Monster - Chapter 41
Chapter 41: Loneliness
Lou placed the light-up bunny ears she'd bought on her head and grinned at the two girls who were picking out other hair accessories. She was at the amusement park with Mira and Aphra, and Miu the crow, in its avian form, was perched on her shoulder.
It was Saturday, and the park was crowded with people—young couples, families of all sizes, and plenty of student groups of three or five, just like them.
Mira and Aphra each bought bear-themed hair clips in different colors. Since they bought three items, the toy shop owner gave them a brightly colored whistle for free. Mira tossed it to Lou, who casually hung it around her neck.
"Fuck you! Are you annoying or what?" Just as the three were about to leave the shop, a young man's loud shout drew everyone's attention. Lou glanced over. It was a young man with bleached-blond hair and ears full of studs, yelling at his girlfriend. Lou scanned him and, unsurprisingly, found that he had already mutated into a monster.
"What should we ride first?" After a single glance, Mira immediately turned her attention back to the amusement park brochure in her hands.
"The Supreme Roller Coaster!" Lou chose the most thrilling ride without hesitation.
"Brave one, aren't you, young lady?" Mira teased with a grin, then turned to Aphra. "What about you, Aphra?"
"I'm fine with anything."
"Then let's ride the roller coaster together." Mira playfully linked arms with Lou and Aphra and eagerly ran toward the ride. The April afternoon sun wasn't harsh, and their three shadows merged into one on the ground, as if they were friends who had known each other for a long time.
Mira had a cheerful, outgoing personality, and Lou was quite unrestrained herself. They started with the roller coaster, then moved on to the pirate ship and all the other thrilling rides. The two of them seemed to be competing to see who would back down first. But while they were having fun, it was torture for Aphra, who was just trying to be a good sport. By the time they emerged from the haunted house, her face was pale with fright. She couldn't take it anymore and refused to join them on the next ride.
"Let's take a break. I'll go buy you guys drinks. What do you want?" Lou asked, fitting her persona, as she tidied her messy hair and adjusted her bunny ears. One side of her shirt, which had been tucked into her pants, had come untucked from the girls pulling on her, but she didn't bother fixing it.
"Coke!"
"Orange juice."
"Okay, wait for me." Lou jogged off, leaving the crow with Mira. The whole reason she'd come out with Mira and Aphra was to investigate the cause of Aphra's peculiar condition. But after a whole afternoon of fun, Miu the crow still couldn't figure it out, which frustrated it. It vowed to get to the bottom of it.
Perhaps to fit the theme of the haunted house, the park had built it in a more remote area. There weren't many shops around. Too lazy to search, Lou spotted a vending machine in a narrow alley from a distance and ran over. A vending machine was sure to have the drinks the girls wanted.
As she got closer, she heard a vicious curse. Lou slowed her pace and saw the blond young man from the toy store in the shadow cast by the vending machine. He was hitting his girlfriend, whose face was already red and swollen, with blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. She stood with her head bowed, trembling and apologizing over and over.
Neither of them noticed Lou's approach.
The monster's harsh accusations filled Lou's mind. "Why did you grab that guy's sleeve just now?! Fuck you, isn't mine good enough for you to grab?"
"You know how much I love you!"
"Don't think I don't know what you've been doing behind my back!"
"You're just a natural-born slut!" The monster slapped the woman again.
Lou pushed the gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose and glanced around. She hadn't brought any weapons with her today. Her bag only contained her phone and Xu Yao's Notebook. After a moment's hesitation, Lou looked down at the whistle hanging on her chest. She took it off, untied the cord, and tested its strength. It was reasonably sturdy.
She silently approached the mutated young man from behind and flicked the thin cord in her hand.
The light blue cord looped around the monster's neck. Lou wrapped the ends twice around her hands and, once it was in place, immediately pulled both ends tight.
The monster's angry curses stopped abruptly. It arched its back and fell backward. Lou braced her knee against its back, preventing it from falling against her. Then she smiled at the woman, who had abruptly looked up at her.
The woman gasped, her face a mask of shock and terror. She took a step forward, about to stop Lou, but then she saw Lou raise an index finger on the left hand that was holding the cord. This gesture extinguished the tiny spark of courage that had just ignited within her.
"Just call the Inspectorate, ma'am. That's the safest thing for you to do," Lou said, winking at her before suddenly tightening her grip. Her expression was utterly ordinary. Under the pressure of the cord, the monster's neck constricted as if it were being decapitated. The pale skin around it tightened like a plastic bag, forming countless wrinkles.
