QQ Lost

Chapter 29

With no opponent to parry his attacks, Xu Haibing's punches missed their mark, leaving him feeling exhausted and bored. Disappointed, he leaned back in his chair, panting heavily...

"Chirp, chirp" --

The "Mischievous Wild Girl" face on the QQ panel started flashing!

Xu Haibing clicked to accept the message she sent, puzzled.

The mischievous tomboy: "Yes, I'm dead..."

The simple-minded young man: "Huh?! You're still online even after you've died?"

Wan: "...only slightly better than a living person..."

Han: "You...are you sick?"

Wan: "The disease is terminal..."

Han: "What illness? Is it that serious?"

Wan: "...a pessimistic view of life..."

Han: "What are you talking about! How old are you, already tired of this?"

Wan: "...I've long since given up on life...I'm planning to end my life tonight..."

Han: "Really?!"

Wan: "Really! My mind is made up..."

Han: "Why? Why is it that you can't go on living and have to die? Can you tell me? Maybe I can help you..."

Wan: "Nobody can help me..."

Han: "You're unemployed?"

Wan: "No..."

Han: "You broke up with your boyfriend?"

Wan: "No..."

Han: "You lost your virginity?"

Wan: "No..."

Han: "Were you attacked, ostracized, insulted, or framed by others?"

Wan: "No..."

Han: "You hurt others, feel guilty, and want to atone with your death?"

Wan: "No! No! Not at all! Please stop asking, okay?!"

Han: "What I mean is, no matter what your reason, you shouldn't think about death or suicide. The most precious thing a person has is life. This isn't my saying, it's what General Secretary Jiang said. If you break up with someone, you can find another, and maybe even someone better; if you lose money, you can earn it back, and maybe even more. But life is something we only have once, and no price can bring it back!"

Wan: "I understand, I understand everything! But my heart feels heavy, suffocated! I feel oppressed, so oppressed I can't breathe! I feel suffocated, so suffocated I'm going crazy! ... What do I see all day? A gray sky, stinky water, dense crowds, towering skyscrapers, reinforced concrete... And what do I come into contact with all day? Empty preaching, boring jokes, pretentious bosses, hypocritical colleagues who are all smiles but not real ones, interpersonal relationships where power and profit are everything... Where is freedom? Where is fun? Where is the passionate, unrestrained true love?!"

QQ Lost 41(2)

Han: "Anything else? Anything else?!... Do you know? There was a girl born with a disability who underwent seven surgeries and had several metal plates in her body just to barely sit in a wheelchair. But how did she view her life? She said, 'My father and mother ejaculated hundreds of millions of sperm in one go. Why was it that I happened to swim into my mother's egg early and be conceived, and how fortunate I was to implant in her uterus? And how lucky I was to be born safely after ten months of pregnancy. Just for that, I must bravely face this life, live well, live enough, so as not to waste this hard-won life!'"

Wan: "Hmph, a child conceived unintentionally during the parents' pursuit of sexual pleasure is nothing to praise. To suffer such great torment after birth and yet still feel gratitude is even more heartbreaking, painful, and chilling..."

Han: "Have you ever been to a cancer hospital? Have you seen the yearning for life in the eyes of those cancer patients, regardless of age or gender, all with shaved heads and no hope of recovery? Although the worsening of their condition ruthlessly shatters their dreams of survival time and time again, they silently endure immense physical and mental pain for a sliver of hope, fighting tenaciously against death until their last breath, their eyes wide open as they desperately stretch their hands towards the sky... What are your little sorrows and annoyances compared to them? Is this your reason for so easily giving up on life and walking towards death?!"

Wan: "The greatest sorrow is a dead heart. My heart is ashen, life is worse than death. What's the point of living if I keep myself wrapped up all day?"

Han: "It's better to live a miserable life than to die a good death. When things aren't going well, we can lower our expectations of life to the bare minimum, because the most basic human requirement is to stay alive! As long as you're alive, there's hope! Only by staying alive can you live a better life!"

Wan: "...People can never truly communicate. You'll never know the state of mind of someone on the verge of death like me. What is the joy of living, what is the fear of dying? When a person has too many unpleasant experiences in life, death becomes a kind of happiness! I'm taking my secret to another world... Thank you for talking to me these past few days. It made my last moments before leaving this world quite pleasant. To be honest, you're not too bad. This is the only time I've ever complimented a boy in my life. But we'll never see each other again. Please forget me..."

