, making a moist sound, Que Bai's moans became louder and more obvious.
Immediately afterwards, something covered with a thin layer of frost covered Gu Hezhi's body through the quilt.
Although his eyes were tightly closed, Gu Hezhi seemed to be able to see how the mutilated limbs, whose skin had dried out and lost all color due to long-term freezing, crawled onto his bed little by little.
"Azhi is shaking."
Que Bai sighed in Gu Hezhi's ear.
"Don't hide…"
"It's all my fault. It's really too cold there."
"Azhi, let me out."
"OK."
"Let me hug you tightly, just like before..."