"Hh… hhh…" A guttural sound escaped the monster's throat. Its limbs and torso thrashed violently, like a live fish thrown onto the shore. Its hands, covered in eyes, clawed backward, trying to grab its attacker.
Lou tilted her head back slightly, avoiding the monster's terrifying, eye-covered hands, and continued to pull the cord tighter. Her rain-colored eyes watched it. The air filled with a foul stench as the monster lost control of its bowels in fear of death. Its entire body began to convulse violently. Two streams of blood spurted from the carotid arteries on either side of its neck, one splattering onto Lou's hand, the other onto the surface of the vending machine.
"Ahhh—!" Seeing this, the woman seemed to snap out of her daze. She let out a bloodcurdling scream and scrambled away.
Lou released the cord, and the monster slumped limply in front of her. She nudged it aside with her foot, then pulled a tissue from her pocket. Wiping her hands, she turned to look at the drinks in the vending machine.
The colorful packaging of the drinks reflected in her clear, bright eyes. The event that had just transpired was so insignificant it hadn't disrupted Lou's plans in the slightest.
"Coke for Mira, orange juice for Aphra, and for the little crow… let's have it try some Laoshan white flower snake grass water. I'll have a Coke, too." Lou selected the drinks one by one, paid by scanning the code with her phone, and then gathered them up to leave.
When she turned around, she saw Aphra standing not far away, staring at her in a state of shock that left her nearly speechless.
"Orange juice." Lou walked over with the drinks and pushed a can of orange juice into Aphra's hands.
"You… you… why did you…?" Aphra stammered. She didn't know why she couldn't react the way people in TV shows did when they met a bad person. She only felt a huge sense of panic weighing on her mind, but she couldn't run away.
"Because it was a monster," Lou said sternly, intending to head back toward Mira. But Aphra suddenly blocked her path, her terrified face showing surprising courage.
"Don't you go near Mira," Aphra said, spreading her arms and biting her lip as she glared at Lou, who treated killing as a commonplace event.
"You like Mira, don't you?" Lou asked with a smile, noticing several amusement park security guards running toward them in the distance. She was sure the Inspectorate would arrive soon enough.
"That's none of your business." Aphra was so scared her eyes were red, but she still refused to move and let Lou get any closer to Mira.
"I'll be in touch." Lou leaned in to get a better look at Aphra, tossed her a can of Coke, and then took off running. "Let's go, little crow!"
At Lou's call, Miu flew over, squawking complaints.
"Can't you control yourself? Stop being such a busybody!"
"It's all Xu Yao's Notebook's fault. I used it, and now I'm super impulsive and my sense of justice is off the charts!" Lou yelled back as she ran, weaving through the tourists.
"Just keep making excuses! The aquarium is up ahead. Let's go in there. I need to contact my family," Miu said, transforming into a brooch.
"So you have a family? Is your dad Papa Crow and your mom Mama Crow?"
"Shut up. I have a lead on Aphra's situation, but I need to confirm it."
Smiling, Lou followed Miu's instructions and entered the aquarium, quickly blending into the crowd. Miu fell silent, presumably using its private light screen to contact its family. Lou knew that no matter which world you were in, the light screen had a function that allowed you to contact people who knew your secret—a rather humane design. For instance, if you were facing a fatal attack in a Tower World, you could use this function to leave last words for your family and friends.
This was a useless function for Lou. When she was young and naive, she didn't know it existed. After she grew up, she never had a chance to use it.
"I wonder what Lin Sandie's mother looked like?" Lou suddenly thought. If Lin Sandie looked exactly like her, maybe the mother she'd never met also looked like Lin Sandie's mother.
She found a place to sit down. Behind her was a large glass tank filled with countless small jellyfish that glowed with various colors in the dark. She gave them a passing glance before taking out her phone. She had already bought a high-definition video of the fight between Lin Sandie and Qian Kun—not just the full version, but also a cool, edited cut. So, for the past few hours at the park, whenever she had a free moment, she would take it out and watch it over and over again.
"Such pretty jellyfish~~" a little girl exclaimed, pressing her face against the glass tank.
"Yes, they're very pretty," the girl's mother said, walking over and gently stroking her head.
"Let's take a picture together," the girl's father suggested with a smile, seeing how much his wife and child liked them. He then turned to Lou, who was sitting nearby. "Hey, buddy, could you help us take a picture?"
Lou made a ferocious face at him, ignored them completely, and got up from her seat with her phone.
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