The End of Memories (2)
“Watching them force-feed Su Yue with the drugs he had personally made, Lin Jueshui wavered. He picked up the gun from the ground and aimed it at me. At this moment, reinforcements were still delayed. Zhao Junfeng probably didn’t expect that in the few minutes he was held up, Song Yiwu would die.”
“At that time, the police higher-ups ordered them to stay put. Song Yiwu broke away from the main group to find me. As soon as the gunshots rang out, he rushed out.”
Lin Youyuan, speaking up to this point, gently closed his eyes, his shoulders trembling slightly.
Outside the screen, Song Yuhang clenched her teeth, her fingers tightly forming a fist. When Lin Yan freed her hand, there were already marks of blood in her palm.
It’s not hard to imagine how tragic the scene was back then.
Lin Youyuan, dragging his already crippled legs, crawled over, blood flowing down his trousers, staining a large area beneath him.
He propped up his head, “Brother, Brother, Brother Yiwu, wake up! Wake up! Don’t sleep, don’t sleep! I’ll take you to the doctor, your wife and children are still waiting for you to come home, Brother!!!”
A man does not shed tears easily, but on that day, Lin Youyuan cried out all the tears of his life.
Blood continuously gushed from his body. That shot hit his throat, piercing his vocal cords and the carotid artery, leaving a bowl-sized scar.
Lin Youyuan tried to cover it for him, but Song Yiwu could no longer speak. With each cough, crimson and warm blood flowed through his fingers to the ground.
With his last bit of strength, he grasped his hand, barely uttering a few monosyllables: “Go… you… wife… children…”
Lin Youyuan wept bitterly, nodding frantically: “I know, I know, Brother, don’t talk, I’ll take you away, take you home, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine…”
As he spoke, he tried to lift him up, but his legs were completely powerless. Song Yiwu’s arm slipped from his grasp, and the two of them fell into the mud together.
“Brother! Brother!!!”
His desperate cries merged with the sound of sirens as the main force finally arrived.
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It was a chaotic battle.
Gunshots, explosions, footsteps, the voices of people on walkie-talkies… Lin Youyuan heard none of it.
He only heard his own and Su Yue’s crying.
He cried for Song Yiwu, while Su Yue wept bitterly for another person who caused his death.
“No, Xiaofeng, no, don’t kill him!”
Zhao Junfeng was aiming a gun at him, his eyes reddened from smoke and fire.
“He killed Brother Yiwu, either surrender or die!”
Su Yue rushed over and hugged Zhao Junfeng’s leg: “Xiaofeng, Xiaofeng, I beg you, let him go, let him go, okay? No one will see, I promise he won’t come back, he won’t do evil again…”
In Lin Youyuan’s arms, Song Yiwu’s body was already cold. The warm blood he shed couldn’t melt the ice and snow, turning into a layer of hard frozen soil.
His fingers dug into the blood-stained earth, finding a Molotov cocktail someone had thrown there, perhaps left by those criminals fleeing in panic.
It was like a slow-motion replay of the moment Lin Jueshui pulled the trigger on him.
Lin Jueshui’s pupils also reflected that flaming bottle flying towards him.
The eyes of the two brothers were filled with the same unwillingness, anger, shock, and pain.
When he was engulfed in flames, Su Yue rushed over to die with him, but Zhao Junfeng held her back firmly.
Lin Youyuan watched as his hair and clothes caught fire, struggling, shouting, staggering back, and finally falling into a pile of grain, immediately swallowed by the sea of flames.
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He cried and then laughed, laughed and then cried.
Lin Youyuan looked up at the heavy snow falling, those snowflakes with a bloody scent, at first he could still see the white, until finally, his vision turned red, turned red, until it was an endless black.
The last thing he did before losing consciousness was to pick up Song Yiwu’s gun and hide it in his arms.
“When I woke up, it was already half a month later. During this half month, the doctors tried every possible way but couldn’t stop the infection and inflammation in my legs. In the end, they had no choice but to amputate. After that, Zhao Junfeng came to see me. According to the rules, the guns of fallen officers must be turned in. I don’t know how he managed to keep Song Yiwu’s gun, but clearly, by then, he already had that kind of power.”
The young man, in a brand-new uniform, looked like he had been promoted again.
Zhao Junfeng placed the gun on the table: “Brother Yiwu’s gun, I saw you holding it when you were unconscious, so I brought it for you.”
Lin Youyuan’s dark eyes stared at him, unmoving.
Zhao Junfeng felt uneasy under his gaze, rubbing his nose: “I also brought you two jars of Huadiao wine, but let’s be clear, you can only drink it after you recover.”
Lin Youyuan’s gaze fell on the wine jars, then numbly returned to his face.
