Мечта о переселении душ

Глава 17

After she had cried enough, she stood up with swollen eyes, drank three cups of blood in succession, and then dialed Li Meng's number.

"Brother, I won't tell anyone about what happened to you, and I don't hate you. Maybe it's because I truly consider you my brother! Although I don't hate you, but... but... I never want to see you again! Please move out as soon as possible... and... in the future, when you... when you... are around, be careful..."

Li Meng was already preparing to escape, thinking Ding Yan would definitely call the police. After hearing what she said, he suddenly understood why he liked her so much.

He liked that about her, her open-mindedness that bordered on the absurdity of traditional moral judgments. He sighed and said, "Thank you... And also, I've always liked you, no, I've always loved you."

After hanging up the phone, Ding Yan was stunned for a moment, then collapsed onto the sofa and burst into tears again.

14.

As the saying goes, the new must come in, and the old must go.

In order to forget Li Meng as soon as possible, Ding Yan decided to go on a crazy blind date and date, and even Wang Xiaofeng and Yang Xin were not to be spared.

She first called Yang Xin, but for some reason his phone was always unreachable. At this time, Yang Xin, who had been kicked out of the team to "avoid suspicion," was secretly investigating a case.

After hanging up the phone angrily, Ding dialed Wang Xiaofeng's cell phone and asked if it would be convenient for him to come out for dinner.

“Of course it’s convenient!” Wang Xiaofeng said without hesitation. “I’ll treat you to whatever you want to eat.”

In fact, Ding Yan didn't know what she wanted to eat most, but she didn't ask. A woman who has just lost love doesn't care about such things.

The restaurant was small, and Wang Xiaofeng had spent a fortune to rent it out. Tonight, he was cooking himself, saying he wanted to give Ding Yan a surprise.

Half an hour later, he came out carrying a large plate as if it were a precious treasure, excitedly saying, "The show is about to begin!"

"What delicious food is it?"

"Have you forgotten what you told me you wanted to eat the most?" Wang Xiaofeng said with a smile, looking very happy.

Ding Yan shook his head in confusion, glanced at the door, and lowered his voice: "I feel like someone outside is always watching us..."

"Who cares!" Wang Xiaofeng put down the plate, lifted the lid, and continued loudly, "A person's cheek! Haha!"

On the plate, there indeed lay a pale human head, trembling and steaming. Ding Yan screamed, "No way... could it be that you also..." She immediately covered her mouth. She was about to say, "So you went to steal corpses too," but worried that she might let slip and implicate Li Meng.

Indeed, after that night, Ding Yan guessed that Li Meng must have stolen the corpse. But she didn't think he was a bad person; he had only stolen a useless corpse and hadn't harmed anyone…

Ding Yan covered her mouth, looking at Wang Xiaofeng who had a smug look on his face.

Wang Xiaofeng proudly exclaimed, "Try it! Try it! Eat the part on the cheek!"

Ding Yan picked up his chopsticks with trembling hands, and just as he reached them above the plate, several men who had been lurking suspiciously outside the door suddenly rushed in, pointing their dark gun barrels at them: "Finally caught red-handed!"

Wang Xiaofeng wasn't nervous this time. He already knew he was being followed, and the police officers' tracking techniques weren't very sophisticated.

He continued smiling and pointing to the plate: "Would you like to try some?"

While they were talking, Ding Yan tore off a piece of the face from the plate, stuffed it into his mouth, and then pointed at Wang Xiaofeng with a loud laugh: "Wang Xiaofeng! You're so talented! You actually managed to make tofu look like this!"

The police officers in the room were stunned, while Wang Xiaofeng's smile grew even more smug.

15.

Li Meng ultimately failed to escape. Ding Yan sighed as he watched Yang Xin, who was beaming with pride, on the television.

It was all because of Beibei. Li Meng didn't take Beibei with him, and it became a stray dog. Dogs have a habit of burying food in their own territory, and Beibei was no exception. It secretly buried a lot of bones in the apartment's garden without Li Meng's knowledge.

On one occasion, a neighbor thought the bone's shape was strange, resembling human bones, and called the police. Although the police didn't find anything at Li Meng's residence, they didn't give up and continued searching all his teahouses.

