At first, Liu Ruoyu still endured it, but sometimes when he was truly enraged beyond control, he would also push Xu Jiayuan, and the two would end up shoving each other. Though Liu Ruoyu was small in stature, he was strong and fierce by nature, and Xu Jiayuan surprisingly couldn't gain much advantage. Both of them ended up with bruises on their faces. This finally provoked Xu Jiayuan's anger. The other two quickly stepped in to break up the fight, but while pretending to mediate, they pinned Liu Ruoyu down alone. Xu Jiayuan slapped him hard across the face and said, "I think you really have a death wish. If it weren't for them holding me back, I'd kill you right now. Fine, I'm going to the HR department right now to expose you, you underage brat who hasn't even grown all your hair yet. I'll make sure you're kicked out!"
The two others pretended to persuade him, saying, "Xiao Liu, why don't you apologize? You were the one who started it."
"Do you really want to be sent back?"
Liu Ruoyu's eyes turned red with fury, but he couldn't utter a word.
Xu Jiayuan turned and headed for the door.
Liu Ruoyu felt as if a thousand knives were grinding in his heart. Gritting his teeth, he shouted, "Don't go! Please don't!"
Xu Jiayuan paused for a moment, then walked back, forcing a sarcastic smile. "I might not go if you kneel down and admit your mistake."
...
On every day off, Liu Ruoyu increasingly enjoyed going to the city center. There were wider roads, taller buildings, countless cars, and beautiful shopping malls. Even the internet cafes were more magnificent and spacious than those in the town where the factory was located. He had only been to an internet cafe a few times before, partly because he had no money and partly because he wasn't very interested. Now that he was in the city, he didn't dare enter shopping malls or restaurants, so internet cafes became the natural choice.
The first time he met Li Biran, they happened to team up in a game and won a match.
Both were gloomy teenagers, both alone, and after winning the game, they laughed exaggeratedly and unrestrainedly.
Li Biran called him "Brother Yu." In return, Brother Yu called him "Biran."
Li Biran asked, "Brother Yu, where do you go to school? Do you want to meet up again tomorrow?"
Liu Ruoyu hesitated for a moment before answering, "I'm working now. Can you tell? I'm already 18. I won't be able to come again until next week."
In Li Biran's eyes, Liu Ruoyu was completely different. He was quiet, steady, played games coolly, and had money to spare, treating him to meals without batting an eye at spending a few hundred yuan. Though they were close in age, Liu Ruoyu was already working and self-sufficient. How free he seemed.
Their relationship grew closer, and they hung out together almost every week. As they talked more deeply, they discovered that Li Biran had lived with his grandparents in the countryside for a while as a child, coincidentally in the same area as Liu Ruoyu. The timing matched, and it was possible they had even played together as kids. This made their bond even stronger.
For Liu Ruoyu, this feeling was entirely new. He had always been controlled by others. But now, he had a younger brother, a buddy.
This feeling was truly wonderful. Liu Ruoyu cherished this hard-won friendship deeply. He also vaguely sensed that his life shouldn't be the way it was. He could actually achieve great things and make everyone look at him in a new light.
Someday, he would take down Xu Jiayuan, quietly and without anyone noticing. If he wanted to, there were a hundred ways to kill Xu Jiayuan. They had no idea.
...
One day, Li Biran had another big fight with Xie Huifang and came to the factory area to find Liu Ruoyu. Liu Ruoyu, afraid of letting Li Biran see his pathetic state at the factory, never allowed him inside. The two only met at an internet cafe in the town.Li Biran said, "Damn, I'm so pissed off by that woman. She actually insulted me in front of all my classmates. She's not even human."
Liu Ruoyu didn't need to ask to conjure up an image in his mind identical to his own aunt. He said, "She's not your real mother, of course she doesn't treat you like a person."
Li Biran's face darkened as he said, "One day, I'm going to make sure she's done for."
Liu Ruoyu glanced at him, and suddenly, the part of his heart that had always been covered by a thin layer of ice, a place he dared not tread lightly, seemed to crack open, revealing a strange light.
"Do you really want her dead?" Liu Ruoyu asked.
Li Biran remained silent for a moment before nodding.
Liu Ruoyu's voice trembled slightly as he took a drag from his cigarette and said, "I have a way."
"What way?"
"Swapping murders."
——
By the time the initial interrogation of the two teenagers was completed, evening had fallen. They confessed to their crimes without hesitation. Liu Ruoyu, having avidly read detective novels, had meticulously planned both murders. He prepared all the tools and decided the timing and methods. Cautious and clever by nature, he executed Xie Huifang's murder with almost no flaws, and with brutal cruelty, he even killed two children.
Li Biran, being more impulsive, left Xu Jiayuan's death scene in chaos. He hadn't worn shoe covers, leaving behind his own bloody footprints. Yet, he also committed an unexpectedly cruel act—he mutilated Xu Jiayuan's face.
You Mingxu thought, according to Yin Feng's analysis, this act was meant to strip the victim of their appearance or identity. Perhaps, in that moment of killing, the teenager had projected his hatred onto the unrelated Xu Jiayuan, destroying the face he never wanted to see again—the face of someone he despised.
You Mingxu had actually encountered cases far more heinous and depraved than this one. The murder methods of these two teenagers were primitive and straightforward. Yet, now that the truth was out, she felt only a profound stillness in her heart.
A stillness that weighed heavily on her. As for the two perpetrators, even during today's interrogation, they showed little remorse. At most, they were fearful and panicked. But in their hearts, in their nearly formed worldviews, those two people still deserved to die. They were also utterly lost about their futures, seemingly having never given it any thought. Nor had they considered the lives of the victims' families or their own parents and relatives from this point onward...
A life in freefall only continues to plummet. Demons and monsters, drip by drip, wear away the stone.
And he was still just a child, muddled and confused, already trapped in the abyss.
——
You Mingxu took a taxi and arrived at her doorstep. Dusk had settled, quiet and dim. She paused, gazing at the lit windows of the high-rise buildings, her thoughts lingering on the two teenagers, a lingering heaviness in her heart. Everything was settled now. She had done all she could, and what couldn't be saved ultimately remained unsaved.
She decided not to enter the residential complex just yet, leaning against the wall instead to light a cigarette and smoke for a while. Gradually, her mood settled into calm, much like after solving every previous case—an intense tension and excitement followed by an overwhelming emptiness.
She finished the cigarette quickly and looked up again. From afar, she could see the brightly lit window of her own apartment in the complex. The gloom brought by the case would eventually fade, but she still didn't feel much like going up.Recalling last night—the devout, infatuated expression and movements he made when she kissed Yin Feng—her heart felt as if it had been scorched by fire, almost charred...
She silently lit another cigarette.
This time, she thought, she would smoke it slowly.
——
You Mingxu had no idea that far away, at a dimly lit street corner, a car sat silently parked.
Inside the car were two people. One of them lowered the binoculars, eyes still fixed in You Mingxu’s direction, and said, “It seems the police have closed the case.”
The other chuckled softly and replied, “As they should. The police can only go this far.”
The first person laughed as well, saying, “They actually believe those two kids were the final culprits—just a case of swapped murders. Ha!”
The other narrowed his eyes, still gazing toward You Mingxu, then looked up toward the heights and asked, “Do you still want to have her?”
After a moment of silence, the first person answered, “No, I don’t care about her anymore. What about you? Do you want to have him?”
The other tapped his fingers lightly on the car window a few times before replying, “Yes. I dream about it every night.”
——End of Volume Two: The Open Road——
Volume Three: Dreaming of Home
OpenNovel