C4 (1/2)

I met Zheng Gaang at the southern courtyard on Hong Kong Kiln Road. Zheng Gaang was one year older than me and was already a thirty-eight-year-old middle-aged man. After thirty years, if it wasn't for his illness, I definitely wouldn't have been able to confirm that it was his. At that time Zheng Gaang was crossing the road, I watched him carry a bottle of yoghurt. When the red light lit up, he slowly walked towards me with one foot, and when he walked to the middle of the zebra crossing, the green light turned red, and Zheng Gaang disappeared into the traffic. The green light lit up again as Zheng Gaang slowly moved forward once more. Finally, when the next red light went off, he appeared in front of me.

The way he walked was very painful. He could only use one leg to take a small step, then drag the other leg to take a small step. One of his hands hung powerlessly by his side, while the other held the yogurt.

When he was only a meter away from me, I saw his face. The left side was twisted and saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth.

The moment he saw me, I knew I was right to look for him. He knew a lot, and he knew it thirty years ago.

Because, when he saw me, the yogurt bottle in his hand fell to the floor with a thud.

At that moment, I understood that if there really were ghosts in this world, then Zheng Gaang must be a hell commissioner. The sun was high, but there was no sign of him.

I found Zheng Gaang based on my other classmate Dabo, Dabo is very easy to find, he's a police officer, but his skin condition is still not good. I found Deppo, who told me that his disease was psoriasis, malady, and hereditary. He would not be able to treat it in his life. He would peel off his skin twice a year and when he shed his skin, it would be so painful that he would wish he were dead. When Deppo spoke to me, he kept scratching his armpits with his hands, and I heard the sound of Coko's voice on his armor.

De Bo told me about Zheng Gaang's story. Not long after Zheng Gaang dropped out of primary school, his mother fell into the ditch and drowned due to illness. His father had dragged Zheng Gaang until he was twenty years old, then finally couldn't take Zheng Gaang's burden anymore and ran away from home. I heard that she went to Guangdong to work, but she had already made a family in the south and would never come back. When Zheng Gaang was twenty, he had already suffered a stroke of a few years old. Half of his body was paralyzed, and he had no life skills at all. But by the time he was thirty, he was lucky, and the old house was demolished, and he was given a house to move back to, and a settlement was made, and he married a wife who spent two years with him, and used up all his money, and got divorced, but fortunately did not have any children. Zheng Gaang relied on the house's rent to survive. Although he had a stroke, he was not stupid and did not give his wife the house to save his life.

Zheng Gaang recognized me, so I helped him return to his house. His house was quite large, with three bedrooms and one living room. He would stay in one bedroom while the other two would be rented out to others. The living room was clean, his bedroom was a mess, and I understood that. After all, it wasn't convenient for him to move around.

He still wanted to make me some tea, so I quickly stopped him. I haven't seen him in thirty years. Back then, his classmates were only five or six years old, so there really wasn't any topic of reminiscing about the past.

After the two of them sat down, I didn't waste any more words, and took the initiative to ask, ”Do you know someone from Xu Yunfeng?”

Zheng Gaang spoke after a while: ”It's you.”

”Oh.” I understand that my pronunciation is too similar to this person's name, so I took out a pen and wrote the three words ”Xu Yunfeng” on the palm of my hand, and placed it in front of Zheng Gaang to look at it.

Zheng Gaang watched for a while. He only had half a head left to think and his reaction was very slow. Then, he slowly said.

I was stunned. It seems that this person has really become an idiot. I wanted to go, but I thought of the shock of seeing me for the first time, and felt that he had not reached a point where no one could remember him. On the contrary, he was impressed with me.

I changed the subject. ”When you were hiding in the sewer …”

Before I finished speaking, Zheng Gaang's eyes revealed a look of fear. After a long while, Zheng Gaang finally said, ”That was the first time.”

”What first time?” I asked, but then I realized what he was talking about for the first time.

Zheng Gaang said, ”They are still in a meeting, they even died without knowing, and they are still in a meeting …”

My palms began to sweat. I knew what he was talking about because I didn't know why, but I could see a scene of a six year old child suddenly being brought to the ruins of an explosion and saw a bunch of dead people sitting in a meeting. Those people were sitting up straight, holding a lump of enamel in their hands. They just sat there, unable to see that their bodies had been torn to pieces.

And then the scene in front of me changed again. It was pitch black, full of floating corpses, swaying in front of my eyes, and it took me a moment to understand that this was in the water, and then I saw the crowded bodies, stacked on top of each other, and the expressionless bodies, with their mouths open, sitting in the seats — the seats of the bus!

My eyes suddenly lit up, it turned out that Zheng Gaang had walked to the wall and switched on the light, causing the room to become much brighter. Zheng Gaang did not speak to me earlier, but I still saw something.

I thought back to what De Bo had told me. Zheng Gaang had a stroke after the ferry sank. I looked at Zheng Gaang, who nodded at me and said, ”You saw it, right?

I shook my head blankly.

”I was held back,” Zheng Gaang laughed bitterly, looking even uglier than if he were to cry, ”It took a long time, so I ended up like this.”

I had always thought that my mind was clear. I had never experienced that illusion before. I said in a daze, ”How could I have seen it?”

”You can always see it.” Zheng Gaang said, ”Have you forgotten about Li Xiaofu and Li Xiaoluo?”

”So what?” I asked, and then I remembered the ”Lifespan” pattern on the clothes of the two brothers. I began to tremble. I have not understood this for so many years.