In the ceiling compartments of two of the teahouses, many bodies that had not yet been disposed of were found.

It is said that Lee Mon was very calm when he was arrested, and he kept smiling, as if he had been waiting for this day.

Ding Yan took a sausage out of the refrigerator, squatted down, and said to the dying Bei Bei, "Here, Bei Bei, have some..."

"That's a stupid dog!" A, B, C, and D, who were past their heat cycle, had clearly lost interest in the female dog, and even disliked that she had shared D's affection.

"It's a bad dog!" said Xiao Ding. "It's exposed the treasure we buried in the garden!"

Beibei slightly raised its head, sniffed the sausage, and then turned its head back. Having grown accustomed to eating human flesh, how could it possibly be interested in such coarse food?

It glanced at its owner's figure flashing across the TV screen, a strange glint in its eyes, then tilted its head and remained still.

Beibei is dead.

Beibei's owner didn't seem to want to live either. Yang Xin said on the phone that he even confessed to killing a prostitute a few years ago.

Chapter Six: Xiao Jia's Monologue

1.

Fate made me the eldest brother, because when Director Zhang found us at the orphanage gate, I was on the far left in line. So the old man named us from left to right: Xiao Jia, Xiao Yi, Xiao Bing, and Xiao Ding.

I don't know if this name is good or not, but it's better to have one than nothing.

The four of us brothers look exactly alike, to the point that we don't need mirrors. For example, I often pull Xiao Yi over to be my mirror, and I put eye drops in his face, but for some reason, they never go in.

The four of us brothers have to use eye drops every day because Dr. Zhang said we are "color busy." I think that probably means that the colors in our eyes are too busy to take care of us, so we can only see black and white.

In fact, not only do colors ignore us, but almost everything in the world ignores us. We are abandoned by the whole world at the same time as we are abandoned by our parents.

...

From a young age, I knew that we were different from others.

For example, all the other children in the neighborhood had dead parents, but ours hadn't; we were abandoned by them. Therefore, from a young age, I envied those children whose parents had died. Their parents weren't unloving; they were just dead. Even in death, they still loved their children. But we were different; quite the opposite. We were hated and abandoned by our parents, like a piece of toilet paper used to wipe after someone has defecated.

The teachers at the kindergarten didn't like us either. We didn't have a fixed class; instead, we were tossed around like a ball. Later, the teachers implemented a duty roster system, and every month we would have a different teacher and a different class. The teacher who took care of us was called "unlucky" by the other teachers.

For example, they often say, "This month is your unlucky month."

Only Dean Zhang was slightly kinder to us. He often sighed to us, "Alas... what a tragedy. It would be a pity if you died, you were still alive, but you suffer while you're alive."

2.

My brothers and I were the last ones left at the orphanage. By the time we turned 14, many of the children who entered the orphanage at the same time as us had been adopted, but we were still ignored, and no matter how we behaved, it was to no avail.

For example, once we lined up like goods, taking turns to perform on stage, and the audience below consisted of wealthy people who wanted children.

We performed a skit about four dogs fighting over poop, and it was so lifelike that everyone laughed. But in the end, we were the only ones who weren't chosen. One of the uncles said that the four kids were indeed very good-looking, but they had some kind of mental problem.

Actually, many people say that we have a problem with our brains, but they can't say what the problem is. Once, I took a screwdriver and planned to open up Xiao Ding's brain to see what was wrong and whether it could be fixed. After studying it for a long time, I couldn't find the screw to open the back of his head, so I had to give up in the end.

Strictly speaking, before that incident, we didn't feel that living was "suffering." Even if the whole world abandoned us, we still had each other. Other children wouldn't play with us, so we played by ourselves. We weren't alone.

During that period, Dean Zhang was acting strangely. He sighed much more often than before, and he asked us, "Is it good to be alive?"

We shook our heads; the question was too profound, and we didn't know the answer.

He then asked us, "Are there really no insurmountable difficulties in the world?"

We shook our heads again.

