Apartment for Rent

Guo Li left.

After I got back to my room, I quickly turned my attention to the various images showing on my screens, but my mind at the time was still lingering in the fleeting moment of joy earlier.

In my encounter with Guo Li, there was no doubt that I was holding the upper hand.

A popular and famous professor from Tunghai University was being toyed with by a college dropout, a good-for-nothing middle-aged guy. That simple thought made me laugh uncontrollably, so much that my jaw began to hurt.

That night, old man Zhang didn’t return to his room; he fell asleep on Miss. Chen’s bed. During only the short moment I sat in front of the screens, the PE teacher old man Zhang already did it three times with Miss. Chen. He probably thought he was in an adult movie.

If only they knew that they were but p.a.w.ns in a much larger game, and that the gears of the dark prophecy will soon crush this pair of lechers under its teeth.

And its main rotating shaft was none other than my own delicate design, the teleporter Bo Yan.

That night, after Bo Yan furiously slammed the door behind him, I could hear the humming sound of a race car engine speeding through the quiet alleyway.

A stupid student of the twenty-first century, an idiot no school really wanted but was forced to accept. Pfft, his inner psyche was so terribly fragile, like a silkworm making its coc.o.o.n; the more silks it makes, the smaller it gets.

I used to keep a silkworm in my pencil box during my third year in elementary school. When it started entering the pupal phase of its lifestyle and enclosed itself in a coc.o.o.n, I would constantly poke holes in it with a pen, tearing apart the seams over and over again until finally, it wasn’t able to complete it. Its body would turn a pale yellow colour and soon after, it would curl into a ball and die. A pitiful creature.

I got off track.

A failure of a student like Bo Yan, even after being f.u.c.ked once in the a.s.s, he still had to cause trouble and wake everyone as he raced through the streets late in the night. A typical social disgrace, he just had to be a pain in the a.s.s no matter what.

I got off track again. Every time I got to talk about Bo Yan, I would unconsciously end up going too far.

I made my move the moment Bo Yan left the house.

I took a huge plastic bag with me as I went into his room. First thing I did was dropping some potent sleeping pills into his unfinished can of c.o.ke. (It doesn’t really matter when or where, no habit is a good one, because it usually ends up being detrimental to your health. Ying Ru is surprisingly a master in this aspect of life.) So I went into Guo Li’s room and bagged Ling Hu’s slightly decayed body. I even carefully tied two knots just in case.

I playfully wiggled my tongue as I did that.

I wonder what kind of painful and tragic expression would appear on Guo Li’s face once he discovers the sudden disappearance of the body from his bathroom. I couldn’t wait to see it.

I poked my head out into the hallway, inhaling deeply, and dragged the stupidly heavy and certainly dead Ling Hu onto the lift. Then I pressed the up b.u.t.ton.

Clack!

The old lift moved incredibly slowly both on its way up and down. The torturous delay, combined with ear splitting sound coming from the gears grinding against each other made my heart pound. Even if you told me ten ghost stories right now, I would believe them all.

Time pa.s.sed like a snail while inside the lift, in complete contrast to the time I spent watching through the hidden cameras.

Merely being trapped in a small enclosed s.p.a.ce with a dead body would make my stomach boil, but now that it was really happening, I found myself unafraid. Compared to the time I stumbled into the half-dead, half-alive body inside Ying Ru’s room, this simply paled in comparison.

I lowered my head and gave the plastic bag a kick. I couldn’t tell which part of him I just kicked. I tried to smile.

Because any smile I made would have been the coolest of all smiles. It would make me a real killer, profoundly so.

But for some reasons I couldn’t explain, I failed to form the dimples on my cheeks like I used to.

Does that mean that I still have a shred of humanity within me?

By the time I’m able to laugh while staring at a dead body, would I have finally become a cold blooded monster?

No, I’ve never seen Ying Ru do such a thing in front of her victims, not even the slightest hint of a smile.

Nope, I can’t recall having seen any.

If killing does not make Ying Ru happy, then why does she kill without reason?

The senseless question kept swirling inside my head. Suddenly, the old lift came to a halt and the green metal fences slowly opened to its left. Just when I was about to drag Ling Hu outside the lift doors, a shadow suddenly appeared as I raised my head…

Ying Ru was standing outside, holding a black plastic bag of similar weight of her own and smiling.

I had known that b.l.o.o.d.y black plastic bag for a long time. I had seen it.

She could have thrown it away any time, but no, she had to run into me in a critical moment like this.

It had to be the metallic sound of the lift that awoke Ying Ru from her slumber.

It had to be. She had to be doing this on purpose.

“That’s right,” I returned with a gentle smile, “I usually throw the trash out late at night.”

“Shouldn’t you be going down then?” Ying Ru smiled while dragging the plastic bag into the already cramped lift.

“I should. But I’m weird that way. Haha.” I laughed.

Strangely, maybe because I knew what was inside Ying Ru’s plastic bag, a corpse just like mine, the similarity of the situation we found ourselves in as accomplices had given me courage.

Clack.

Pushing the fence open, I calmly dragged Ling Hu out of the lift. The way the black plastic bulged made me realize something: a body without its limbs severed obviously looked like a body, even when it was wrapped in plastic.

But so what?

I stopped before the lift doors closed behind me and turned towards her.

“Right, what is in your bag? It smells!” I purposely gave her a frown.

“Nothing, just some leftovers.” Ying Ru smiled as the fences closed in front of me.

