Gu Hezhi's hand trembled.
The spoon fell into the bowl with a "click", and a little boiling soup splashed onto the back of his hand.
He stared at the soup bowl in front of him. The nail had sunk back to the bottom of the bowl and was no longer visible.
"What's wrong? Is it not to your liking?"
A thin and tall shadow appeared at the kitchen door. Qiao Liang stared at Gu Hezhi with his dark eyes and asked.
Gu Hezhi's breathing was extremely heavy. He forced himself to turn his head and look at "Qiao Liang".
The man's face became extremely blurry in the backlight, but from the tone of his voice, it can be heard that he is in a very good mood.
"Oh, right." He clapped his hands as if suddenly remembering something. "We've been eating a lot of meat lately, and the fridge is almost full. So, for now, it's best not to order takeout and try to eat at home... Oh, don't worry, there's always a way. Look, I've already thawed the meat. I'll cook some more and go downstairs to feed the cats. Aren't you the only one who cares most about those stray cats and dogs? This is a good time to give those poor little creatures a little extra food..."
As he spoke, the man leaned out of the kitchen and slowly walked towards Gu Hezhi.
If Gu Hezhi hadn't been sitting on the sofa, he would have collapsed from exhaustion. He stared blankly at the shadow approaching him. At first glance, it was indeed Qiao Liang, but with a little more attention, he could clearly sense the pervasive incongruity. Qiao Liang was plain-looking and small, while the man was tall, with a pale yet handsome face.
A face that Gu Hezhi would never forget in his life.
As the distance between the two gradually shortened, Qiao Liang's voice also changed rapidly. It became hoarse and low, with a hint of nervousness in every syllable.
That was clearly... Que Bai's voice.
Gu Hezhi's body began to tremble violently.
"It's you."
He thought he would scream, but all that came out of his constricted throat was a thin, trembling sound, like a sob.
"As expected... you still won't let me go..."
Gu Hezhi murmured.
Que Bai's expression did not change at all, but from the first moment he opened his eyes, Gu Hezhi inexplicably mistook Que Bai for Qiao Liang.
Maybe it was because I had fallen victim to some supernatural trick set up by Que Bai again?
Gu Hedu thought about it.
After so many years of dealing with Que Bai, he was no longer surprised by things that science couldn't explain. In fact, even Que Bai himself admitted that his first encounter with Que Bai was due to Que Bai's use of special means.
"I've already confessed everything to you, Ah Zhi, right? I did cast a spell on you, Ah Zhi... I'm sorry, it's all my fault, but if I hadn't used the spell, someone like Ah Zhi wouldn't have bothered with me, right?"
Que Bai, who had not yet grown up at that time, still had the fragility of a teenager. When he knelt on the ground and looked up at Gu Hezhi, a tearful expression appeared on his face.
"I've actually been trying to control myself. I actually… I've actually thought about casting a spell on you, Ah Zhi… If I use that spell, Ah Zhi might like me a little, a little bit, right? But then, once the spell is removed, Ah Zhi will definitely hate me…"
…
It is said that the ancestors of the Que family came from the depths of Xi Mountain.
They were a special ethnic group famous for their spells and witchcraft.
Que Bai perfectly inherited that extremely special bloodline and possessed all kinds of methods that normal people could not understand or resist.
So, that morning, when he saw those black plastic bags in the kitchen, Gu Hezhi had clearly wanted to commit suicide more than once, but every time at the last moment he would stop timidly.
The reason is very simple, Gu Hedu is more than just afraid.
What he feared was not death, but the fact that the nightmare, who was familiar with all kinds of metaphysical spells, would still be waiting for him in another world.
And now, Gu Hezhi's nightmare finally came true.
"What do you want me to do to let me go... Que Bai... What do you want me to do... Wuuuu... I've locked you up... The refrigerator is already locked... Wuuuu..."
Gu Hezhi's tears kept flowing out.
"Azhi."
Que Bai looked deeply at his lover who had completely collapsed mentally, pursed his lips and smiled gently.
"Sure enough, the deception is useless to Azhi. As expected of Azhi, he recognized me so quickly."
As he said this, Quebai looked almost cheerful.
He gazed sweetly and intently at the slender figure on the sofa, his eyes full of fascination.
"I really like Ah Zhi."
He murmured.
Que Bai half-knelt in front of Gu Hezhi, leaned forward slightly, and rested his face on the young man's trembling knees, rubbing them cautiously like a cat.
He smelled faintly of rust.
He mumbled a few more words, and it took Gu Hezhi a few seconds to realize that he was saying...
"It doesn't matter, soon we'll be together forever."
The places touched by Que Bai quickly became cold.
Gu Hezhi felt as if he was about to lose consciousness completely.
