The phones in the entire building went off at once.
The notification sounds weren't exactly the same.
Some were two short beeps, some played a melody, and some phones vibrated through the walls. But they all lit up in the same second and stopped in the same second, like the building had opened a dozen different eyes at once.
Doors opened outside.
Upstairs, downstairs, across the hall.
Slippers scuffed over the floor as locks turned one after another.
I was still clutching that piece of paper that said, “I’m willing.”
“Let’s go.”
I said it too quickly and choked on my own spit.
Lu Bo'an closed the black binder and put it, along with the other materials, into an evidence bag. The white phone was still lit inside another clear bag. Beside the full battery icon was a pink heart.
Lin Shufen reached for it.
“That’s Xu-Xu’s!”
Lu Bo'an stepped aside.
Three neighbors were already standing outside the door.
The man in front was wearing only a tank top and still holding a spatula. When he saw me, he looked at the silver ring first, then at the phone the police had bagged.
“We can’t let them take away the things that take care of Yanchuan.”
It was his own voice.
Another woman followed up, “Yanchuan isn’t thinking clearly right now.”
“He hasn’t slept all night.”
“We need to let him rest first.”
More and more people gathered.
I started counting.
Three, five, eight.
Someone moved behind me, so I started over. The second time there were seven. The third time, eleven. I didn’t recognize a single face, yet every one of them looked as though they’d watched me sleep.
“I don’t need you to protect me.”
The hallway fell silent for a moment.
The man with the spatula frowned.
“See? He really does say things like that.”
I remembered the sentence in the documents.
Please do not believe his refusal in the moment.
Lin Xu had already explained away every one of my no’s.
Lu Bo'an showed his badge and ordered everyone to move aside. One person actually took a step back, but most merely changed their expressions to ones of concern.
Behind me, Lin Shufen cried, “Yanchuan, stay here for now. Mom won’t hurt you.”
She had demanded that I call her Mom before.
I never had.
Now those two words came out of her mouth as if someone had already agreed on my behalf to become part of this family.
I turned and headed for the entryway.
Every step sent pain through my right knee. My gray shirt clung to the bruises on my shoulder, and sweat slowly seeped down my back. There were only a few yards left in the hall, yet I felt every pair of shoes shifting inward.
“Let him go.”
Cheng Xiaoqing’s voice came from the emergency stairs.
She stood on the landing below and didn’t come up. In her hand was a piece of cardboard from a convenience store. Written across it in thick black marker were the words:
**He says he wants to leave.**
The neighbors turned toward her.
Some of their gazes immediately turned hostile.
“Did you teach him to say that?”
Cheng Xiaoqing’s face was pale, but she remained where she was.
“He said it himself.”
“He needs to rest.”
“That still doesn’t mean you get to decide for him.”
I was afraid they would hurt her.
I was also afraid that if I opened my mouth, everyone would turn around and protect me by hurting her first.
I gripped the stair rail and squeezed sideways through the gap the crowd had left.
No one stopped me outright.
They followed me down.
One floor, two floors, three.
The footsteps of the entire building trailed behind me.
It wasn’t until I reached the lobby that I saw the screen of Lin Xu’s white phone glowing through the evidence bag.
“Together” had opened automatically.
**Current guardians: 12,417**
A button that hadn’t been there before had appeared beneath it.
**He doesn’t need protection?**
Beside the words was a gray switch.
Lu Bo'an didn’t touch it. He had a colleague photograph the screen first.
I stared at the switch.
“Turn it off.”
“It might alter the phone’s contents,” Lu Bo'an said.
“Turn it off.”
My hand was shaking so badly I could barely hold the evidence bag steady. He didn’t hand me the phone. He simply let me see the button’s position through the plastic.
I pressed it with my left index finger.
The switch changed from pink to gray.
A question appeared on the screen:
**Are you sure you want Gu Yanchuan to face danger alone?**
There were only two options below it.
**Continue protecting.**
**Ask again later.**
There was no option to stop.
I kept scrolling down, searching for a third choice.
The neighbors in the lobby watched me scroll. Identical pity gradually appeared on their faces.
“You can’t see it because that option doesn’t exist,” one of them said.
I pulled my hand back.
The switch on the screen turned pink again by itself.
“I want to delete the account.”
Lin Shufen chased me into the lobby and said breathlessly, “You only agreed yesterday to take care of what she left behind.”
