The place was pitch black, and after sleeping for a while, I woke up again from a nightmare, fearing I would never wake up if I slept on. Tang Yi was still sleeping soundly in my arms; children of her age hadn't yet realized the capacity for danger. When it was time for her to sleep, she naturally did. I checked my phone, and it was around three in the morning.
"Teacher Ye, Ye Qingcheng..."
There was a gap in the tightly packed space. I shone the faint light of my phone towards it but could see nothing. I had no idea what Ye Qingcheng's situation was. I sighed and turned off the flashlight.
By this time, it had been over ten hours since we were trapped, and there was still no movement from outside. Such a massive earthquake, and rescue teams should have arrived. However, the affected area was likely quite large, and my chances of being rescued were almost nonexistent. In all this time, I had only managed to drink a couple of sips of water, and my body was incredibly fatigued.
I tried to shift my position, but the slightest movement sent a muscle spasm through me. A tendon in my shoulder and back was dislocated, causing pain so intense I couldn't breathe. I fought hard, gritting my teeth. I didn't want to wake Tang Yi; the longer she slept, the less fear would trouble her.
Li Jiu had written in his sheepskin notebook that people who experience terrorist attacks would lack a sense of security in their future lives, and their psychological fortitude would easily crumble when facing difficult situations. Subconsciously, they would fear others, and as a result, their avoidance would lead to a lack of societal recognition and respect.
I wasn't a psychology expert, but I felt that what he said was true. Terror was like a seed that would take root and sprout in people's minds. When I read that sentence, I agreed with it, though I didn't know why.
Now, all I could do was minimize Tang Yi's fear as much as possible. Whether she was my daughter or not, if she survived this disaster, she deserved a happy future.
However, pain was a strange thing; the more you tried to control it, the more active it became. Now I remembered that at the moment of the collapse, my back had been hit. It was likely a spinal injury, but my attention had been on my ankle at the time, so I hadn't noticed my back.
I shifted Tang Yi to a different position. This girl slept so soundly. Children her age, when asleep, wouldn't wake up even if the sky fell. After changing my position, I leaned my shoulder against the rubble. The pain did not lessen with the change in posture; instead, it intensified. The human nervous system was peculiar; the more you tried to control it, the more it spiraled out of control.
I probably drifted into unconsciousness from the pain, my vision turning a hazy white. I felt like I was standing at a crossroads, but not a life-changing one. This crossroads was very familiar to me; it was the intersection of the market and the grand theater.
Due to the presence of the vegetable market, traffic there was always chaotic. Therefore, traffic police were always stationed there to maintain order. I passed through this intersection every day and was always particularly vigilant.
The reason for this vigilance might have been somewhat childish, but people of that age would likely think the same way. At that time, I was in the second half of my first year of high school, not unlike other teenagers in their formative years. I had also eagerly acquired my own girlfriend, what is commonly known as a first love.
However, so many years later, what I remembered was not my first love but her father, who was a traffic police officer. I was a very observant person even then, though I didn't realize it myself.
My first love's surname was Chen, and her traffic police father, we privately called him Officer Chen, in the style of Hong Kong dramas. Officer Chen's mood seemed to be related to the traffic; when traffic flowed smoothly, his mood improved. When it was congested, his mood turned sour, and he would shout loudly.
Officer Chen and I had only one significant interaction in our lives. One day, he had been drinking too much and, at night, found himself at that same crossroads. Perhaps because he had been maintaining traffic there for four hours every day, Officer Chen, in his drunken state, felt compelled to come back. He had drunk far too much, acting like a madman, not in uniform, standing in the middle of the intersection, directing traffic.
My first love and I were walking home hand in hand from school and saw him from afar. I instinctively let go of her hand. My first love was also scared. She bit her lip and walked into the middle of the road to try and reason with her father.
However, Officer Chen slapped her across the face. Half of her face turned red, and her emotions became unstable. She yelled at her father, "If you weren't so useless, would Mom have run off with someone else? What are you drinking for? Do you have the face to drink and act crazy? If you lose even this job, what will happen to me?"
I had never known about my first love's family affairs, only that her name was Chen Ling. Chen Ling was a simple girl, not particularly beautiful. In an era of bare faces, a girl's appeal to a boy mostly came from her personality.
In high school, I was not very talkative and had poor athletic performance. It was difficult to attract girls. I met Chen Ling through a club. It was called "helping the needy," but most of the time, we spent our time picking up trash around the school.
