Endless assassination

The apartment's first floor.

The boy shut the front door and fastened two locks.

He glanced at the time: 1:15 a.m.

Sleepy.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor.

One step.

Two steps.

The natural wood stairs creaked beneath him.

But from the third step onward, the stairs were painted black. It was as though he had stepped out of the light and into darkness.

The boy pushed open the equally black door at the top of the stairs.

The entire second floor was a thirty-square-meter bedroom.

But the whole room was pitch-black.

The windows on the north and south sides were completely sealed with black blackout fabric. The edges had been finished with meticulous care, leaving no gap for moonlight to seep through.

A firefly that had somehow flown inside lit up with a green glow.

As it circled, it illuminated the furnishings.

The desk, wardrobe, and shoe cabinet had all been painted solid black. Even the metal handles, once bright silver, had been sprayed with black paint.

Every colorful miscellaneous item had been put away in the cabinets.

The boy entered the room and took out a black paper bag.

He slipped it over the green cinnamon tree that could not be put away, covering it from top to bottom. The tree vanished completely into the black background, impossible to make out.

Then.

The boy watched the firefly flitting back and forth and said quietly, "There can't be any color in my bedroom. It has to be pure black. Sorry."

Clap!

The boy brought his palms together, and the firefly's light disappeared completely between them.

But a moment later.

White moonlight spilled into the room.

The boy had drawn back the heavy curtains and opened the window, releasing the firefly into the outdoors.

The firefly circled and danced through the night sky.

Its faint light seemed to illuminate all of Rust City.

The boy smiled.

He closed the window and sealed the curtains. The room instantly became so dark he could not see his hand in front of his face. There was no difference between having his eyes open or shut.

He took off his shirt and hid it inside the black wardrobe.

Then he lay spread-eagled on the black single bed.

"Before I sleep, I can't see any colors..."

"Because I have... another tiny psychological condition. Insignificant, harmless, not worth mentioning."

Drowsily, the boy fell asleep.

In his dream.

He felt himself getting up again and again, leaving again and again, walking into a black vortex over and over.

On the twelfth repetition, a sudden shiver ran through him.

An intense sense of danger surged through him!

The boy's eyes snapped open!

His right hand was gripping something shiny and sharp, just two centimeters away from plunging into his right eye!

Still shaken, the boy breathed heavily.

He looked closely and saw that he was holding the paper crane folded from a plastic candy wrapper.

The return gift the little girl had just given him.

But if the crane's pointed wing had actually stabbed down, it could well have pierced his eyeball!

"Reset..."

"Reset..."

An electronic voice sounded nearby. In the corner stood an old calculator that had appeared at some unknown point. A stone held down one of its buttons, making it repeat, "Reset," "Reset."

The boy tilted his head back.

A candle burned beside the bed, its flame licking a hemp rope that ran up to the ceiling.

A stone weighing at least a hundred kilograms was tied up and suspended overhead.

In another minute or two, the rope would probably burn through. The stone would land squarely on the boy's skull, inevitably splattering his brains.

"Right eye."

"Calculator."

"Smashed head?"

"What the hell?"

The boy muttered a complaint.

Then he merely rubbed his eyes. Even faced with this scene, he was remarkably calm, as though he were used to it.

Then he sank into his memories.

A year ago, or was it nine months?

He would jolt awake from a deep sleep and suddenly discover that he was caught in a trap that had appeared out of nowhere.

All kinds of tricks, all kinds of methods, with the technical sophistication advancing by leaps and bounds.

At first, they had been mere pranks. By now, they had become sickening, each one enough to kill him.

"It's only 2:55 a.m..."

"A trap this complicated-or rather, an instrument of torture... and you only needed an hour and a half."

"You even managed to find this many tools in resource-starved Rust City..."

"You've improved again."

"Especially that calculator. How did you come up with that?"

The boy stared at the paper crane in his hand. "You even turned this into a murder weapon."

He had tried spending the night elsewhere, but the strange phenomenon followed him like a shadow. He could not shake it.

Or he would sleep beside a street where people passed, but strangely enough, the phenomenon would stop occurring.

Once, after surviving the first attempt on his life, he had acquired an antique secondhand camera and installed it by his bedroom door.

