No. 22 Fleeting Fireworks
Dark clouds gathered, and heavy rain poured from the sky as I changed into my clothes, ready to leave the apartment.
Ouyang Dati had initially planned to keep me indoors for three days, but he eventually relented.
Although I had to bring the sniper with me.
“How are you feeling?”
I asked the man in black who was trailing behind me like a loyal dog, my hand tucked in my pocket.
He was nondescript, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, carrying a violin case on his back. He was thin and easily blended into a crowd. But I knew he was far from harmless. The violin case contained a disassembled sniper rifle and two smoke grenades. I had also seen him stash two pistols and four military knives somewhere on his person.
“What?”
Ouyang Dati hadn’t told me his name, just instructed me to call him “043.”
“I’m saying, maybe you should stay home in this weather. Won’t your gun get wet?”
I held the umbrella over him, trying to persuade him to turn back. His shoulder was already soaked.
“No.”
He was the most taciturn person I had ever met. Perhaps it was an occupational hazard. Just being near him, I could sense an aura of death and violence. I couldn’t imagine what kind of childhood he must have had.
I was going to check on Lan Zhuoyue.
Through my hacker network, I had tracked him down to a hospital last night.
My gut feeling told me something was wrong.
“Vehicle starting. Please hold on tight. Next stop…”
The bus lurched forward in the pouring rain.
Despite the weather, the bus was packed with commuters. It wasn’t quite sardine-can level yet, but it was difficult to move around.
043 escorted me to a less crowded area and stood protectively in front of me.
Suddenly, a shrill voice shattered the silence. “Thief! Driver, don’t open the doors! Stop the bus!”
A middle-aged woman in her thirties pushed her way to the back door, her arms outstretched. “Someone stole my wallet! There was over three thousand yuan in it!”
The passengers started murmuring.
Three thousand yuan was a significant sum, especially for most residents of the Upper Capital City.
But it was rush hour, and it was pouring outside. Few passengers had the patience to deal with a lost wallet.
Someone else’s lost wallet, even if it contained a million yuan, was none of my business.
As the bus pulled over, a few passengers protested. “Come on, I’m going to be late for work.”
“Yeah, if I’m ten minutes late, they’ll deduct three days’ worth of wages. That’s over two hundred yuan!”
“I’m still on probation. I’ll get fired if I’m late…”
No company cared about your excuses for being late. Most workplaces had time clocks. If you clocked in late, the finance department would deduct your wages accordingly.
Like a cold, heartless machine, the system was efficient, precise, and unforgiving.
“It won’t take long. There are only forty of us here. A quick search will take less than five minutes!”
The woman stood her ground, her expression indignant. The passengers, realizing they had no choice, reluctantly agreed.
This wasn’t the first time I had encountered this situation. But last time, the victim was a man. When he demanded a search, most of the women on the bus refused. After a heated argument, the driver had let those who had already been searched off the bus and taken the rest, along with the victim, to the police station.
The passengers cooperated, and soon, the woman reached 043 and me.
“Sorry, little sister, I have no choice. That money was for my grandmother’s medicine.”
She reached towards me, but before she could touch me, two military knives appeared at her throat.
“Clang!”
043 stepped in front of me, his eyes cold and sharp.
“Hey, hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
Several passengers who had witnessed the scene jumped to their feet.
“Think carefully! Stealing only gets you jail time. Murder is a capital offense!”
“Yeah, you’re still young. Don’t do anything stupid!”
The woman, realizing she had stumbled into a life-or-death situation, stammered, “You… you don’t have to… I won’t search her…”
Her eyes, however, seemed to accuse us of being the thieves.
“043, put the knives away.”
I reached out and gently pulled his hands back.
“Tell her who stole her wallet.”
As a professional sniper and bodyguard, I was sure he had seen what happened.
My words were law to him. He nodded curtly, sheathed the knives, and walked towards a man in black standing near the door.
“What are you looking at? You think I stole it?”
The man glared at him defiantly. “She already searched me. I’m warning you, don’t start trouble.”
043 looked at me.
I nodded.
With a flash of steel, he sliced through the man’s belt. A small women’s handbag fell out of his pants, along with his pants themselves, revealing a pair of floral underwear.
