[Light Cut] Dwelling Skin

Chapter 14

Onikiri smelled the strong smell of alcohol on Minamoto Raimitsu, and he knew Minamoto Raimitsu had always consciously refrained from drinking alcohol—according to him, excessive alcohol would make people stupid and mentally weak, but according to his current appearance From the looks of it, he has gone far beyond the boundaries of reason.

On the basement floor of the tavern, the air is not circulated enough. People who drink too much hug and make out on the sofa, regardless of whether the man or woman under the mask is ugly or beautiful. Anyway, no one can recognize anyone. There are too many people, and the air is heated. When he got up, the air conditioner seemed to be turned off, and the music in the lower floor broke the eardrums, only this small area seemed to be a silent vacuum. He was dressed in a strange costume, disguised from head to toe, like a clown in a stage play.

——For some reason, Onikiri was quite convinced that this was a coincidence meeting, and like everything that happened to them in the past, it was an arrangement of fate.

Out of the corner of his eye, Onikiri saw another man wearing an oni mask. He stood on the edge of the excited crowd and kept turning his head, looking at him and Minamoto Raimitsu with hesitant eyes. Obviously, if he hadn't gone through this turmoil, That's the person I'm really looking for.

In the middle of the room, Kuriyama looked back and saw Onikiri talking with a stranger. After a moment of panic, he was determined to help Onikiri out of the predicament, and squeezed out with all his strength. arm.

"Why are you standing here?" Amidst the deafening music, he had to raise his voice, "Come join in the fun with me!"

"That's right." Onikiri said, nodded slowly, and naturally turned to the side, ready to leave with him.

"Don't go." Minamoto Raimiko said, this time, his hand touched Onikiri's wrist; he seemed to feel dizzy, stopped in his tracks, and rubbed his forehead, while Kuriyama became impatient and restless beside him.

"I don't know you." Onikiri repeated.

"You are very similar to an old friend of mine," he said stubbornly. "When you appeared in front of my eyes, I thought I saw him."

"You don't need to use such an excuse if you want to strike up a conversation," Li Shan interjected. Under the mask, he didn't recognize who this person was. He just thought he was inexplicable and wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. "Don't bother us."

"No," he insisted, "I mean it."

Minamoto Raikou's voice is hoarse and rough, as if yelling and overused, the whites of his eyes are covered with bloodshot eyes, and Onikiri's determination is almost shaken, but he gradually learns to be smarter in getting along with this person He has learned enough lessons to think that he should not be fooled by his appearance of weakness, and he should stick to his original position.

"I guess you must often make this mistake of admitting the wrong person." He said coldly.

Minamoto Raimitsu seemed to be hesitant, and then said:

"I just lost him for some reason and I'm not sure if I'll ever get the chance to see him again, so when I see you, I miss it so much."

"Take me as that person, can you save him? Will he come back to you again?"

The question was so surly and vicious that Minamoto Raimitsu said it suddenly, as if he had been slapped.

"You know very well that what stands in front of you is just an occasional stranger, and I have nothing to do with the person you know, because of the regrets you have caused yourself, stubbornly using a stranger as a substitute, Can't tell the difference between imagination and reality, are you pretending to be confused, or are you really stupid?"

The drummer struck out the last syllable, the vocalist threw the clothes into the crowd, the girls giggled like crazy, and Onikiri saw Minamoto's chest rise and fall.

"I didn't admit the wrong person."

He said one last sentence, turned around and hurried away, never looking at Onikiri again.

Li Shan didn't know, so he went forward and saw that the emulator's eyes were fixed on the empty exit of the safe passage, and the indicator light quietly produced a dark green light in the dark, so he reminded him cleverly: "That guy won't come back to bother you." is you."

"Not again." Onikiri replied.

After the next song started, the tall friend from the customs finally got in touch with Onikiri, and told him the time when the information modification will take effect, so that they must leave the border checkpoint between 55:[-] and [-] o'clock tomorrow afternoon , when it was close to the shift point, the first round of staff was the least attentive.

"I almost broke out in a cold sweat just now," he said. "You can just walk away with a few perfunctory words, but you yell at that guy for a whole load of things. Do you really think you didn't attract attention?"

"Who knows, probably not."

"You shouldn't have talked to him in the first place, it's unnecessary."

"Don't be so nervous. If I panic, others will be suspicious when they see it. Why don't you just blame him, so that he won't feel anything strange."

"I still don't see the justification for your actions," he emphasized.

"But it didn't reveal anything."

Onikiri replied casually, then walked into the elevator neatly, descended to the garage on the second floor, left the noise and the smell of vomit, found the parking space when he came, and sat in the passenger cab After a while, Kuriyama also got down and sat down on the driver's seat.

"Well," he said, "I can send you out tomorrow."

He had hoped to catch a little bit of joy from Onikiri's face, but he couldn't help being surprised when he found nothing.