“Haha, and there I thought you have a body in there.” I pretended to make a joke as I watched Ying Ru’s same pretty face slowly descending down the shaft, further and further.

Then it disappeared.

The instant I opened the doors, I noticed that my hand holding the silver handle was shaking excitedly, unable to stop.

Of all those dark encounters I had had with my mentor, it was the first time I had not faltered.

I kicked Ling Hu again, but harder this time.

Bang! Right in his face.

Now that we have gotten this far, surely, the experienced ones amongst you can already guess what I’m about to do next.

How funny, is it possible that none of you are any wiser?

Or perhaps, I’m no longer mortal.

Looking back at the black plastic bag sitting in the corner of the room, made me wonder how Ling Hu fells curling up inside like a baby.

I wasn’t sure if he was in a state of peace, but the dead probably couldn’t feel a thing anyway, and thus he wouldn’t mind if I gave him another kick to the face.

I hit something hard.

Everyone could become a tough guy when they are dead.

Bo Yan didn’t come back till mid day; the sound of him slamming the doors woke me.

It is a good thing for a lazy a.s.s student like Bo Yan to be cynical. Criticizing society can often be a great way to create a sophisticated cover; it makes him look more intelligent as a whole.

I watched Bo Yan moving through the screens; his face had a few more scratches, and the corner of his mouth was swollen. He probably got into a fight with someone, somewhere, in order to vent his anger.

“Why don’t you go farm the fields, tough guy?” I mocked him.

Bo Yan drank the half-empty can of c.o.ke as he began to play a FPS[1] on the PC called Medal of Honor. Slowly, in the midst of enemy fire on Omaha beach on the French coast, Bo Yan’s head fell flat against his keyboard.

The battle did not cease because of it, even after the heavy machine guns inside the enemy bunkers grinded Bo Yan’s virtual character into a pulp.

“Action!” I smiled.

Before the complex ending of our movie takes center stage, I want to talk about the other characters for a bit.

This is an eight dimensional world. After all this time, you should have learned to see things from eight different perspectives.

Mr. w.a.n.g left early this morning with his daughter. That’s all right; I don’t have a scene for them today.

To be frank, I respect Mr. w.a.n.g a lot. Even though I dosed him with aphrodisiac every night, he still managed to sleep with a hard on. He didn’t even need to relief himself in the bathroom. Every night, he would fall asleep holding his lovely daughter tightly in his arms, but I could tell he was in agony as he wiggled his lower body back and forth.

Meanwhile, I have altered my prophecy. I now have a new screenplay waiting for Mr. w.a.n.g to get into. His new role will be much more suited for someone of his talent.

After a day of marathon style love making, old man Zhang and Miss Chen left the room together. However, they did not both appear side by side like a pair of sticky gums, instead, they came through the drawing room separately, and very quietly.

Miss. Chen was supposed to take her taller boyfriend home tonight, which meant that old man Zhang would knowingly stay in his own room.

I wasn’t really afraid of old man Zhang suddenly skipping work either; he simply didn’t have a reason to.

But I have to say it again: the reason I gave old man Zhang the power to sneak into other people’s rooms was not simply for his insatiable l.u.s.t for women, but most importantly to satisfy his dark peeping fetish.

And there was another woman inside this apartment house.

Of course, I had to admit, I wouldn’t want old man Zhang to sneak into Ying Ru’s room too early, or everything else would have lost their purpose. But I wouldn’t get in his way if he insisted.

What about Ying Ru?

Well, she hadn’t come back after she left last night.

Ying Ru had never been a part of my script; she was more like a temporary hired-gun, or some unrelated actor from the studio next door. I wouldn’t even know if she would bring back another trophy tonight or not.

But I remained hopeful, like a brat constantly staring at the stocking hung on a Christmas Eve.

Meanwhile, Guo Li, a main character of this scene, was probably trying to dig a hole somewhere. Somewhere far away and remote. Or he was preparing the tools and gathering the strength he would need for whatever he was about to do tonight. More importantly, he was formulating a plan.

All plans required preparation.

Anyways, there was nothing stopping me now.

So, I dragged Ling Ru’s heavy corpse into Bo Yan’s room.

Bo Yan was drooling so much it had covered his keyboard. This time he didn’t leave a message trying to communicate with “his other self” before he fell asleep.

I untied the plastic bag and slowly pulled Ling Hu’s gradually stiffened body from the bag. A pool of ooze or some sort of red and yellowish liquid streamed along with his body and over the floor.

Even now, that sharp knife was still stuck in Ling Hu’s chest.

I wasn’t sure if Ling Hu’s decayed blood would coagulate like a pig’s would, or would it gush out like a fountain if I were to pull the knife out right now.  Just to be sure, I proceeded with caution. Besides, the knife shrouded the body with the mystery of murder, so I chose to leave the knife where it was.

I carefully repositioned Ling Hu’s body under Bo Yan’s bed, leaving a small section of his arm exposed on purpose. Then I stripped Bo Yan naked as usual. Out of curiosity, I took a look at his a.s.shole, and d.a.m.n, his rear end was swollen red from all the scrubbing. He was clearly extremely h.o.m.ophobic.

Karma.

After I hid away Bo Yan’s clothing, I carried the naked Bo Yan on my back and went down with the lift. Opening Miss Chen’s door, I tugged Bo Yan away under her bed, and I was smiling the whole way through. However, this time I hid Bo Yan well and did not purposely leave a part of his body exposed.

I closed the doors with satisfaction before I returned to my own room and took a nap.

Tonight is show time; I have to make sure I’m ready.