After he finished carving, Zhang Youzhi curled up on his blanket again, bored out of his mind, and stared absently at the poem he had written.
He remembered the days just after graduation, when he and Li Douyu had been in a long-distance relationship. At this time of day, she would have been pestering him to talk on the phone.
He had just thrown his phone into the river.
He wondered whether Li Douyu was missing him now.
According to his arrangement with Number Two, the funeral company's staff should now be running all his social media accounts.
Using big data, those employees had replicated Zhang Youzhi's online chatting habits and were impersonating him in conversations with Li Douyu. They also had fabricated video recordings ready for emergencies.
That would keep Li Douyu satisfied for a while.
The deception probably wouldn't fall apart anytime soon.
Unfortunately, the truth would have to come out eventually.
"So I'm the only one left."
Zhang Youzhi felt that he still had countless ties to this world, and it made him uncomfortable.
He wanted to leave with less weighing him down.
Zhang Youzhi picked up his nail clippers, snipped his ID card into tiny pieces, and tossed them into the river.
Then he lit another Liqun cigarette. He took a deep drag, coughed violently for ages, then couldn't help groaning with pleasure.
Just as Zhang Youzhi was considering whether to add a final note after his poem, he suddenly thought he heard sobbing.
A woman's sobbing, at that.
Was there a female ghost haunting this place?
Zhang Youzhi sat up warily and looked outside his hollow beneath the bridge, just in time to see things dropping from above.
A wallet, a phone, keys.
"What the fuck?" Zhang Youzhi couldn't help swearing.
"Can't you fucking let me die in peace?"
A surge of vicious anger rose in Zhang Youzhi for no apparent reason. He was practically begging anyone and everyone for a chance to live, yet someone else was wasting her life by throwing herself into the river?
If you don't want to live, can't you leave your healthy body to someone who does?
Heaven really is fucking rotten.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. No, he had to go up there and beat this person up.
Zhang Youzhi knew he had to climb up and stop her.
It wasn't because saving a life was supposedly worth more than building a seven-story pagoda. He was dying himself; how could he worry about anyone else? It was purely because, once someone jumped into the river, his hiding place beneath the bridge would definitely be searched. Then he wouldn't be able to stay and would have to wander again.
He had finally found a den that sheltered him from the wind and rain, and he absolutely refused to be forced out. Otherwise, there was an eighty-percent chance he would die while wandering, and a twenty-percent chance some kind person would rescue him, take him to a hospital, and leave him to die there.
Perhaps because of the wind, a card slipped out of the wallet and blew into the hollow beneath the bridge.
Zhang Youzhi picked it up and looked. Well, well-an ID card.
"Her name is... He Min?"
By the light outside the hollow, Zhang Youzhi made out the name He Min. Born in 1996, she was five years older than him.
She might be an old auntie, but wanting to die at such a young age? She was really something.
Zhang Youzhi tucked the ID into his pocket, slung his little bag onto his back, and leaned out of the hollow. Then he grabbed the ladder of steel rungs embedded in the concrete and slowly climbed upward.
It was late, and hardly anyone was on the bridge. This old bridge, built in the sixties, was now open only to pedestrians and was essentially a sightseeing bridge. The new bridge built after the millennium was only a few hundred meters away, so very few people walked across the old one.
At least right now, there was only one person.
A woman crouching beside the railing, crying quietly.
As though handing everything out to charity, the woman threw all her belongings down: her hair tie, hair clips, phone, keys, and jacket. It looked as though her shoes were next.
A pair of high heels skimmed past Zhang Youzhi's scalp and plopped into the silent Crane River.
Zhang Youzhi sucked in a sharp breath.
He had come that close to dying ahead of schedule.
After she finally threw down her black stockings, crumpled into a ball, the woman closed her eyes, steeled herself, and prepared to step over and jump.
The stone railing was a little high. Or perhaps it was because she was wearing a short office skirt. Either way, it took her a great deal of effort to get one leg over it.
But no matter what she did, she couldn't get the other leg over.
She could only cling to the railing with both hands to support herself.
After struggling for ages, the woman successfully got herself stuck on top of it and burst into aggrieved sobs again.
As she cried, she punched the stone lion on the bridge's pillar.
Zhang Youzhi had little strength and could barely haul himself upward. Irritated by the crying, he roared.
"Stop fucking wailing!"
