zero o'clock

【Midnight Train】

In late January, Shanghai Railway Station.

Sporadic snowflakes have been drifting all day, and under the night, the waiting hall of the old building is brightly lit.

At 07:30 in the evening, a female voice from the loudspeaker gently reminded passengers on the D322 bullet train to go to the designated entrance and prepare to board.This is the last train from Shanghai to Beijing that day. During the peak of the Spring Festival travel season, it is hard to get a ticket.

There was a long queue in front of the No. 13 entrance passage, and the passengers with large and small bags couldn't hide their excited expressions on their faces. They gathered together to laugh and chat with their fellow villagers, and slowly moved forward with the queue.

Li Huan was carrying a NIKE bag on one shoulder, standing alone behind a couple with a Nanjing accent, silently listening to the two arguing about which house to go to this year's [-]th, the man obviously loved his girlfriend very much, he repeated it several times Parents stopped struggling when they got older, and agreed to go back to their home with their girlfriend to celebrate the New Year on the first day of junior high school.

Behind him is a very well-dressed middle-aged man, who looks well-educated. The clothes are expensive, and he doesn't look like the type of person who can squeeze a car. The man only carried a small suitcase, and there seems to be nothing else companion.

Li Huan followed the team and moved forward a few steps. The couple in front had already passed the ticket gate. The station staff smiled at him and said politely, "Sir, please show your ticket or platform ticket."

"Okay." Li Huan reached into the pocket of his windbreaker, took out the McDonald's machine-printed receipt, and handed it to him.

staff member:"……"

"Sir," the man's mouth twitched, but he still said patiently: "Did you take it wrong? There are many people waiting to enter the station, please don't make this mistake again." After speaking, he raised his head, slightly He looked unhappily at the guy who entertained himself with the small ticket.

Suddenly, the eyes of the two met in mid-air, and the man was stunned for a moment—they were a pair of peach blossom eyes with a slight smile, and the other's pupils were extremely black, revealing a hint of flowing dark red, eyes like cicada wings The eyelashes are slightly drawn down, and the narrow eye line is raised, forming a very charming and stunning shape.

At that moment, the noisy environment around seemed to be silent for an instant. The man raised his head dully as if his soul had been pulled away, and looked at those eyes without turning away.

Li Huan smiled and said, "Take a closer look, isn't this a train ticket?"

The man looked at him, then looked down at the paper in his hand, and finally nodded dumbly, "Yes—" He returned the McDonald's receipt, "Sorry for wasting your time."

"It's okay." Li Huan put away the receipt, passed through the ticket gate, and went down the stairs to the platform.

The temperature here is much lower than that in the waiting hall, and there is a puff of damp water vapor floating in the air. Many passengers are shivering from the cold, and they can't help but wrap up their down jackets and rush past, just wanting to get on the bus to warm up quickly.

Li Huan was wearing a dark autumn windbreaker and jeans, and stepped on a pair of mid-cut motorcycle boots. He was thin, but tall, and his legs were slender and straight covered by the hem of the windbreaker. However, if paired with those sly and smiling peach blossom eyes, this kind of taste will appear a bit ambiguous.

His eyes glanced over the cars corresponding to the tickets in turn, hesitating for a few seconds, and then he walked towards the third car.

After getting on the bus, Li Huan took a seat at the window on the right hand side at the end of the compartment, and put the flat Nike bag under his feet. The backpack made a soft thud when it fell to the ground. It sounded like there were some metal objects inside.

Passengers who settled their luggage began to buy boxed lunches and instant noodles back and forth, or called home at the top of their voices. After a while, the strange smell of various instant noodles wafted in the carriage.

The young couple from Nanjing were located in the tenth row of the third car, which happened to be in the middle. The two of them probably had a little impression of Li Huan. When they passed by him, their eyes met, and the girl smiled at Li Huan very friendly. This made her boyfriend jealous, and the two started bickering again.

This high-speed train will depart from Shanghai Railway Station at 7:53 in the evening. The journey will take nearly 12 hours, passing through Wuxi, Zhenjiang and Nanjing in Jiangsu Province, and arriving in Beijing South at [-]:[-] the next morning.

There is less than 10 minutes left to drive, and the seat next to him is still vacant. Li Huan leans back in the seat, puts on his earphones and closes his eyes to listen to music. Take it as a ticket.

Suddenly, the luggage rack above his head moved. Li Huan opened his eyes and saw the well-dressed middle-aged man trying to stuff the suitcase into it.

Speaking of which, this man is only in his fifties. Although he is not young, his movements should not be so clumsy. He seems to be suffering from severe frozen shoulder, and he can't lift his arms at all. Sliding out of the luggage rack, the man turned pale and sweated profusely.

At this moment, a hand stretched out from the side and helped him lift the box up.

"Thank you." The man took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Li Huan said, "You're welcome."

The two sat down, the train started to start, and the dimly lit platform receded in the night. Small snowflakes hit the glass windows, and were soon melted into a drop of water by the heat from the carriage.

"Are you alone? Where are you going?" The man was at a loss for words. He took off his coat and put it on his legs, leaving a thick cashmere sweater on his top. It can be seen that his arms and body are very thin, like a long-term man. Malnourished, or chronically ill.

Li Huan turned his head to look at him, pursed his pale lips slightly, smiled, and said, "What about you, Beijing?"

"Same." The man put away his handkerchief, the sweat was gone, but his face was still pale.

