"Do you have a pen?"
"Huh?"
"I want to draw my dream for you."
Li Duidui found me a ballpoint pen and a small notebook. "There's nothing else." He said, as if afraid I would use the lack of proper tools as an excuse for not being able to draw. I rolled my eyes at him disdainfully, took the pen and notebook, and buried myself in drawing.
As a professional comic artist with no imagination, solid drawing skills are my bread and butter. I sketched the scenes I couldn't describe onto the paper. My strokes were quick, and the drawing was inevitably a bit rough, but the proportions of the scenery and figures were flawless.
I don't speak when I draw, and Li Duidui didn't say anything either. The quiet underground office of the Association was filled only with the light scratching of my pen across the paper, and the varying intensity of my breathing as I drew.
When I stopped drawing and looked up, I realized Li Duidui wasn't doing anything else; he had been staring intently at my drawing. Seeing me stop, he raised his eyelids as well. Our eyes met, our breaths were close, and the distance between our figures in each other's pupils was one where we could lean on each other.
I held up the drawing, blocking it between Li Duidui and me, like a barrier separating us. "It's done."
Li Duidui leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and called out, "Su Xiaoxin."
Seeing his posture, I immediately became defensive. "Alright, alright, I'm not asking you to judge how well I drew. Just look at what it means..."
"Your drawing is not bad."
Thump. My heart skipped a beat, not for any other reason than... Li Duidui, that Poison-Tongued Li, actually praised someone!
"The way you draw is also not bad."
I stared wide-eyed at Li Duidui. When the skill I was most proud of was acknowledged by the person who least acknowledged me, after the initial moment of shock and astonishment, the corners of my mouth tilted up slightly: "Then..."
"Next time you see me, don't talk, just draw."
"..."
Heh, how naive I was. What ivory could possibly come out of this guy's mouth?
I tapped the notebook with the pen. “Focus! This is the important part!”
Li Duidui followed my pen and glanced at my drawing again. "An air-raid shelter from the time of the Great Bombardment. It doesn't look big. This is a mother who lost her child, right? Give me a detailed portrait of her face. I'll have someone scan and copy it to distribute."
I was stunned. "Scan and copy it to distribute?"
"Yes. What you saw is probably what the zombie who bit you looked like when she was alive." Li Duidui said this with a cold expression, sending chills down my spine. "Li Peipei told me yesterday about your dreams. I discussed it with several doctors and corpse drivers. It's probably because the zombie's fluid entered your bloodstream and caused poisoning. The toxin is making you see the zombie's life before she died. Normally, zombie fluid wouldn't have this kind of toxicity, but those out-of-control ones might have mutated. The fluid's toxicity has unknown uncertainties."
"I..." I said, trembling, "I'm poisoned by zombie venom? Am I... going to die?" By the end, my tone changed, and I couldn't control the hint of a sob that crept in.
Li Duidui shot me a side glance, full of disdain and arrogance, as if to say, With me here, dying isn’t that easy.
I calmed my emotions a little. After a while, I still couldn't help but silently calculate in my mind that I needed to go back and write a good outline for my unfinished comic. If something happened to me, the story still needed to have a conclusion for the readers! This was the professional ethics of a comic artist!
As I thought this, I turned the page of the notebook, sketched a rough outline, and then began to draw a sketch of the woman's face from my dream with the ballpoint pen. As I drew, I suddenly remembered something, looked up, and asked Li Duidui, "Last time I was bitten by that zombie, why didn't you just have me draw the zombie's appearance then?"
Li Duidui paused slightly as he wiped his glasses, squinted, and asked me, "Oh, do you still remember what that zombie woman looked like?"
...
I'm sorry, I forgot. Regarding the memories of that night, I only remembered the man in black whose face I didn't even see clearly. Hmm... it seemed that it was true that in the day or two after being attacked by the zombie, I didn't care about "being bitten" at all, and was completely consumed by that whole love at first sight thing.
