Sarah walked to the bus station and waited for about fifteen minutes, her mind kept spinning. The bus she was riding rumbling down the street. It started to slow down and turned to wait for her to stop. She waved to the bus driver to get off. She watched it fly by.
She walked straight to the Chen family, walking very fast, next to the storefront and the front of the building, trying to hide in the shadow of Yin. Opposite Chen's shop is a pharmacy, an old school where they make their own formulas. The pharmacist has a grumpy temper, gray hair, half sour, half sincere, and has always been a perfectionist. Sarah sneaked into the pharmacy. A hot wind greeted her.
She rummaged through the magazines and found a suitable one. She took it down from the magazine rack and read it carefully while staring at the big front window of the pharmacy with one eye. Her eyes were fixed on Teacher Chen, hoping that they had not left yet.
Ten minutes later, her patience paid off. Chen and his friend are gone. The two talked for a few more minutes, then they lowered their heads, turned and left. Chen walked around the corner, disappeared out of sight, and reached where he had parked.
This part of the city is clearly divided, with small shops and businesses in the emerging and successful part to the north. The old-fashioned street lights lit up the bustle and bustling with bright lights. Baskets of flowers hang from the light poles until autumn. The trees on both sides of the sidewalk are well maintained and intentionally spaced. Two blocks south, cracked sidewalks and abandoned buildings tell a different story.
Chen Yunlin went north. Mingfu went to the south.
Sara hurriedly put the magazine back on the shelf and ran out the door. Akio stopped and looked back at the drugstore and Sara. She looked down and walked in the opposite direction.
When Ming Fu started walking again, she crossed the street around the corner and turned back. She followed him for a block or two.
She doesn't know why she wants to follow him, but she feels it is necessary to do so. She needs to know more about him, maybe she can see where he goes next.
She followed him for eight blocks, getting farther and farther, because there were fewer and fewer people on the street. Where is he going? Isn't it cold when he only wears short sleeves? Why does he walk? Does he have no car
Suddenly, he turned a corner, and she couldn't see him at all.
She hurriedly walked first, then ran. She didn't want to lose him. She walked to his corner and looked down the street. He can't be seen everywhere. In fact, there was no one on this street that she could see. All shops were tightly closed. Only a solitary street lamp provided weak illumination. All other street lights went out.
He left and disappeared.
Damn it.
She took a deep, trembling breath. It wasn't until that moment that she realized that she was breathing quickly and her heartbeat was speeding up.
Fortunately she lost him. It is a foolish thing to follow him. Bruce would be furious if she knew she was chasing a strange man alone in this part of the city at night.
She looked down the street for the last time. Yes, still empty, still black. So dark. Unbearable darkness. If possible, it is darker than the street where she was born. A single-operation street lamp shook, dimmed, brightened, and then dimmed, making it look like a shadow moving, becoming larger, smaller, and then larger. It's almost as if every surging of the bulb brings them closer and closer.
"You are such a terrible sneaky guy," a low voice came from behind her.
She turned around. Chen's friend Feng Xiong stood behind her. He said loudly.
She wanted to scream. She opened her mouth and screamed.
He tilted his head to the side, waiting for the scream, but it didn't sound.
She wanted to run, but her feet felt stuck to the ground.
"A lot of people don't realize this," the man said. He opened his arms and approached her, "When you need to scream, when your life depends on whether you scream, you find yourself unable to make your own voice. This is why the self-defense seminar requires participants to practice screaming and Shouting no, because this is not a conditional anti-shè, but a learning technique. Your brain tells you to scream, but your body is unable to respond. You are not responding appropriately to the imminent danger. Likewise. , Run. You should run now, as far as possible. You should start to realize that I am not the kind of person you should follow. You should turn your back to this lonely, dark alley."
He grabbed her upper arm. Pull her.
He repeated it, his voice louder and more angry. His voice was full of threats. He looked over her shoulders into the alley. "I'm not that kind of person!" He pulled Sarah away from the corner of the alley. "This is the darkest place in the city. A little girl like you might be someone's dinner."
She screamed. finally.
Finding her own voice, she did not give up. She screamed and screamed. She tried to pull her arm out of his hand, but he refused to let go. He continued to pull her. She dug the wound into the wound to heal, but this did not slow him down in any way. He moved faster and faster, dragging her into the street.
