Chapter 35: An Old Friend

25TH JAN 2023~ VERALUCTL

An Jie slowly moved a hand into his pocket and pinched himself hard through his clothes – the moment seemed to last extra long. He even felt an unfamiliar emotion suddenly surge up his heart, clear and strong – one that did not belong to him.

It was a killing intent that he had sealed up in his darkest corners.

You promised her, An Jie told himself. You promised her that you wouldn’t kill that man named He, that you’d never kill him… Be kind.

His muscles trembled uncontrollably under his oversized jacket. He felt like he was a machine with faulty commands, on the verge of overload. An Jie tried to calm his boiling emotions with a deep breath. The cold and dry winter air rushed into his lungs; at that moment, his mind almost blanked as if he was suffocating. 

There was madness flowing through An Yin Hu’s veins. 

The children who had been waiting for class to end rushed up to the school gates with an enthusiasm akin to the desire for light, chatting and jostling each other. They clamored loudly, celebrating the temporary pause in their teachers’ enslaughts. No one noticed the brief pause in this one young man’s footsteps. 

He seemed to return to normal in under a second and walked out unwaveringly with his books filled with languages from Mars.

His phone vibrated in the outer pocket of his coat. An Jie hung up without even looking. 

After a few seconds, the phone continued to ring, unrelentingly. An Jie hung up again, then turned off his phone – Zui She was no longer the only person who knew his number, there was also a collection of classmates who wanted to worm their way into becoming his friends. Of course, classmates wouldn’t call him endlessly; the one with such a problem was Mo Cong. 

It was evident that it was impossible for An Jie to avoid that person he never wished to see again, since they were after him after all. All he could do now was to control his hand firmly clutching the knife in his pocket, along with his features that tend to let his emotions slip. 

He was now just a child in high school, not that An Yin Hu. 

As expected, the young man with white gloves next to He Jingming stared at him from afar. An Jie forced back his desire to move away and allowed himself to be pat on the shoulder. White Gloves spoke Mandarin as if he was about to bite the inside of his cheeks and said respectfully, “Young Master An, can I speak to you for a moment?”

An Jie blinked and replied as if taking a moment to respond, “Me?”

Gloves placed one hand on An Jie’s shoulder. Under his not-particularly-buff physique was a grip strength that was completely at odds with his appearance. An Jie somehow held himself back and allowed himself to be almost dragged away. 

The terribly dazzling sportscar slowly followed the two. He Jingming moved to the driver’s seat, his dark brown eyes staring unblinkingly at An Jie. 

They were followed the entire way by nosy crowds before Gloves took An Jie through several turns into a small alleyway. The sportscar behind them stopped, followed by the sound of a door opening. An Jie glanced back at He Jingming with confusion and curiosity before forcing his eyes to stick on that car. 

Then, another car appeared at the end of the road, and from the much less eye-catching black Buick came a dark skinned man. He Jingming cocked his head and they walked towards him with understanding, bowed, took over the keys from his hands, and drove away that sleazy sportscar. 

Gloves opened the door to the Buick himself and bowed. “Please get in.”

An Jie looked at him hesitantly. “Who are you?”

Gloves ignored the pointless question and maintained his respectful gesture of opening the car door, but his other hand had somehow taken out a gun. “Please get in.”

An Jie’s pupils contracted when they moved onto that gun. He paused, then silently got into the car. The hand in his pocket quietly shifted but he didn’t take it out. 

Gloves looked back at He Jingming with lowered eyes. “Director He,” he said.

Followed by the crack of a whip on flesh. An Jie’s muscles convulsed subconsciously – He Jingming held a short whip in one hand; Gloves’ face jerked to the side from the impact, leaving behind a red mark that spread all the way down to his neck. He Jingming, who had been silent the entire way leant into Gloves’ ear and whispered with a shudder-inducing intimacy, “If this happens again… I will cut your hand off. You know what I’m talking about.”

Gloves didn’t dare make a sound, or even frown, and replied with a reverberating ‘yes’, more obedient than a humanoid Chobit.

He Jingming got into the car and tried to stretch out a kinder looking smile on his face as he looked back. It created a terrifying miasma in the dimly lit car. 

Gloves waited until he sat down before closing the car door, getting in the driver’s seat, and slowly starting the car. 

An Jie shrank back into the corner, the collar of the trenchcoat he wrapped around himself just tall enough to hide his chin in as he tried his best to maintain an ‘innocent and naive’ alertness in his eyes as he stared at He Jingming. 