"What's the matter?" he said. "I'm doing all this work and risking myself for you, and you have nothing to be grateful for?"

"Don't worry, I will thank you when I really go out."

This old and cunning human being weighed the simulation man's answer repeatedly, and he couldn't help feeling suspicious, but he immediately thought that the simulation man still lacked a flexible rebellious mind after all. After all, he thought, this guy's next life or death will matter. It is in his own hands, and there will be no mistakes—unless he doesn't want to live anymore.

When Onikiri returned to the warehouse, it was just after twelve o'clock.He took off his disguise and threw it on the ground, with his cheek against the worn-out sponge pad. The surface of the sponge pad was extremely dirty, showing a tired softness.

In the window, in the purple night sky, the incomplete crescent moon is like an oil painting inlaid in the glass, the edges spread out like ink melted in water, smudged with blurred light.

The night becomes a huge hourglass, and time becomes visible, flowing smoothly and peacefully.

——In "The Tale of Genji", Mr. Genji, who was drunk after the red leaf appreciation banquet, met his enthusiastic and brave lover who chanted "the hazy spring moon night, the beauty is unparalleled in the world" in such a moonlight.

Such thoughts flashed through his mind, exploded like a short-circuited spark, and disappeared.

All night he counted the time he had left in the city.

At [-]:[-] the next day, the two arrived at the border crossing.If they leave by public transportation such as the Intercity Express, it will take one more checkpoint, so the means of transportation they choose is still the old electric car. The vehicle must be searched, and the person must pass through the security system and then accept manual inspection. verification of documents.

The reporter passed by first, feeling very nervous, but seeing Onikiri's face was still impeccably calm, so he thought:

"This guy can really bear it!"

The staff stared at Onikiri's face several times, so long that Kuriyama was about to run away, but finally tapped the seal and let Onikiri go.

They had just driven two or three kilometers away when a sign of a car charging station came into view.

At this moment, Onikiri, who had been silent all this time, suddenly spoke to him:

"Stop at the charging station up ahead and buy me a drink."

"Why don't you go?"

"Who knows if we've opened up police territory, it's not just in case."

Kuriyama was dissatisfied with Onikiri commanding himself at will, but he was irrefutable to his words, so he went to the supermarket impatiently. When he was paying at the cash register, he suddenly caught a glimpse of the dummy climbing out of the corner of his eye and sitting in the driver's seat. He got on the seat, and before he finished the payment, he rushed out, only in time to catch a glimpse of the eyes in the rearview mirror, and the car disappeared in his field of vision.He was left holding two bottles of Coke and furious in place. The staff at the charging station stared at him in amazement as he smashed the Coke on the charger, and the frothy brown liquid splashed all over the ground. Finally someone dared to ask him what was going on. The reporter heard someone with his back turned to him not far away, holding his mobile phone and talking in a low voice. The matter of smuggling the emulator was about to be exposed, so he forced himself to wake up from his rage, and could only tell the staff with a wry smile that he and his friend had parted ways during a trip with something to do, and obediently paid for the defaced equipment compensation, and called a taxi to drive him back.

And Onikiri——Onikiri has already crossed the intercity highway, the speed of the car has been adjusted to the high-efficiency mode, and the yellow liquid in the car's perfume bottle is shaking non-stop. For the first time in his life, he has obtained complete and short-lived freedom.

He neither wants to hide in Tibet, count the remaining days to live, nor let himself become a pawn in another person's game. He has decided early on that he wants to end up in the barren land abandoned by human beings. The land; the alien land that he had looked across the river, through the barbed wire where three dead bodies hung;

In the past, he didn't understand why those humanoids crossed the river and ran out. It was obviously a ruin of nothingness. Now he understood that the dying elephant would leave his companions and take the initiative to find a cemetery for himself. The dying humanoids, So it would be—and the city is too crowded to have a place to sleep.

He rolled down the window of the car, and the howling cold wind immediately entered the car, making a whirling sound. The network connected to the car had been cut off in advance, and without navigation, he could not know exactly where he was, only knew that he was Farther and farther away from the city.

While escaping, he still couldn't help but look back at the city of sin—the well-protected green space on the edge of the city is barely covering the colorful buildings behind him, just like the land of Adam and Eve. Shameful leaves.

After five o'clock, it was the time when the sun was setting in the west. The horizon was far away in the sky, and it was close in front of us. In the western sky, a round of heavy red sun was slowly sinking, as if the sky could not bear such a weight. Covered with red sunlight, it illuminated the dry and barren ground and illuminated his ashy eyes.

He is driving this small car, the skin, nails, and teeth are all immersed in such a red light, as if wrapped in a dimming flame, the car is the scene in the painting, and he is the person in the scene— —until he sailed from light into dark night.