I went quiet and went back to drawing. Li Duidui finished cleaning his glasses, put them back on, and stood up. “Keep drawing. I’m going to get someone. They’ll go home with us tonight.”
Without giving me a chance to ask any more questions, he walked out with his hands in his pockets.
About an hour later, the tip of my ballpoint pen stopped at the corner of the woman's eye, emphasizing a shadow, then straightened my back, exhaled, and examined it from left to right, adding two more strokes to the corner of her mouth.
"Wow!" I heard a child's tender exclamation. A dark head immediately came close, admiring my drawing with amazement: "You draw so well!" The child said, looking up at me, his eyes as bright as obsidian, "You're amazing!"
There are very few children who appreciate art like this anymore. I was proud in my heart, and just as I was about to say something modest, the notebook in my hand was taken away. Li Duidui looked at the notebook and directly used the front desk's little cutie's telephone to make a call: "Hello? Come to the front desk to get a document. Issue it today. Level Two Wanted."
The Association's wanted orders are divided into Special Wanted Orders and Levels One, Two, Three, Four, and Five Wanted Orders.
Generally, Level One Wanted is the highest wanted order. It is issued for major criminals when there are non-human serial killings or large-scale non-human brawls with heavy casualties. Level Two Wanted is the highest level in ordinary cases. It seems that the zombie matter is putting a lot of pressure on them.
As for Special Wanted, Li Peipei said that it was a secret within their non-human affairs working organization, and most people didn't know about it...
"Miss, you not only draw beautifully, but you're also so beautiful. I'm stunned."
Huh?
I moved my gaze away from Li Duidui and saw the half-sized child's face. The little boy blinked a pair of bright obsidian-like eyes at me. For a moment, I couldn't believe that a little boy had said those words:
"Miss's eyes are so beautiful. It must be because you always use such beautiful eyes to see the world, so the drawings you draw are so beautiful."
Huh!?
Wait! This child! This child is simply...
"Oh dear, I'm blushing from being stared at by such a beautiful miss. How embarrassing!" As the little boy spoke, he buried his head in my lap, and just as his forehead was about to touch me, a pale hand grabbed him by the collar from behind and lifted him up.
Li Duidui glanced at him sideways: "You're already old, so stop trying to act cute and take advantage of people."
"Huh? What are you saying, uncle? I don't understand."
Li Duidui looked at him with a rather disgusted expression. With a wave of his hand, he flung the boy toward the wall as if he were tossing out the trash. I gasped, thinking the kid was about to splatter his brains all over the place only to see him clutch his head, do a few flips in mid-air, push off the wall with both feet, twist his waist and torso, and land perfectly on the ground like one of those gymnasts seen at the Olympics.
He was barefoot and without shoes, with a bell tied around his ankle, but the bell didn't make a sound during the set of actions just now.
"Don't just look at faces. This guy is already forty or fifty years old uncle to you. Put away that look of admiration as if you're looking at a child prodigy."
"Huh? Forty or fifty?" I asked in surprise, "Tianshan Child Granny*?"
"No way, I'm really just a little boy." He looked at me with a smile, "My name is Yu Shao. Miss can call me Xiao Shao Shao or Xiao Yu. I'm a corpse driver, and I'm going to live at Miss's place today."
"It's just the same building. Don't think too much." Li Duidui interrupted him.
“I’m going to live in the same building as such a beautiful big sister, just thinking about it makes me so happy. Even those hideous foreign zombies don’t seem like such a big deal anymore.”
"If you're not happy, you can continue to sleep in the office building."
Yu Shao didn't even look at Li Duidui. He walked up to me and held out his hand: "We're leaving now. It's so dark ahead. I'm afraid I can't see. I need Miss to hold my hand, or I can't walk."
I quietly looked at him, then looked at Li Duidui. Li Duidui nodded almost imperceptibly. Only then did I feel relieved and put my hand in the palm of this strange child. The moment he held my hand, his eyes, which had always seemed innocent and cute, suddenly sharpened: "Miss was bitten by a zombie a few days ago and has been having nightmares, right?"