“I didn’t agree.”
“You said it yourself.”
“I don’t remember.”
Not remembering doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
That sentence pinned me in place.
The call to the police, the pickup signature, the fourteen minutes in the lounge.
Every record could prove that I had done those things. I was the only one who couldn’t.
Lu Bo'an said they would take the evidence back for examination and find another way to deactivate the account. He arranged for a colleague to escort us out.
The sight of the uniform made me think of the locked police car.
“I can walk by myself.”
“Your injuries haven’t—”
“I can walk outside by myself.”
This time, Lu Bo'an didn’t immediately object.
“I’ll stay close enough to keep you in sight,” he said. “I won’t come any closer.”
Cheng Xiaoqing asked, “Should I stay here, or go downstairs?”
“Stay here.”
I didn’t want her to follow.
I didn’t want her watched by a crowd of people again because of me.
She nodded.
I walked out of the building.
It wasn’t raining outside, but the sky was still gray. Two scooters were parked at the mouth of the alley. A delivery driver leaned against one, looking at his phone, while someone pushed open the door of the convenience store.
Everything was so ordinary that it was hard to believe.
I walked in the direction with fewer people.
After ten steps, I looked back.
Lu Bo'an stood at the building entrance. He hadn’t followed any closer.
The neighbors had been kept inside by the police.
I walked another twenty steps.
For the first time, there were no footsteps pressed against my back.
And yet I had to check every pane of glass I passed.
In the breakfast shop’s window, there was only me. In the parking lot’s rearview mirror, there was a person wearing a helmet. The pharmacy’s automatic doors reflected three overlapping faces, but when I turned around, there was only a mother and child.
The mother pulled the child a little closer to her.
Maybe she was simply afraid I’d bump into him.
Or maybe she had already seen my name.
I quickened my pace, and my right knee immediately protested. The pain made my stride uneven. The sound of my sole dragging across the pavement sounded like someone else following behind me.
I stopped, and the sound stopped too.
When I walked again, it returned.
They were obviously my own footsteps, but I still had to test it four times before I believed it.
A bus drove past the roadside.
The route number on its front reminded me of the answer I hadn’t said aloud last night. I immediately lowered my head, afraid that if I looked too long, the people nearby would guess the route from the direction of my gaze.
I was beginning to understand that keeping a secret didn’t mean possessing it.
From now on, I would have to hide even from the thought of it.
My chest was still tight, and my right knee still hurt, but the street wasn’t choosing my direction for me. I passed the first intersection and deliberately didn’t look at the traffic light, randomly choosing the left.
The choice meant nothing.
But it was the first time today that no one knew where I was going.
At the second alley, a man emerged from behind a parking shelter.
He looked about forty and wore a dark raincoat. Even though it wasn’t raining, the brim of his hood was pulled low.
“Gu Yanchuan?”
I stopped walking.
His phone displayed a photograph.
It was Lin Xu.
Her eyes were swollen and red, and she was forcing a smile at the camera. Beneath the photo was a long block of text. I could make out only the first line:
**If something happens to me one day, please don’t let him be alone.**
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
The man moved closer.
“She’s already dead, and you still want to shut down the account?”
I stepped backward.
“You knew her?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “But I promised her.”
He wasn’t one of the guardians.
At least, his voice, expression, and movements weren’t like Lin Xu’s.
He had simply believed what she wrote.
“She said you’d deny it, pretend to be the victim, and let those friends take you away.”
The man grabbed me by the collar.
The fabric yanked my right shoulder forward. I doubled over in pain.
“What the hell did you do to her?”
“Let go of me.”
“She was still begging everyone to save you before she died!”
He shoved me toward the wall.
The back of my head slammed against the rough concrete. A dull thud rang in my ears. The edges of my vision immediately went black. I raised a hand to protect my head, but my right knee gave out, and I slid to the ground.
This wasn’t concern.
It wasn’t the tenderness that came after being taken over.
He really hated me.
The man grabbed my collar and tried to drag me up from the ground.
“Come back with me and explain yourself in front of her mother.”
I saw his other hand clench into a fist.
My body recognized the danger before I did.
My stomach tightened. My fingers lost their strength. My breathing shrank to a tiny gasp. My limbs felt hollowed out. I wanted to shout for Lu Bo'an, but when I looked back, I couldn’t see the mouth of the alley.