A sparse group of dilapidated buildings appeared in the field of vision, tall and short, and there seemed to be some gaps that could be called "streets". Onikiri stared at it for a while, then slowly approached it, turned the car Parked next to a small three-story apartment and got out of the car.

The overused old car drained its battery at this moment, groaning and dying.

Evidently, this was the old town, and there were still some undestroyed buildings from that war, but like him, both were things that had lost their value.

The fallen ones can be rebuilt, the broken ones can be rebuilt, and the dead ones can be reproduced. How smart people are, there is always a way to solve the problem of "lost".

But he doesn't care anymore.

He took the initiative to choose to exile himself, and before being judged by the world, he decided the end of his life first.

He felt something sharp and hard under his feet, so he lowered his head to look:

It turned out to be a pile of weeds, a crushed grass branch lying askew on the ground, exuding a fresh fishy smell.

This place should be completely dead. It is said that every inch of land is covered with toxic dust. For more than ten years, human beings have forgotten it and avoided it. According to the government's propaganda, this place has long been like Silent Hill. However, it is in such a place that there are signs of life.

He watched without moving, and couldn't help being surprised, and walked forward. There were some scattered puddles in front of him.

A few gray-brown lizards lay on the wet, cool, caked sand, and when they sensed his approach, they fled swiftly. Under the wall and by the puddle, there were grass bushes, one place in the east, one place in the west, and on the blades of grass. Reflecting the cold blue moonlight, there may be other creatures, but they are lurking safely in the dark protective color.

He took a few more steps in a daze, then stopped suddenly, his heart was beating extremely fast, and his eyes were wide open.

Something was huddled in a corner, motionless, its white hair sparse, curly, matted, obviously never bathed, but still alive—it was breathing, its chest was heaving.

It was a living dog, although it was very dirty, but based on this, Onikiri could tell that it was not an electronic dog; those man-made pets had their own cleaning system, they had to be clean, beautiful, spotless, and obedient , never bite.

"What are you doing here?" he blurted out, then realized that it couldn't understand anything.

The dog also raised its head and observed him with difficulty, with its front legs slightly propped up on the ground, trembling constantly.

He looked at it, looked and looked, and his breath became short of breath. The animal brought a flash of light to his memory, and he remembered where this feeling of déjà vu came from—in the many times that Minamoto Raimitsu had shown him. In the image, in his dream, the snow-white Pomeranian nestled between the couple of lovers on the sunny grass, like a fluffy ball.

He knelt down, inserted his fingers into the dog's messy fur, touched the warm flesh underneath, and touched a brass-colored rusty name tag.

His fingers were trembling, aching like calcium deficiency, and twitching. He slowly recognized the letters on them, but there was only one word engraved in English letters on it, which was obviously a name given to dogs by people.

He felt dazed for a moment, then burst out laughing.

Of course, of course not that dog, what dream is he having! ——More than ten years have passed, its lifespan has long been exhausted, and it is already dead. As for this white dog that appeared by accident, it may have escaped from the city, or it was brought here by some human being and abandoned here , anything is possible.

The dog was stroked by Onikiri, but he didn't try to break away from him.Instead, it slowly moved closer to him, lowered its head, and touched Onikiri's leg, whimpering in its throat, as if approaching a kind-hearted owner who had raised him for many years.

"I am not your master," he said.

But the dog still rubbed against Onikiri, continuing to cry out in mourning, and his heart trembled from the warmth of the living thing: even a single hair of it was warm.

It's real, I'm fake, for human beings, I'm just an inferior gene copy, ghosts thought about it, and suddenly felt relieved, but for this beast, it has already recognized my existence, we are Equal and independent.

At that moment, he finally reached a reconciliation with the lingering "Onikiri" that existed in him.

It is no longer necessary to deliberately extract the relationship between him and him: they have already complemented and continued each other.

Then he realized what he had to do.

"Come with me," he said to the dog on his lap.

The dog still couldn't understand what he said, but it seemed to feel very tired again, so it lay down and made a nasal sound.

He went back to the car, searched around, and took out a mobile phone. It hadn't been charged for a long time, and the battery had already been exhausted. He restarted the car, switched it to energy-saving mode, turned off all the lights, and plugged in the phone. The power supply sent in a stretched amount of energy, and after a while, the screen finally lit up.

He still remembered Minato Raimitsu's usual number, quickly turned on the positioning, and then sent him his coordinates - he was not sure whether this number Minamoto Raimitsu was still in use, there was a great possibility, the market Those in the administration are closely monitoring the call records of this number.

But he didn't have much room to think: the screen jumped and fell back into slick darkness.

If there was any chance for him, it would have ended just now.

He picked up the dying dog, put it in his arms, put the back of the chair down, and lay back, looking at the stars in the night sky.

Who will come first, the police or Minamoto Raimitsu?

Yet he waited for the unknown future with peace in his heart.