Chapter 4: Changing Clothes and Disguise

  Put down the phone, slapped two coins on the counter, pushed open the door and walked out of the small shop without looking back. Standing by the street, watching the flow of people coming and going, I suddenly felt that the world was vast, but I had nowhere to belong.

  I walked along the street, continuing southeast, with two rows of stalls lining the road ahead. This was a self-formed early market. I lowered my head and slowly merged into the crowded flow of people. Suddenly, I remembered a scene from a movie where the protagonist wanted to quickly escape pursuit and had to change clothes and blend in with the crowd to disappear quickly.

  I've been running out of the hospital for a while now, if that bald-headed Qiang really didn't make it, the police should have started looking for me by now, and this outfit I'm wearing is just too eye-catching.

  As I thought, I started to look for everything that could help me hide in this not-so-small morning market. In an instant, I was no longer so terrified, as if I were the protagonist of a movie.

  I spent five yuan on a plastic sunglasses at a stall, and then bought a gray old casual pants and a cyan-black old zip-up casual top at a second-hand clothing stall. Then I bought a bottle of lip balm, a black lipstick at a daily necessities stall, and picked up several skull rings, a exaggerated dog chain thick silver large skull pendant necklace and a pair of black magnetic fake earrings at an accessories stall.

  In 2008, our city had not yet experienced large-scale renovation of old residential areas. This spontaneously formed morning market was surrounded by open-style old residential areas on both sides, with buildings no higher than four stories. In front of each first floor, there was a row of coal sheds, which is also the local term for warehouses.

  I casually put on an old casual outfit, carrying the things in my hand to find a abandoned coal shed and walked in. I put on my pants in that cramped space filled with miscellaneous objects.

  At this moment, I didn't feel a bit of tension, but instead had the feeling that I was the protagonist of the movie. I used a ceramic knife to shave off the whiskers on my face and above my lips in front of the small piece of broken mirror left in the coal shed, leaving only the whiskers under my chin and the sideburns under my cheeks.

  Facing the mirror, I took off my red hat, applied a block of pomade to my messy, multicolored long hair that I had at the time, making every strand stand on end. I put on black lipstick and wore that plastic sunglasses, paired with those tattered accessories, and also wore the earbuds of an MP3 player that wasn't turned on.

  I was instantly convinced by myself, I am very satisfied with this rural killer's general style, even if my parents are standing in front of me at this moment, they will definitely not recognize me.

  I came out of the coal shed, and people on the road cast strange glances at me. I felt a lot more at ease in my heart, pretending to listen to explosive music, my body slightly swaying, and once again blending into the crowd, my mood suddenly relaxed a lot.

  As soon as my tense mood relaxed, I felt a wave of hunger surge up in my chest. In the morning market, I found a vendor selling egg pancakes and bought one. When I looked at the money left in my wallet, there wasn't much - only 143.7 yuan.

  "I have to get in touch with my uncle first," I thought, and did so. Holding a pancake in my hand, I stuffed it into my mouth bite by bite, while searching for a place to make a phone call with my eyes.

  After taking a look around, I found another small restaurant diagonally opposite the convenience store where I just made the phone call, also with a public telephone sign. Just as I was about to go to that small restaurant to make a phone call, I saw my cousin leading three auxiliary police officers searching for something from door to door.

  I subconsciously wanted to turn around and run, but I was only a few steps away from the entrance of the small restaurant, and I had walked straight towards it. Now turning around and leaving would be too conspicuous, and my outfit was indeed quite eye-catching.

  One of the four auxiliary police officers who just came out of a hardware store in front of a small restaurant was attracted by my unique appearance, and I also knew that the more he looked at me, the more I couldn't let my guard down, and had to continue walking forward as if nothing happened.

  But the more I walked, the closer they got, and my heart became increasingly tense. My appearance also caught the attention of my brother-in-law and others, just as a large auxiliary police officer was about to point at me and stop me, someone saved my life.

  Behind them, not far away, at a small fruit stand, a woman in her fifties was pulling the wrist of a thin and dry young man in his twenties, shouting: "Police comrades, catch the thief quickly! Catch the thief!"

  And in the hand of that young man, who was wearing a denim suit and was thin and dry, which was tightly grasped by the middle-aged woman's wrist, still held a shiny blue-bottomed printed wallet.

  "Thank goodness!"

  As soon as my brother and the three auxiliary police officers' attention was completely drawn away, I suddenly felt a sense of relief and joy like being reborn. Watching my brother and the three auxiliary police officers walk towards the two people who were fighting, I didn't dare to stay any longer, turned around and walked quickly in the direction of my school.

  "First, I need to get in touch with my uncle and confirm his arrival time and location in Shenyang,"

  As I walked towards the school with my head down, I thought to myself: "Secondly, the police shouldn't have thought of investigating whether I was in contact with my uncle so quickly, let alone discover that he was on his way to our city."

  I only went to the internet cafe near school to hide for a while. Thinking of this, I changed direction again and headed towards the internet cafe area near school.

  Before 2010, although there were regulations in our city that internet cafes were not allowed to be set up near schools, due to insufficient regulatory efforts, internet cafes were still ubiquitous around primary and secondary schools.

  Especially near the high school I attended, there are two high schools in the south and north. The one mentioned earlier that my mom's unit is affiliated with is a vocational school located behind a traffic intersection further north of the northern campus.

  In the northern campus, parallel to the west of two traffic police stations, there is a provincial key primary school. This street area is a standard educational district and also a typical representative of the heavily affected areas of various large and small internet cafes in our city.

  I don't dare to go to the internet cafe I used to frequent, in front of the east gate of the south campus where I used to surf the internet, there is a small district built around 04, inside the district, not counting the row of street-side shops and internet cafes, just the small district itself has more than sixteen or seventeen one-story window-turned-door black internet cafes.

  I absolutely cannot go to that place, since I was in the first year of junior high school, I have been mixed up in this piece, going to various internet cafes is just a familiar face, if I went, it would be impossible not to fold, even if they knew my things, it would still expose my whereabouts.

  I'd better hide myself until my uncle's convoy arrives in the city, after all, the police may not find me that quickly, and I'm not that naive little kid anymore.