At night in Huadu in August, the city square is located in the suburbs of Huadu, and the night here is a bit quieter than in the city.
Due to the heavy rain in the morning, the asphalt road was still slightly wet, and the coolness after the rain had dissipated, replaced by a steaming hot and humid moisture, which made people a little anxious.
This is a famous office area in Huadu. It is in a deserted area. Developers have built a large modern high-rise building. Several towering office buildings are luxuriously decorated, but the price is famously cheap. The rent is more than half lower than the city center, plus various municipal subsidies.
Many bosses have chosen to set their office here, but this has made it difficult for ordinary employees who travel back and forth.
The traffic in City Garden is very inconvenient, the subway station is still under construction, and it takes more than 20 minutes to drive to the nearest residential area. The nearby living facilities have not kept up at all. Under such circumstances, several convenience stores have become the must-visit places for office workers to live.
There are few buses and limited buses here. Every day when I get off work, there are many black vans on the nearby streets.
With the delay of time, the nearby office buildings began to be empty, the vans all disappeared, the lights in several buildings gradually went out, and the night fell into silence.
The road is very empty. At this time, the 24-hour convenience store on the side of the road is conspicuous, and the white light shines through it. From the outside, you can see a few simple tables and chairs for people to rest at a glance.
As night falls, fewer and fewer people come here. Only some programmers who need to stay all night will visit occasionally to buy some supper and cigarettes to refresh themselves and prepare for the next night.
Qu Ming, Qiao Ze, and Zheng Bai were in a van with dark glass at the moment, parked across the road, like a black car that had missed the drop off time.
"Let's stop here, it's a bit conspicuous, right?" When Qu Ming used to track, the environment was much more hidden.
Qiao Ze debugged the equipment: "But if you go a little further, you won't be able to see the situation in the convenience store."
"This is already the place with a wide view and the least conspicuous nearby. It's fine, anyway, there are no people at night." Zheng Bai was the driver just now, and he drove the car around for a few laps before settling on this observation position.
Qu Ming looked serious: "I still can't relax our vigilance. We don't even know who the other party is and how many people will come."
"Shouldn't you see a group of thugs with weapons?" Qiao Ze controlled the surveillance, and the picture on the computer gradually became clear. Through the camera in the convenience store, you could see Su Hui sitting at the table and pretending to be a clerk. Lu Junchi.
A middle-aged man entered the convenience store, Qiao Ze hurriedly asked, "Someone entered, is this..."
The man bought a pack of cigarettes and went out, not intending to stay in the convenience store for a long time.
Qiao Ze breathed a sigh of relief, he looked at his watch, it was ten o'clock: "There are fewer and fewer people coming to the convenience store now, I don't know if the next one is..."
The other party is late.
From a camera on the road outside, you can see the inside from a distance.
Su Hui was sitting alone in the innermost part of the convenience store. He wore a slightly larger shirt, which made him look thinner and thinner, and he looked indifferent and alienated.
Zheng Bai said: "Don't worry, the army team is going out in person today."
He volunteered to act as a clerk before, but Lu Junchi chose to come in person and let him be here on duty.
Although Lu Junchi could not be seen in the camera, he must be not far from Su Hui.
The weather in summer is unpredictable. It was stuffy just now, but now it suddenly rained. At first, it was just a small rain flower floating in the air, and then it became bigger and bigger.
Qu Ming suddenly pointed across the road, "A man has been looking in the direction of the convenience store for a long time."
Qiao Ze followed his gaze. It was more than 20 meters away from them. Under a tree in the open space, stood a young man. In the light rain, he didn't have an umbrella, so he just stood in the rain. , motionless, like a statue. His whole body was shrouded in darkness, and he couldn't see his eyes clearly, but he could feel a gloomy aura.
"It's raining, I can't see clearly. I guess he can't see the situation in the convenience store." Qiao Ze asked, "Do you think it's the person involved?"
Qu Ming kept calm, took out his camera, and after focusing, he took two pictures towards the man, and then he zoomed in: "The rain does have an impact, it's a bit far, and the angle is too skewed, so it's not clear."
"That man seems to be moving... Shouldn't he be an accomplice?" As Qiao Ze said, he watched the young man turn around and disappeared into the rain, maybe he just appeared by coincidence.
