They looked at the young man numbly.
A variety of voices, some old, some vigorous, spoke at the same time, overlapping in perfect harmony, twisting into the same tone without any fluctuations, "Do you want to open the window?"
"You want to open the window?"
"You want to open the window?"
They kept mechanically questioning the same thing at the same time, like a programmed machine that had malfunctioned, repeating the same sentence in an extremely annoying way, pairs of dark, emotionless eyes fixed on him.
Although he was in an extremely hot and suffocating carriage, he felt a strange chill rising up his spine. An invisible sense of pressure enveloped him. He knew clearly what he should do to break this weird atmosphere, but in fact he was just tongue-tied. The words seemed to be stuck in his throat like phlegm, and big drops of cold sweat began to roll down his forehead.
From the moment he said that, the people around him suddenly distanced themselves from him.
Yes, he also just realized that there is actually such a large space in this damn narrow carriage that seems like you can't even fit a needle. But the young man who enjoyed the spacious seat alone was not happy at all.
At this moment, the words that the passengers kept repeating suddenly became low and unclear. When he heard them clearly again, they had become another sentence.
"We can't let him stay here."
"Get him out of here."
"Get him out of here."
"Get him out!!"
The words suddenly became sharp.
The passengers who were originally at a distance from him, moved closer to him again - but it was not the ordinary approach, but the faces in his sight suddenly became larger, as if their necks were stretched softly, and heads were gradually floating closer, with their pupils constantly expanding.
His body began to become more tense, and he bit the tip of his tongue tremblingly, letting the rusty taste and pain in his mouth wake him up to say something.
He vaguely felt that if he was "caught" close enough, something bad would happen.
But he just couldn't move.
The time of torture seemed to be extended infinitely at this moment. His ears were filled with the voices of "get him out" coming from different people's throats with exactly the same rising and falling rhythm. When he was almost confused and thought vaguely that he should "go down" - a clear voice completely different from those repetitive, somewhat numb and mechanical words rang out.
There was the sound of something tapping gently on the glass window.
"Knock, knock", only two times.
But it was like the sound of a bell suddenly breaking out from the chaos, waking him up suddenly.
The originally numb tongue root was pressed against the white teeth and bitten hard. The intense pain was like a needle piercing into his mind, and it also forced him to calm down from the inexplicable panic. He pulled his bloody tongue and forced an ugly smile in pain, "I, I didn't mean that."
“I don’t want to open the window.”
After the stuttering of that sentence, the next sentence came naturally, and was said firmly and clearly, "No, I don't want to open the window."
The unanimous slogan-like shouts suddenly stopped, returning to the previous eerie silence and calm. The aunts, uncles, elderly people and children all stared at him expressionlessly. The young man felt a familiar chill on his back, and his legs and feet felt a little weak. If it weren't for the support of the pillar handrails, he would have fallen to the dirty metal floor by now.