Chen Ling and I were often in the same group. Sometimes I would buy her ice cream because I thought she was exceptionally kind. That's how we met, we could talk, and later, we developed into a shy boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. For this, my good friend teased me for prioritizing my girlfriend over our friendship for half a semester.
Boys in that era were generally shy, and I was no exception. When we said we were dating, we were actually dating. All my fantasies stopped at the fantasy stage. To be blunt, my mind was filled with unsavory thoughts, but in reality, I didn't even dare to kiss her. The biggest progress we made was holding hands. This, perhaps, was what first love was like.
...
Now, my consciousness was muddled. The reason I saw this crossroads in my hallucination was likely because it was the only terrifying incident I had witnessed before going to Ruili.
Calling it a "terrifying incident" was probably my own exaggeration. Thinking back, it was really just a petty thief stealing something. At that time, I stood at a distance, watching Chen Ling, who had cried and left after saying a few words, feeling helpless. Just then, a thief appeared at the entrance of the vegetable market. The thief had stolen an old woman's wallet and was discovered. He snatched the wallet from the old woman and ran.
The thief had a small mustache; I couldn't recall his specific features clearly, only the ferocity on his face. He brushed past me. My feet felt rooted to the ground. How many times as a child had I fantasized about being a hero? But when the opportunity arose, I couldn't even move. My eyes were locked on the dagger that was casually exposed at his waist as he ran.
...
Just then, Officer Chen rushed forward. He ran sideways, colliding with the thief, causing the thief to stumble several steps and lean against the wall of the grand theater to avoid falling.
I could feel the thief's instinctive fear, but Officer Chen was too drunk. He lunged at the thief, but lost his balance himself and fell to his knees.
"You little brat, I'm a police officer."
Officer Chen was merely a traffic cop. He could only stand at the crossroads by the vegetable market maintaining traffic. He did such arduous work, and his position wasn't high. The thief, unlike me, knew the details. He didn't want to be caught, and seeing Officer Chen in such a drunken state, he pulled out a knife and threatened, "Mind your own business, it's nothing to do with you."
"How dare you point a knife at a police officer? I'll beat you to death!"
In our imaginations, most police characters in movies and TV shows were formidable when facing villains, subduing them with ease. In reality, it wasn't like that. Even Luo Bo from the Criminal Investigation Bureau was physically weak. Yu Xiaoluo was an exception; her unyielding personality led her to pass the special police exam, but in reality, there were no female special police officers, which was why Wang Zeyí transferred Yu Xiaoluo to the Criminal Investigation Bureau as a detective.
Officer Chen, in his daily traffic police uniform, along with his height and build, could indeed intimidate some people. But today, he was in civilian clothes and was drunk. Seeing the thief pull out a knife, he bravely charged forward.
The struggle between the two ended in a matter of seconds. Because I was close, I seemed to see a flash of silver from the dagger. The dagger was plunged into Officer Chen's stomach. Officer Chen's hand was firmly gripping the old woman's wallet.
The act of injury didn't seem intentional. The thief, in a panic, dropped the wallet and fled.
At that moment, I was stunned. I watched blood flow from Officer Chen's abdomen. After a while, I snapped back to reality, ran to a nearby public phone, and dialed 120!
Officer Chen died. That single stab wound had pierced his internal organs. However, the most terrifying thing was not Officer Chen's death but the subsequent harm it brought to Chen Ling.
The old woman whose wallet had been stolen disappeared without a trace. This heroic act was instead given a different interpretation. Although I kept trying to prove that Officer Chen was a hero, no one was willing to believe a child's words. People were more inclined to believe it was a drunken traffic cop fighting with a passerby.
This world is so unfair. Officer Chen sacrificed his life by being a hero. Yet, everyone wanted to know about his scandals. For some reason, his family matters also spread throughout the school: his wife had run off with someone else, he committed violence while drunk, he was often rude to the people in the market, and so on. Several versions circulated, and one version even claimed that his daughter, Chen Ling, was a manipulative girl who asked her boyfriend to help her father, who was involved in a fight, create false testimony.
It was truly unfair. I was summoned by the disciplinary committee and questioned repeatedly. My stubbornness kicked in. No matter how much others tried to persuade me, I insisted on telling the truth. Until one day, I stood in the school corridor, looking out the window, and saw Chen Ling, carrying her backpack, standing at the main gate, looking back at the high school with reluctance.
She had been expelled.