Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 149

Chapter 149: The Spark

After the college entrance examination, Zhan Luo had realized for the first time that the crack in his fate was not a certain trauma from his childhood, but was concrete and visible.

The windowless interrogation room, the Qin Luo sitting opposite him, was like the proctor from back then, staring at his blank test paper with a suspicious smile.

His college entrance examination scores had been good back then. Even without using sports, he could have chosen his favorite major based on his grades. Zhan Luo looked down. In these past few years, when he had been sitting in the audience, listening to Qin Luo’s speech on the stage, his heart had been pounding countless times. He had thought that if he could go back to before college, he might have been a different person.

The Zhan Luo of back then had also tried to negotiate with his father, hoping that his father would listen to his heart and give him a chance to choose for himself, but it had all been in vain.

He still remembered that night, when the man whose ribs he had broken was slumped on the sofa. The TV was replaying a track and field competition. The commentator was passionate. For a moment, Zhan Luo had felt that his father was even more distant to him than the commentator. He had put down his bowl and chopsticks and had said solemnly that he did not want to pursue a career in sports in the future, that he wanted to study biology.

His father had not responded to him. His gaze had passed over his plea and had landed on the TV program behind him. He had reached out and had turned up the volume. And his mother and sister, as always, were silent, as if he did not exist. Zhan Luo had laughed dryly twice and had then continued to eat with his head down. He had had a particularly good appetite that night and had eaten several bowls in a row—not because he was hungry, but as if he were swallowing the remnants of his self-esteem in some kind of ritual. He had understood that his college entrance examination scores had nothing to do with his life. His future had been arranged by his father. His only role was to pass on this surname.

Before the start of college, his mother had prepared a gray suit for him, saying it was an adult gift. He had stood in front of the mirror and had felt that the suit on him was very much like a funeral home uniform, with the stench of a corpse. But he had still smiled and had told his mother that the cut was very fitting, and that he would wear this suit the next time he went to receive an award. The mother and son had looked at each other in the mirror. Both of them knew very well that the sports management major he was studying had basically nothing to do with competitions, but his mother had not exposed him and had just nodded lightly.

In college, he had finally gotten away from his father, but Zhan Luo’s life had not gotten much better. There were six people in his dorm, and five of them were of one mind. Only he was always like a soldier who had gotten into the wrong line. Zhan Luo thought to himself that the men in the sports college were all extremely abnormal. The overwhelming muscle training plans, the protein powder reviews, and the topics were always about who had hit on which freshman, and who had touched which gymnastics assistant’s waist. The person in the lower bunk would talk with excitement, and would imitate his girlfriend’s moans with a grin, which would make the whole room laugh. He would turn his back on the upper bunk, and in front of his eyes would be the scene of being ostracized for being short in junior high. These sounds were like his father’s echo, just as familiar, just as disgusting. Men always maintained an order of strength and weakness through attacks and trampling. He could not understand why they were always competing to see who was harder, who was more ruthless. This kind of competition mechanism made him disgusted.

It was always criticized to be out of place with his classmates in the sports college. At first, it was just some teasing remarks, saying that he was not like someone from the sports college, that his speech was too literary, and that his personality had become his evidence of guilt. Slowly, in his junior year, Zhan Luo had begun to be entangled in some gay gossip, which had made the teachers and the junior students believe it to be true. There were even many people who had confessed to him.

At first, Zhan Luo would curse in a stressed manner. Later, he had tried to block, to ignore, to be silent.
But silence itself had become a tacit admission.

He had a hard time shaking off these evaluations. He knew that the pressure he was under did not come directly from his sexual orientation, but from his failure to meet the requirements of the gender script.

The fear and denial that had wandered in his ears as a child had come back to haunt him like noise.

To escape this shame, Zhan Luo had begun to force himself to have a girlfriend, hoping to prove himself through a stable relationship. But he had found that the louder the noise, the more he hated women. It wasn’t until after he had graduated from college that he had been a little sure of his sexual orientation. His physiology did indeed like women.

After graduating from college, he had interned at a sports school, had worked as a training assistant, and had served as a teaching assistant. After graduation, he had been admitted to a professional sports school and had officially become an assistant coach.

Zhan’s father was not satisfied with his son’s career, but he knew that Zhan Luo’s ability was limited, and that he could not be counted on to maintain the family’s glory in the sports field. But fortunately, his daughter in the fencing team had entered the national team as a coach, so he had gradually lost his sense of control over Zhan Luo.

Zhan Luo was not happy after he had started working. He had returned to the familiar sports competition. It seemed that his career as a coach was stable and clear, but in fact, he was still under the pressure of his results. Not only that, but the leaders who loved to form cliques, and the colleagues who were righteous on the surface, had made him realize that the male society was the most unstable quadrilateral. The relationships between them were often quickly established in a structure of power anxiety and competition, and would also quickly collapse. Lacking emotional attachment, there was often only the tool role of “role” and “function” to achieve the placement of resource power, thereby forming a hierarchy.

The ones who were most likely to have a mental breakdown in the sports school were the boys.