Then he looked at the middle-aged man who bought a pack of cigarettes at the convenience store: "The middle-aged man hasn't left yet, and he looks at us from time to time. I think this man has a bigger problem."
Zheng Bai, who had been staring at the convenience store, suddenly said, "Hey, don't look over there, it's here."
While talking, a girl with a ponytail entered the convenience store, bought a drink, and sat opposite Su Hui.
In the convenience store, Su Hui also saw someone approaching. He squinted slightly and looked up and down before he could see clearly. It was a young woman who looked only in her twenties. Very clean, wearing a white dress, like a Barbie doll in the cupboard.
In the hot weather, the girl wore a lace glove on her right hand.
She asked Su Hui, "Hello, is that you?" Then the girl opened the drink herself, "I'm a sleeper."
Lu Junchi hid behind the shelf and adjusted the wireless headset so that the voices of the two could be clearly transmitted. The other party only entered the convenience store alone, and it was a woman, so he immediately relaxed a lot.
As it got late, there were no other customers in the convenience store, only Lu Junchi and a male clerk. The current environment is very favorable for them.
"How can you help me?" I have to say, the people in front of me are a little different from the people Su Hui imagined.
"You must have encountered problems in your life, we will help you." The woman said, her voice was very gentle, the whole person was like a puppet cat, and her beautiful eyes looked at Su Hui, " What you're going through right now is what I've been through. So, we can empathize."
Su Hui looked at her. The indifference in his expression was the best cover for his emotions. Those people easily regarded him as one of the same kind: "What do you mean by a sleeper? Who are you?"
The girl looked at Su Hui and continued: "Life is often painful. The meaning of a sleeper is that if you want, you can also enter a beautiful world like a dream. My name is Liu Mengying, and I am your guide."
At this point in the conversation, it doesn't sound suspicious.
Su Hui noticed that the girl had a beautiful left hand with fair and slender fingers. In the words of the old man, it was a pair of hands suitable for playing the piano.
Lu Junchi's voice came from the headset: "Ask her, who is behind the forum, and try to be her words."
Su Hui received Lu Junchi's message, blinked and asked, "You're not alone in that forum, right?"
"Yeah." The girl replied in a low voice, "I used to live in pain. I used to be a depressed patient, and there are many people like me in the Sleepers organization. We are a group of people after recovery. people who want to help more people.”
Su Hui continued to talk: "What does your help include?"
Liu Mengying said very conservatively and cautiously: "We can chat with you, recommend doctors to you, and solve the problems in your life, so that you will not face pain alone. We can provide all the help that psychologists can provide, but they cannot. With help, we can be as satisfied as possible." She stopped here, blinking her eyelashes, "But the premise is, I hope you can tell me, how did you get depression?"
Su Hui raised his eyes and asked her, "How did you get sick in the first place?"
The girl hesitated for a while, then pulled down her right glove. Her hand was very beautiful, but the little finger of her right hand was missing a joint. The wound seemed to have healed, but it was still a little shocking.
"I was born in a wealthy family, and I'm the only daughter in the family. You can tell from my name, Meng Ying, you have to win in your dreams. My father was a pianist in the band, and my mother was a pianist. She is a violinist in an orchestra. Because of my father's death, my mother has been very harsh on me since I was a child, and she has been harsh to the point of perversion. She wants me to inherit my father's mantle and become a pianist."
"I have spent hours practicing the piano every day since I was a child, and I even played all day on weekends. My mother stood behind me with a pointer. When I was stunned, she would beat me and slap me in the back. I played until my fingers bleed, and it hurt my heart when I touched it. I didn’t have the game time for ordinary girls, and even my homework would be delayed. If I played the piano a little bit wrongly, my mother would beat me and scold me.”
"Moreover, she has a strong desire to control me, and she attributed her failure to remarry to me. She would control me by crying, making trouble, and hanging herself, calling me unfilial... She deprived me of my filial piety. Life."
"When I was sixteen, because I didn't practice the piano on time, her leg was broken by her. Even if I had a cast on my leg, she still forced me to practice the piano. Resist her. I went on a hunger strike and lost more than 60 pounds. In the end, as long as I heard those piano sounds, I was about to go crazy."