Han: "...You, go to hell! I really don't understand, if you have the courage to commit suicide, why don't you have the courage to live?! You despised coward! You pathetic worm despised by everyone! Calling you a worm is too kind of you; you don't even have the tenacious vitality of a small worm! Do you know that a tiny cicada pupa has to spend seventeen years underground struggling for a single month of singing in the sunlight?! They all know to cherish their extremely short lives, and they all know to radiate even the faintest brilliance of life! You are not worthy of being compared to worms, much less worthy of being among humans! It's right that you die! No one will stop you, no one will grieve for you! Your death is as natural and deserved as a piece of trash being thrown away! I am ashamed and disgusted to have met you as an online friend! I hereby declare that I will be going offline for three days to get rid of bad luck!"

Xu Haibing slammed his hand on the table and stood up. Suddenly, he felt that his back, which had been in so much pain that he couldn't straighten up, was able to straighten up in an instant after this sudden stretch!

Just then, Xu's mother rushed in with a stack of plasters in her hand: "Oh dear, I was chatting with your Aunt Zhang just now and happened to see that TV series 'The Passionate Years,' and I was so engrossed in it that I forgot to change your plasters."

Xu Haibing lifted the back of his shirt: "Perfect, let's take them all off, we don't need them anymore."

"Why wouldn't you need it?"

"alright."

"All better?" Mrs. Xu asked doubtfully, peeling off the plaster. "How could it be so fast? A broken bone takes a hundred days to heal, and this kind of sprain and bruise will take at least fifty days. Don't be like your father, so afraid of treatment. I think your dad is a carbon copy of Shi Guangrong from that TV drama..."

"You're making a complete mess of things. How can my dad be compared to Shi Guangrong? Shi Guangrong had similar experiences to my grandfather—the Liberation War, the Korean War…"

"Your dad commanded ships and defended the Xisha Islands. No wonder you didn't know. Back then, you weren't even in line yet, and your sister Haitao was only two or three years old. After your dad retired, he was like a lost soul. Even Shi Guangrong stayed at home after retirement, but he insisted on going to the naval veterans' retirement home. If I weren't worried about your dating problem, I would have dragged him home long ago..."

"Another 'dating couple,' it sounds stale. I don't know if you and my dad are like Shi Guangrong and Chu Qin, but I'm sure it was the organization that decided you two were dating. Go on, go on, keep reminiscing about your passionate days..."

He pushed his mother away and glanced at the computer screen.

The "Mischievous Wild Girl" face is flashing on the QQ panel.

Xu Haibing, still fuming, ignored it and strolled to the window, gazing into the distance at the fading night sky...

In an instant, he felt the dazzling lights before him disappear—

A pale woman's face appeared on the dark windowpane.

She stared straight at him with her two big, yellow eyes, pulled open the noose, and slowly put her head in. Instantly, her eyes rolled back, her blood-red tongue spit out, and she dangled into the house with her feet dangling in the air...

Xu Haibing fearfully drew the curtains shut, shivering uncontrollably!

He suddenly realized something, gasped, and hurriedly turned around to rush to the computer!

On the computer screen, the "Mischievous Wild Girl" face in the QQ panel was still flashing.

He picked up the mouse, about to click, when suddenly the computer and the room lights went out—the power was out!

"Cough--" Xu Haibing leaned back in his chair in frustration...

The bedroom door opened slightly, revealing a face with a striking contrast of black and white, followed by an abrupt question: "Is he dead or not?"

"Huh?!" Xu Haibing was startled and sat up abruptly when he saw his mother's face, which was illuminated by the flickering candlelight. He was so surprised that he couldn't speak.

"I'm asking you, is he really dead or not?" Xu's mother pressed.

Xu Haibing regained his composure: "Who is it?"

"Shi Guangrong! I just got back inside and turned on the TV when I saw he had collapsed. And then the power went out. I don't know if he's dead or alive. It's really worrying."

QQ Lost (Chapter 41(3))

"I don't know," Xu Haibing replied irritably.

Do you want a candle?

