Swallowing the Seas

Chapter 23

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"Ouch, be careful, be careful not to fall... Slow down!"

Chen Lao was supported by the students left and right, and suddenly turned around tremblingly and took the intern policeman's hand: "Comrade Public Security has worked hard, we must solve the case as soon as possible and avenge the people..."

"I know, I know." The intern policeman couldn't help laughing and laughing, and he was relieved: "We must work hard, please walk slowly!"

The gray-haired old expert was carefully helped by the students and got into the car. No one noticed that in the distance, the reflection of the mirror on the twelfth floor of the Express Hotel opposite the Criminal Investigation Building of the Nancheng Branch slightly flickered from the gaps in the curtains.

The room was small and dark, the sheets were in a mess, and a few black bags were thrown randomly in the corner. A man in his twenties, wearing a baseball cap and an anti-smog mask, stood in front of the window, stared at the direction of Chen Lao's car leaving the Public Security Bureau, and scolded silently, "Fuck!"

What should we do now

He frowned tightly, turned his head to look at the backpack in the corner of the wall, turned around and set up the telescope again after a while, looked out aimlessly, and suddenly caught a glimpse of something, and his line of sight was certain.

"…?"

Wu Yu walked out of the Criminal Investigation Building with his head down. He was tall and straight, but his expression was loose. He lit a cigarette while walking down the stairs, took a long breath, and walked straight through the front yard of the branch to the bus stop across the road.

The sight behind the high-altitude binoculars has been firmly locked on him, from confusion, doubt, uncertainty, to unbelievable astonishment - who is this person? !

... But how could this person appear here? !

The man remained silent for a long time, his cheek muscles were clenched very tightly, and he gently put down the telescope after a long while. The hotel room was dead silent, except for the faint sound of vehicle horns coming from the street outside, only his own repressed breath echoed. After a few minutes, he pulled off the mask, as if he had finally made up his mind and took out the mask. The phone quickly dialed a number.

"Hello, Miss Yin?"

There was a moment of silence on the other side of the phone, and the man seemed to realize something and shouted, "Don't hang up!"

"Don't look for me, I won't help you." A cold female voice came from the other end of the call: "The wind is too tight now, and your hands and feet are too unclean..."

"Do you want to meet the old man?"

The voice on the other side stopped abruptly, and it took a long time to spit out a word: "Who?"

The man laughed, raised his head and moved the back of his neck.

"I seem to have seen a familiar face just now." He said leisurely: "Your... old rival in love."

·

"Sign here, and feel free to contact us if the situation becomes unstable..."

"Okay, got it."

Sitting on the hospital bed, Liu Li suddenly heard something. When Misheng turned around, she saw Wu Yu walking into the ward with a bag of fruit, and she suddenly exclaimed in surprise, "President Wu—"

Wu Yu raised his hand to stop her.

The number of beds in the city's first hospital was tight, and it was already a matter of the Nancheng Branch that she could arrange an indoor bed for Liu Li. The family members of the nurses in the other beds in the ward all cast a curious look. In front of so many people, Wu Yu didn't say much. He just wanted Liu Li to nod his head and say briefly, "The doctor said you can be discharged, let's go."

The night gradually fell, the neon swept the sky, and the long street continued with endless car lights. The snack street was crowded with people, and the smell of hot barbecue filled the streets and alleys. Liu Li threw the iron stick on the greasy disposable plate and wiped her mouth contentedly: "It's delicious! I just like to eat spicy food. , two bottles of Jinwei will be even more powerful!"

Wu Yu exhaled a long puff of smoke and said, "You will start taking drugs when you enter the forced rehabilitation center tomorrow. It's best not to touch tobacco and alcohol."

The night market was bustling with people, garbage and mosquitoes floating in the sewers, the dim light bulbs of the food stalls were covered in a layer of dirty grease, and shirtless men were sitting around shouting and pushing the cups for a change. Liu Li squinted at Wu Yu, she had never seen this young police officer in uniform, his ill-fitting oversized T-shirt was always faded, yellowed and wrinkled, and he was wearing cheap flip-flops on the carpet onto a plastic chair. As soon as he sat down, his shoulders fell naturally, his right ankle was on his left knee, and he was holding a cheap cigarette worth a dozen yuan in one hand, exactly like the young cement worker who had just come down from the construction site to drink at the next table.

He blended in with this dirty, greasy, vulgar cheap background, and there was nowhere on his body that the word 'police' came from.

But when Liu Li looked at him under the dim yellow light, his flat profile was shrouded in cigarettes, his eyelashes fell naturally, and the red light of the cigarette butt was reflected in his pupils. Different from everyone.