“Your surname is An?” He Jingming leant down slightly, taking on an oppressive position, and continued in that low, almost flirtatious gentle tone. His face didn’t seem very used to acting so kind and convulsed as he spoke. “How old are you?”

The hot air He Jingming breathed out hit faintly onto An Jie’s face, making his murderous intent surge up once again. His body started shaking, his fingertips reaching for the knife handle uncontrollably… but this small tremble made him look more like a terrified child when paired with his thin body. 

He Jingming’s hand rose slowly and lightly caressed his cheeks. The texture of the skin was terribly smooth: the youthful, energetic delicacy of a teenager, untouched by the elements or the years, breathing out the warmth of life. 

He Jingming seemed to be infatuated with his warmth and moved ever so slightly closer. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. “Just like his smell…” Feeling that the youth seemed to be shaking even harder, He Jingming’s fingertips gently traced the outlines of his face. “No need to fear, child, no need to fear… I won’t hurt you.”

An Jie gritted his teeth, his back against the car door. The door dug into his shoulder blades, which were exposed because of how thin he was. He Jingming pressed down onto him in an almost flirtatious position which pulled his nerves even tighter, nearly snapping them.

He Jingming wrapped one arm around his shoulder and lowered his face until the tip of his nose lightly rubbed against him. “This smell… it was this smell…”

The last bit of his sanity crumbled away. Fuck that promise!

This feeling of imprisonment was like a fire: it made An Jie return to that suffocating fury of his dreams and memories. His wrist jerked and he was about to pull out his knife and stab the man in the torso – 

At that moment, a gun fired. The car spun in a wide circle on the spot and almost flipped over. An Jie instinctively raised his hand to protect his head and was immediately flung against the car window. If he hadn’t reacted so quickly, even if the impact hadn’t broken his skull, he would’ve been knocked unconscious. He Jingming fell off the backseat and hit the back of the driver’s seat. Before he had time to react, ten or so people rushed out of nowhere and pointed the dark muzzles of their guns at him.

A hand opened the door and half-carried An Jie off. 

Mo Cong held a gun with one hand, the other around An Jie’s waist as he retreated. He had never seen An Jie like this, his face so terribly pale. The leisurely expression which he carried with him everywhere had completely vanished as he stumbled and allowed himself to be dragged off, almost like he had lost consciousness. 

The two were extremely close. The body in his arms kept shaking; he could even feel this person’s breathing and heartbeat growing slower. Mo Cong quietly called out, “An Jie?”

He couldn’t tell if An Jie was shaking because he was scared or not. From his perspective, this seemingly omnipotent man of unknown origins shouldn’t have feelings such as fear. Mo Cong frowned and felt his heart ache. He quietly comforted him, “It’s fine, it’s fine…”

An Jie ignored him and stared dead ahead at the man in the car. He Jingming was indeed someone who had seen the world. He calmly fixed his clothes before getting out of the car. The gloved driver probably didn’t have the good habit of wearing a seatbelt and was knocked unconscious from being flung into the windshield, using his own body to teach everyone the importance of obeying car safety rules. 

He Jingming looked at Mo Cong’s hand around An Jie’s waist, narrowed his eyes, and slowly spoke. “Who sent you? Shui Shi… Zhai Haidong? Or Zui She?”

Mo Cong’s gloomy eyes met He Jingming’s. After a long while, he finally lowered his gun, barely. “You must be Director He? This youngling is merely a messenger – if Director He has already come all the way here, he shouldn’t avoid his old friends.”

He Jingming stared at him, the corners of his lips slowly lifting up – his smile was extremely strange, only the lift of his lips moving the two stone-like muscles in his cheeks. His facial paralysis was quite severe. “Shui Shi.” He used a flat declarative and nodded jerkily like only half his body functioned. “Lead the way.”

Mo Cong put the gun away and waved his hands. The gang quietly lowered their weapons and surrounded He Jingming. Two muscular men lifted the gloved man from his dead fish-like position on the driver’s seat. Mo Cong pointed ahead. “Please, after you.”

He Jingming glanced at him, his eyes straying to An Jie who was almost completely buried in Mo Cong’s arms, and strode away. 

Author’s Notes: This is a peaceful society. There might be many scenes in this chapter that could be misleading, but please don’t think too much about it…