She kicked him, trying to trip him.
He stopped pulling her and turned to face her. He lifted her away from him.
"Enough," he said.
"Let me come! I! Go!" She gave him a hard kick in the shin.
"I'm teaching you a lesson," he said.
"Let me come! I! Go!" She kicked again desperately three times.
"Stop!" he said, shaking her.
He waited.
She kicked him a few more times. She tried to break his finger off her arm.
He waited.
He caught her. She realized that unless he was willing to let her go, she couldn't escape. She was completely at his mercy.
She looked up and found that they were about to return to Chen's office. She lost her backpack in the fight. She can't remember the exact time. The man held it in his other hand. She looked at him from the corner of her eye, even though she felt that her arm was torn from her shoulder, she still let herself hang like a dead person. She hoped that his hand would loosen, he would adjust himself, grab her again, give her a chance to get out, or better yet, maybe he would give up completely and let her go.
If he wanted to hurt her, he would have done it a long time ago. Of course, this alley is a suitable place for him, bringing her an ugly ending, a murder that cannot be solved in the future.
"Okay," she said. She stood up, pulled her body back, and stopped struggling. In the struggle, her hair came loose from the bun, and she flicked it away with the back of her free hand. "I apologize for following you."
"I accept your apology," he said.
"Can you let me go now?" she asked.
He let her go.
She rubbed her arms. There must be bruises on her fingertips.
"Go home," the man said.
She did not move. "What's wrong with Bruce?" she asked.
"Go home," he said again.
She straightened her chest in front of him and looked directly into his eyes. He shook his head at her shamelessness.
"Please. Tell me what's wrong with him? I heard you say he is in danger. Please tell me what happened."
"Maybe there is nothing," he said. "If Bruce wants you to know, he will tell you."
He put her backpack at her feet. He turned around and strode back to the way they came - the way he dragged her. At the nearest corner, he left, and after a while, the engine of a motorcycle roared and started. Ming Fu and the motorcycle galloped from the corner and drove along the street. He didn't bother to wear the helmet, although one of them was tied to the back of the bicycle.
"Where have you been?" Bruce asked.
He paced back and forth in the living room of their small apartment. He has been sitting on the sofa, but that feeling is worse than pacing, so now he is pacing back and forth.
When he got home, he was surprised to find that Sarah was not there. He suddenly realized that Sarah couldn't just sit there and wait for him, because he worked hard in the laboratory all night. What did she do while he was away? He never thought of asking.
He called Teacher Chen, but the answering machine picked up, so he paced and waited. Wait and pace.
Sara did her best to tidy up before getting on the bus. She trimmed her hair and adjusted her clothes. The last thing she wants to do is to attract attention. The driver of the bus she was riding might have noticed. He always smiled at her, if she was sitting in the front row, they would chat, she often did this, but today, she missed her bus. An older woman driving this bus, she didn't even glance at Sarah.
The bruise on her arm was the only physical evidence that she followed a strange man into an unwise place in the city. She hid the bruises under the long-sleeved shirt, Bruce would be angry with her, she didn't plan to let him know.
When she opened the door of their apartment, she saw Bruce, "Your home!"
"Where have you been?" Bruce asked again.
"Reading a magazine in the pharmacy," she shrugged, supporting her lie like a piece of cardboard. "I thought you would come back very late."
"About that," he said. "I want to give you a surprise. Actually two surprises."
"Really?"
"First—" He picked up a new coat, which he had spread on the armrest of the sofa. A new coat
She opened her mouth. This coat is very beautiful, but too expensive. She looked across the room and knew they couldn't afford it.
"Oh, Bruce," she said. "Too considerate. I like it, but we can't afford it."
"But we can," he said. "This is the second surprise. Carl left the lab this morning, and I spent the whole afternoon thinking that maybe he was right. Maybe it's time to look forward. I got a lot of lucrative positions. Important. Me Called Clive Hawthorne of Post and Lumont and accepted his offer."
""what? How about your work? You can't just give it up like this. All the time you put in. No, Bruce. Call him back and tell him no. "(To be continued) (End of this chapter)