As an assistant coach, Zhan Luo often had to comfort the teenagers who were throwing tantrums because of their losses. This was his job, and also the thing he hated the most. The teenagers, who were in a period of vigorous hormone secretion, were full of violence. They would often vent their anxiety of losing and their fear of being eliminated on others openly. Some would complain that the rules were unfair, some would question the coach’s partiality, and some would directly throw water bottles and smash equipment on the sidelines, showing off their well-developed limbs and their preference for using their fists to speak. Every time he had to do psychological counseling, he would always lament the emotional stability of the girls. Zhan Luo had hit a student for the first time during his time as an assistant coach. Just like with his father, he had broken the boy’s ribs with one punch. The student’s parents had called the police, and Zhan Luo had been disciplined by the school. The leader had been implicated, and from then on, he had been given a hard time every year. So after working for two years, Zhan Luo had completely become a marginalized assistant coach.

Although he had suffered a blow in his career, at the same time, Zhan Luo had encountered a beam of light in his destiny.

He had met the woman at a book fair. The two of them were browsing in the contemporary new wave literature section and had happened to be interested in the same author’s novel. The book fair was crowded, and the two had smiled at each other in the crowd.

The woman had not expected a man to like such a pioneering female writer, so she had started a conversation with him.

Zhan Luo had been a little reserved at first. His words had a sense of boundary, and he had gently agreed with the woman’s views. Later, he couldn’t help but talk about The Red String, and he had gotten carried away. He had even used many emotional words, but he was not aware of it, as if he were defending some forbidden feeling.

A silent reader longing for a soul that resonates.

He had looked up at her. There were not many words between them, but their gazes had been quietly stuck in the noisy air of the book fair for a few seconds.

From then on, they had slowly gotten to know each other, and literature had become the thread of their conversation. Zhan Luo had gradually added the frustrations of reality to their topics.

The woman’s frankness, her never judging easily, and even her not staring at the scars on him, had made him feel an unprecedented sense of tolerance. He had begun to try not to be on guard in front of her, and had even told her stories from his childhood. He had beautified the story of him burying a tropical fish, and had turned the greed for death in his heart into the glory of a “wild child.”

The woman was like a soft bed, accepting his secrets and vulnerability. He had found a bit of strength to breathe again. The feeling was like being pierced by a warm beam of light in the deep sea.

He had fallen in love with the woman.

Not long after they had fallen in love, Zhan Luo had taken the woman home. But the situation that night had been terrible. His drunk father had humiliated his mother in front of his girlfriend. Unfortunately, before he could stop him, his girlfriend had left the table. Later, his girlfriend had expressed her incomprehension of his indifference at the family banquet, asking him why he had not stopped Zhan’s father’s violent behavior.

This was not right.
This was to be blamed.

Zhan Luo had not defended himself. Instead, he had felt that his whole body was relaxed.

He had chosen to return home again the next day and had also called his sister. At the dinner table, he had solemnly warned his father, even more seriously than the negotiation after the college entrance examination. This time, his father had still not looked at him and had wanted to avoid the conflict between them with silence. The almost thirty-year-old Zhan Luo had slammed the table at home for the first time, imitating his father’s appearance as a child, inheriting his ability to intimidate, and the physically strong Zhan Luo’s strength was even greater. He had directly knocked over his father’s bowl and chopsticks.

He had said that he was going to marry the woman and had told his father that if he hit his mother again, he would break his arm. His father had said the words “break his arm” before. Zhan Luo was just returning them to him now.

His son’s threat had worked, but the good times had not lasted long. His mother had unexpectedly had a small illness. Although her body was fine, the physical labor was tiring. Every time Zhan Luo came home, he could see his father lying on the sofa, waiting for his mother to cook.

He knew that this kind of exploitative relationship would not have any change unless he died.

The fruit knife on the coffee table had become conspicuous in his sight. His father was like a swaying tropical fish. His breathing had gradually become a little less smooth in his attention.

He had worked as an assistant coach for five years, with no improvement. His position was low, and his salary was small. To start a family with the woman, he had prepared to find another way out. With his girlfriend’s encouragement, he had resigned and had joined a pharmaceutical factory as a salesperson. His career had gradually improved.

Zhan’s father had only found out about his resignation half a year later. The father and son had had another fight. Zhan Luo had not been able to hold back and had sneered at his father’s first half of his life, and had been slapped by him in return.

His father had said that it was his girlfriend who had led him astray, that he had quit a perfectly good job, and that he now dared to lecture him, his father, in this attitude. His father had sworn that he would never agree to him marrying his girlfriend in his life. With that, he had torn up the household registration book in front of Zhan Luo and had kicked his girlfriend out of the house.

Since he was a child, Zhan Luo had been used to listening to his lectures with his head down, avoiding that judgmental gaze. The cold and indifferent tone had belittled his personality, had humiliated his abilities and hobbies, and even the relationship that he was about to enter into marriage had been brutally denied by his father with a single sentence.

Anger, had been brewing in silence for too long.

Zhan Luo remembered a sentence from The Red String, which he and his girlfriend loved the most:

“The gas that has accumulated in a confined space has finally found its spark.”