Chapter 22 Part 3

He couldn't hold on.

...

He should have put down the thing in his other hand.

But he didn't have time to react at all.

He was frozen.

He could only watch helplessly as the guitar slipped from his hand bit by bit.

A second before it fell—a hand reached out from behind him.

Xiao Heng stood behind him and grabbed his wrist.

Xiao Heng was half a head taller than him. He looked down at him and said impatiently, "What are you spacing out for?"

As he spoke, his gaze shifted from the top of Lu Yan's head to the wrist he was holding.

Lu Yan's wrist was very thin.

It was all bone, pressing uncomfortably into his palm.

The black tattoo he had seen that night in a half-dreaming state was now in his grasp.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

...

He counted them clearly this time.

It was seven points.

Xiao Heng held his hand and hung the guitar back up.

Xiao Heng clicked his tongue again and patted the top of his head. "Snap out of it. Stupid?"

Lu Yan: "...You're the stupid one."

Xiao Heng's gaze fell on Lu Yan's wrist. "You can't even carry something so light. What kind of arm strength is that? Are you a little girl?"

"..."

Xiao Heng recalled nonchalantly, "In the hallway that day, it seemed like you went down with just one push too."

Fuck.

"The door's right there," Lu Yan pointed at the doorframe. "Get the hell out."

Lu Yan stood in front of the blank wall, the guitar hanging above his head. By the time he heard a phone ring, Xiao Heng was already gone. It was Li Zhen calling.

Li Zhen: "What are you doing? Took you forever to answer."

Lu Yan didn't look at the guitar again. He said, "I was just... tidying up."

Li Zhen chuckled for a bit. "Let me tell you, Old Lu, good news!"

Lu Yan gestured for him to continue.

Li Zhen spoke very quickly, sounding excited—so excited he was almost tripping over his words. "I found a guitarist at the Air-Raid Shelter today. His skills are fucking amazing, you'll definitely be satisfied when you see him! You can't find a single flaw! After he finished his solo, the whole Air-Raid Shelter went crazy. Even Spades Band came to recruit him, you know? Damn, that scene, it was like they were fighting over money..."

Spades Band had a fixed lineup that hadn't changed in years.

For them to be willing to disrupt their current balance to recruit a new member, especially when they weren't lacking a guitarist—that was indeed rare.

Lu Yan asked, "Did Spades get him?"

Li Zhen: "No."

Lu Yan asked again, "Then did you get him?"

Li Zhen: "...Also no."

"And this is good news?" Lu Yan clicked his tongue. After doing so, he felt like his tone had been assimilated by someone.

Li Zhen: "Spades didn't get him, so that counts as good news. At least we have a target now, right?"

"But that guy was pretty strange," Li Zhen smacked his lips, recalling. "It seemed like he was there looking for someone. In the end, he didn't join any band and just left."

Even if Li Zhen described the mysterious guitarist in the most glowing terms, Lu Yan hadn't heard him live and couldn't share his excitement. He just treated it as a minor interlude that passed after they talked about it.

The two chatted, and their conversation drifted in another direction. Li Zhen said, "I have to go to a class reunion in a few days. It's so annoying, I don't want to go. Class reunions are so materialistic now, they're basically wealth-flexing competitions. I can already imagine what those bastards will say."

Speaking of which, Li Zhen put on a high-pitched voice, "Oh, Li Zhen, my goodness, you're still doing music~"

Lu Yan laughed a couple of times.

Lu Yan said for him, "I'm still doing it. What, you got a problem with that?"

Li Zhen laughed too. "That's right, I'm still doing it. So what?"

"What were your old classmates like? I haven't seen you go to any class reunions or anything these past few years," Li Zhen added.

Lu Yan didn't speak.

After a few seconds, he said evasively, "They were just... like that."

They chatted for a while before hanging up.

Listening to the dial tone, Li Zhen thought to himself that they had known each other for so many years, yet he seemed to know nothing about Lu Yan's past.

In the past, when the four band members ate, drank, and chatted, they would always bring up their "glory days": how they used to be. After getting drunk, Jiang Yaoming always liked to talk about how the little girls at school were crazy for him back in high school, and that stupid business about getting a neck tattoo just to defy his homeroom teacher...

But Lu Yan wasn't like that.

He never brought up "my past."

It was as if he had buried the past ten-plus years of his life and was desperately moving forward, leaving "the past" behind.

After hanging up, Lu Yan sat on his bed for a few minutes.

Then, just like usual, he made instant noodles, washed the pot after eating, and went to bed when it was time. He even fell asleep quickly.

Except he had a dream.

In the dream, he returned to Jizhou.

Jizhou had reeds covering the mountains and plains, looking like a sea from a distance.

A voice came from somewhere, repeating the same sentence over and over: "I want to get into C University, the music department."

"The music department."

"..."

Then, as the world spun, the surrounding scenery began to distort. He closed his eyes and fell continuously until his back hit a hard bed board—he had fallen onto a bed.

Under the pillow his head was resting on, there was an envelope. Inside was two years' worth of tuition he had saved up and a one-way ticket to Xiajing City.

The reeds slowly faded in color, turning into a shocking black, and the reed leaves were like the blackened, clawed hands of a monster.

Countless hands reached for him.

Lu Yan woke up startled in the middle of the night, his back covered in cold sweat.

......

After that meeting, Brother Wei spent two full days out gathering information. On the evening of the third day, Brother Wei, having rented a black minivan, appeared on Lu Yan's way home from work.

Lu Yan's dessert shop job was going well.

At first, the boss was captivated by Lu Yan's good looks. "Have you done this before?"

Lu Yan stood there, open and magnanimous. "I have relevant work experience."

As it turned out, once he officially started work, the boss discovered that Lu Yan's so-called relevant experience was selling nut cakes in the past.

"Desserts, the food and beverage industry—doesn't nut cake count, boss?"

"..."

But Lu Yan had a good attitude, was willing to learn, and was just too pleasing to the eye. In the end, the boss accepted this apprentice, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "From today on, you'll learn properly."

On his way home from work, a black minivan continuously honked its horn beside him.

Then the window rolled down, and Brother Wei's head poked out. "Yan, I found him!"

"You still have to use unorthodox methods. Damn it, all that criminal profiling stuff from books isn't as fast as me calling a few of my brothers."

As he spoke, Brother Wei handed his phone to Lu Yan. "Brother Yan, look at the photo. Is this the guy?"

Lu Yan took it. On the phone were a few candid photos.

Judging from the build, clothes, and overall state, he looked almost identical to the person in the surveillance footage.