"Yes..."
"Then be careful these few days."
My heart skipped a beat: "Careful of what?"
"Be careful of being taken away by the zombie when you're dreaming."
Damn it, that was too scary. My legs immediately went weak, and I couldn't walk anymore. Seeing that I was scared, he smiled again, and said as he led me away:
"But Miss, don't worry. There is originally a barrier set by the foreign zombie in your building. Although I don't want to admit it, he is indeed very powerful. Those disobedient zombies don't have the ability to break in. It's just that if they want to break in, it might not be those few..." He mentioned it briefly, then changed the subject back, "But, no matter what zombie, now that I'm living in that building, I won't let such a beautiful miss go play with them. If you want to play, you can only play with me."
Hearing this, I understood that this corpse driver was actually a bodyguard that Li Duidui had found.
"Were those zombies that went missing driven by you?"
Yu Shao chuckled. “Miss, I haven’t personally herded corpses in a long time. My subordinates handled those. But this time things got messy, so they had to call me over from Xiangxi to clean up the mess. Besides, I haven’t visited Chongqing in ages, I’ve been craving some spicy hotpot.” He pointed to the side. “But it’s all this stingy workaholic weird uncle’s fault. I’ve been here two days already, and he’s kept me working in the basement the whole time. Didn’t even let me out to play.”
As he spoke, we had already left the Association's underground office building and returned to the dilapidated dangerous house that we had walked into in the afternoon in a flash of the magic circle.
Yu Shao pushed the door open and walked familiarly onto the main street of Ciqikou. It was already early morning. Compared to Ciqikou during the day, the ancient town at night really had the look of an ancient town, but the traces of commercialization were still unavoidable. Occasionally, some stores were working through the night on renovations, but most were shut. A few small bars echoed faint folk songs into the dark accompanied by guitars.
The spring breeze was no longer cold, carrying the dampness of the river water, gently brushing my face, blowing out a bit of my sleepiness.
"For hot pot, we can buy groceries and cook it ourselves upstairs another day." I yawned and saw that the shop selling fried dough twists by the roadside was about to close. My parents loved to buy this fried dough twist for me since I was a child. Now their business is very popular during the day, and it takes at least ten minutes to wait in line. There wasn't a single person late at night. I propped up my sleepiness and hopped over, forcibly paid when the boss's phone only had 3% battery, and bought two bags of glutinous rice fried dough twists.
"Xiao Shao Shao, here, a first meeting gift." I gave him a bag, "I'll be bothering you to take care of me from now on."
"Wow! Miss, you're so nice!" Yu Shao happily took it, tore it open and ate one directly, praising how delicious it was with narrowed eyes. The seller next to him saw it, and before closing, called Yu Shao over and grabbed two large handfuls of fried dough twists and stuffed them into his hands: "Eat more if you like it, kid."
A child who is cute and knows how to talk is indeed pleasing everywhere.
Yu Shao kept praising the shop owner over there.
I glanced at Li Duidui here. He was staring at the cat on the roof. I handed him the other bag of fried dough twists: "This bag is for you."
Only then did Li Duidui lower his head to look at me: "The one for him is a first meeting gift, the one for me is... protection money?"
"Then will you accept it?"
Li Duidui was silent for a moment, raised his hand, and took the small fried dough twists.
I emphasized: "If you accept the protection money, you have to do things."
If you accept the protection money, you have to protect me.
He glanced at me, and just as Yu Shao came running back hugging his stash of fried dough twists, Li Duidui only said lightly: “Just focus on drawing your comics.”
Note: Tianshan Child Granny, also known as Tianshan Tonglao, is a fictional character from the wuxia novel "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils" by Jin Yong (Louis Cha). She is the ruler of Lingjiu Palace on Mount Heaven (Tianshan) and a powerful martial artist. She is known for her youthful appearance despite being an elderly woman due to her mastery of a special martial art.