Chapter 52: Hesitation
Translator: Letty / Editor: DarkGem / IceTea
Chang carefully crept over to the front of their bunk bed, but he wasn’t even able to raise the knife as he gazed at their unruffled faces.
Somehow, this scenario and his hesitation were constantly pushing him to be more decisive as it was the right timing.
“If I were living in a web novel, I would definitely be an incompetent protagonist; I can’t even kill someone who’s totally vulnerable.” Chang smiled mockingly. He forced himself to think of their shameless behavior as if he was hypnotizing himself to feel better and to be more decisive.
From the beginning, they occupied the beds unfairly and accused him as a murderer; they even threatened him to share his food, and the look of them as they chomped greedily…
This recollection eased Chang’s guilt towards killing the mother and son, as he was no longer anxious. Chang stood tiptoed, and his right hand holding the knife passed through the gap between the rail and the bed. He confirmed the position of the son’s neck by touching the pillow with his left hand. He then covered the son’s mouth swiftly, and the knife followed the momentum and made a deep cut.
It was only an instant, and it was a simple process.
Chang only felt four sensations before the son was dead: first was the warm exhalation when he covered the son’s mouth, and second was the sensation of breaking strings when he cut through the muscle of the son’s neck – it was the same feeling from when he cut off the bullfrog’s tongue, but it was much easier this time. The third was the light trembling and convulsion of the son’s body, and the last was a spring of warmth covering both his hands – it was blood.
These four things happening in less than 20 seconds, and thus a person had died. The time he used was less than one-hundredth of the time he waited in the dark. 25 years of the son’s existence was erased in such a short amount of time.
Destruction was always much easier than creation.
Perhaps the slight shaking from the upper bed affected the lower bed, but the mother opened her eyes fuzzily.
The same moment she opened her eyes, she only saw the upper body of a man with a grim face. The next second, the coldness and pain on her neck made her breathing more difficult.
Chang stabbed the knife into the mother’s throat. He finally witnessed the whole process of him killing a person as the mother was sleeping on the lower bed.
The knife went into her neck smoothly and the blade landed on the most fragile and vital part of the neck without any obstructions. Chang didn’t even glance at the knife because he knew the woman would die from this. The reason that he didn’t look at the knife was simple; his attention was caught on her eyes – he never knew the expression in a person’s eyes could change this quickly.
As the knife buried into her neck, Chang saw the confusion in her eyes, and her panic came after. He read her baffled expression after three seconds – at the forth second, the change in her eyes was complicated.
In that one fleeting moment, her fear was the most obvious emotion. As if she thought of something, her fear was covered by sincere pleading.
Her mouth was wide open and she made her greatest effort to say something, but only a deep groaning could be heard. Her limbs clutched together and her hands were waving as if she was catching something in the air. She seemed to want to express something, but the knife in her throat and the gushing blood refrained her from doing so. The mother stared at Chang deeply, conveying her thoughts and hopes by her eyes and mouth.
Perhaps Chang was stunned by the expression in her eyes, or perhaps it was his first time concentrating so hard on killing a person, but Chang involuntarily tried to distinguish what her wish was.
“Pl…Plea…se…” the first word wasn’t surprising at all; she was begging for something.
“Don.. don’t… kill… m…” Another few words didn’t affect his feeling either.
“M…my….so….son…” These were her last words.
The whole sentence put together was, “Please, don’t kill my son.” His mind went blank as if he was pulled out from reality. Whatever he saw became blurry, and his stomach convulsed. The hand that was holding the knife started shaking violently.
While his mind wandered away, the son’s blood finally permeated through his bed and a big drop of blood splashed on the mother’s face.
It really was a big drop of blood.
It covered her whole face.
The blood made her eyes red.
“No…” When this drop of blood smeared her eyes, her expression changed again as she realized the situation on the upper bed. She no longer pleaded; her pupils contracted in an instant and her body struggled violently as if she was using her last strength to get the anger and desperation out of her chest. The blood in her throat even dribbled from the corner of her mouth. All the effort she made resulted in a shriveled and weak yet emotional scream.
“No—” the brief and quiet scream was later covered by the bubbling sound from her throat. Her pupils began to dilate after she lost her persistence – but during the whole process, her uplifted hands never withdrew from the air.
“Er…” Chang could not hold on any longer after the scream, he was extremely nauseous and threw up as if he was letting out all of his guilt.
The whole dorm was awakened and they witnessed this horrible and pathetic scene.
However, the first one who recovered from the stunning scene and got off the bed was the person who didn’t sleep at all. He walked to Chang and patted on Chang’s shoulder, and glanced at the person who was also awakened – Dr. Huang.
“You woke her up, we need to…”
“Don’t, don’t touch me! Don’t ask me to kill someone again!” Chang pushed away Qing Shui’s hand and he almost emptied his stomach. He slumped onto the ground and the expression of the mother pleading him kept flashing back into his mind.
Chang suddenly realized that even though the mother was impudent and shameless, she was merely a mother, like his own. She was a living person and a mother. She was evil in some sense, but she certainly didn’t deserve death. In her last moment, her biggest reaction was not begging for life, but instead motherly love.
……
Qing Shui stood beside Chang for a few seconds, and he then gave up on comforting Chang. He opened the door to observe if anyone noticed the events in the room. After confirming that no one heard or saw the events that occurred, he went back into the room and wrapped their dead bodies using the bed sheets. He then stuffed the bodies into two woven bags and he called Jing.
“Come, I need you to help me look for somewhere that has no traces of human. We need to throw them out.”
“Uh,” Jing nodded feebly. She looked at Chang, and then she turned to the doctor who was shaking on the bed fearfully, and finally jumped off the bed.
In the icy wind and under the dim moonlight, Qing Shui carried one bag on each side of his shoulders and went out with Jing.