The Long Night - Chapter 49

The rain outside the window was getting heavier. The emerald green leaves were swaying in the storm, about to break.

The air conditioner in the living room was blowing warm air. Ge Dong-lin was wearing a turtleneck sweater and was wrapped in a thick blanket, but he still felt cold. He hugged his arms and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the tree finally collapse under the pressure. He also shivered violently.

Even if he put on all the warm clothes in the house, he would still feel cold.

He was exhausted, fighting off his sleepiness and waiting. It wasn’t until his phone vibrated with a “buzz” that a text message that had been sent a second ago appeared on the screen: “We got him.”

Qin Li had told him to do many things. He didn’t need to think; he just needed to act as a servant who obeyed orders and carried out missions.

But only when it came to Yan Liao, perhaps because of the grudge from the previous generation, Qin Li didn’t want to show his face and told him, “You handle it.”

Qin Li knew that he and Yan Liao were friends. Maybe this was a test, an opportunity for him to show his loyalty.

He subconsciously thought this, and then quickly denied the idea. Maybe this wasn’t a good opportunity given to him by Qin Li, but a chance for fate to turn things around.

These days, Ge Dong-lin often wondered if there was a parallel universe. If he hadn’t been with Lu Xiao and was still just a lonely person, what kind of decision would he have made?

Memories came flooding in, like sharp pieces of broken glass piercing his mind.

From a young age, there had always been people like this around him, like shadows he couldn’t get rid of.

Smooth sailing, glamorous, a favorite of heaven.

He remembered seeing Yan Liao say in an interview, “I think I’m just very lucky.”

As long as he was next to Yan Liao, he would be reduced to a supporting role. Even after he got this glamorous job, his colleagues would ask, “You know Yan Liao?” “Are you high school classmates?” “Can you help me give this gift to him?”

Years of jealousy had twisted into disgust, and the accumulated resentment was enough to resurrect ten skeletons left to rot in the wilderness.

If there was a parallel world where he hadn’t met Lu Xiao, would he, who had used hatred to push himself forward step by step, have learned Qin Li’s way of thinking? Would he have gone for what Yan Liao cared about the most, what would crush him the most? Would he have wanted to see a pair of bloody hands?

Why didn’t he have such a twisted malice towards others? This disgust was just something he had always been unwilling to admit. It was just because of jealousy, right?

He wouldn’t be jealous of the people who blocked him at the school gate to ask for money, or the people who grabbed his collar and told him to go to the bathroom during a test to pass on the answers. He knew they were scum and trash. His disgust for them was as simple as that of a single-celled organism.

But these feelings, when placed on Yan Liao, could mobilize all the suppressed hatred.

This twisted feeling was “I want to be you.”

“I want to live your life, even if it’s just for a day.”

“I thought that being your friend would allow me to share your life, but I can never become the kind of person you are. I can only be myself.”

But now, the thought that had been burning in his mind like a nuclear bomb, the desire to destroy, was slowly no longer so intense.

The hatred that had been festering deep in his body, waiting to grow, no longer had the nourishment to feed it.

All the changes happened after he got together with Lu Xiao. He felt endless peace, calmness, and security. The power that used to make his blood boil in his veins disappeared inexplicably. He no longer had the crazy idea of rewriting his fate. He wanted to be the most ordinary and common person with Lu Xiao, holding hands, eating, shopping, and watching movies, pushing a shopping cart in a brightly lit underground supermarket, and sleeping in the same bed, hugging each other.

So he started to think about things that would calm him down.

In his first year of high school, a classmate kept kicking his chair. Yan Liao fiercely pushed the person away. “Stop kicking. Are you done yet?” As he was about to leave after school, Yan Liao grabbed him and helped him avoid the people who were waiting for him with a fierce look in their eyes.

In the car, he heard Yan Liao and his father talking about what gift to give his mother for her birthday. When he felt a little awkward and tightened his fingers, he saw Yan Liao turn his head and ask, “Do you want to come to my house for dinner?”

