The bathroom was cold and narrow, creating a tense atmosphere. In the struggle, the shower head was knocked aside, and a brief spray of water dampened the clothes on Lu Nanyang’s body, which then clung coldly to his skin.
Xie Quan’s movements were devoid of any tenderness; he violently yanked at his hair with brute force, seemingly indifferent to whether his teeth were scraped in the process. He moved with rough, mechanical actions. The wound on his palm hadn’t fully stopped bleeding before it was reopened, and dark red blood dripped slowly from the base of his palm, spreading across the floor and blending with the accumulated water.
Lu Nanyang initially resisted a few times, but quickly gave up. He lifted his head in response to Xie Quan’s force and allowed him to manipulate him at will.
This submission stirred an even greater desire for brutality in Xie Quan. It would be best to tear apart this worthless, self-righteous fool, to block his throat, crush his windpipe, and ensure that he would never speak another word of interference again.
Leave scars on him, leave pain, leave fear, and make him understand who the true dominant one is, who the one not to be defied is.
Just like…
Just like what that person had once done to him.
“Cough, cough… cough, cough, cough!” Lu Nanyang seemed to have been choked, coughing violently. Xie Quan didn’t let him swallow; instead, he pulled back, watching as Lu Nanyang coughed for a while before turning his head to spit it out.
In the suffocating space, heavy breathing filled the air. Lu Nanyang reached up to wipe his mouth, but didn’t do it properly. The corner of his lips still had a trace of white.
Xie Quan, panting, glanced over. For a brief moment, he actually hoped that Lu Nanyang would punch him or kick him, or at least insult him with words like “scum” or “animal.”
But there was nothing. Lu Nanyang didn’t even show an expression of anger on his face. He simply leaned back lazily, resting his wet head against the equally damp ceramic wall.
Lu Nanyang’s eyes were a perfect shape, resembling lychee eyes, with thick and dense lower lashes. Perhaps because of this, whenever he looked up at someone, the moisture in his eyes was always very obvious—wet, like some kind of canine.
“Is this enough for you?” Lu Nanyang asked.
Lu Nanyang’s gaze struck him like a sharp blade. An indescribable emptiness engulfed Xie Quan’s chest, and the nausea that had been suppressed before surged up again from the depths of his stomach.
Why was this happening?
It felt meaningless.
Lu Nanyang closed his eyes. Not long after, a door slammed from the north, and when he opened his eyes again, Xie Quan was already gone. The bathroom was empty except for him. Lu Nanyang smiled bitterly, gritted his teeth, and staggered up from the floor, limping out.
Not only was his jaw aching with almost no feeling left, but his body was also likely bruised in several places.
He really hadn’t expected that when Xie Quan went crazy, he was even worse than a mad dog.
Lu Nanyang opened the drawer in the bedroom, pulling out a crushed pack of cigarettes. Shaking it, he found there was only one left.
He took the last cigarette out, fiddled with the lighter for a while, opened the window, and sat on the balcony.
It was already completely dark. The moon hung directly in the center of the window frame, shining over the roof of the house across from him. The lighter hadn’t been used in a while, and it took him two tries to light the cigarette. A small spark glowed in the night, and Lu Nanyang lifted his finger, using that little spark to burn a hole in the moon.
It seemed that ever since encountering Xie Quan, his years of quitting smoking had officially failed.
Amid the smoke, Lu Nanyang smiled.
It seemed that addiction could be contagious…
……
That night, Xie Quan had a strange dream.
He dreamed that he was walking aimlessly in a vast grassland. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he had to keep moving forward, without stopping.
“Xie Quan!” Suddenly, someone called his name from behind. He had no choice but to turn around, but his steps never slowed.
He saw a small dog with Lu Nanyang’s face running behind him, calling as it ran: “Xie Quan! Where are you going?”
The little dog even had Lu Nanyang’s northern accent, and it was incredibly lifelike.
Xie Quan ignored it and kept walking quickly.
Soon, the dog caught up to him, walking alongside him.
“Aren’t you tired of walking like this all the time?” the dog asked again. “Do you want to stop and rest?”
Tired? Xie Quan thought. But he couldn’t stop. If he stopped…
What would happen?
Right, why couldn’t he stop?
Xie Quan slowed down, gradually coming to a stop as he pondered the question. Just then, a chilling, strange noise came from behind, startling him as he turned around quickly.
