night traveler

Throwing her schoolbag on the sofa, she dragged her shoes into the kitchen.

"Why so late? Hang out with your classmates?"

"No."

"Ah Chu, what happened to the injury on your face? Did you fight with your classmates again?" Zhong Changming raised his hand to touch the bruise on his face. "Go get some ointment. Got into a fight with someone?"

"Zhou Yu said in front of the class again that I have no parents, and you picked it up from the trash can." Qi Chu pouted.

Remembering that the place where he met Qi Chu was as dirty as a trash can, Zhong Changming smiled. "Didn't you beat him up last time? Don't be rough on your classmates easily, or you will be hated."

"It's been recruited." Qi Chu said indifferently. "Zhou Yu called someone from No.[-] Middle School."

Zhong Changming gave a pause for cutting vegetables. "He asked someone from the No. [-] Middle School to beat you? I want to report it to your homeroom teacher." The No. [-] Middle School has no good stuff, and they have no other reputation in the local area except that they often cause trouble.

"Forget it, he's not feeling well anyway. He's going to beat me up, so I'll do it first." Qi Chu washed his hands in the sink and took the kitchen knife from Zhong Changming. "He couldn't beat me."

"Did someone from No.[-] Middle School do something to you?" Zhong Changming scanned his whole body and found several footprints on the school pants. "Ah Chu, did they beat you together?"

"No, they only kicked me a few times. I put bricks in my schoolbag and told them that I was going to fight one-on-one. After knocking Zhou Yu down, I hit one of them with a brick, and the rest ran away." Qi Chu Said very lightly, very confidently.

"..." Zhong Changming was speechless. Qi Chu was very strong and had a very stubborn temper. He would definitely win a fight with others, but he didn't want Qi Chu to make too many enemies in school.After all, I encountered those things when I was a child. Without proper guidance, it is easy to develop a violent personality when I grow up.However, Qi Chu is at the age when the second stage of middle school and the rebellious stage overlap, so if he said "don't fight" or something like that, he would just say "hmmm" and would not listen to him seriously.Sometimes he thinks, if Ningning is still there, he should be a well-behaved high school student.

"Ah Chu, I'll pick you up from school tomorrow." The students in No. [-] Middle School worried him.

"It's okay, I can take the No. [-] bus."

Of course, there is no No. [-] bus in Yucheng.Zhong Changming laughed, Qi Chu was not a disobedient child, he was just comparing. ． ． ． ． ．That's all.He could feel that there was something hidden in this child that he couldn't tell him.

"Ah Chu."

"What's the matter?" Qi Chu finished cutting the shredded potatoes and put the vegetables on the plate.The shredded potatoes he cut were very thin and neat, as if he had trained them specifically for cooking.With his good knife skills, Zhong Changming cooks very quickly.

"Ah, nothing." Do you want to go see your friends?Zhong Changming originally wanted to ask this question.He took Ah Chu to see the funeral of the slain homeless children spontaneously by the citizens, but Ah Chu never mentioned to see Ah Qing and the others afterwards.I don't know if it's escaping from something, or the child wants to forget the sad things.Eight years ago today, he brought Qi Chu home. He wanted to celebrate it as Qi Chu's birthday, but Qi Chu said no.He also mentioned going to see Aqi.But Qi Chu refused impatiently, saying that he would never see her again.

Even if Qi Chu came to his house, he was still living alone.He hides in his own world, and no one except the dead has really seen his heart.

Maybe it's because I'm getting old.Zhong Changming finally found his own answer, maybe because the kids nowadays are too weird.

One more dish today.When Qi Chu was about to ask, Zhong Changming took out a box of cakes from the cupboard. "Ah Chu, maybe you don't like it, but I still want to say happy birthday to you." Zhong Changming patted his head and straightened his messy hair from the fight.

"Father, do you want me to call you that?" Qi Chu raised his head and looked at him very calmly, without any disturbance in his eyes.

"I've never thought about it that way. Achu, Ningning is irreplaceable to me." Zhong Changming looked at him with something strange in his eyes, which Qi Chu couldn't understand.That's not love, it's more like a kind of compensation for what you owe. When Zhong Changming looked at him, he avoided his eyes intentionally or unintentionally.

"Oh." Qi Chu lowered his head and ate.

The TV is playing the news.Since Qi Chu came to Zhong Changming's house, nothing has changed.Qi Chu didn't expect to get any more information from the news, it was more of a psychological suggestion. He hoped that one day the report on TV would show the man with the scary eyes, handcuffed and wearing an orange symbol Clothes for criminals.But unlikely.It was so long ago that twelve children, including him and Azzie, had been abandoned, abandoned to another world, abandoned to struggle in this world.