It does not belong to the neon lights of the huge city that are like daytime, nor does it belong to the sewers that are mixed with fish and dragons on the dark side.

Like an abrupt, tired outsider.

"Let's go," Wu Yu put out his cigarette butt, threw a few banknotes on the table, got up and said, "I'll take you home, you can clean up by yourself, and someone from the police station will come to pick you up tomorrow."

This meal was very cheap, because neither of them asked for beer, and there were very few iron signs in front of Wu Yu. For some reason, Liu Li was embarrassed to see a man spend money for the first time in her life. She was thinking about something, but she was not very good at speaking. Eat these things, right?"

Wu Yu said, "I can't eat too spicy food."

"Then are you full?"

"I'll go back to the bureau in the middle of the night to eat some more."

Liu Li followed him through the crowd, looked at his two slender fingers holding the fruit, swallowed, and said, "Hey, are you treated well as police officers? I always listen. People say that it's not good to be a policeman these days, that you're poor, you don't have much salary..."

"Who did you hear that?"

"When I was arrested in the past." Liu Li scratched her hair carelessly: "The police officer scolded us, saying that he worked hard for a month, and he didn't make as much money as us - hey, but who doesn't make money hard these days? , he can't do our job!"

Wu Yu glanced back at her, his eyes were funny and a little helpless, but he swallowed what he wanted to say, sighed and said, "... the detachment is okay."

"Yes! Your leader looks like a corrupt and corrupt person!" Liu Li suddenly wanted to start a new career, and immediately a wicked fire rushed to the top of her head: "The tone of your speech is so condescending, and you are still hanging on your face. It's so long, I hate it! Why doesn't he act in TV dramas, he's a villain without makeup, Baohong!"

The bus stopped slowly, the door opened, and a wave of people poured out and another wave of people squeezed in. Wu Yu gave Liu Li a dollar and said while swiping the bus card: "You will praise him for his looks like an actor, he will be happy."

Liu Li: "..."

The air in Jinhai City is varied: walking in places like the central business district and Yunlu Road, the high-end luxury shops on both sides of the street are lit up, and the expensive and reserved fragrance is tingling in the night breeze, as if you have to pay for one more breath; In Wynn Street, where KTV nightclubs are lined up, the fragrant lights and feasts of wine and meat are fragrant, and the silver bell-like laughter comes and goes with the BMW incense car, which scratches the hearts of people everywhere.

But if you cross the Sili River, which passes through the port and traverses the urban area, to the other side of the city, the lights in Changping District will gradually disappear with the depth, and countless shanties, low walls, urban villages to be demolished and unfinished buildings without glass disappear. In the increasingly deserted night; further down Caiying District and Xiaogang Village, from the criss-crossing lanes and narrow alleys, there are clotheslines pulled up by various households, yellowed diapers, greasy aprons, paints Spotted work clothes and colorful bed sheets and quilt cover mixed with thousands of scents, separating blocks of honeycomb-like dwellings, horizontally under the urban sky.

I don't know which baby is crying, echoing in the dark and rugged alley. In front is Liu Li's house. She skillfully jumped over the puddles and asked with a smile, "Then how long will I stay in the forced detention center, can I release it if I don't smoke?"

There was no sound behind her, she turned her head and looked at Wu Yu with bright eyes: "—Huh?"

"..." Wu Yu stopped under the street lamp, his face seemed a little melancholy: "No."

"Ah?" Liu Li didn't react: "How long will it take? Can I stop smoking?"

Wu Yu looked at her and said slowly after a long time, "There will be no day when you don't want to smoke anymore."

Liu Li stood blankly on the slate, not understanding what he was talking about, and rubbed the blood scab on the black and thin cheeks.

"After you go to the drug rehabilitation center, they will give you medication, and you will be groggy and just want to sleep for the first few days. In the next few days, they will give you regular rest, exercise, labor, adapt to militarized management with others, and recite behaviors. Standardize housekeeping and hygiene. If you can pass the housekeeping assessment, then you can enter the rehabilitation area to work in the workshop, and occasionally plant flowers and fruit trees, but most of the time you do clothes embroidery on the sewing machine, and there are tasks to be completed every day If you fail to complete it, you may be fined for copying the code of conduct, or writing a thought report."

"A first-tier city like Jinhai should have eight or even four-person rooms. You are a female prisoner, and Bu Chonghua said hello again. Food and accommodation will be more preferential. There are instructors from the medical department who regularly chat with you for counseling. Every day when the air is released, I will organize watching TV, play table tennis games, and maybe rehearse the program to prepare for the entertainment party during the festivals... This kind of assembly-line collective life will only take a few months and you will no longer be addicted to drugs, not to mention drug addiction, Even the idea of taking drugs has been forgotten, and after the 18-month compulsory abstinence period expires, you will feel that you have been reborn, and your whole person has gained a new life.”

