Chapter 0539: People
After being looked at by Chen Ge for half a day, the man tightened the shirt on his collar and coughed softly.
”Did we know each other before?”
His voice was cold and mellow, seemingly unconcerned about anything in the outside world.
Chen Ge didn’t expect the other party to speak suddenly, he paused slightly, then followed the man’s words, “You look a lot like a friend of mine, your temperament is almost the same, haven’t we met somewhere before?”
The man turned his head, a hint of fatigue hidden in his eyes, “You could be mistaken.”
”No way, I must have seen you somewhere.” Chen Ge and the man had only met for the first time, and he had said this simply to chat with the other party a bit more so that he could obtain more useful information.
The man was silent for a while, he saw that Chen Ge didn’t look like he was lying, and after hesitating for a while, he raised his hand and removed the mask from his face.
With a high nose, pale skin, and blue lips, the man removed the mask and coughed violently for a few moments, “You’re mistaken, I’m not the person you’re looking for.”
After saying this, he put the mask back on, his gaze implied a touch of emotion that was difficult for others to understand, “I don’t have any friends.”
This man wasn’t afraid of Chen Ge, he was a passenger who got on the train later and was a living person himself, he didn’t know what was hidden among Chen Ge’s shadow, probably in his eyes, Chen Ge wasn’t too different from the other passengers.
Chen Ge wanted to figure out what happened in the eastern suburbs, and also wanted to bring all the ghosts and monsters on this hearse back to the haunted house, but to his surprise there were two living passengers on the hearse tonight.
He didn’t want to reveal his secret, and it was inconvenient for him to do anything out of the ordinary in front of the two living people, so he temporarily changed his plan to keep a low profile first, and wait until he reached Liwan Town and the two living passengers got off the train, then he would have a good chat with the other passengers.
Sitting honestly in his seat, Chen Ge moved his gaze away from the man and looked out the window.
With the rain falling on the glass, the buildings on both sides had long been unrecognizable, and the surroundings were pitch black, the Route 104 hearse they were traveling in was like an island floating on a black ocean.
The car suddenly quieted down, and the man realized that Chen Ge hadn’t opened his mouth since he had finished talking to him, and thought that he had said something wrong.
He placed his hands on his knees and suddenly asked Chen Ge in a low voice, “Do you want to take this car just to look for that friend of yours?”
Chen Ge’s gaze gradually came into focus, and the expression on his face began to change, as if he had been guessed by that man who had guessed the secret of his heart, there was some uneasiness, some pain, and some self-reproach.
Nodding slowly, Chen Ge looked at the man next to him, “How did you know?”
”The passengers on this bus all have their own stories and secrets, otherwise people wouldn’t come to ride this bus after midnight in the wee hours of the morning.”
”Listening to your tone, this isn’t your first time riding this bus?” The corners of Chen Ge’s mouth tugged, revealing the same smile as when he boarded the bus, but there was a trace of suppressed and extremely deep pain in his eyes, making people feel heartbroken when they looked at him.
”I take the 104 bus when I go to work, and I’ve been riding it for almost twenty years.” The man seemed to have not talked to anyone for a long time, and spoke in a slow tone, “At that time, the section was quite busy and understaffed, so I often worked overtime and always took the last bus home. At first I quite like to take the last train, very few people, very quiet, but later sat more, looking at the dark buildings on both sides, more or less will feel a little lonely.”
”Section? What did you used to do?”
”Doctor, in the burn unit.” The man emphasized the words burn section in particular, and a ripple appeared in his eyes as if he had remembered something.
”The burn unit?” Chen Ge had only dealt with psychiatrists before, and didn’t know too much about the burn unit.
”Surgery, skin grafting, rehab, that’s what we do.” The man spoke lightly, but Chen Ge heard a hint of heaviness behind these words.
The man also noticed the extremely deep suppressed pain in Chen Ge’s eyes; it was as if he saw his own shadow in Chen Ge, and subconsciously treated Chen Ge as someone just like him.
After a brief conversation, the two men fell silent again, and only after a long time did Chen Ge speak, “Are you traveling in this car to look for someone as well?”