He was actually a very well-mannered person. Politeness was his trademark, gentle refinement was how those around him described him, and never touching cigarettes or alcohol was one of the countless virtues Li Douyu bragged about in her boyfriend.
At least, that had been true before his cancer diagnosis.
The sudden voice gave the woman an enormous fright, stopping her sobs dead.
"Who? Who's talking?" The woman looked around, but there wasn't a soul in sight on the pitch-black bridge.
"Your dad."
One of Zhang Youzhi's bloody hands suddenly reached up from below and grabbed the edge of the bridge.
As luck would have it, Zhang Youzhi was climbing up directly beneath the woman.
A bloody hand suddenly emerging on a pitch-black bridge, accompanied by "Your dad," completely shattered the woman's composure.
Her whimpering turned into terrified bawling.
Then Zhang Youzhi poked his bloody head up too.
He hadn't washed his face or hands since getting off the bus. Add in the several falls he had taken along the way and the cuts all over his face, and he looked positively ghoulish.
Seeing the woman clinging to the stone pillar and bawling, Zhang Youzhi flew into a rage.
"He Min, can't you fucking hear me? I told you to stop crying!"
"Done crying yet?"
Zhang Youzhi shouted at the woman in office clothes sitting on the ground, her face covered in tears and snot, while still remembering to hand her some toilet paper.
"Want a drink?" Zhang Youzhi picked up a bottle of Niulanshan.
"Yes."
He Min answered softly through her sobs.
Zhang Youzhi spent five minutes explaining why he had climbed up from beneath the bridge-fishing-then another three explaining where the blood on him had come from-killing fish. Finally, he spent two minutes scolding her for scaring the fish away from the spot he had baited.
He also went back down and brought up some of his bread and water to prove he wasn't lying.
After all that, he finally won the woman's trust.
"Bro, how come you're so nice?" He Min cried her eyes out, clutching her half-can of Snow Beer and gulping down two mouthfuls.
"Don't call me bro. You're five years older than me."
Zhang Youzhi took a drink too, then lit himself another cigarette.
"How d'you know I'm five years older than you?" He Min hiccupped and asked through her sniffles.
"Your fucking ID hit me in the head."
Zhang Youzhi took the ID out of his trouser pocket and tossed it down in front of her.
He Min snatched it up and held it tightly against her chest. Then she stared at her ID and sobbed, her shoulders twitching now and then as though she were having spasms.
"Smoke?" Zhang Youzhi blew a smoke ring into her face.
He Min choked, coughing and hiccupping. Zhang Youzhi laughed out loud at the sight, looking every inch a demon.
"Bro, I don't know how to smoke." Once He Min finished coughing, she still accepted the cigarette.
"Don't call me bro. I'm younger than you," Zhang Youzhi repeated. Then he flopped backward onto the bridge. After lying there for a while, he felt the cold ground and sat up again.
"Tell me. Why'd you want to jump?" His clothes covered in blood, Zhang Youzhi sat with his head half lowered. His piercing gaze stabbed through his messy fringe as he silently watched the woman in the darkness.
"Bro, my boyfriend slept with my best friend, boohoo... Bro, how could those two do that? It's so infuriating, boohoo..."
Before she had even finished half a sentence, the woman started sniveling again.
With a headache coming on, Zhang Youzhi finished his cigarette and tossed the butt into the river.
"What a load of fucking nothing. Your man ran off, so what? You're not even fucking married, and you want to jump into a river? Are you a fucking idiot?"
He Min was stunned by the abuse. She didn't understand. Wasn't he supposed to help her curse her best friend and that cheating bastard? Why was he cursing her instead?
"Then you tell me what I oughta do." He Min kept crying.
"Can't you live a perfectly good life on your own? If you really can't stand it, take a knife and stab those two scumbags. Are you sick in the head, trying to kill yourself? You've got a perfectly good life, and you just throw it away? I think you're worse than that pair of cheating trash." Zhang Youzhi was furious.
A long time passed before He Min spoke in a tiny voice.
"Bro, murder's against the law."
"Your face looks like it's against the law," Zhang Youzhi snapped.
No one had ever called her ugly in her entire life. Who hadn't praised her beauty? Now someone had said her face looked like it was against the law. He Min was miserable, and the tears she had only just stopped were about to spill again.
"Cry, then. Cry your heart out, day and night. Think you can cry Dong Zhuo to death?" Zhang Youzhi gave a cold snort.
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