Puzzle Madness

Chapter 58 Pain
Richard raised his good right hand and slapped it against his mouth. His fingers dug into his flesh, deforming it, but they did suppress all the screams back into his throat, leaving only a vague humming sound.

"I have a good friend who loves watching FBI or CIA documentaries. Oh, she's my deskmate I mentioned earlier. She said that documentaries contain a lot of cold reading, psychological analysis, topic manipulation, and other things."

Originally, Richard's hand was much larger than Doudou's, but now it was completely encased in Doudou's fist, and dark red blood began to flow from between his fingers and drip onto the ground.

Boom!
Richard suddenly grabbed the wet towel roll on the small coffee table used to wipe his hands, stuffed it into his mouth and bit it tightly; the overturned plate fell to the ground.

"Hey, hey; I know you're not an FBI agent, but a corporate agent. But don't play hard to get or speak half-heartedly with me. It's annoying. Only my friends can play tricks on me. Just because you say you're my friend doesn't mean you're my friend, okay?"

"If you have to jump back and forth between my friend and my enemy, I will feel annoyed. The things that annoy me must be eliminated from the world I can see and touch."

"You've been testing me all along, haven't you? Huh? You've been testing my boundaries, back and forth? Isn't that a bit insincere? Because you think there's something I want to know, you want to take this opportunity to determine what I can do? To what extent?"

"No way, are you treating me like a donkey with a carrot dangling from its nose? You told me it was a 'fun thing', but now you're trying to trick me with only half of it: So the rest of this fun thing is exactly where you want to go?"

"Oh—no, no. You think I'm actually still a child and you want to control my immature mind?"

The mathematician saw what was happening, and his body trembled like a sieve; but he also followed Richard's example and covered his mouth with his tiger's mouth to prevent any sound; his teeth left deep marks on the edges of his palms.

Outside the video room, the night was still bustling, but no one paid any extra attention to the closed booth. Only the green glass bottles of soda reflected their distorted faces.

Doudou's gaze passed over Richard and reached the text on the screen, which trembled constantly due to the pause. He studied the trembling interference pattern on the CRT screen with great interest:

"Didn't you see I was yawning the whole time? This part of the worldview introduction is over for now, it's time to move on to the next part."

"Okay, no need to hide anything, no information, or pretend I made the decision myself to keep the conversation going. I'm getting a little bored. Who do you want to kill? Just say it directly. It doesn't matter, but don't bore me, and do it quickly. It's summer vacation, okay?"

"Didn't you promise me before? Summer vacation is very important. It only comes once a year, and there are only a few days left. How many summer vacations do humans have before they finish their entire schooling?"

"So don't waste your time. You get what you want, the doctor clears his name, and I get some happy, wonderful summer memories. It's a win-win-win situation—oh, that [non-zero-sum game] you were talking about before. Okay, get this straight."

The veins on Richard's neck were bulging, and the wet towel he was biting was stained with blood, which was blurred by the cold sweat that kept dripping down: his gums were also bleeding.

"Also, don't spit in front of me. That's a lack of manners, eh?"

But Richard still tried his best to look directly into Doudou's eyes and nodded - perhaps the severe pain covered up his cowardice, or perhaps the fear inspired his courage.

Doudou loosened his grip: Crash! A small ball of blood mixed with sawdust hit the ground and seeped into the cracks between the tiles.

When Doudou loosened his grip, Richard raised his intact right hand. He quickly walked to the door of the box, hiding his bloodshot hand behind the wall.

"Waiter! Bring me a—a take-out bag, and some Red Sun liquor. No glasses, just a bottle."

Richard's left hand now looked more like a skewer of chopped, marinated, and kneaded meat, or an exaggerated chicken drumstick from a cartoon. Between the broken bamboo chopsticks, one could vaguely make out the fingers encircling them.

Curled up and bleeding; it seemed to be stuck in the fist state forever.

He leaned his forearm against the coffee table and poured the bottle of local liquor from the Cochin Autonomous Prefecture onto his seemingly unusable left hand. He then poured the remaining liquor into a damp towel, wrapped it around his fist, and tied it tightly in a plastic bag; the tattered disposable chopsticks remained inside. Li Chuck, trembling, picked up another damp towel; he tied it around his wrist, pulling it taut to stop the blood from flowing further from his palmar and digital arteries—
Finally, he fumbled in his suit pocket and pulled out a short, round tube. He held it up in front of Doudou in a showy manner:

"The stimulant I was given. My hand hurts so much. I need to use it. Please wait a moment."

Richard tore open the plastic packaging with his teeth, rolled up his sleeves, and smashed the needle-free syringe on his forearm.

After taking a deep, long breath, he spoke again, his voice still trembling with pain:
".Doudou, I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me - my desire to survive led me to do these things."

"Because of some of the personality you showed, I thought we could deepen our relationship. You're so amazing, I wanted to take a gamble. I'm sorry."

Richard spoke very quickly, with just a hint of hoarseness and phlegm.

"We should go to Shouzhu 151 Building now. I've been assigned a few missions before, dealing with people who were disrupting the construction progress of Shouzhu 151. So, while it's officially a Shuguang Real Estate project, it's actually invested in by Asia-Europe Post. My basis for this judgment is: field staff don't accept external orders; they only handle their own affairs."

"According to Asia-Europe Post's custom, they should have reserved several underground floors, not rented out to the public, but reserved for internal flexible use—"

"And the investment in this construction is huge: perhaps they intend to establish a long-term branch in Mong Cai. I speculate so."

"I think you can find more in-depth information about ecstasy there—if you're interested! The other tapes do have some information, but not much: not much different from what I talked about at the food stall, about self-examination."

"And, and, and: my chief of section is in Mong Cai; she has something you've never seen."

"You haven't seen it, absolutely nothing. She's got a project going on, and the output is incredible. I don't know the exact figures, but—but the section chief has created something monstrous."
-
monster!

"Monster? What kind of monster? Not like a human—never mind, don't tell me yet! I want to keep it a little suspenseful."

Doudou's eyes seemed to suddenly light up, no longer wrapped in darkness:
"Okay! That is - go to the Asia-Europe Post branch in Mong Cai and help you deal with this section chief. Is that right?"

"Since you've asked me so sincerely and apologized to me, I'll go and see if she's a bad person. If she's okay, I'll help you talk things over with her."

When he said the word "reasonable," Doudou raised his fist to his face and clenched it; sawdust and Richard's blood were still lingering between his fingers.
"All this fussing over this, dammit! Do you middle-aged people have to make things so complicated? It's settled. So why are you still putting it off? Don't talk about days, we're going tonight; right now."

He spoke slowly and leisurely, without any decisiveness. But no one would doubt the meaning of the words "right now" from Doudou's mouth.

Richard's hands, wrapped in a plastic bag, kept shaking and making crackling sounds, like a Parkinson's patient:
"I think the word 'help' is too light. If the company really has established a branch in Mong Cai as I thought, then it would be very dangerous to go there directly, even if it means giving you a ride."

Doudou didn't rush to respond to Richard. He was busy pulling out a few cheap tissues from the table, wrapping up the fish bones that Richard had spit out earlier, and piling them on the table.

"First of all, now that we've come this far, there's no way I wouldn't go. Secondly, danger is fun. It's really interesting. If I really run into someone or something that can kill me—hey, aren't you curious about what it feels like to die?"

Before, the mathematician would shake his head like a rattle, but now he stood there motionless like a mannequin.

Doudou shrugged and wiped his hands on his raincoat twice:
"If I find out that death is terrible, and that getting hurt is terrible, then I can just run away."

(End of this chapter)