Finish your homework.Qi Chu remembered the cake he had left on the table, and the box hadn't been opened yet.Zhong Changming thought he didn't like sweets, so he put it there.Zhong Changming really didn't understand him, Qi Chu was waiting.In the past, Qi Chu got some small cakes from her sister in the pearl milk tea shop, and they tasted delicious.He pocketed the cake in his clothes and shared it with Ah Qing and the others. Even though he chewed carefully, the cake was gone soon.It was the best thing they ate while wandering.

Zhong Changming didn't react until Qi Chu put the cut cake into Zhong Changming's hands.

"Chang Ming, happy birthday."

"Oh, thank you." He was overwhelmed like a child who received an unexpected surprise on his first birthday.It is true that no one can replace Ningning in his heart, and he never thought of treating Qi Chu as his son, but Qi Chu gave him the warmth of his companion.He didn't say it, but Qi Chu found a few crooked words written with a watercolor pen on the bottom of the vase on the coffee table, Dad, happy birthday, with the date beside it.Qi Chu always remembered.

"Chang Ming, what's wrong with my sister..."

"She had a car accident. I asked her to go shopping that day, but on the way home, she was hit by a truck and died. She was the only thing her mother left me. But I didn't take good care of her." Buried deeply in his hands, the trembling of breathing sounds like crying.

The day he met Qi Chu, he didn't want to keep him.But the way Qi Chu looked at Ning Ning's photo suddenly hurt him.The sadness in Qi Chu's eyes is like the pain of losing his daughter. It is not the sympathy of ordinary people, not a pretense, but because of similarity.He is similar to himself.That day was his birthday, and he forgot it because of loneliness, but now he is accompanied by Qi Chu.

He put a piece of cake into his mouth, the sweetness of the cream and the soft and moist taste of the cake made him feel at ease.

The author has something to say:

Fifth night

"What happened?" Hu Yafeng put on his gloves, "I'm sorry, I just came here after eating."

"It's a little girl, about thirteen or fourteen years old, and it's already rotted. It seems that it hasn't been a short time."

"This child was..." Hu Yafeng hesitated and did not say those two words.

"En." Chang Hao nodded heavily. "It was done by scum." He lifted the cloth covering the corpse, revealing the rotten and smelly corpse.Hu Yafeng pinched his nose.There are traces of sadism on the naked body, and it seems that the murderer is a twisted pervert.

"Asshole." Hu Yafeng gritted his teeth and turned his head away. Chang Hao covered the body. "Brother Chang, do you have any clues?"

"Yes." He retreated to the wall and lit a cigarette. "This is not the first case. Similar cases have occurred in neighboring cities. There have been three cases. The situation is similar to this one. The murderer is a repeat offender. Let's wait for the forensic doctor to check."

Hu Yafeng nodded, and suddenly remembered the serial murders of street children eight years ago. "Brother Chang, how about the corpse in the case eight years ago?"

"It's been a long time since you asked what you were doing."

"It's nothing, I just remembered it all of a sudden." At that time, Hu Yafeng had just entered the police station and didn't know the specifics of the case.

"The people at the scene didn't really want to recall it. The scene was really... well, it was like being run over by a truck. The murderer actually destroyed the body like that, which is not something normal people can do."

"Like being run over by a truck?"

"Yes, the ribs are broken, and there are almost no complete organs and muscles from the chest to the waist. That impression is too deep, and I have never forgotten it... You should go back and read the file yourself."

The evening news broadcast the case in a simple and sloppy manner, and still put the negative black news at the end.

Qi Chu was washing the dishes when his vague voice came from the kitchen: "I hope the ending won't be the same as the murder case eight years ago."

Zhong Changming knew that Qi Chu had been brooding over the incident eight years ago, but he did not expect Qi Chu's obsession to be so strong.He was vaguely uneasy, some tiny bugs were gnawing on his heart, and the slight itching caused waves of waves.

Qi Chu washed his hands, came over and sat beside him, leaning on his shoulder without saying a word.The TV made a noisy sound, and the picture seemed to be jumping with life. Qi Chu changed the channel slowly, with a peaceful expression.

Qi Chu is like the last small animal in an extinct race. He hides his aggression under the fur. His appearance is cold, and people who are close to him are easily frightened by his cold skin.But now Qi Chu leaned on his shoulder, and Qi Chu's warm temperature came from the place where they leaned together.This is not consolation for the loss of his child, he understands, but he feels that Qi Chu trusts him.

Fortunately, Zhong Changming didn't know that other people's obsessions were also very strong, because a policeman who was no longer young began to secretly re-investigate the case eight years ago.

胡亚