In his senior year of high school, he was chased all the way. Yan Liao threw away his badminton racket and yelled, “Over here.” They ran to the rooftop and leaned against the gray-white wall, panting with exhaustion.

Tang Shaocheng brought Lu Xiao over and introduced him. He said casually, “Just say that you’re the one who broke his arm.” Lu Xiao yelled beside him, “My arm isn’t broken yet, okay!”

He subconsciously smiled shyly and flatteringly. Yan Liao, who was sitting next to him, pinched his face from the outside in. “Please act a little more like an older brother, okay?”

During the holiday last October, the four of them were in a barbecue restaurant. The glasses clinked together, making a crisp sound.

If he were to recall these things from recent to distant, going back to the very beginning, the other person had probably already forgotten. Eight years ago, when he was sixteen, he met Yan Liao for the first time during the entrance exam. The other person put his arm around his neck from behind. “Dude, watch my backpack for me.” They were two completely unfamiliar people wearing different junior high school uniforms. Yan Liao said with a smile, “I trust you a lot.”

The feelings that couldn’t be fully expressed. Many of them had become blurred over the long years, but the clear feeling at this moment was that something had fermented in his body, so his heart had also become soft.

The rain outside the window gradually lessened, and a hazy fog slowly floated up.

Ge Dong-lin looked at the “We got him” on the screen. He slowly typed on the keyboard, “Let him go.”

Then he let out a sigh of relief.

At that moment, he didn’t know if his God was satisfied, but he wanted to thank his God.

Just as he was about to press send, he heard the sound of a key being frantically turned in the lock. His expression froze, and he suddenly turned his head.

Lu Xiao’s mind was in a mess.

His call with Tang Shaocheng was suddenly cut off, and he couldn’t get through again, so he could only drive to Ge Dong-lin’s place first. All the way, he was still holding on to hope. The voices that kept ringing in his mind were “impossible,” “something must be wrong,” and “how could this happen?”

A long time later, Tang Shaocheng called him again from another number and briefly told him what had happened.

He couldn’t connect that scheming, evil person with the Ge Dong-lin he was familiar with, but he was already unconsciously believing the details that now made sense.

Lu Xiao had the key card to Ge Dong-lin’s community and the key to his house. The last time the two of them went upstairs together, the cleaning lady from the property management asked curiously, “You have a guest?” Ge Dong-lin blushed a little and said, “He’s family.”

So now he could go upstairs and open the door without any obstruction. The moment he saw Ge Dong-lin, he couldn’t say a word.

Lu Xiao let out a deep breath, but he still couldn’t control the anger that had been desperately suppressed all the way—the anger of being lied to, deceived, and betrayed. He asked coldly, “Did you do it?”

“Yan Liao was kidnapped. Did you do it?”

Ge Dong-lin numbly walked from the balcony to the living room. He clearly saw the anger in Lu Xiao’s eyes. His pupils constricted. The halos were like gathering flames.

They had talked on the phone at noon. At that time, Lu Xiao was eating at a fast-food restaurant downstairs from the boxing club. Ge Dong-lin didn’t want to hang up and asked him what he had eaten and if it was good. Lu Xiao’s voice had a slight smile. “I’ll take you to eat there next time.” So he started to look forward to their next meeting.

At their next meeting, this person was furiously questioning him in front of him, “Did you do it?”

Ge Dong-lin’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Who told you?”

Lu Xiao clenched his fists, as if he had seen something die in front of his eyes. His heart sank rapidly.

Some twisted inferiority and sensitivity that were ingrained in his bones couldn’t be changed. He could have honestly said at this time that Qin Li had made him do many bad things, that he had been led astray many times before, but now he wanted to correct his ways, that he felt there was hope for his life to start changing because a person had appeared in his life who made him no longer feel pain and made him want to become a better person.

But Ge Dong-lin stared at Lu Xiao and said calmly, “What if I did it—”

“What would you do?”

“Would you want to know why I did these things?”

“Would you have the patience to listen to my explanation?”

