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Swallowing the Seas - Chapter 23

Published at 28th of April 2023 05:45:13 AM


Chapter 23

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 "Oh, be careful, be careful not to fall... Go slowly!"

    Being supported by the students, Mr. Chen suddenly turned around tremblingly and took the hand of the trainee policeman: "Comrades in the public security have worked hard. We must solve the case as soon as possible and avenge the people..."

    "I know, I know." The trainee policeman couldn't laugh or cry, and said with relief: "We must work hard, you go slowly!"

    The gray-haired old expert was carefully supported by the students and got into the car. No one noticed the distance, on the twelfth floor of the Express Hotel opposite the Criminal Investigation Building of the Nancheng Sub-bureau, and the reflection of the mirror flickered from the gap in the curtain.

    The room was small and dark, the sheets were messy, and a few black luggage bags were thrown randomly in the corner. A man in his twenties, wearing a baseball cap and a haze mask, stood in front of the window, staring at the direction of Old Chen’s car driving away from the Public Security Bureau, gritted his teeth and cursed silently: "Fuck!"

    What should we do now?

    He frowned tightly, turned his head and looked at the backpack in the corner, then turned around and set up the binoculars again, looking out aimlessly, and suddenly saw something, his sight was certain.

    "...?"

    Wu Yu walked out of the Criminal Investigation Building with his head down. He was tall but sloppy. He lighted a cigarette while walking down the stairs quickly. He 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-level telescope has been locked on him, from bewilderment, suspicion, uncertainty, to a mixture of incredible consternation-is this person clearly? !

    ...How could this person appear here? !

     The man remained silent for a long time, his cheek muscles bite tightly, and it took a long while to gently put down the telescope. There was a dead silence in the hotel room, except for the faint sound of vehicle horns from the street outside, only a depressed and restrained breath echoed with him. After a few minutes, he pulled off the mask, as if finally made up his mind, and figured out The phone quickly dialed a number. ωωω.999xs.co\m\

     "Hello, Sister Yin?"

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

     "Don't find me, I won't help you." A cold female voice sounded on the other end of the call: "The wind is too tight now, and your hands and feet are too dirty..."

     "Do you want to meet your old friend?"

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

     The man laughed, raised his head and moved his neck bone.

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

     ·

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

    "Okay, got it."

    Sitting on the hospital bed, Liu Li suddenly heard something, and when he turned around, he saw Wu Yu walking into the ward with a bag of fruits, and suddenly said in surprise: "Wu Jing——"

    Wu Yu raised his hand to stop her.

    The beds in the first hospital in the city were tense. It was already because of the face of the Nancheng Branch to arrange an indoor bed for Liu Li. The family members of the nursing workers in the other beds in the ward cast their curious look. In front of so many people, Wu Yu didn't say much, he just thought Liu Li nodded and said briefly: "The doctor said you can leave the hospital, let's go."

    As night fell gradually, neon blasted the sky, and the long street continued to see the end of the car lights. There was a crowd of people on the snack street, and the hot barbecue aroma filled the streets and alleys. Liu Li dinged and threw the iron pick on the greased disposable plate, and wiped his mouth contentedly: "It's delicious! I like to eat spicy food." , Two bottles of Jinwei are even more exciting!"

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

    The night market was noisy and hustle with people, garbage and mosquitoes floating in the sewers, and the dim light bulbs of the food stalls were wrapped in a layer of dirty grease, and the shirtless men sat around and shouted, pushing their cups to change. Liu Li squinted at Wu Yu. She had never seen this young police officer wearing a uniform. The large, unfitting T-shirt was always washed out, faded, yellowed and crumpled, and she was dragged onto a plastic chair in cheap flip-flops on the carpet. As soon as he sits, his shoulders hang naturally, his right ankle is on his left knee, and a pack of cheap cigarettes is held in one hand, exactly like the young cement worker who just came down from the construction site to drink at the next table.

    He blended in with this dirty, greasy, vulgar and cheap background, and there was nowhere in his whole body that could touch the word "police".

    But when Liu Li looked at him under the dim light, his plain profile was enveloped in the cigarettes, his eyelashes dropped naturally, and the red light of the cigarette butt star was reflected in his pupils, somehow he felt Different from everyone.