"What did you do?"
He asked.
His expression was blank, and his eyes fell on the broth on the table. In just a short while, the fat on the surface of the broth had solidified.
A faint fishy smell seeped into the chilly air from the cold soup.
Que Bai hummed twice as if acting coquettishly.
"Why do you keep thinking about those guys... They're all dead."
The man said lightly.
"oh."
Gu Hezhi responded and fell silent.
The next second, he quickly grabbed the soup bowl and smashed it hard on the back of Que Bai's head——
The porcelain made a dull sound as it hit Que Bai's skull through his scalp. Sticky liquid splattered everywhere, but it was hard to tell whether it was soup or blood.
After the bowl was knocked over, Gu Hezhi discovered that the "soup" in the bowl was actually dark red in color.
Gu Hezhi jumped up, his heart beating wildly deep in his chest, and it was tingling with fear.
His mind was blank as he fled towards the door, not even turning back to see the corpse or the ghost behind him. He didn't even know where he was going, but he knew he couldn't stay in the same place with Que Bai any longer.
He will go crazy.
Of course, maybe he had already gone crazy.
Next to the living room is the narrow and messy entrance of the rental house. The security door is liver-colored. When you press the handle down hard, you can hear the dry "clicking" sound of the lock cylinder due to long-term lack of lubrication.
After rushing out, there is a long, narrow and dark corridor in the U-shaped building.
He couldn't take the elevator, but maybe he could just run down the escape ladder... Then, he should turn himself in...
Gu Hezhi only heard the voice in his head chattering incessantly.
However, when he pressed the handle of the security door and stumbled out, what appeared before his eyes was not the corridor, but the living room of 1401, which seemed particularly cramped because a freezer was forced into it.
Gu Hezhi stood at the kitchen door, staring at the man who was staggering to his feet from the ground, and began to doubt whether his sanity was still normal.
There were some dark red bloodstains on Que Bai's collar.
Because he was only wearing a white shirt, the bloodstains looked quite conspicuous. Gu Hezhi stared at him straight. Compared to the tall man in his memory, Que Bai at this moment looked like a skeleton. His body under the shirt seemed to be only a thin skeleton.
The air became very cold.
The light from outside the window seemed unable to illuminate the small living room, and the cheap furniture was only a large, blurry shape in the dark purple shadows.
"Azhi..."
As if knowing that Gu Hezhi could no longer escape his control, Que Bai gently stroked the back of his head, then turned around and muttered softly with a hint of grievance.
"Azhi, please don't be so hard next time, it hurts a little."
"Azhi, why do you always get angry with me because of other people..."
"They're not nice to you…"
…
Gu Hezhi staggered backwards.
However, no matter how he escaped, he could not leave Room 1401.
Maybe this is what is called a ghost wall.
Gu Hezhi gradually lost his strength in despair. During his futile escape, he clearly felt that Que Bai was following him calmly.
Even without looking back, Gu Hezhi could still smell the scent of Que Bai.
That lingering chill.
"What have you done...what have you done to me..."
Finally, Gu Hezhi stopped in the kitchen, which he had passed by for who knows how many times.
He was in tears, his face twisted with despair.
"Azhi."
Que Bai was indeed behind him.
"Don't run away."
He said gently but with concern.
"You can't leave for the time being..."
Gu Hezhi was almost going crazy.
"What are you going to do?"
he asked over and over again.
"You're taking revenge on me? Right? Revenge for me killing you..."
Gu Hezhi asked again and again with tears in his eyes.
But every time this happened, Que Bai would fall into a strange silence.
"Azhi, please calm down."
He just kept repeating the same words.
"I, I will never hurt you, you know that."
"What about the others? Dong Ruiming? Qi Wei? Yes, yes, and Qiao Liang—what about those bodies I saw? You killed them, didn't you—"
Inadvertently, while screaming, Gu Hezhi touched the kitchen knife on the sink. He immediately grabbed the knife and held it tightly in his palm, pointing the tip of the knife at Que Bai.
"Don't come over here! I'm warning you, don't come over here... If you come over here again, I'll kill you... I'll do it..."
Que Bai stopped.
He stood not far away, looking at Gu Hezhi with some sadness.
It's like an old dog that has a vague premonition that it is about to be abandoned.
Gu Hezhi met Que Bai's gaze, and a dark halo suddenly flashed before his eyes.
This scene was so familiar, so familiar that it made his throat tighten.
right...
This scene seems... seems to have happened...
The dull pain in his head made it difficult for Gu Hezhi to concentrate. He could only grit his teeth to stay awake.
"Azhi."
Que Bai murmured softly.
"Don't be like this."
The man's voice gradually became distant.