“Would you not be angry or disappointed?”

“Would you believe me?”

“Would you forgive me?”

“You bastard!”

In an instant, anger surged through his nerves like a flood.

Lu Xiao looked at Ge Dong-lin’s unguarded eyes. It was as if all the blood in his body had flowed backward to his head. His body reacted before his mind did. His fist uncontrollably hit him hard.

“Is this the kind of person you are? Huh?”

“Were you this kind of person all along?”

Ge Dong-lin fell to the ground. The rusty smell of blood kept hitting his throat. He wanted to raise his hand to cover his eyes. His entire arm was sore and numb, as if it had been bitten by a poisonous snake. A mist filled his eyes. Everything in front of him seemed to be boiling with dense bubbles. Crimson blood flowed down his brow bone, mixing with his tears.

For a moment, besides the pain in his eyeballs that felt like they were about to crack and the pain of his internal organs being torn apart, it was as if his heart’s protective mechanism had given him a sense of relief, like everything had settled in its place, in the midst of the extreme throbbing pain.

He knew this would happen.

All the past tenderness was just him dreaming of love.

The blood from his brow bone flowed into his eyes. His left eye was a bloody red. Everything in front of him was like a scene from an old movie reel. Ge Dong-lin moved his hand away, moved his knees to support his upper body, and stared at Lu Xiao.

The words “It’s not like that” that were originally choked in his heart, full of grievance and wanting to be screamed out hysterically, were swallowed down with his tears and blood. They were replaced by a sinister, cold voice, squeezed out of his clenched teeth word by word. “Yes, it was me. I’ve always been this way.”

Lu Xiao also gritted his teeth hard. The veins on the back of his hand bulged menacingly. He grabbed Ge Dong-lin’s collar and lifted him off the ground with such force that he hung in the air. “Where is he? Where did you take him?”

The blood on Ge Dong-lin’s face dripped onto his sweater, staining it with a red mark like a winter plum blossom. He slowly exhaled. “It’s too late.”

…

“You’ll regret this, you hear me!” Lu Xiao stared at him. “You’re a lunatic!”

Lu Xiao threw him back onto the ground. He didn’t want to waste any more time here. He didn’t even look down at him again and walked straight out without looking back.

Ge Dong-lin lay motionless on the ground. A cicada-wing-thin light fell on his eyelids.

Hot and chaotic air silently surrounded him. The taste of blood filled his throat.

Cold, clammy sweat, tears, and crimson blood stained his skin. It was like he was back in the amniotic fluid, back to the very beginning of his life.

But now, no one would die because of his difficult birth. The one who should die was him. He was the boy who shouldn’t have been left behind when they had to choose between “saving the mother or saving the child.” His birth was a complete mistake.

Just then, Yan Liao’s calm voice from an interview suddenly rang in his ears.

“I think I’m just very lucky.” —Why didn’t you die?

Why do you get to have everything you want? Why can the people you love always be on your side? Why is God completely your God alone?

Ge Dong-lin ran a hand through his damp, broken hair, picked up his phone that had fallen to the ground with him, and saw that the two words “Let go” had not been sent yet. The other party had already urged him again, “What should we do?”

Ge Dong-lin swallowed the saliva that had unconsciously secreted in his mouth, deleted the original two words, and slowly typed on the keyboard.

The ending still deviated from his previous life. The “save his life” that he had decided on in his previous life became “I want him to die.”

When he typed those two words, he was still praying that it would be in time, but now it had become the most vicious curse.

He no longer knew who to direct his hatred toward. He wanted to make himself the dirtiest, most disgusting, and most despicable person in the world so that he could stop himself from fantasizing about having a new, better life. He wanted to watch Yan Liao die. He wanted to see the dove-gray plea in Yan Liao’s eyes as he was dying. He wanted to watch the life he had fantasized about having countless times, the life he could have shared, die completely. Yan Liao would die, and he would die, too.

“Sure enough, I should be the worst kind of bad guy.”

He saw the “read” notification on the text message and closed his eyes peacefully.