Chapter 14: To Kill
Chang sighed as he walked through the crowd. He repressed his feelings and tried to stay detached from his surroundings, trying to avoid looking at people who were about to die and hearing the cries from their families.
However, the more he tried to avoid looking around, the more he was able to perceive everything around him.
The anguished faces entered his eyes and into his mind; Chang felt like he couldn’t breathe as he walked through the crowd.
He continued forward and gradually drifted away from the crowd. He felt like a lonely soul.
“Sweet heart, you can have the lollipop if you go inside the hospital and tell us what happened.” When Chang moved along the street with glazed eyes, he heard a voice that made him uncomfortable.
“No, I don’t want to go.” Then came a cry from a little girl.
“Are you going or not?” The voice suddenly became stern.
The strange conversation attracted Chang’s attention; he could no longer remain uninvolved. He walked toward the voice and saw three men with flat-top hair style.
Among the three, one had a scar on his face, one was stout and one had a hooked nose.
They all had the same kind of standard prisoner haircut. Their coarse hair was closely cut to their scalps.
This kind of hairstyle was rare on the street; the chance of running into men with this haircut was less than one in a hundred. Now that there were 3 men with the same haircut gathered together, their identities were obvious – prisoners.
Both their appearance and behaviour resembled that of criminals, and although they weren’t in uniforms, Chang was almost completely certain that they were.
The three also had injuries on their bodies and faces, probably caused by fighting with others. If Chang was correct, they must’ve been prisoners who escaped from jail after the growth of the red fog, their injuries were all infected.
In front of them was a six-year-old girl. Obviously, they didn’t know each other, but there weren’t any parents watching over the girl.
“I don’t want to go into the hospital, it’s dangerous in there.” The little girl shrank her neck after she heard what the people in front of her wanted her to do.
“Bullsh*t, we’re just asking you to walk into the hospital. There’s nothing dangerous there.” The hook nosed man said with a grimace.
“…It, it’s dangerous…” The little girl repeated as she started sobbing.
Seeing this, Chang felt even more uncomfortable than when he witnessed death. The struggle between having integrity and surviving made it difficult for him to breath, but he didn’t want to be kind again – in the chaos, things like this happened all the time. It was none of his business, and he didn’t want to risk himself for that meaningless morality.
Chang turned away to the opposite direction. He decided to ignore the cry.
He heard a resounding smack on a face as he took the first step.
“Fu*k! You’ll do what I say, no more bullsh*t!” It was a husky and thick voice.
Then, the girl started to cry louder. Chang gritted his teeth, but didn’t stop.
But then, an outrageous sound stopped him – a flick of a switchblade as well as the sound of skin being cut by the blade. What came after was a heart-wrenching cry.
“F*ck!” He furiously spat and turned around. The first thing he noticed was a long trail of blood which had already coated half of her delicate face. She cried desperately but failed to attract even the slightest sympathy from the thug trio.
In the thick fog, the visibility of ordinary humans was three meters. To visualize the distance, three meters was similar to an adult leaping or running two steps; it was a very short distance.
Hence, when Chang sank the scalpel into the hook nosed man’s neck, the man didn’t even have time to see Chang’s face.
The tip of the scalpel poked through the right carotid artery, then Chang pulled the scalpel downward, cutting the veins too. He jumped off of the thug’s body and blood gushed from the thug’s neck immediately. The hook nosed man covered his neck and scowled, but that expression didn’t last for more than a few seconds. His body collapsed soon after he shortly moaned.
However, no one cared about the Hooknose; to be exact, no one looked at him. The remaining two were terrified by the young man who came out from the fog. They were all drawn towards his bloody hand and the scalpel.
Chang stood still and clenched the handle of the scalpel after taking the thug’s life, then he stared at the remaining thugs.
“Who are you?” The scar faced man broke the silence after he gazed at Chang for a few seconds.
“A passerby.” Liu Chang answered honestly. The feeling of killing someone for the first time wasn’t wonderful, but it gave him a sense of relief. The pressure of having integrity was released as he brandished the scalpel; his heart surprisingly felt lighter.
Contrary to his feelings, Chang’s body was extremely excited. Excess epinephrine was secreted from killing the thugs, causing his body to tremble uncontrollably.
“A passerby?” The scar faced man saw Chang’s tremble and quickly learned that he was merely an amateur. Thus, he revealed a look of contempt, “Kiddo, you must have watched too much Marvel shows and wanted to be a hero. What a pity; today’s the day you’ll learn your lesson to not be a hero.”
While the scar faced man was talking, he flicked the switchblade from his hand. There was blood on the blade – it was this guy who lacerated the little girl.
Seeing here, Chang slightly squinted his eyes and stepped back without speaking.
“Well well well, now you know what fear tastes like.” Seeing Chang stepped back into the fog, Scarface grinned loudly, “Little bastard, don’t try to be a hero when you aren’t! You were daring to kill a person, but facing me, you’re just scared silly!”
Chang calmly stood in the fog which was beyond the scar faced man’s vision. He took a few deep breaths and stabilized his own body. He indifferently looked at the man who was still clamoring.
Then, he moved slowly and walked around Scarface until he was four or five meters behind him – at this distance, Chang could see every movement the man made without revealing himself.
Afterwards, things became very simple. He took two big steps and thrust the scalpel into the man’s spine in his lower back. Chang twisted the scalpel, then withdrew the scalpel at the same moment the man uttered a piercing scream. His body was convulsing.
“No…no…”
The unbearable pain from his spine caused the scar faced man to convulse, and his upper and lower body contractions were already disjointed.
The scream finally sparked fear in the last thug; the two killings were too eerie to him. The stout man made a decision that was both right and wrong under panic.
He grabbed the little girl tightly.