    It does not belong to the neon lights of the huge city at night like day, nor does it belong to the sewers that are mixed with fish and dragons.

    Like an abrupt and exhausted outsider.

    "Let's go," Wu Yu put out his cigarette, dropped a few banknotes on the table, got up and said, "I will take you home, and you will clean up by yourself. The police station will pick you up tomorrow."

    The meal was very cheap, because neither of them asked for beer, and there were very few iron fortunes in front of Wu Yu. For some reason, Liu Li was embarrassed to see a man spending money for the first time in her life, thinking about what to say, but she was really not very good at talking, followed him for a while, and suddenly asked, "Hey, don't you Eat these things, right?"

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

    "Then are you full?"

    "I'll go back to the game in the middle of the night and eat more."

    Liu Li followed him through the crowd, looking at his two slender fingers holding the fruit, swallowing, and asking for words: "Hey, do you guys who are the police are treated well? I always listen. People say it’s not good to be a policeman these days, poor, and few salaries..."

    "Who did you hear saying this?"

    "When I caught it in the past." Liu Li scratched his hair nonchalantly: "The police officer scolded us, saying that he had worked so hard for a month, and he hadn't made as much money as we made--hey, but whoever makes money these days is not hard. Well, he can't do our job!"

    Wu Yu glanced back at her, his eyes were funny and helpless, but he swallowed back when he wanted to say something, and sighed: "...The detachment is okay."

    "Yes! Your leader looks like corruption!" Liu Li suddenly thought of Bu Chonghua, and an evil fire hit his head immediately: "Speaking like that, it's so awkward, you can still pull your face while hanging. It's so long, so annoying! Why doesn't he act in a TV series, he is a villain without makeup, and red!"

    The bus came to a halt slowly, the door opened, a wave of people came out and another wave of people squeezed up. Wu Yu invested a dollar for Liu Li, swiping the bus card and said: "You praise him for looking like an actor, he will be happy."

    Liu Li: "..."

    The air in Jinhai City is diverse: walking in places like the Central Business District and Yunlu, there are rows of high-end luxury shops on both sides of the street shining brightly, and the expensive and reserved scents permeate the night breeze, as if you are charged for a breath; In places like Yongli Street where there are many KTV nightclubs, the feasting, the feasting, the smell of wine, the silver bell-like laughter coming and going with the BMW scented cars, everywhere scratching people's minds.

    But if you cross the Sili River, which passes through the port and traverses the city, to the other side of the city, the lights of Changping District will gradually disappear with the depth, and countless shantytowns, low walls, urban villages to be demolished, and rotten buildings without glass will disappear. In the increasingly deserted night; further down Caiying District and Xiaogang Village, from the crisscross alleys and narrow lanes, there are clotheslines pulled up by houses, yellow diapers, greasy aprons, and paint The splattered work clothes and colorful sheets and quilts mixed with thousands of odors, separated blocks of honeycomb-like dwellings, horizontally under the urban sky.

    I don't know which baby is crying loudly, echoing in the dark and rugged alley. Right in front is Liu Li's house. She skipped the puddle skillfully, and asked with a smile: "Then how long will I stay in the camp, can I let it out without smoking?"

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

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

    "Huh?" Liu Li didn't respond, "How long will it take? Can't I stop smoking?"

    Wu Yu looked at her and said slowly after a long time: "You won't have the day you don't want to smoke."

    Standing on the stone slab blankly, Liu Li did not understand what he was talking about, rubbing the blood scabs on his thin black cheeks.

    "After you enter the drug rehabilitation center, they will give you medicine, and for the first few days you will be groggy and just want to sleep. In a few days, they will let you work and rest regularly, exercise and work, follow other people to adapt to militarized management, and recite behaviors. Standardize housekeeping and hygiene. If you can pass the housekeeping assessment, then you can enter the rehabilitation area and work in the workshop, occasionally planting flowers and fruit trees, but most of the time you do embroidery on the sewing machine, and you have tasks to complete every day If you fail to complete it, you may be punished to copy the code of conduct or write a thought report."