The man nodded softly, his gloved hand pressing against the scarf.
”Did your wife knit this scarf for you?” Chen Ge found the right moment to ask, pretending not to notice.
Hearing Chen Ge’s words, the man froze for a moment, he removed his hand from the scarf and slowly shook his head.
”Not from your wife?” The truth was not quite the same as Chen Ge’s previous guess, and he was a little curious: “Can you tell me your story?”
The rain fell harder, and the raindrops struck the window with a constant sound.
The man pondered for a moment, removed his mask, and took a deep breath, “Patients in the burn unit are not quite the same as other units; disfigured, disfigured, scorched, and skinned patients abound in our area. For a while during my internship, I thought I had come to hell, until I slowly got used to the blood and flesh, the stench and all the odors.”
”At that point, I thought for a moment that I would never again have too many emotional ups and downs when dealing with patients.”
”Until I was thirty, when I met a fourteen-year-old patient.”
”She was a child, and her back had been so badly burned by boiling water that it took me half an hour to separate her clothes from her skin.”
”The girl was quiet and did not cry or fuss.”
”I did not use general anesthesia to prevent any effect on the nerves of the child’s brain, and while I was separating her clothes and skin, the child kept her eyes open and looked at me.”
”Her back and her face were two extremes, and I comforted her as I would any other patient.”
”After the wounds were treated, I found the adult who brought her to the hospital and was going to explain some precautions, but after questioning her, I found out that the person who brought her to the hospital was a neighbor, and that the injuries on her body were not due to an accident, but were the work of her parents.”
”I called the police.” The man coughed occasionally as he spoke, he was in poor health.
”The girl’s father is severely violent, and her mother is deaf and mute with a cowardly personality.”
”The police detained and educated her father for a month, and then it was her mother who took the initiative to run to the police station to plead for mercy, after all, the family was counting on the father to support them.”
”During the treatment of the girl, I have always accompanied her, this child is like a small white wildflower blooming on the side of the road. Staying with her also made me, who was used to seeing cruelty and smelling bad odors, feel a hint of joy for the first time in a long time.”
”One day, two months after she was discharged from the hospital, I suddenly received an unfamiliar phone call with her voice on the other side of the line.”
”Unable to tolerate her father’s drunken brutality, she ran away from home.”
”I took her in, hiding her from the police and her family.”
”I know I probably did wrong, but I can’t imagine what kind of things she would have suffered if I had sent her back then?”
Speaking here, the man paused for a moment, seeing that Chen Ge’s expression didn’t change much, before he continued to speak, “When she was twenty years old, she confessed her love to me.”
”I was thirty-six years old that year, saving the process of falling in love, we didn’t get a license and held a wedding that year with just the two of us.”
”I had the happiest five years with her and unimaginable stress.”
”When I was forty-one years old, her parents found her, verbally abused, beat her, made trouble at school and at the hospital where I was.”
”Life changed all of a sudden, people talking, I could take it, but she gave up.”
”As I rode the last bus home that day, I called her several times, but there was no answer.”
”When I opened the door and came home, there was a good meal on the table and a long letter she had written me.”
”Finally I found her in the bathroom, her body soaked in water, not breathing.”
The man’s face was frighteningly white, and he was coughing more and more, Chen Ge reached out and patted his back.
”Thanks.” The man didn’t put on a mask, the exhaustion in his eyes couldn’t be hidden, “In fact, all the passengers on this car have their own stories, during the day everyone is busy and hides their hearts, and at night, these helpless, agonized, and desperate people will take this car to the terminal.”
From the man’s words he didn’t seem to know that the other passengers were ghosts, or maybe he already knew, except that he thought of the ghosts as people as well.
”You know other things?”
”Too many, like that mute next to me, I’ve met him before.” The man’s tone held a hint of sympathy, “He’s intellectually defective, can’t speak, works as a porter in a supermarket, often gets bullied and still giggles and reads others’ favor.”
”Then why did he get on this car? A simple-minded person should not be missed by dirty things.” Chen Ge had some doubts in his heart.