“Help me.”
My voice was too soft.
The man didn’t hear me.
His fist rose.
“Help me!”
This time, the entire alley heard me.
The convenience store door flew open.
The delivery driver dropped his phone.
Someone on the second floor pushed open a screen window. Two workers who had been smoking in the parking shelter turned around at the same time.
Before the man’s fist could come down, the delivery driver slammed into him from behind.
The two of them crashed to the ground together.
“He’s hurting Yanchuan.”
A woman’s voice came out of the delivery driver’s mouth.
The man struggled to get up. One worker pinned his back with a knee, while the other stomped on the hand he had made into a fist.
“Stop!” I shouted.
No one looked at me.
The delivery driver straddled the man’s waist and punched the back of his head. As the fist landed, the alarm on a parked scooter suddenly began to shriek.
The high-pitched sound stabbed into my ears.
I thought I had yelled stop, but maybe no sound had come from my mouth at all. My chest heaved too fast. Every breath reached only my throat, and my limbs felt completely drained.
A woman in pajamas rushed out of the stairwell. She was holding a metal clothes pole. When she saw the blood on the ground, she didn’t stop.
“He scared Yanchuan.”
She said it in her own voice.
But the delivery driver answered in Lin Xu’s voice, “Then don’t give him another chance.”
Two versions of her agreed in front of me.
I crawled forward, my left palm scraping over the ground. Fine grit embedded itself in the uninjured skin. The sting finally helped me recover a little of my voice.
The convenience store clerk rushed out with a mop. The wooden handle came crashing down on the man’s calf.
Once.
Then again.
The bone made a soft sound.
The man screamed.
“Stop hitting him!”
The delivery driver grabbed the man by the hair and slammed his face against the ground.
“He’ll come back next time.”
“Make sure he can’t walk.”
“Make sure he can’t touch Yanchuan.”
People from upstairs began running down.
Footsteps converged from every direction.
I used the wall to pull myself up, but my right knee buckled, and I fell again. Blood from the man’s nose ran to the edge of my shoe. He looked at me, his eyes full of a plea for help.
I had been the one afraid before.
Now he was the one afraid.
And everyone kept him pinned down because of what I had said.
“I’m not afraid of him anymore!” I shouted.
It didn’t work.
“He wasn’t trying to kill me!”
The clerk raised the mop again.
I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around the wooden handle.
A rough splinter scraped across my palm. Pain shot through my right shoulder until I nearly lost all feeling in it. The clerk turned to look at me, wearing the wounded expression Lin Xu had whenever she was stopped.
“I’m doing this for your own good.”
“You’re hurting me.”
I hadn’t planned that line. The handle was pressing down on my hand, and my shoulder felt ready to split open. I was genuinely in pain.
The clerk immediately let go.
Everyone else stopped too.
Only the worker pinning the man was half a second slower before lifting his knee away.
The people who had stopped didn’t disperse.
They formed a circle around me, watching to see whether I was still in pain. Someone asked whether they should tie the man up. Someone else took off a jacket and tried to cover my shoulder. Another person had already called a car to take me back to Lin Xu’s mother’s home.
One sentence from me had stopped the mop, but it hadn’t given me my life back.
I didn’t dare say again who was hurting me.
If I got one name wrong, the circle would turn toward that person.
Lu Bo'an rushed in from the mouth of the alley with two police officers behind him. He called an ambulance first, then separated everyone.
I sat on the ground, watching the man curl up with half his face covered in blood.
He really had been about to hit me.
But not like this.
I hadn’t wanted them to do this.
The white phone inside the evidence bag suddenly lit up.
The pink heart pulsed once.
The number began climbing from 12,417.
12,418.
12,431.
12,506.
Every time it increased, a phone nearby made a notification sound.
Someone stepped onto the balcony of the apartment across the street.
A rider stopped at the mouth of the alley and lifted his helmet visor.
A passing taxi’s brake lights came on, and the driver turned to look at me through the window.
I couldn’t see the screens of their phones, but I knew those four hundred-plus new numbers were falling into the daily lives of certain people. Maybe someone was waiting at a red light. Maybe someone was serving dinner to their child. Maybe someone had no idea who Gu Yanchuan was.
Now they did.
The number finally stopped at:
**Current guardians: 12,864**
A new line of text appeared beneath it.
**Thank you for admitting that you need me.**