Walking out of Lin Youcheng’s residential compound, Ren Xing and I collapsed into the car, both of us overcome by a spontaneous sense of emptiness.
It likely stemmed from the belief that as long as we lived as humans and followed human rules, we could always grasp our own destinies, leaving the rest to luck.
But now, we knew. We were just... bugs.
Ren Xing gripped the steering wheel with one hand. "Where to now?"
I pulled out my phone and called my roommate. I was the one who had bought the phone for him. He picked up after a single ring. "Ye Xiao."
"Where are you?"
His side was noisy. "Washing dishes. What’s wrong?"
"...My stomach hurts a bit. Can you go to the hospital with me?"
"Wait a moment, I’ll ask for leave."
"Okay, I’m heading to your shop now."
As I put the phone down, Ren Xing asked, "What exactly are you trying to do?"
I sighed. "Keep him occupied for now... and my stomach really does hurt..."
Ren Xing rubbed my stomach for a while before driving me to see my roommate.
When we arrived at the restaurant, my roommate was dragging a trash bin to dump the waste. It was the kind of orange, wheeled bin sanitation workers use on the streets, reaching up to my chest. The bin was piled so high it was nearly overflowing; one could only imagine how heavy it was. More importantly, it was kitchen waste—disgusting, a slurry of slops and leftovers. Greenbottle flies swarmed over it, buzzing and scattering as he approached, only to circle back and hover around him. My roommate calmly pushed two large bins deep into the alley. Because that alley had been a dumping ground for a long time, it was filthy beyond belief. The water on the ground was a yellowish-brown, turning sticky under the sun and emitting a nauseating stench. I was amazed he was willing to do it.
After dumping the trash, he stood there watching for a moment before slowly walking back. From his silhouette, I read a sensation akin to desire and struggle. I suddenly realized that I had seemingly never seen my roommate eat. He never joined me at the cafeteria. Every night, the duck blood vermicelli soup was given to me, and the bacon fried rice was given to the cat; he never ate any of it himself.
Indeed, what did he even eat?
When I asked him, he predictably claimed he had already eaten, so I had to let it go.
He greeted the kitchen master and then walked side-by-side with me toward the exit. It was summer, and we were both wearing short-sleeved T-shirts. We walked close, our arms occasionally brushing against each other, and as we reached the street, he naturally took my hand. His palm was very cold.
"Does your stomach hurt?"
He tried every which way to touch my navel, but I slapped his hand away.
He looked a bit aggrieved, glanced at me, and then suddenly stopped, looking over my shoulder. We happened to be passing Ren Xing’s parked car. The windows were tinted, making it impossible to see inside, yet I didn't know how he recognized it. Seeing this, Ren Xing expressionlessly rolled down the window. "Student Liu."
My roommate ignored him, only lowering his head to ask me, "Why is it him again?"
He looked particularly resentful.
I smiled. "What’s wrong?"
His face darkened. "I’m unhappy." With that, he squeezed my hand. "Move back in."
I gave a non-committal laugh.
My roommate swept a glance at Ren Xing. That coldness reminded me of that list. Before I realized it, he had let go of me and was striding toward Ren Xing with meteor-like steps. Holy crap, it was seven o'clock at a brightly lit intersection; my roommate wasn't going to make Ren Xing vanish on the spot, was he?!
Before I could catch up, he had already leaned over the car window and said something to Ren Xing. I didn't hear exactly what it was, but by the time he came back, Ren Xing’s face was white.
Afterward, Ren Xing drove away, and we walked slowly toward the hospital. I didn't know how to fish for information, so I tentatively told him, "Zhang Litian is gone."
He said, "Oh. Who is Zhang Litian?"
"The last time we went to the hospital, didn't you take a list of discharged students? He was the first one."
As I spoke, I reached for that list, but the paper that had been in my pocket was gone. I stopped and searched through my bag and pockets, but I couldn't find it.
My roommate just stood there quietly, waiting for me.
That bastard. He definitely made it disappear. And then he had the nerve to ask if I’d left it in Ren Xing’s car—left it my foot. I couldn't help but glare at him huffily.
However, I didn't truly want to use that list to confront him; I just wanted to convey this message: *I already know what 'good deeds' you've been up to.* I always felt that, for some reason I didn't understand, my roommate valued me quite a bit. Now that I’d said this much, he should be able to restrain himself, right? If the remaining people continued to vanish into thin air, I would have no choice but to lay my cards on the table. I had a conscience, after all; I couldn't just stand by and watch my classmates disappear for no reason. Gone without a trace, no body to be found—who knew where he was sending them? We were fellow humans, after all; I still had that much solidarity.
As soon as I glared at him, my roommate hung his head in a dejected, aggrieved manner. After a moment, he suddenly said, "You’ve grown grass."
"What?"
He pointed at my feet.
Only then did I realize that the rustling sound I had been trying to ignore was coming from beneath my feet.
I looked down. I was stepping on a clump of wood sorrel. I stepped back in shock, but the wood sorrel was still growing wildly, and another clump seemed to be bursting through the soil right where I had been standing.
"So many." My roommate pointed toward the path we had come from. The road in this area was in poor condition and under renovation; the soil layers that hadn't been covered with cement were already a lush green. Even the roadside trees on both sides of the motor lane seemed to have grown much larger, their shade spreading until the canopy connected and shielded the entire street.
The sound of growth was everywhere. It was as if the first spring thunderstorm had just passed.