"No!" Xu Haibing grabbed his clothes and hurriedly put them on. He was clearly worried about the "mischievous wild girl" and wanted to find a way to reconnect with her as soon as possible.

Seeing this, Xu's mother said with concern, "Where are you going so late? The power's being replaced in the neighborhood; it'll be back on soon."

Xu Haibing remained silent, fastening his belt as he left the house.

Xu's mother cried out anxiously, "Oh! Your back..."

QQ Lost (Chapter 42(1))

The waning moon hangs in the sky, its halo hazy.

Xu Haibing rode his old bicycle out of the residential area and saw that there was no power outage in the area ahead. He also saw a lightbox with the word "Internet Cafe" in front of a dilapidated storefront in the distance. Remembering that it was the Internet Cafe he had visited before, he headed straight for it.

He arrived at the internet cafe, parked his car, and saw people constantly leaving. Hesitantly, he went inside, and just as he entered the doorway, he bumped into someone face-to-face. He looked away—

It was the haggard young woman who had sat next to him and chatted with him via voice last time.

A dazed young woman, a cigarette dangling from her lips and a beer bottle in her hand, staggered away.

Inside the internet cafe, several law enforcement officers in uniforms of unknown type were disassembling computer plugs one by one.

A middle-aged couple grabbed the arm of the man in charge, who had a bulbous nose, and pleaded incessantly: "...Please don't confiscate it! We're both laid off, and we finally managed to borrow some money to open this internet cafe. It's not that we didn't want to get a license, it's just that we've been trying for over three months and you haven't given us any response..."

The man with the bulbous nose shook off their hands, his goldfish eyes glaring: "What, so it's still our fault?!"

The middle-aged couple trembled like mice before a cat: "It's our fault, it's our fault. We deserve to die! We deserve to die! We'll accept any punishment, please have mercy and spare our lives. We have one child in high school and one in university; they're our only hope. We're begging you..."

Xu Haibing couldn't bear to watch any longer and turned to leave the house.

The streets were dark, and cars were swerving and honking as they passed each other in a traffic jam.

Anxious, Xu Haibing simply leaned his bicycle against a tree, stood by the roadside, and hailed a taxi.

A taxi finally managed to squeeze in, and the driver poked his head out and asked, "Where to?" Xu Haibing stepped forward and opened the door: "To the university town in the western suburbs."

"Sorry, I'm not going." The driver then closed the car door. Xu Haibing was stunned and wanted to argue, but the car had already driven away.

Another taxi pulled up, and Xu Haibing leaned in and said into the window, "West Suburbs..." The driver quickly replied, "Oh, no, we're not going there," and drove off.

Xu Haibing clicked his tongue in confusion. Seeing a taxi blocking the middle of the road, he hurriedly squeezed through the gap between the cars, leaned in, and knocked on the window to talk to the driver inside. The driver waved his hand impatiently and started the car.

In an instant, the congested traffic suddenly started moving and proceeded smoothly, leaving Xu Haibing stuck in the middle of the road, unable to move.

It took a long time for the cars to become scarce before Xu Haibing cautiously approached the roadside.

Suddenly, a black sedan veered off course and sped towards him from the side!

He panicked and tried to escape!

The black sedan was in hot pursuit!

In desperation, he jumped onto the sidewalk and grabbed onto the utility pole!

The black sedan stopped abruptly at the side of the road!

"Haha! Haha!" A hearty laugh echoed from inside the black sedan chair. Still shaken, Xu Haibing turned to look—

A face appeared through the car window; it was one of the two who first noticed the unusual situation in room 407 and promptly reported it to the police.

"Oh... it's Squad Leader Yuan..." Xu Haibing finally caught his breath. Seeing Tuan Lian waving for him to get in the car, he opened the door and climbed in.

"I saw you frantically trying to flag down a car on the street from afar. Where are you going on a date?" Tuan Lian asked as he drove.

Xu Haibing patted his throbbing chest: "...Ugh, don't even mention it. I wanted to take a taxi to school, but every single one refused to take me. I just don't understand, it's over ten kilometers, why wouldn't they take advantage of the easy money!"

"Hey, isn't it obvious? Getting to the school involves passing through a deserted area. It's so late; what if you were a robber with ulterior motives?"

"No wonder, I was wondering why it was so eerie. Looks like life is more important than money."