…
For some reason, a scene he had never seen before suddenly emerged in Gu Hezhi's mind...
It was his own room, reeking of alcohol.
I was also holding the knife tightly in my hand just like now, and the blade was covered in blood.
Que Bai was standing in the corner of the room in panic, staggering, one hand pressed against the wound on his abdomen. However, even with the pressure, blood continued to seep out from between his fingers, staining most of his body blood red.
Witnessing the tragic scene, Gu Hezhi involuntarily retreated to the corner of the wall. He could no longer hold the knife in his hand and it fell to the ground.
"Wuwu… please… Quebai… please, let me go… let me go…"
The pale man's eyes were straight and his expression was extremely distorted.
Obviously, even he himself had not expected that he would actually do such a thing.
After realizing what had happened, Gu Hezhi collapsed to the ground, completely exhausted.
He couldn't control his tears.
"Yes, I'm sorry, Ah Zhi, I'm sorry."
Que Bai looked at Gu Hezhi in panic, muttering to himself.
"I was wrong. I made you unhappy... I, I will leave..."
Que Bai carefully looked at his wound. His face became paler and paler as he lost too much blood.
"I, I'll leave for a while, okay?" the man said humbly as he walked towards the door. "Don't be afraid, I won't die here. Otherwise, it will cause too much trouble for Ah Zhi."
When passing Gu Hezhi, Que Bai instinctively slowed down his pace. He stared at Gu Hezhi for a few seconds. The latter had curled up into a small ball due to extreme collapse. Although he had not touched the other party yet, he instinctively shrank back the moment Que Bai stretched out his finger.
Que Bai slowly withdrew his hand.
"Azhi, I'm sorry."
He muttered quietly.
"I...I actually..."
The man stared at the bloody knife on the ground, a trace of confusion flashed in his eyes.
"Crack."
After a while, the sound of the door closing was heard from the entrance.
Gu Hezhi, who was sobbing, raised his head in a daze and glanced outside the door.
Que Bai has already left.
However, Gu Hezhi knew that it would not be long before the other party would appear beside him again silently like a shadow.
Indescribable despair roared in my face.
I don't want to live, but I don't dare to die either.
Gu Hezhi didn't know how long he had been crying. In order to control his completely broken emotions, he walked out of the room in a trance and picked up the bottle of wine.
He didn't stay in his room, because it was already covered in the bloodstains left by Que Bai. All he could do was curl up on the cold and completely uncomfortable cheap sofa, pouring gulps of wine down his throat.
A strange bitterness rose on the tip of his tongue, but at this moment all Gu Hezhi's senses were completely numb, and he didn't notice it at all.
Similarly, Gu Hezhi didn't notice that his shoulders were shaking and his chest was feeling stuffy.
Soon, his eyelids began to feel heavy.
A wave of dizziness came over me.
Gu Hezhi's body slowly slid down the edge of the sofa.
breathe...
Breathing becomes difficult.
At the moment he fell, his sanity briefly returned. Faintly, he heard the conversation between a man and a woman, as well as the sound of footsteps.
*
"Crack—"
The door of the rental house was opened.
"Come on, the house is a little dirty, so you don't need to change your shoes..."
A man's voice came from the entrance.
Then, Dong Ruiming hugged Ruan Qi, who looked a little reluctant, and walked into the living room from the door.
"Wow, what a smell... Um, is anyone drinking?"
Ruan Qi put her hand in front of her nose and fanned it, then asked in confusion.
Dong Ruiming's face was originally full of smiles, but at this moment it became a little stiff.
"Oh, well, my roommate is drunk in the living room..."
He leaned over to take a look at the sofa and saw Gu Hezhi lying motionless on the ground.
"Wow, how much did this guy drink? Is he crazy?"
Ruan Qi raised her eyebrows and quickly glanced at the living room, speaking half-jokingly and half-sarcastically.
Next to the slender figure, there were densely packed wine bottles.
Empty wine bottles were piled up like a mountain, almost taking up most of the coffee table and the ground around it.
Some of the wine bottles had fallen over, and the strong smell of alcohol filled the entire space.
When Dong Ruiming saw Gu Hezhi's appearance at the moment, he couldn't help but tighten the corners of his mouth.
"He's not usually like this. Maybe something happened to him today?"
Hearing her boyfriend's words, Ruan Qi pouted her lips and made a clicking sound.
She quickly glanced at Gu Hezhi's back, and a hint of annoyance appeared in her eyes.
"Ah? So... so we're still... still in the room today? It feels weird to have a drunk guy in the living room." She muttered. "I told you to go to the hotel a long time ago..."
"Well, I didn't expect that, didn't I? Actually, he usually doesn't leave his room. And even though he's a drunkard now, he used to be quite popular in school..."