Li Huan looked up and down calmly, his slender eye feathers trembled slightly, his skin was extremely white, which made his pupils dark, and his eyes, which were warm and moist like black jade, turned slightly, and matched with the line of his upper lip. A touch of just the right arc——

The middle-aged man sitting next to him swallowed for no reason. He felt that the young man in front of him was clearly not smiling, but there was an elusive sly smile on the corners of his eyes and brows.

"You don't look like a train crowd?"

"Oh, this," the man came back to his senses, smiled gently, and introduced: "I am a university professor, and the school plans to hold an academic exchange with Peking University in the next year. Now some professional details are best discussed in person. Time is tight, I haven't booked a ticket for today, and I bought this ticket through my relationship."

"No wonder." Li Huan said.

"What about you?" The man glanced at Li Huan's backpack at his feet, "It doesn't look like you went home for the New Year."

Li Huan said: "I came to Shanghai for an internship, and now I'm going back to work."

"I just graduated from university, no wonder I look so young." The man is indeed a professor, and he can't stop talking about this topic. He continued: "What are you studying? Why do you have to come to Shanghai for an internship?"

"Well... the content is a bit complicated, and the internship is not completely over." Li Huan took out his mobile phone while talking, pressed a series of numbers on the screen, and said to the man, "I'll go out and make a call."

The man stood up with the back of the chair in the row in front of him, and the two passed by.

Li Huan smiled at him apologetically, then put the mobile phone to his ear, the receiver beeped for a while, and the other party connected, Li Huan said: "Teacher——" He quickly left his seat and walked into the space where the two cars were connected. "I'm already in the car..."

There was a rumbling sound from the wheels running over the rails, the damp night wind was blowing in through the cracks in the car doors, and the air was still filled with the smell of nicotine left by the last smoker here.Li Huan leaned against the trembling carriage wall, with a smile on his lips, listening patiently to the man's instructions.

The call lasted about ten minutes, and when he went back, the man was no longer in his seat.

At ten o'clock at night, the lights of the train are turned off.

There is no lighting on both sides of the railway, and it is pitch black outside the window. Passengers who are not yet sleepy consciously lower their voices to chat, and more people are boredly scrolling through Weibo and WeChat. The blue and white light of the mobile phone lights up in the dark, like a ghost fire off.

After another hour or two, the last cluster of cold lights belonging to electronic equipment dimmed, snoring sounded, and people were exhausted, leaning on the car window or the shoulders of their companions, falling asleep one after another in the shaking car.

At midnight, the first car.

There was a slight snort in vain amidst the bumps, and under the cover of the even undulating snoring, this abnormal sound was so weak that it could be ignored.The lady sitting in the front row twitched in her sleep, and then fell asleep as if she continued to sleep.

There was a snoring and sucking sound, as if someone was drinking from an empty Leli package, and the blurred light cast a strange shadow on the floor beside her feet, it seemed that there was a slender A tube was inserted into her skull.

The moist and warm liquid splashed over, and the male passenger sitting next to the woman moved as if feeling something, and stretched out his hand to wipe his cheeks, only to feel that the touch was very sticky, before he could open his eyes, he heard another puff , the man's whole body twitched for a few seconds, and then his limbs went limp.

The weird sucking sound continued, spreading backwards like a plague in the claustrophobic compartment.

In the third compartment, the nostrils of the young man who was asleep under the windbreaker fluttered slightly, and his sensitive senses far surpassed that of ordinary people almost instantly caught the fishy and sweet smell floating from afar.In the depths of the silent body, an indescribable warm desire seeped out, that kind of desire was not too strong, but it reminded him of the most primitive desire of his body all the time.

Li Huan took a deep breath, lifted the windbreaker and put it behind him, then picked up the Nike bag on the ground and stood up.

The passengers all around were sleeping, and the university professor next to him was lying on the back of the chair in the front row. Li Huan, with his backpack on one shoulder, got up and stepped on the soft seat, and then stretched out his hand to climb the luggage rack. Over the top of the man, it landed lightly on the aisle of the carriage like a cat with a pad, and then quickly rushed towards the front carriage.

As the distance approached, the sweet smell of human blood became more and more intense. Li Huan passed through the junction of the second and third carriages, and a fat man with sleepy eyes staggered out of the toilet cubicle. Almost bumping into each other, the man made a provocative gesture of getting up, and said cursingly: "You don't have a long fucking walk—"

Li Huan didn't even look at him, he stepped sideways to avoid it, and the next moment he twisted his body, a hand knife hit the man's back neck, and then threw him back to the toilet cubicle intact, so as not to get in the way for a while.

As soon as he stepped into the second compartment, the sucking sound stopped abruptly.

At the same time, footsteps sounded behind him, and Li Huan turned around cautiously. The university professor who was still sleeping on the back of the chair smiled at him, "Why are you carrying a bag? Nanjing Railway Station has already passed, and Beijing has to wait until dawn." Come on, you won't be able to get out of the car for a while."

Li Huan: "Why are you up?"

The professor said, "I'm going to the bathroom."

Li Huan slowly rolled up the corners of his lips, untied his backpack and held it in his hand, and said with a half-smile: "Isn't our seat closer to the other side?"

The professor was stunned for a moment, and after reacting, he immediately explained: "Oh, I saw you coming here and thought something was wrong, so I stopped by to have a look."

"That's it, thank you for your concern. I'm just here to deal with the final work of the internship."

"Your internship is on the train?"

"Because the target hid too deep before and didn't find a chance to strike, I had no choice but to do so on the train," Li Huan raised his eyelashes lightly, and Li Huan glanced at the other party casually, his eyes glowing with a dark red light With a meaningful smile on his face, "Your child is too greedy."

- To Be Continued