“Why didn’t you come earlier?” He had just woken up, his voice weak and hoarse.
Zhao Junfeng didn’t hear clearly and moved closer to cover him with a blanket.
“Brother Xiaolin…”
“Don’t call me brother!” The person lying in bed suddenly became agitated, grabbing his collar and pulling him close, eyes wide with rage.
“Why… why didn’t you come earlier?!”
He panted heavily, his face flushed with abnormal redness from agitation, the IV stand shaking precariously.
“I…” Zhao Junfeng struggled to speak, but before he could finish, he collapsed straight down, convulsing.
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“Doctor, doctor, come quickly!” He stabilized him and turned to call for the doctor.
Soon, a group of people in white coats rushed in, pushing him out and pulling the curtain to start emergency treatment.
Zhao Junfeng looked futilely at his hands. Except for some calluses, there was nothing on them. Yet he always felt that from that day on, his hands were stained with invisible blood.
After a while, the doctor came out and informed them that the rescue was successful, and the hand hanging in mid-air slowly fell.
Zhao Junfeng left a sentence, “Take good care of him, and call this number if anything happens,” then turned and left.
From that day until now, Lin Youyuan still didn’t know where he had gone.
Zhao Junfeng bought a couple of packs of the cheap cigarettes he used to smoke, costing five yuan each, and got two liang of liquor. He went to Su Yue’s house, which was now empty.
The dilapidated door was covered with cobwebs, swaying in the wind. Through the window, the furnishings inside were still the same, but the young people who once drank and had fun together were gone.
He went downstairs with the liquor, passed a few children playing with hoops, walked through the long alley, and came straight to the familiar riverbank. Before Lin Youyuan went to Qiongzhou, they had said their goodbyes here.
In the cold wind, Zhao Junfeng lit a cigarette and placed it on the rock beside him. He also opened the seal on the liquor bottle to let it breathe.
As dusk fell, he took a drag, and the cigarette on the rock was shortened by the wind.
He recalled the last dialogue they had that day.
Lin Youyuan was about to leave and patted his shoulder: “Keep going, kid. When I come back, I want to see you promoted and rich. Don’t let anyone bully you again.”
Song Yiwu, with his arm around his neck, laughed: “Of course, Xiaofeng is smarter and more capable than me. If he becomes an official, he’ll be a good one.”
How did the boy respond back then?
“Yes, if I become a big official, I’ll clear Brother Xiaolin’s name, and I won’t let anyone bully you guys again!”
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Now, five years later, the boy had fulfilled his promise. He cleared his friend’s father’s name, personally presided over his good brother’s memorial service, represented the organization in awarding him the title of “Public Security Hero,” giving him the honor he never enjoyed in life, and even personally sent the captain who recruited him to prison.
He had known for a long time that the person connected with the criminal gang was his captain. He had bided his time, waiting for this chance. The order to stay put was not his; he had just thought to wait for two minutes, just two minutes. If the criminals escaped because of this, his captain would be held responsible and never recover.
It turned out he was right.
Zhao Junfeng reported all the evidence he had collected directly to the higher authorities, and the captain was indeed imprisoned.
Today was the day the prosecutor officially issued the arrest order for him.
Thinking of this, Zhao Junfeng burned his finger on the cigarette butt.
His tears rolled down.
“Brother Yiwu, I’ve avenged you.”
A gust of wind blew, making the cigarette butt on the rock flicker. The ashes, like bones, drifted into the river.
“After that, Zhao Junfeng achieved success and fame, transferred to the Anti-Narcotics Brigade, and rose steadily. I sent people to look for Su Yue; she disappeared without a word. Using the connections I had accumulated from my former life in society, I started doing business. Because I had helped the police before, I was accepted by both the black and white sides, and soon my business flourished. Lin Cheng came to me at that time. Oh, he’s not my biological son; I took him from an orphanage. His parents died from drug use.”
“I adopted him partly for my reputation and partly to atone for my past sins.”
“At that time, I thought Lin Jueshui was already dead. After all, the fire burned his body beyond recognition, so when Lin Ge’s mother came to me with him, I didn’t refuse. I looked at the child’s innocent face and thought he was my only relative in the world.”
As the old man spoke, his masseter muscles twitched slightly, and Lin Yan could easily see he was gritting his teeth.
“But I never expected to raise a tiger. Do you remember when you were six?”
What happened that summer was so painful that Lin Yan chose to forget it physically. She never spoke of it, but at Lin Youyuan’s reminder, the memories came flooding back.
It was her third year in the Lin family. She had a good relationship with Lin Ge, and they attended the same prestigious school’s primary and junior high sections.
LP: I was wrong, Su Yue isn’t Lin Ge’s mother… good…
Also, it’s pretty good that the characters are so complex, I’m so conflicted in what to feel!