Luo Binhan stood there and stared at Asabam for a while. He had no clue what she said. There was no decoration on Asabam's shadow-covered body, and he didn't remember having one before.
"Did you lose your brooch?" he asked suspiciously.
Asabam didn't answer and shook his head silently. Garfield sighed slowly. The tacit understanding between these two aliens made Luo Binhan suspicious. But then Asabam stretched out a finger and pointed it straight ahead.
"Follow the water," she said, as if she didn't intend to mention what had just happened. Luo Binhan couldn't figure out what she was thinking, but no matter what, it was a good thing that she didn't ask him to go down to the river to find an inexplicable brooch again.
The green rope tied to the flesh shrank back, re-formed into a small piece of mucus, and rolled to Luo Binhan's feet, as if it wanted to return to its main body. Luo Binhan stared at it, rubbing the ground silently with the soles of his feet until the mucus rolled away knowingly and hid under Asabam's hair. Asabam still had his eyes closed, showing no reaction to the matter. Luo Binhan opened his eyes and asked Garfield in his mind: Why are you getting in her hair?
"I want to communicate with her on some intelligence," Garfield said. However, it cunningly avoids the specific content of the communication, reminding Luo Binhan that the environment around him is changing rapidly. The fog was clearly lifting, and night took over its former territory. The current pushed the boat forward briskly, and Luo Binhan threw aside the heavy and difficult-to-use dead man's nails.
Luo Binhan looked up at the sea of stars twinkling in the sky, trying to find the trick to determine the direction. However, he found that the stars in the empty sea only flickered once in place. No star is permanent and stable. Whenever he sees a fragment of light extinguished, it will never appear again. Their color and size are also not fixed, just like schools of fish that appear and disappear on the sea surface.
He raised his head and rowed, thinking that those stars were definitely not real stars, but maybe spirits or flying fish.
"I think those are indeed stars." Garfield said, "But they are not stars in the same world as us. Ah, those are the waves that the lawmen often talk about..."
"Shh." Luo Binhan said.
He looked up and stared at the stars, not wanting Garfield to explain anything. Asabam was behind him, but he had forgotten his situation and thought of another place to go.
It must not be here, it must not be at this time, somewhere in an uncertain place of time and space, someone is on a long journey. That might have to wait until tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the unpredictable future, but when the journey to the stars reaches the end, she will come back and tell what she saw. He imagined that the road would look like the shapeless starry sky above his head, merging into a stormy ocean. Therefore, the journey must be very long, and it will take many, many hours of waiting - but it is not a desperate or painful waiting, but a waiting filled with happiness in the emptiness.
He thought that after many stars had perished, in the cold spring on the outskirts of Lihai City, the traveler who finally returned found her old friend's tombstone and lightly covered it with a wreath. She will sit in front of the monument and tell the answer she finally found. All the vegetation in front of the grave bears witness to this event. She would talk for a long time until she exhaled tiredly. Then she took off the turtleneck coat that covered her neck and sat down next to the tombstone, still wearing the Flying Sheep jumper underneath. Finally, she kissed the tombstone, and their agreement was complete.
The idea did not frighten him—he had seen death long ago. Before Zhou Yu was alive, she once told him to stay away from water sources on rainy days, otherwise he would be taken away by the "Lord of Rain". It was probably a horror story meant to scare people, but Zhou Yu only told it in front of him and never mentioned a word to Zhou Yu. Luo Binhan knew why she didn't tell Zhou Yu this story.
He guessed it must be a rainy day.
After the extremely risky brain tumor surgery was successful, the brain medicine expert who came back from abroad became the object of his father's respect. Not only because of the grace of saving his life, his father has long been looking forward to the emergence of scholars and "scholars" among the descendants of the family. He enthusiastically made friends with the medical expert and learned that the other person had an only son in Lihai City.
His father asked medical experts about his only son and discovered that the two families actually lived very close to each other. But they have never heard of each other, because the Luo family has many contacts, and medical experts are always working abroad, and his only son is recuperating in the hospital.
The child is recovering? His father must have asked. It was purely out of concern for the savior, or wanting to find a friend with a good family background for the eldest son. The others will never be known. His father was not only considered a good and loyal man, but also the most intelligent businessman in the family. His offers of financial assistance and expensive gifts were rejected, but when he offered to let his eldest son accompany a patient of his own age in the hospital, the medical expert thanked him briefly. The expert was very busy and left the address and contact information of his only son in hospital, and flew abroad the next day.
So, that was Luo Binhan's first time in the hospital. Of course, that couldn't be the real first time, but it was the first time he formed a clear impression of the hospital. Dazzling white paint, muffled whispers, and humid air. It must have been a rainy day. He was afraid of the deep and far-reaching corridors, but the mother who sent him there held his hand and led him through the corridors. They bought fruits and jigsaw puzzles, went through some complicated procedures, and finally walked into the ward at the far end of the corridor.
Why was a child recuperating in the hospital? At that time, he quietly asked his parents, but the adults kept it secret, as if it was a very important secret that the child would not be able to bear. But that was not the case. Luo Binhan found out from Zhou Yu half a year later.
- A truck driver carries a heavy load across the intersection. At that moment the green light was flashing, several pedestrians were preparing to pass, and several private cars were waiting to turn on the side road. Pedestrians were cautious and stood by the stone steps on the sidewalk waiting. There should have been nothing wrong with that, but the truck that reached the intersection suddenly turned and rushed towards the roadside completely out of control. It eventually crashed into the wall of a restaurant, after its tires had crushed shards of glass from a car and the flesh of six pedestrians. The truck driver died before that happened. Dashcam footage shows he suffered a heart attack the moment he crossed the road.
The six pedestrians caught under the wheel were two students, a young couple, and a mother and son. In the end, only the child whose body was protected by his mother survived. Until the ambulance arrived, he lay on his side in his mother's broken arm, quietly watching the blood flow on the street. It is said that the blood was so thick that it covered one of the child's eyes.
Six people would never have that much blood. Luo Binhan also knew about this. He could only guess that it was a rainy day when water filled the streets. Sometimes it rains like this in Lihai City. On that day, the blood of the five victims mixed with the rain, as if the whole street was dyed red. The medical expert's wife died in that car accident. Since then, he transferred his only son to a friend's private hospital, where he finally rescued him.
Luo Binhan gradually learned about these things later, and gradually pieced together the whole story over the years of interacting with that withdrawn family. But when he entered the ward with his mother for the first time, he didn't know anything. His mother gently opened the door and called the child's name. There was only one patient in the ward at that time. He sat in front of the hospital bed by the window and looked over slowly. When he saw the other person's face clearly for the first time, Luo Binhan's heart was beating wildly in his chest. He shrank behind his mother to hide, but he was still observing his peers on the hospital bed.
Those are a pair of dead eyes. He thought to himself.
Keng.
Eyes that are close to death and regard death as ordinary.
clang clang.
Dark, protruding, dragonfly-like eyes.
"...What's that sound?" Garfield said.
Luo Binhan woke up from his thoughts. He still heard the strange sound of "clang, clang, clang", like some kind of dull metal collision. He stood up from the boat and looked toward the river bank ahead.
He saw a column of tall soldiers, all wearing heavy armor, marching in formation along the river bank. They did not utter any slogans or words, only the rusty metal feet fell to the ground, making a heavy clanging sound.
