Chapter 9 The Boss's Delusion

  "Hey, is this it? We came all the way here for four hours and now we're just leaving like that? At least let's have lunch here."

  "Shut up!" He turned around and roared at me. I was stunned, I didn't expect him to get angry like this. If only I had known, I wouldn't have teased him.

  I shrank to one side, while he looked at the scenery outside the car window. After a long time, he said: "Don't joke about this in the future. We are just partners who complete tasks together. If you want to know, go back home and I'll tell you."

  "Oh." I responded. It turned out that we were just partners, and a sense of disappointment arose in my heart. I thought he had such a big reaction to this joke, it must have something to do with his ex-girlfriend. I really wanted to ask him about his girlfriend, but looking at his dark face now, it's probably not the right time. I chose to be like him, saying nothing, and just looked at the scenery outside the car window.

  The depressed mood spent four hours and returned home. The home is the same as when we left. Even in the morning, because of the hurry to go out, I still have a half-eaten box of yogurt that I left at home, it's still there. I had an illusion that we never left D city.

  Su Haicheng returned home and closed the door behind him, sitting on the sofa and reopening the package.

  I sat beside him and watched as he opened the box, asking in a low voice: "Was this package sent from that village?"

  As he opened the contents, he said: "We were the second batch to go in. The first batch was that medical team. When we went there, they were all dead. We received orders to burn everything! Can't leave any trace!"

  "Why burn it? Is it infectious?"

  "I don't remember, I think I'm dead too, burned to death, but I only have fragmented memories, and my memory is also intermittent. I don't remember how this package was sent out. Anyway, I know that before setting the fire, I searched the entire village. This thing was protected by an old man at that time. The rest, I don't remember. Looking at the words on this package, it wasn't me who sent it. Who exactly sent it? I got the thing and had it delivered to my home, so I should have asked someone to send it."

  "So someone actually survived from that village? If we find her, will we finally know what happened in that village?"

  "I don't know, I've got too many fragmented memories and a lot of them I don't recall. I even forgot who the person was that sent out the package."

  I sighed: "How could you forget something so important?"

  Just as I was sighing, my phone rang. It's rare for anyone to call me. The only people who can call me are three kinds of people: one is my parents, they won't call me unless it's necessary, and usually, I'm the one calling them. Another is Kakashi, but he rarely calls me, if there's something important, we'll just talk about it on QQ, anyway, our mobile QQ is always online, so we can reply as soon as we see it. The other is my boss. But I guess my boss isn't in the mood to chat with me now either.

  I took out my phone and looked at the name "Kaka Xi" on it. It's really rare for him to call me. "Hello, what's up?" My voice was weak and toneless. I hadn't eaten lunch yet, and now it was almost time for dinner.

  "The boss has gone mad, hurry up and open our school's forum."

  "What? What did he do?"

  "He was teaching us this afternoon, then suddenly rushed out of the classroom and ran around the whole school, shouting his girlfriend's name, saying he saw her and asking her to come out. He even ran to the school square to shout, and there was a campus broadcast declaration of love. He cried."

  "Oh." My heart is racing. Judging from the situation, the boss's girlfriend should be dead already. And after he came back from that village, he rarely spoke and was very nervous. I guess he really went crazy this time. "I'll go to school in a bit to take a look."

  I hung up the phone and turned around to see what Su Haicheng was holding in his hand. It was a stick about 20 cm long, which was quite strange. Some parts were metal and some were wood, with many patterns on it. But I didn't have the mood to appreciate it anymore. I hastily said: "I'm going out for a while, my boss has something wrong, I'll go back to school to take a look."

  He didn't even notice me, but was studying that little stick. I really don't know what's so great about this little stick he went to such great lengths to retrieve.

  On my way to school, I ate a quick meal at the school gate. After being busy all day, Su Haicheng that dead man didn't eat anything, but I still had to eat, or I would have been so hungry that I couldn't speak. It wasn't until I was eating fast food that I thought of a very serious question. It seemed that Su Haicheng that dead man really didn't need to eat. Last night we went to that fast food restaurant together, he ordered something, but didn't eat it at all, not even one bite.

  My heart is heavy, I think he should be a dead person. Last night I was still excited about his sudden heartbeat, maybe it was just the electrostatic reaction caused by my approaching him.

  Walking on campus, using the campus WIFI, I checked the forum. In the afternoon, our boss's thing had already spread widely, and even some classmates recorded the voice of the boss shouting through the loudspeaker with their mobile phones and posted it on the forum. The sound quality was poor, but listening carefully could still barely understand.

  The front part should be unrecorded, he recorded it down and listened to the familiar voice of the boss saying: "Not dead! I know you'll come back! I went to that village to find you, I saw those corpses standing up again. I know you're definitely there. You must still be alive. Sakura, no matter what shape you've become, I still love you. I know you haven't gone far, you're still in D University, I said these words, you must have all heard them. Sakura, I beg of you, don't hide from me anymore. Come out, Sakura."

  The boss cried, he as a teacher, in school broadcasting crying like this, I think he must love that woman named Sakura Yuki very much.

  Someone commented below that the boss has gone crazy and must have had hallucinations to see his girlfriend coming to find him.

  As I watched, I also walked into our studio. Inside the studio, there was a small office room, which was the boss's territory. At this time, it was just dinner time, and no one was in the studio. The boss's office had already turned on the lights.

  I knocked on the door and pushed it open. The boss was lying on the sofa in his office, with a cigarette still clutched between his fingers. Judging from the thick smoke in the room, he had already smoked quite a few. I walked over and opened the window: "Boss, boss, let's go eat. Or should I bring takeout up to you?"

  "No need!" He fell silent, and I didn't know what to say either, so I just sat beside him. In just a month's time, he had lost a lot of weight, his eyes were puffy, and it was clear that he had been crying.

  After a while, he suddenly sat up and said to me: "Si Yī, that night, you also saw those corpses standing up, didn't you?"

  I'm still trying to process this, but he continued: "They're not dead! The bodies in the village didn't die, they got back up and went somewhere. Today I really saw Sakura, really! She was standing right outside that door, I saw her through the small glass window on the door. If she's not dead and she came to find me, why won't she see me properly? There must be something else going on here that we don't know about."

  Now that you mention it, I also think it's possible. If the boss's girlfriend was dead at that time, wouldn't she come back to life like Su Haicheng and find her way here?

  I opened my mouth, wanting to tell the boss about Su Haicheng's situation, but the words got stuck on my lips. Su Haicheng had said that his identity couldn't be casually revealed to others. Now that things were unclear, it was possible that the boss's girlfriend was really dead and wasn't coming back. He might have just been hallucinating. And if I told him about Su Haicheng now, wouldn't I be giving him false hope, only to lead to even greater disappointment in the end?

  Let's wait and see for now.