Finally, Dean Zhang smiled and gave each of us a piece of candy, saying, "Sigh...you all think that there are indeed unfortunate things in this world that cannot be overcome, right?"

After he finished speaking, he hung a rope on the roof.

I asked curiously, "Grandpa Zhang, are you planning to swing on the swing?"

Dean Zhang nodded, stepped onto the stool, stuck his neck into the rope, and said, "In a moment, please help me move the stool away. I'm afraid I won't have the courage..."

"Okay!" we said.

"Then, you stand guard at the door and count from 1 to 1000. No one is allowed to come in until you finish counting, understand?"

"Yes!" We nodded obediently.

So Dean Zhang closed his eyes: "Let's begin..."

Xiao Bing and I worked together to move the stool away, and then we invited Xiao Ding and Xiao Yi to sit at the door and count together.

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 9,..." As I counted, I realized with frustration that none of us knew how to count to 1000. For the first time, I felt utterly useless. Dean Zhang had entrusted us with such an important task for the first time, yet we were unable to complete it.

Xiao Ding whispered, "How about... I go in and ask Grandpa Dean?"

"No way!" Xiao Bing said, "If we ask, wouldn't we look stupid?"

"But what comes after the 9?" Xiao Yi frowned deeply.

I ignored them and counted on my fingers. In the end, after adding up all four of our fingers and toes, we finally reached 65.

Just then, Dean Zhang's son arrived. He kicked us aside from the doorway and tried to push it open to go in. Absolutely not! We haven't even counted to 1000 yet!

So I pulled his left leg, Xiao Yi pulled his right leg, and Xiao Bing and Xiao Ding pulled his arm together. We tore at each other like that for a few minutes.

When Dean Zhang's son finally managed to shake us off and push the door open, he found that Dean Zhang was already dead.

The doctor said that even a minute earlier, there would still have been a chance to save him.

3.

I never imagined that failing to complete Dean Zhang's task would have such dire consequences.

Because we let Dean Zhang's son in before we counted to 1000, we were all beaten up by Dean Zhang's son.

Not only that, he also kicked us out of the dormitory, chained our legs, and tied us to a big locust tree next to the orphanage's garbage dump.

It's hot there during the day, cold at night, and smells terrible with lots of flies.

That's not all. The most important thing is that he stopped feeding us. The teachers and children in the orphanage all hated us to the core because we were the ones who killed Director Zhang, who was like a grandfather to us.

During free playtime, the children in the yard would gather around in groups of three or five, either urinating on us or throwing trash at us. My three younger brothers would often cry because of the pain, saying between sobs, "Go ahead and count to 1000! Do you even have the ability to count to 1000?"

I didn't cry because I'm the older brother. I picked up anything edible from the trash and shared it with my younger brothers. I know how painful it is to be hungry.

Later, I discovered a new way to obtain food.

For example, if we bark like a dog, some children will laugh and throw us their leftover steamed buns; or if we catch a stone they throw at us with our mouths and return it to them, they will give us their leftovers to eat.

The children called us "dog brothers," but the real dogs didn't treat us like brothers. Near the orphanage, there was a big, black female dog whose fur seemed to be coated with glue, sticking to her body in clumps.

Every night, it leaps over the low wall and jumps into the garbage heap to compete with us for precious food. Its claws are sharper than ours, its teeth are harder, and it moves more nimbly than we do. Most importantly, it is no less intelligent than us.

It knew we were chained and couldn't run far, so it deliberately provoked us. It would often leap into our range, grab us, and then jump far away again, giving us no chance to retaliate.

It was at that moment that I understood what pain was.

When even a stray dog starts bullying you, you can't help but feel miserable.

We fell ill when the locust tree was almost bare of leaves.

First it was Xiao Bing, then me, followed by Xiao Yi and Xiao Ding. We not only look alike, but we also get the same illnesses. Coughing, runny noses, and it feels like there's a heavy drum in our heads, constantly pounding away. Because of the drum, we all feel our heads are heavy and our bodies are light.

For some reason, the stray dog didn't come back during that time. Perhaps it got tired of playing with us and was looking for a new, more interesting target to tease.

I was saddened to discover that even stray dogs had abandoned us.