Chapter 56: Eulogy

Fang Qi wrote the final period, capped his pen, and finally let out a long sigh.

He found his life to be truly absurd. In the student union at school, he was the one writing drafts and reports. After graduation, when he joined the Executors, he was still the one writing drafts and reports. Yu Mi had once joked that if anyone in the group passed away, Fang Qi would be responsible for the eulogy too. This joke somehow spread to Team 1, and those guys actually added his contact info, saying they could invite him to say a few words at their funerals. He initially thought they were joking, but less than a year later, one of those accounts messaged him. The sender wasn’t the account owner, but the Team Leader of Team 1. The owner had died in the line of duty, and one of his last wishes was to hire Fang Qi to write the eulogy for his funeral.

Fang Qi stared at the message, speechless for a long moment. Finally, he tried to learn the format of a eulogy, wrote the draft, and stood at the funeral of that person whose name he didn’t even know, reading it aloud. Listening to the soft sobs of the family around him, he thought this guy’s operation was truly absurd to the extreme. He managed to pull off a wild stunt even with his own funeral. With that kind of mindset, he was probably living quite comfortably down there, with no shortage of entertainment. The unfortunate thing was, the story somehow got around. Soon, all the Executors near Pingjiang knew about a guy named Fang Qi in Pingjiang Group 2, a top-notch writer nicknamed the Eulogy Prince. They all expressed immense admiration that their little Pingjiang held such a master, scrambling to add his contact info to pre-book his funeral eulogy service. Money was no object.

During that period, his contact list ballooned with names, usually followed by a bracket containing specific requests. Some were hopelessly chuunibyou, demanding he wear a black suit, sunglasses, and carry a black umbrella, and that the eulogy must include the line, “You saved the world, the organization will not forget your merit.” Some were performance artists, with a note requesting not a single word be spoken, but that he must buy a white flower, any type, and then burn it at the funeral… Many of these requests made Fang Qi’s heart tremble with fear, always feeling that if he actually did these things, the furious family members would physically attack him. But those guys, full of ideas for chaos, just slapped their chests and swore to him, “Don’t worry, you’re so big, you can take a beating,” or “If all else fails, just write a report to claim work injury compensation from above, you might even make a profit.” They were utterly shameless.

The performance art guy lived well and was promoted six years later. But the chuunibyou guy really did die. He died in a car accident. The culprit was an Insider, deliberate. He was smashed to pieces; they said his head and feet were thirty meters apart. The funeral was set for late July. Fang Qi cursed violently at the date and, enduring Pingjiang’s thirty-nine-degree summer heat, donned the full gear: black suit, sunglasses, and umbrella. Zhou Liao praised him, saying he had the style of someone who could be executed on the spot, a presence impossible without at least ten lives on one’s hands.

—Because he was simply too embarrassed to take the subway in that outfit, he had to borrow Yu Mi’s car to drive there. He read the eulogy at the funeral. The whole place was silent. The master of ceremonies was stunned for a long moment before reacting to give support, probably unable to figure out which mental hospital this fearsome-looking man had escaped from.

After everything was finally over, the guy’s mother stopped him, saying her son had left him a letter. Fang Qi opened the letter and found it was mostly nonsense, praising his good taste in games, acknowledging that The Elder Scrolls V was indeed a great game, and then asking him to burn a copy for him when the new one came out. Fang Qi quickly flipped through the letter. At the very end, there was finally something serious, basically telling him to get their stories straight so he wouldn’t blow his cover in front of his mother, because he had always told his family his job was a secure, iron-rice-bowl position, a leader sitting in an office.

He put the letter away, thinking to himself that he was good at this. He exchanged a few polite words with the mother, subtly and naturally praising her son as an idealist, a good comrade… but the mother waved her hand, telling him not to lie to her. Did he think she didn’t know her own son? If her son could hold a public office, then the world had truly gone to hell.