After a moment of stunned silence, the bus erupted in applause.
…
“Is Lan Zhuoyue a patient here?”
I rushed into the hospital, dripping wet, and asked the nurse at the reception desk.
I had instructed 043 to take position in the building across the street.
“One moment, please.”
The nurse typed something into her computer.
“Fifth floor, hematology department.”
I took the elevator to the fifth floor and, after inquiring at the nurse’s station, found Lan Zhuoyue’s ward.
I pushed the door open and saw three elderly patients lying in their beds. Lan Zhuoyue, the only teenager in the ward, was chatting with a man who looked like his father. He turned his head when he heard the door open.
“Yi Yao? What are you doing here?”
His eyes were a mixture of surprise, panic, and sadness.
I clutched my jacket tighter, my hands tucked in my pockets, and walked over to him.
“What happened?”
I glanced at the information card on his bed. Besides his name and age, it also had a note: “Liquid diet only.”
“It’s nothing serious. Just a minor illness. I’ll be fine after a few days of rest.”
He was still his usual cheerful self, but I could see the exhaustion etched on his face.
“This is the hematology department.”
I was all too familiar with this department. You wouldn’t be hospitalized here unless it was something serious.
Realizing he couldn’t hide it any longer, he scratched his head sheepishly. “Thalassemia. It’s nothing serious.”
Those words sent a shiver down my spine.
Thalassemia, a hereditary blood disorder. The severity varied, and the life expectancy depended on the type. Like leukemia, it was incurable.
I knew this because, in my previous life, while taking care of my mother at the hospital, a little girl in the next bed had suffered from thalassemia. She was a strong and cheerful girl, never complaining or crying, even when she had to endure countless injections and medications. But in the end, she had passed away before my mother.
I forced myself to remain calm. “Mild?” I asked.
Mild thalassemia, if managed properly, had minimal impact on daily life and rarely posed a life-threatening risk.
He didn’t answer, just chuckled nervously and avoided my gaze.
“And who is this?”
The man beside him, sensing the shift in atmosphere, quickly changed the subject.
“She’s my classmate…”
“I’m his friend. My name is Yi Yao.”
I bowed politely to the middle-aged man.
“Yi Yao… um, could you please not tell anyone in class about my illness?”
Despite the IV drip in his arm, he spoke in his usual carefree tone.
He hesitated for a moment, then added, “Please, I don’t want to burden them with bad memories.”
It was as if he had already accepted his fate.
Like an old man, nearing the end of his life, choosing to leave his family behind, not wanting to be a burden.
I finally understood why I had lost contact with Lan Zhuoyue in high school in my previous life. Whenever I asked about him, my classmates would give me vague answers.
It wasn’t because he was a delinquent who had run away. It was because he wouldn’t live long enough to attend high school.
He had pretended to be a troublemaker, skipping class and neglecting his homework, when in reality, he had been battling a life-threatening illness, spending his time in hospitals instead of classrooms.
No one would care if a delinquent suddenly disappeared.
No one would be affected if a loner left.
I had always thought that my perfect grades in junior high made me the center of the world. But now, I realized that my world, compared to Lan Zhuoyue’s, was insignificant.
“Anyway, enough about that. Yi Yao, I did it!”
He struggled to sit up and pulled out a newspaper from his bedside table. He pointed at an article titled “16-Year-Old Boy Sneaks into Luggage Compartment, Flies to Paris for Eiffel Tower.” “Look, I even made the news.”
He looked like a child eager for praise.
“Heh, you know, Yi Yao, when I got off the plane, I realized they speak French in France. My English was useless. And since I didn’t have any documents, they took me to the embassy. But the French people there were impressed by my courage. They even took me to see the Eiffel Tower.”
He opened his phone’s photo gallery.
Hundreds of photos of him posing with foreigners in front of the Eiffel Tower filled the screen. His face was pale, his lips colorless, but he was beaming in every photo.
“See? Traveling isn’t that complicated. I went to Paris with 308 yuan and came back with over 200!”
“And this, this is a gift from the French ambassador. A genuine French souvenir.”
He weakly picked up a black baseball cap from his pillow and handed it to me. “I promised to bring you back a gift, right? Your bro always keeps his word.”