I stood there thinking for a few seconds and then decided that this skill was fucking useless unless I went into municipal landscaping. Besides, my stomach hurt even more, so I had to let my roommate carry me to the hospital.
At this hour, the doctors had already finished their shifts. The emergency doctor on duty pressed on my stomach a few times and said I had acute gastroenteritis. He prescribed some anti-inflammatory medicine and told me to get an IV drip. While my roommate went out to get the medicine, I finally couldn't help but lower my voice and say to the doctor, "Doctor, my stomach hurts actually because... because yesterday, after I was with my boyfriend, I didn't clean up in time. Why don't you give me an enema..."
The doctor had a look on his face that said *I knew you two were paramours*. He reached out and pressed randomly on my stomach again. "It hurts right here. What does that have to do with whether you did it or not? It’s just acute gastroenteritis."
My heart was full of unspeakable bitterness. There was no way it was just that; it was definitely that *whatever-it-was* left inside me that was causing this mess. I really didn't know how to explain it to him, but then my roommate returned, and I immediately shut up. The doctor’s gaze became even more disdainful, as if saying: *I knew you were a shameless slut, messing around with other men behind your man's back.*
By the time I finished the IV, it was around nine in the evening. My roommate was curled up in a chair holding me, staring blankly; if I hadn't woken up in time, the IV bag would have run dry. I urged him to call the nurse. He went slowly and came back slowly, not in a hurry at all, which really infuriated me.
As we reached the exit, I suddenly remembered that after I had drawn that Aztec gold coin last time, I wanted to find Jin Mu. But situations kept cropping up one after another, delaying it until now. Since we were at the hospital anyway, I might as well pay him a visit. However, when we reached his ward, we found that Jin Mu’s condition seemed very poor. He was still unconscious in the Intensive Care Unit, and the nurses wouldn't let us visit.
We could only look at Jin Mu through the door’s glass. He lay on the hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask. The monitors beside him flickered with a series of numbers which, from my layman's perspective, looked stable. My roommate stood beside me, watched for a while, and asked me who he was to me.
I said he was nobody.
"Then why are you looking at him?"
Of course, I couldn't tell him the truth.
He watched with me for a bit longer and said there was nothing worth seeing.
He said this very calmly, without impatience or any sign of anger, as if he were simply stating a fact: a person lying in the ICU was nothing worth seeing.
I had already sensed a certain emotional deficiency in my roommate. He often asked me why I cried or why I laughed. At first, I thought he was flirting, but later I realized he genuinely didn't understand. A word came to mind: empathy. My roommate seemed unable to empathize with the people around him. I felt that even though he wasn't human, being *this* non-human was a bit much. Could this be a precursor to depression?! If he got depressed in the future, I wouldn't even know where to find a doctor for him.
I asked him, "Then what do you find interesting?"
He looked at me. His eyes were a very, very deep black.
"Cats?" he said with a hint of uncertainty, looking at me as if afraid he’d answered incorrectly.
I nodded.
He thought for a while longer. "You." This time, he spoke with certainty.
I thanked him very much.
He was truly bored, so I asked him to go down and buy two cans of coffee for us to drink together. He left quite happily. I didn't really have anything to do; I just wanted to wait for the doctor's rounds to ask a question. Not knowing when they would come, I turned to head into the hallway. But at that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something in the ward. I pressed myself back against the glass.
The space between the bed and the door was unobstructed. The side of the bed against the wall held the equipment, and Jin Mu lay on the bed.
Then I noticed the shadow on the wall was wrong. It was writhing, opening and closing. The silhouette was still Jin Mu’s, but that movement really didn't seem human.
I shifted my gaze back to Jin Mu and was nearly paralyzed with fear!
Jin Mu was lying on his back, and his back—specifically the back of his head—was splitting open! That splitting sensation was as if his entire body was an insect's pupa, and something inside was trying to push its way out!
In the few seconds I watched him, a dark, mollusk-like thing from inside his body slowly crawled out. A particularly viscous tentacle grew from his head and unfurled in mid-air, trailing thin traces of blood, about a meter long.
And I felt that it had sensed me too. After it rose from the bed, it suddenly snapped toward the door like a snake!
I instinctively stepped back, and the tentacle lashed out, slamming into the glass of the door! Holy shit! The entire glass pane was shattered by the impact! I saw its suction cup pressed against the other side of the glass, leaking some pale green slime! I would have normally fallen flat on my ass in terror, but now I scrambled up and ran. After just a few steps, I slammed headlong into my roommate. He casually caught the flying coffee cans and pressed one against my face.
My face was pale. "There’s something inside..."
With such a loud crashing sound, the doctors arrived. Seeing the shattered glass everywhere, they demanded we pay for it. But the tentacle was gone. I told them what happened, but they wanted to commit me to the psychiatric department and refused to even check the surveillance footage. As we argued, a security guard reached out to grab me. My roommate caught his hand and snapped it directly, then swept a glance over them. "Who gave you permission to touch him?"
Amidst the security guard’s wails, everyone fell silent. For a moment, no one spoke. My roommate radiated a violent aura that said, *Dare to ask for compensation and I’ll beat you all together*, to the point where no one dared to say a damn word. I quickly tried to smooth things over. "Shouldn't we check on the patient at a time like this?"
They opened the door and went in.
Everything inside was normal. Jin Mu’s vital signs were also normal, and there wasn't even a trace of slime on the floor.
But his head—his left brain—had a hole the size of a fist, and diluted blood was trickling out...
***