"—doesn't it sound simple, even comfortable?"

"..." Liu Li stared at him blankly, her chapped lips moving slightly.

The howling of babies stopped at some point, moths rustled above their heads and hit the streetlights, and the occasional bark or two of wild dogs echoed in the distance.

"But almost everyone relapses." Wu Yu said to her in a low and hoarse voice, word by word: "No one can quit, I have never seen anyone who can quit."

"Ice drug addiction is a mental addiction. Unless you completely break with the past, you will be able to relapse in a few days. However, even if you leave the life circle of the past, there are still hidden numbers behind the walls of every public toilet, in the corners of construction sites, and in the corners of vegetable markets in this city. There are also countless demolition houses selling zero packs; even if you leave the city, after the station squares, shopping malls, Internet cafes, and telephone poles in other cities, there may still be one or two sellers selling 'meat' or 'candy' Number."

"A drug addict can find drugs in a strange city with a sense of smell and speed that ten anti-drug police officers can't match. Even if you really have the perseverance to stay away from all possible sources of drugs, get married and have children for 20 years. This addiction is still deeply hidden in your bones. Any child who plays with a straw in front of you, a friend who smokes tobacco with a tinfoil roll, or even a passing scene in a TV movie may make you in the future. One day, he suddenly relapsed again. Detoxification is not a matter of 18 months, it is a torment that must be endured for the rest of my life, every moment of every day, every second of every second.”

The halo of the street lamp was spread on the winding stone road. Wu Yu lowered his head, flicked the soot, and looked up at her sadly again.

"You won't have a day when you don't want to smoke. There is only one way to prove the success of detoxification, and that is death."

Liu Li opened her mouth and squeezed out a few words with difficulty: "But... I... "

She was walking towards the sea step by step as if she was walking on the beach in the dark night, until she was submerged in the sea, and then she suddenly realized something as if she was awakened. A trace of fear emerged spontaneously, but even the shudder was suppressed by the pressure of the icy sea water:

"I-I'm still young... I still have many years to go... I have to live... "

Wu Yu's hand stopped in the air, as if to give her a hug to her trembling body, but after a long time he only patted her hair lightly: "Let's live every day in the future. Detoxification is like anti-drug, it's the only way to die. Hugh's war."

They stood opposite each other, Wu Yu handed her the bag of fruit and whispered, "Go in."

Liu Li's mind was buzzing, as if she was stunned by a sap, her mind was blank. She mechanically turned around with the bag of fruit, not remembering how she opened the door to enter the house. Her whole body seemed to be immersed in the noisy and suffocating deep sea, and countless words and phrases in the depths of her memory rolled into an icy vortex:

"Take a sip, it won't be addictive, how do you know if you don't try it?" "Which one doesn't smoke in this industry, and you will have more business and customers will like you more!" "The government is lying to you. Do you know that flying leaves can cure diseases, and flying leaves abroad are legal, do you know?" "It's fashionable to smoke this now, if you don't smoke it, you will be old-fashioned!"…

With a soft snap, she turned on the bedroom light and sat slowly on the ground.

Those gossip gradually faded away, leaving her in the boundless sea of ice. In the bottomless darkness beneath her feet, a louder and clearer roar gradually sounded, and every sound was like a death knell:

"You'll never have a day when you don't want to smoke—"

"There is only one way to prove successful detoxification, and that is death!"

Liu Li buried her face in her arms, but she couldn't stop the chill coming from nowhere, and goose bumps appeared all over her body.

There were tears on her face.

The clock on the wall is ticking, especially clear in the quiet room. After a long time, she finally supported the wall behind her and barely stood up, moved her numb legs, and walked slowly to pack up the things she was going to bring tomorrow.

If it wasn't for Wu Yu's security at the Heyun Road police station, she would have spent the night by the police station's radiator, and she wouldn't even want to bring a toothbrush into the forced detention center. But even so, she didn't have much luggage to pack, and even serious clothes could not be found. It was impossible to bring those exposed lace underwear and cheap plastic jewelry, and they would definitely be confiscated when they entered.

Liu Li felt numb and dazed after she collapsed. She put the toothbrush in a small bag, found a few pairs of thick socks, and wanted to go to the closet to rummage through the thick winter coat.

call-

The wardrobe door opened and a man appeared in front of her.

He stared straight at her from the hanger, with a skeleton face with white bones on his neck.