”He was going to the terminal to look for his daughter.” The man was a bit intolerant to say more, “For some reason, someone found off-campus punks to bully this his daughter, cigarette burns on the palms of her hands, her hair was pulled out, and even more outrageous things were captured in the surveillance. Her daughter never said anything, and finally couldn’t take it and ended her life.”
”School bullying?” Chen Ge’s gaze clouded over, these things did happen and he had seen them before, “Did you call the police? How did the police handle it?”
The man in the seat next to him was intellectually deficient and physically uncoordinated, he usually stumbled when he walked, it was difficult for someone like him to defend his rights.
”Call the police?” The man cracked his mouth, “This father, who has congenital intellectual defects, has no way to speak, and usually walks unsteadily, knocked out all of those punks as well as the culprits and locked them up in an abandoned building in the eastern suburb, and then doused them with gasoline, and burned all of them with a single fire.”
”He’s in poor health and still mentally deficient, so how did he do it all by himself?”
”The police can’t figure it out either, so the murderer hasn’t been caught in this case yet.”
The burns doctor and Chen Ge simultaneously turned back to look at the man, who looked a bit rushed and giggled towards the two.
”Fighting violence with violence will leave more problems in the aftermath, a heart that is already crippled from the injuries suffered will find it hard to withstand all the stress after a revenge killing, he may go from one extreme to the other.” Chen Ge couldn’t comment on what that father did, thinking differently, if he was that father, he wouldn’t dare to guarantee what he would do.
”An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, I’d say that’s fair. Not to mention him, I’ve seen worse cases than him on this bus.” The burn surgeon said casually, “One time when it was storming, I got on the bus and saw a young man in a suit, he was dressed up and didn’t look too different from the other passengers, but who knew this man was a complete lunatic.”
”What has he done?”
”The young man was a wedding officiant, had been in the business for a few years and had officiated hundreds of weddings, and when it finally came time for him to get married, he was suited and booted to welcome his bride, but had a car accident on the way back.”
”The bride was not resuscitated, and although his life was saved, he was disfigured.”
”The wedding company dismissed him, and then he changed his profession to become a funeral designer, and when someone finds him, he helps design funerals, and when no one is around, he looks after cemeteries.”
”All of this was pretty normal too, but then in conversation, he unintentionally let slip a piece of information.”
”In the dead of night, he would pull yin margins and match those corpses with medieval marriages, and then go and officiate himself.”
The man said a little frighteningly, “He got in the car to go look for his wife, and then he was going to make up a special wedding when the time came.”
After listening to the stories of the burns doctor, the mentally deficient father and the funeral designer, Chen Ge realized that the last train on Route 104 was not quite the same as what he had thought before, this train seemed to have become a passage for the living in Jiujiang to enter the middle of the city’s shadows, and all sorts of people rode on it in search of their last thoughts.
Chen Ge did not know what to say to the burns doctor, everyone took this train as their last hope, but they were not destined to succeed, because the terminal of this train was made up of the deepest despair and pain.
Chen Ge even suspected that the reason why the masterminds behind the eastern suburbs had gotten such a shuttle out was to collect despair and all sorts of negative emotions.
”The Weird Tales Association kept making weird tales in the first place just for despair and negative emotions, the ghosts inside the gate need these things, in addition, only people who are desperate and in pain and dominated by negative emotions can become vessels for ghosts and monsters.”
There are people with ghosts on the last train, and they come to the terminal with the last glimmer of hope, yet I fear that they will be greeted by another world of endless despair.
”I can’t let this happen again, it looks like I can only get rid of this car, maybe I can get a new line out that goes straight to the haunted house.”
These abnormal living passengers in the car made Chen Ge think of the game he played at Fan Cong’s house.
In that game, there were not only the existence of the stern ghosts and red coats, but also a lot of psychopathic homicidal maniacs, and Chen Ge now suspected that those homicidal maniacs were the living passengers who used to be on the Route 104 bus.
”The entire town is full of severe ghosts and homicidal maniacs, the people behind the eastern suburbs are much crazier than the Weird Tales Association.”