    "First-tier cities like Jinhai should be in eight- or even four-person rooms. You are a female prisoner. Bu Chonghua said hello again. You will be treated more preferentially in all aspects of food and accommodation. There are instructors in the medical department who will chat with you regularly to help them. Every day when the wind is released, we will organize watching TV and playing table tennis matches, and we may have to rehearse programs and prepare for entertainment evenings during the holidays...This kind of streamlined collective life only takes a few months and you will no longer be addicted to drugs, let alone addiction. , I forgot even the idea of ​​taking drugs. After the 18-month period of forced prohibition expires, you will feel that you have been reborn and your whole person has been reborn."

    "--Does it sound simple, even comfortable?"

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

    The howling of the babies stopped. Moths fluttered above their heads and hit the street lights, and the wild dogs sometimes barked or barked in the distance.

    "But almost everyone will relapse." Wu Yu's voice was low and dumb, and he said to her word by word: "No one can quit. I have never seen anyone quit."

    "Ice|Drug addiction is a heart addiction. Unless you completely break with the past, you can relapse in a few days. However, even if you leave the circle of life in the past, every public toilet in this city is hidden behind the wall, in the corner of the construction site, and in the corner of the vegetable market. There are countless demolition homes selling odd packages; even if you leave this city, after station squares, shopping malls, Internet cafes, and telephone poles in other cities, it is still possible to say one or two selling'meat' or selling'sugar' ''S number."

    "A drug addict, their sense of smell and speed in searching for drugs in a strange city can't be matched by ten drug police officers. Even if you have the arduous perseverance to stay away from all possible sources of drugs, get married and have children for 20 years. Later, this addiction is still deep in your bones. Any child who plays with straws in front of you, friends who smoke cigarettes with tin foil, or even the flashing scenes in TV and movies may make you in the future. Suddenly relapsed one day in the future. Detoxification is not a matter of eighteen months. It is a torment that must be endured for the rest of my life, every moment, every minute and every second."

    The halo of the street lamp 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 the day when you don't want to smoke. There is only one way to prove success in detoxification, which is death.

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

    She seemed to be walking towards the sea step by step on a dark sandy beach until her chest was submerged in the sea, and she suddenly realized what she was awakened. A trace of terror was born, but even the trembling was stunned by the pressure of the cold sea:

    "I, I'm still young... I have many years to... to pass..."

    Wu Yu's hand stopped in the air, as if he was about to give her a trembling body a hug, but after a long time he only patted her hair lightly: "Every day will be better in the future. Detoxification and anti-drugs are both dead ends. Hugh’s war."

    They stood facing each other, Wu Yu handed her the bag of fruits and whispered: "Go in."

    Liu Li's mind buzzed, as if stunned by a sap, her mind went blank. She mechanically carried the bag of fruits and turned around. She didn't remember how she opened the door and entered the house. She 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 whirlpool:

    "Take a sip, it won't be addictive. How do you know if you don't try it?" "Which one in this business doesn't smoke? Only when you smoke, you can get more business and customers like you more!" "The government lied to you. , Fly|leaves can cure diseases, fly abroad|leaves are all legal, do you know?" "Nowadays, it's fashionable to smoke this, if you don't smoke, you will be old-fashioned!"...

    With a soft slap, she turned on the bedroom light and slowly sat on the floor.

    Those babbles gradually faded away, leaving her in the boundless sea of ​​ice, and in the bottomless darkness at the bottom of her feet, gradually more and more clear roars sounded, and every sound like a death knell filled her with power:

    "There will never be 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. Goose bumps formed all over her body. don't know how long she dullly felt that her arm was wet and cold.

    It was tears all over her face.

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

    If it hadn't been for Wu Yu who had taken care of the police station at Heyun Road, she would have spent tonight by the radiator of the police station, and don't even want to bring a toothbrush into the camp. But even so, she didn't have much luggage to pack, and she couldn't even find a few pieces of formal clothes. It was impossible to bring those exposed lace underwear and cheap plastic jewelry. They would definitely be confiscated when they entered.

    Liu Li felt numb and at a loss after prostration, put the toothbrush into the small bag, found a few pairs of thick socks, and wanted to go to the closet to look through the thick coat she wore in winter.

    call--

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

    He stared straight at her between the clothes racks, with a skeleton face on his neck.





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