A mountain-high, thin black shadow, like dark clouds, covered the entire grassland. Everywhere the shadow passed, it turned into a desert emitting black smoke, and everything beautiful and living was ruthlessly slaughtered.
Xie Quan recognized that face. Fear made his legs go weak, and his mind went blank, leaving only one thought.
He had to run. He had to escape with all his strength.
But it was too late. He had stopped, and his feet could no longer outrun the terrifying demon. Even the little dog that had been by his side just moments ago had disappeared.
The world was now empty, with no sun, no moon, and no stars.
The demon’s claws reached him, and the darkness pierced his flesh. It was all too late.
Xie Quan jolted awake from the nightmare, gasping for air in the morning sunlight that filtered through the blackout curtains. It took him a while to realize that his pillow was soaked with cold sweat.
Curled up in his blanket, he still felt the remnants of last night’s memories. His left palm, still under bandages, throbbed with pain. He took double the usual amount of medication, barely managing to suppress the storm of emotions in his chest.
Fortunately, Lu Nanyang wasn’t home. He seemed to have already left.
Diazepam is a good thing. Not only can it relieve anxiety and relax the body, but it can also erase a person’s emotions, making them numb and dull, like a walking corpse, only needing to complete each task step by step as required.
Xie Quan methodically folded the bedding neatly, drew open the curtains, and opened the window. Yuncheng City wasn’t a place with many sunny days, let alone now, during the rainiest season.
The sky was overcast, with fine rain falling like threads, quietly washing the narrow stone slabs in front of the building.
He glanced at the time as part of his routine, then opened the fridge, took out a green pepper, and rinsed it under the tap. The sound of the water indoors mingled with the sound of the rain outside, vague and ambiguous, indistinguishable from each other.
He sliced the green pepper, boiled a pot of noodles, and cracked an egg into it. When the water boiled, the noodle soup surged and stirred the egg, bubbling up with hot, frothy white foam.
In the end, just as he had planned, the noodles were ready, and there were still five minutes of spare time before he had to leave.
But at the moment he was about to eat the noodles, that voice inside him still seized the opportunity and spoke up.
Is this enough for you?
What’s the point of doing this?
“Shut up.” Xie Quan silenced the voice and continued to mechanically and numbly go through all the tasks step by step.
The rain wasn’t heavy, but it kept falling nonstop.
Xie Quan later thought, if he hadn’t been mentally controlled by the excessive medication, he probably would have noticed something was wrong earlier.
Like when no one had spoken to him since arriving at school.
It all started from the moment he sat at the back of the classroom, and no one sat next to him.
It started from when the professor’s distracted gaze swept past him and quickly moved away.
It started from when a few girls in the back row stared at him, whispering and laughing among themselves, and stopped abruptly when he walked past.
But he didn’t notice any of it until the class representative suddenly ran to find him, notifying him that Professor Qi from the clinical medicine department wanted to see him in his office.
“Now?” Xie Quan was stunned. “But class is about to start.”
“Now,” the class representative said.
“Did Professor Qi say what it’s about?” Xie Quan stood up from his seat.
The class representative’s eyes suddenly became shifty, avoiding Xie Quan’s gaze as he scratched his face. “Uh, it seems… it’s something related to the skills competition.”
“…Okay, thank you.” Xie Quan nodded.
The class representative mumbled something and hurriedly left.
That unease that had been subtly lingering around since the morning finally erupted as Xie Quan walked towards Professor Qi’s office.
Professor Qi was an elderly professor who had been rehired after retirement. With a wrinkled face and wearing reading glasses, he had an intimidating aura even without showing any anger. Now, in the office, the atmosphere was even more suffocating, filled with low pressure.
Xie Quan felt as though his throat had a cotton ball stuck in it, and after a long pause, he spoke. “Professor Qi, you wanted to see me?”
Professor Qi remained silent and slammed a pile of paper materials onto the desk. The papers slid forward slightly and stopped right in front of Xie Quan.
Xie Quan’s gaze scanned the words on the papers, and his breath caught. But years of deception had almost become a reflex, and he smiled before lifting his head to look at Professor Qi. “Professor, what’s this?”
“Can’t you see for yourself?” Professor Qi raised his voice. “This is the drug distribution report from the school medical office! Just this month alone, 15 bottles of diazepam have been sent to your office. Care to explain?”
