Zhu Yun called emergency services and got Jili’s employees to come look after Gao Jianhong. By the time she went out looking for Li Xun, he had already disappeared without a trace.
Zhu Yun stood at the street corner. The passersby around her were all looking at her with expressions of alarm. A young man came forward and asked, “Are you all right? Do you need help?”
Zhu Yun looked down and realized her hands and clothes were covered in blood. She shook her head and said quietly, “It’s alright, thank you.”
Zhu Yun drove home, changed her clothes, and by the time she arrived back at Feiyang it was noon. Everyone was getting ready for lunch. Zhu Yun scanned the room and didn’t see Li Xun, so she asked Hou Ning, who said Li Xun had never come back.
“Team Leader, are you eating?” Zhao Teng was in the middle of ordering delivery. Zhu Yun felt exhaustion settle over her in an unfamiliar way. “You all go ahead and eat. I’m not hungry.” She went to see Director Dong to request time off. “I’m a bit tired. I’m not coming back this afternoon.”
Director Dong sat back in his large leather swivel chair, looking at her. “Now that’s a rare sight — you’re actually taking time off.”
Zhu Yun said, “Just one afternoon.”
Director Dong said, “You went to Jili? What was the outcome? Why do you look so awful?”
Zhu Yun shook her head. “Nothing came of it. Let Li Xun fill you in.”
Zhu Yun went home and lay down on her small bed. The afternoon sunlight streamed in through the window, bright enough to make her squint. It was her own bed, yet it felt strangely unfamiliar — most likely because she never lay down on it during precious working hours.
She closed her eyes and tried to let herself go still. The sunlight was warm enough, and gradually Zhu Yun drifted off to sleep. When she woke from that deep, unplanned sleep, the sky was already completely dark. She stood at the window looking out — the sky was the same as always, not a single star in sight.
There is a moment right after waking when the body feels lightest, because the mind is still blank. But very soon, everything floods back in to cover every surface of the brain, and the heaviness returns.
Zhu Yun yawned, and on a whim decided to go see a movie to lift her spirits. She washed up and was in the middle of toweling her hair when there was a knock at the door.
Zhu Yun paused, thinking back over whether she had ordered anything online recently.
“Who is it?”
No one answered from outside. Zhu Yun looked through the peephole — a dark figure stood outside with their head bowed.
She recognized the person in an instant and opened the door.
“Li Xun?”
The moment the door opened, Zhu Yun was hit with the heavy smell of alcohol.
“…You’ve been drinking?”
She couldn’t make out Li Xun’s expression clearly, but he appeared to already be drunk.
“Why didn’t he regret it?” he said in a low voice.
Zhu Yun didn’t catch it. “What?”
Li Xun raised his eyes to look at her. “I’m asking you — why didn’t he regret it?”
His gaze startled her. His eyes were bloodshot, both of them a deep red.
Li Xun said, “Does he hate me that much — he’d rather die than let me win?”
Zhu Yun had no words.
Li Xun looked at the silent Zhu Yun, and suddenly cracked a grin. That kind of gaze paired with that kind of smile was genuinely unhinged.
“He’s too foolish. How could he ever beat me? He knows it himself — he knows it completely. He understands my abilities better than you do. All I have to do is apply the slightest pressure and he can’t take it.” Because of the alcohol, Li Xun was rambling somewhat incoherently. As he spoke, he abruptly stopped and looked at Zhu Yun. “If I drove him to his death, what would you think of me?”
Zhu Yun said, “Gao Jianhong’s illness is not your fault.”
Li Xun said, “Isn’t it?”
Again Zhu Yun had nothing to say.
For some reason, she had always felt she understood Gao Jianhong quite well. Perhaps he was like her — he too had lived through a stretch of days in a closed, inescapable loop. All three of them had once been driven to the same wall by the same thing. Li Xun had been separated from the world by iron bars. Of the two left outside, one had chosen to run from it, while the other had chosen to follow that one path all the way to the end, no matter what.
Li Xun said, “What did you want to say?”
Zhu Yun shook her head.
But that small motion was enough to ignite Li Xun’s anger. He said with fierce intensity, “Say what you want to say. Stop making me guess like you used to — I don’t want to guess right now. Are you on his side too? Do you think I did something wrong?!”
Zhu Yun hadn’t expected him to suddenly flare up. The door of the neighbor across the hall opened — a postgraduate student at the same university who knew Zhu Yun well. He looked at Li Xun warily and asked Zhu Yun, “What’s going on?”
Zhu Yun waved him off and pulled Li Xun inside, turning to say to the neighbor, “It’s fine. He’s someone I know.”
Zhu Yun closed the door, went to the refrigerator, and took out a hangover remedy. She tapped out two tablets, then brought them over with a glass of water.
“Take these first. How did you drink so much?”
Li Xun stared at the two tablets and appeared to sink into thought. Zhu Yun directed him like programming a robot — placing the tablets into his hand, then steering his arm so the tablets reached his mouth, then holding the glass to his lips.
“Drink.”
That seemed to bring Li Xun back to himself slightly. He gave Zhu Yun a cool glance, then drank the whole glass in one go.
Zhu Yun took the empty glass from him. Li Xun dropped himself onto the bed and bowed his head to light a cigarette.
Outside the window the night was deep and heavy. Zhu Yun stood beside the bed looking at him.
“Before, after I finished something — whether it succeeded or failed — I would feel energized, ready to channel that into the next thing.” Li Xun had smoked half the cigarette, and his voice was low and hoarse as he spoke. “But this time I can’t bring myself to do anything. Tell me — am I wasting my time?”
Zhu Yun said, “I don’t know.”
Li Xun said, “Do you think I should keep going?”
Zhu Yun said, “That’s yours to decide. Others have no right to weigh in.”
Li Xun looked at her. “I’m asking for your opinion right now.”