When he jolted awake that night, there was no one else in the room, and he was fucking hanging himself.

He immediately checked the surveillance footage, only to discover that nothing unusual had happened for 99.9 percent of the recording.

Only in the final three seconds did a hand suddenly reach out, twist the camera around, and rip out its cable.

The boy had drawn a small, sharp breath then.

The next day, he acquired four secondhand cameras equipped with primitive thermal imaging.

The four surveillance points were the hallway, the doorway, inside the room, and the window.

He carefully concealed the cameras, hiding them in the shoe cabinet or ceiling, or covering them with objects.

In short, even if the mysterious killer found one, he could not find them all.

That night, the boy inexplicably jolted awake again.

To his surprise, he found himself lying safely in bed.

He didn't come?

The boy had just begun to relax when he slowly turned his head.

A clothes rack stood beside the bed, with a canister of compressed air hanging from it.

Following it downward, he saw an IV tube connected to the bottom of the canister. The needle at the other end was inserted into a vein in his arm.

If a relatively large amount of air entered during an infusion, it would pass into the bloodstream and travel through the veins to the heart.

As the heart contracted, the blood would produce large amounts of foam inside it, making it difficult for blood in the ventricle to enter the pulmonary artery and causing an air embolism.

A slow death.

Some patients receiving infusions accidentally fell asleep, allowing the medication to run out and air to enter their veins. That left them hovering on the brink of death, and some died from it.

"You really know how to have fun."

Fortunately, the murderous setup had only recently been completed, and the boy felt nothing more than tightness in his chest.

He pulled out the needle, immediately got out of bed, and checked the footage.

The result left him speechless.

The mysterious hand had destroyed the cameras one by one, missing none. No more than ten seconds passed between each, with no searching at all.

As though he had known where the cameras were hidden all along.

Now.

The boy had grown accustomed to these assassination attempts in his sleep.

There were always a few such days every month.

He had also learned the reason behind it all.

At that moment.

The boy turned his head and looked at his shadow, cast onto the wall by the candlelight.

The shadow sat quietly on the bed, just as he did.

As the candle flame flickered, black mist seemed to rise from the shadow, which writhed slightly.

The boy looked at his shadow.

His expression slowly grew calm, though a trace of anger lurked beneath that calm.

"You murdered my parents."

"And now you want to murder me."

"It was you!"

"My hidden... dark personality!"

The boy's chest rose and fell unevenly, while the shadow twisted slightly, as though mocking him in silence.

"Heh."

Qin Yiguan began to sneer inexplicably as well. "You've tried so many methods, but so what? Every time, I wake up at the critical moment!"

"As though someone is secretly warning me."

"Don't worry. I won't take us both down."

"One day!"

"I'll force you to reveal your true form and erase you!"

"I'll watch quietly as you fade away!"

The boy clenched his fists, turned toward the candle burning the rope, and blew it out with a puff!

Then.

He lay back down and went straight to sleep!

Crack...

Crack...

After he had slept soundly for an hour, faint sounds came from the ceiling. Unable to bear the weight, the hemp rope holding the stone began to fray.

The boy had been too careless, only blowing out the candle.

He had no idea the massive stone was about to fall!

Crack...

That section of rope had snapped ninety percent of the way through. Only one last thin strand remained!

Snap!

The hemp rope broke completely, and the massive stone fell!

But the boy was still fast asleep.

At that critical instant.

The boy's eyes snapped open.

But he seemed like a different person. His eyes held the weight of long experience, like a warrior who had fought bloody battles and guarded the frontier for a hundred years.

His gaze lacked the commanding presence of a general leading vast armies. It held only a rock-solid resolve.

He looked more like a deputy general.

A deputy general willing to protect his commander with his own flesh and blood.

The muscles across the boy's body tensed in an instant, sharply defined, as though brimming with explosive power.

The boy let out a low growl in the voice of a weathered man. "Guard!"

Bang!

The boy swung his arm, using his elbow to knock the falling hundred-jin stone away.

Crash!

The massive stone smashed straight through the wall and flew out of the apartment!

The next instant.

The boy's eyes grew hazy, his imposing presence dissipated, and his head tipped sideways as he sank back into deep sleep.