Dong Ruiming said with a smile, then winked at Ruan Qi.
"It's okay. Look at him, he's already so drunk. He definitely doesn't know anything. Besides... even if he knew, wouldn't it be quite exciting? Xiaoqi -"
"I'm leaving."
Ruan Qi glanced at her new boyfriend's cramped and dilapidated rental house, and her expression gradually became ugly.
Especially when she saw Dong Ruiming's stingy look, the woman raised her eyebrows, turned around and walked towards the door.
"Hey, Xiaoqi, wait, why are you angry?"
Dong Ruiming became anxious when he saw Xiaoqi was about to leave.
Just as he was about to chase after him, he vaguely heard a thin moan coming from Gu Hezhi's mouth.
"Rui...Ming..."
Dong Ruiming was startled and turned his head to look at the ground. He found that Gu Hezhi seemed to have woken up, but his eyelids were red and his eyes were only slightly open.
"I can't breathe... ambulance... ambulance..."
Please call an ambulance for me.
From the unclear whispers, one could barely piece together Gu Hezhi's plea.
"Ah, that, that—"
Dong Ruiming was about to pick up his cell phone when he glanced in Xiaoqi's direction with embarrassment.
The woman had already put on her coat again and had obviously heard Gu Hezhi's muttering as she stood at the entrance. However, she was impatient at the moment and only sneered when she met Dong Ruiming's gaze.
"Well, your roommate is more important, so you can just spend the day with him."
Leaving behind a sarcastic remark, Ruan Qi opened the door and left the room without a care in the world.
"Hey, wait, Xiaoqi."
Seeing his girlfriend about to run away, Dong Ruiming didn't care about anything else.
Looking back at Gu Hezhi, Dong Ruiming saw that the young man had closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep, reeking of alcohol. He was stunned for a moment, then he ruthlessly left the man behind and chased after Ruan Qi in the direction he had left.
Gu Hezhi was just like that just now. He was probably just drunk and talking nonsense.
As he left, Dong Ruiming muttered to himself in his heart.
However, as the sound of the door closing again was heard, Gu Hezhi, who was lying on the ground, began to tremble slightly.
He wanted to raise his hand to his throat.
But in fact, he just moved his fingers slightly, almost imperceptibly.
The handsome, thin young man lay motionless on the dirty and cold floor, with a little thin white foam oozing from the corner of his mouth.
The paleness on his cheeks was gradually covered by a bleak blue-gray color.
*
Gu Hezhi was like a ghost, standing in a daze at the side of the living room.
He lowered his head, staring blankly at the motionless and unfamiliar corpse at his feet.
His own corpse.
"No, that's not it."
It was a long time before he heard his own vague and hoarse murmurs.
"That's not the case... I... that day..."
Gu Hezhi hugged his head.
"When I sobered up that day, I saw your body cut into pieces and placed in a plastic bag. It was me. I dismembered you, and then I borrowed a freezer from the landlord. I locked you up..."
Gu Hezhi screamed incoherently.
As he spoke, he rushed towards the freezer in the corner of the living room, as if he could find Que Bai's body by simply opening the freezer, proving that all this was just a terrifying illusion orchestrated by Que Bai to avenge him.
Are you kidding me... How could he be dead...
How could it be possible...
When the freezer was opened, a bone-chilling chill suddenly surged out.
Gu Hezhi roughly dragged out the neatly stacked plastic bag inside, but because his hands were shaking so much, the plastic bag containing the body parts slipped from his fingertips and fell to the ground with a thud.
Then, a grayish-white round object covered with frost, whose original skin color could no longer be seen because it had been frozen for too long, rolled out of the plastic bag.
It was a human head.
Due to long-term freezing, the head had long lost its original beauty. The dehydration caused by the low temperature had caused the eye sockets to sink deeply, and the cheeks began to tighten inward, highlighting the shape of the skull.
Not to mention, every inch of exposed skin on the human head in front of Gu Hezhi was covered with intricate and strange runes painted with dark red paint.
It looked like a scary prop from some third-rate horror movie.
However, Gu Hezhi stared at the head for a long time and felt dizzy.
Over the past twenty years, he had seen the image of that head in the mirror countless times.
So, even though it had become like this, he still recognized it at a glance...
It was his own head.
At this moment, within the head's mouth, there was a small mass of bright red flesh. Despite the freezing temperature, the flesh showed no signs of freezing. Crimson blood slowly seeped through the veins of the flesh, staining the corpse's already shrunken lips.
The author has something to say:
So throughout the whole story, Gu Hezhi basically didn't eat anything and kept feeling like vomiting.
Because in reality he always has a piece of meat in his mouth.