Fang Qi felt a jolt, thinking, wait, is this one of those storylines? The mother always knew her son was lying to avoid worrying her, and out of consideration, she never exposed it? Before the sourness could even well up in his heart… the mother suddenly lowered her voice and asked, “Tell me the truth, was my son secretly in the mafia?” He felt like he’d been struck by lightning, thinking truly, like mother, like son, their train of thought could be so absurd. In the end, it took tremendous effort to finally explain that her son really wasn’t involved with organized crime and wasn’t silenced by evil forces. Her son genuinely had a secure, iron-rice-bowl job. He even had to pull out his Executor ID before the mother finally believed, a little, that her son wasn’t some thug or gangster.

But then, the mother asked him one last question: Was her son’s sacrifice worth it? Fang Qi paused, then nodded, saying her son had died a heroic death, saving many people… The lies flowed from his mouth, then turned into smoke he inhaled into his lungs. He sat on the curb, smoking one cigarette after another. People passing by didn’t dare look him straight in the eye, afraid this madman might pull a machete out of his clothes at any second.

Was her son’s sacrifice worth it?

Fang Qi didn’t know how to answer that question, because her son hadn’t sacrificed himself at all. He had been killed in retaliation. The driver was a young man from the Inner Circle, a fanatic who firmly believed that patients like himself were superior beings and should rule over the incompetent pigs… These so-called Disease Supremacists had been growing in number since ’06, even showing signs of clustering. They were common among the younger generation of the Inner Circle. They were like piled-up firecrackers, only needing a single spark to ignite. And the fatal problem was, many new Executor recruits were the same, holding the extreme view that “these lunatics are making too much trouble, we might as well just eliminate all the troublemakers to root out future problems.” The fanaticism on both sides was identical.

The young Insiders felt the rules and systems were too harsh, that the Executors didn’t treat them as human. The young Executors felt the rules and systems were too soft, insisting on procedural justice… Thinking of this, Fang Qi couldn’t help but sigh. Do these young people even understand one principle? If things truly blow up, everyone is doomed. Do they really need another catastrophe like the Tao Family tragedy, to feel the pain, before they can calm down?

(———)

A vending machine selling soda and drinks, placed beside the stairs.

Qi Xin stood before it, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out a slightly heavy cloth wallet. She hesitated, not touching the twenty-seven coins, but instead choosing a purple five-yuan note with a crease on its surface. This paper note was quite new, with only a single fold mark, which was why she had kept it until now and never used it.

She took out the purple note, hesitating as she looked at the vending machine. Her gaze swept across the drinks inside, finally settling on a blue package on the third row. But the number “2.00” beneath it made her pause. It seemed different from the price she remembered.

After a brief thought, she carefully put the purple note back into her wallet. Anyway, she wasn’t really thirsty; she just wanted to buy a bottle of water and, incidentally, get change for this note.

“Are you thirsty?”

She suddenly heard Li Yuan’s voice from behind. Turning around, she keenly sensed the woman’s mood was a bit low. She asked softly, “I’m just… looking around. Is it over?”

“It’s over. Yu Mi passed the test. Now he just has to wait out the six-month observation period.” Li Yuan seemed to think of something and asked, “By the way, are you free this afternoon? Or do you still have homework to finish?”

“I finished it at school. I can leave my prep work for tonight,” Qi Xin hesitated. “Why, is something the matter?”

“Nothing important,” Li Yuan sighed. “My mother recommended a pretty good mango tea shop. It looked quite tempting. Want to try it?”

Qi Xin opened her mouth, thinking about how to refuse Li Yuan’s invitation. She suddenly regretted being so inflexible earlier; finding an excuse now to say she had afternoon plans would be far too obvious. As she was pondering, she suddenly felt a warm touch on her head—then realized it was Li Yuan’s hand.

She looked up with slight confusion, not moving.

Li Yuan maintained a serious expression. She first patted Qi Xin’s head, then ran her fingers into her hair. She paused, observing the girl’s expression. Seeing no reaction on that pretty face, she then ruffled the neatly combed hair. Even when her hair was mussed to the point of sticking up, the girl merely pursed her lips slightly in discomfort, but didn’t speak or move.