"I didn't follow my mother's arrangement to study in a foreign vocal university, nor did I follow her arrangement to go on a blind date. My life in the first 22 years was like a struggle with my mother, and I wanted to prove to her that I am A person, if I don't have the piano, I will live better. In order to break free from her control, after the performance she arranged for me, in front of all the audience, I stood up from the curtain call and cut off my little finger with my own hands. At that time , the bright red blood dripped on my white dress, but my heart was more refreshing than ever."
A smile bloomed on Liu Mengying's face, and she took a deep breath: "I didn't know until then that I was sick, I was depressed. Afterwards, I was sent to the hospital by a friend, and I was sober and depended on my life. Destroy my hand and get my life back. But my actions got me hysterical cursing and cursing from my mother, who backstage said I screwed everything up and called me a piece of shit."
"I started to see a psychiatrist to help myself, and now I have finally survived."
Liu Mengying recalled these experiences, her face turned pale, and her breathing gradually became faster.
In those years, in those days, she was like a person who was forced to run constantly, to the point of exhaustion.
It was not until the moment when her finger was broken that she truly had her own life.
That was a mother's dream, and she never expected herself to be on that stage.
"What about now? Your problem is solved? Are you healed?" Su Hui continued to ask.
"My depression has been cured, my mother passed away a long time ago, and I can finally be myself. Now let's talk about your story..." Liu Mengying put on her gloves and pulled back the topic with a smile, "You Can you tell me now, what's the problem with you?"
Su Hui pondered for a moment, then raised his head and said, "I had a serious accident, and after the accident, I was in a coma for two months. The accident left me with serious sequelae, my vision was blurred, a I'm deaf, I lost my job. The world is completely different to me... And I didn't know until I woke up that my family had both passed away in a car accident on their way to see me... I got depression because of it."
Lu Junchi was arranging the shelves and looked at the two people in front of him from the gap. He knew that Su Hui was telling the truth and lying, and then he listened to Su Hui continue to say: "As for the reason why I asked you for help..."
His black eyes blinked slightly, watching Liu Mengying's expression silently. Su Hui looked at the pale girl in front of him, who had obviously not yet fully recovered from the intense emotions. He could clearly recall that when the other party told his painful experience, his body unconsciously trembling.
In fact, in retrospect, he seems to be...
I have never been so emotionally exposed since I got sick.
Was it that what happened to him did not cause him enough pain
But he was clearly in great pain, the scorching air, the huge impact of the explosion, the damage to his eyesight and hearing, the death of his family...
Those pains are like a layer of frosted glass, which cannot be seen clearly and cannot be touched, but they are accompanied by him and cannot be relieved.
This may have been caused by his depersonalization.
Now, he needs to break this layer of glass, he needs to find something that affects the other party's emotions, what would that be
Those accidental deaths, those with vested interests, mothers who forced girls…
He speculates that this forum wants him to kill the haters? Then there must be such a person.
He took a deep breath and continued: "It wasn't until later that I realized that the accident was not a coincidence, but someone who was behind it, someone who wanted to ruin my life..."
Su Hui paused here.
The girl's expression finally changed, "Who is that person? Are you the only one fighting with it? Then you must feel lonely and powerless..."
Lu Junchi stood behind the shelf, and his hand arranging the shelf also stopped.
From his point of view, Su Hui's skin was cold white under the light and shadow in the convenience store, and his eyelashes drooped down, making him unable to tell whether he was telling the truth or a lie for a while.
The girl's expression finally changed subtly. Her eyes flashed, and there seemed to be tears in her eyes. She stretched out her mutilated hand to hold Su Hui's hand: "We will help you."
Two strangers communicated with each other in the convenience store on the rainy night, like wounded beasts licking each other's wounds.
The conversation seemed to have just entered the topic, but the girl's cell phone suddenly rang, and she lowered her head to look...
Qiao Ze's voice came from the miniature headphones that Lu Junchi and Su Hui carried at the same time: "Army! Army! There is a man here who seems to be tracking the road. He seems to have found our car..."
That man was the middle-aged man they had seen who went into the convenience store to buy cigarettes. He originally only stood and smoked far away. Later, he answered a phone call and walked near the car, and his expression changed.
Qiao Ze and Qu Ming were discussing whether to move to another position, and the man walked away quickly, sending a text message with his hair down, as if he was notifying his accomplices.
Sure enough, Liu Mengying stood up immediately after receiving the text message, and hurried out the door without saying goodbye to Su Hui.
Lu Junchi knew that this meeting could only end there, he said into the headset: "Implement arrest."