203: My name is Ban Yangming, and I am the deputy captain of the Fox Hunting Special Operations Team (Part 2)

He Jingrui?!

Impossible!

He was supposed to have sacrificed himself!

I saw him and the Captain enter that crack with my own eyes, and only the Captain came out alive… The report was clear.

At the memorial service, the Captain’s fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms, bleeding profusely.

We all stared at He Jingrui’s Silly and happy black and white photo, our eyes hollow as if our souls had been dug out.

But now… that silhouette… Just as I was lost in thought, a clear voice rang out.

“Three people, right? This way, please.”

I looked up and found that the figure so much like He Jingrui was gone.

I almost pushed past the young man in front of me, but I quickly controlled the impulse.

Yes, I was never an impulsive person; in the squad, I was always the big brother.

“Boss, are you the only one working?”

After ordering, I asked the young man.

The young man replied, “Yes, there’s usually an assistant, but he wasn’t feeling well just now and took the day off.”

I nodded and didn’t ask any more questions.

But those words kept replaying in my mind.

Just now? Not feeling well? Took the day off?

An impulse rose within me to rush into the kitchen and see if that guy was He Jingrui, but then a new idea suddenly struck me.

This idea calmed me down again.

No hurry, no hurry.

The food was served quickly.

Soon, all the dishes we ordered were on the table.

It was delicious, truly delicious.

So delicious that it momentarily diverted my attention from He Jingrui, leaving only the dishes before me.

Under the lights, the sauce coating each dish shimmered with an inviting luster, like solidified honey or the maple leaves of late autumn.

The different flavors were distinct yet perfectly blended, powerfully sweeping through my nasal passages, even briefly overpowering the chaotic thoughts in my mind.

Salty, fresh, sweet, rich—all the tastes bloomed in layers in my mouth and then merged perfectly.

It was a deep, soul-satisfying feeling, enough to make any diner remember it forever and worship it.

After the ultimate deliciousness came a complete renewal of body and mind.

This made my earlier thought shift slightly again.

Before leaving the Midnight Diner, I subtly glanced towards the kitchen again, then left with Li Zhenzhen and He Qianqian.

He Jingrui!

That face, that profile, I could never be mistaken!

How many times had we crawled side-by-side in the mud, covered each other’s backs in a hail of bullets, and collapsed in the same foxhole, panting like broken bellows after extreme exertion… Every subtle habit of his was deeply etched in my memory.

He’s not dead!

This thought was like a lightning bolt tearing through dark clouds, instantly splitting open the cold, heavy tombstone in my heart named “sacrifice,” bringing with it a dizzying ecstasy and searing pain.

But immediately after, an emotion named anger surged within me.

He saw me, he must have seen me!

Otherwise, why did he disappear so coincidentally right after I entered the Midnight Diner?

What does “wasn’t feeling well just now and took the day off” mean?

Heh, such a clumsy excuse, perfectly fitting his Silly personality.

At the same time, the Captain’s figure appeared in my mind without warning.

After the memorial service, he locked himself in his room for three days.

When he came out again, he was a changed man.

He secretly submitted that application for the “New Human” project, which was actually a human experiment, without telling us, his comrades and brothers, and then disappeared without a trace.

That project was clearly a path of certain death.

But I knew he was gambling his life for a slim chance of “not losing anyone again.”

He had told me himself that he never wanted to see anyone sacrifice themselves in front of him again.

If He Jingrui knew that the Captain, out of guilt, to avoid losing any more brothers, had sent himself into that hellish laboratory… I drove, listening to the noisy car music and the laughter of the girls in the back seat, yet I felt a bone-chilling coldness and loneliness.

It was as if a hole had been carved into my chest, filled with cold, howling wind.

I need to find He Jingrui and tell him about the Captain.

He should know about this.

After dropping Li Zhenzhen and her best friend He Qianqian off at home, I drove back to the alley again.

This time, however, I hid in the shadows.

The chill of the deep night crept up silently like an invisible tide.

I leaned against the cold, rough concrete corner, most of my body merging into the deep, impenetrable shadows of the alley.

The world before me was reduced to the tightly closed back door diagonally opposite, illuminated by the dim, flickering yellow light from a struggling streetlamp at the alley entrance.

The Midnight Diner had long since closed.

The door was tightly shut, sealing off the lingering cooking fumes and the warmth of human life inside.

The entire back alley was eerily silent, with only the distant, low, blurred hum of the tirelessly flowing traffic on the city’s main road, like background noise from another world.

Time lost its measure.

Every second was stretched, solidified.

The strong smell of cooking oil in the alley, mixed with the damp, moldy scent from the corner of the wall, formed a suffocating aroma, belonging to the deep creases of the city, stubbornly drilling into my nostrils.

The cold concrete wall, through my clothes, greedily drew away my body heat.

The halo of the streetlamp at the alley entrance cast my elongated, distorted shadow on the damp ground.

My fingertips unconsciously fumbled for the spot inside my jacket, near my ribs—there, the outline of the hard Fox Hunt Squad badge, through the fabric, gave a cold yet familiar sensation.

It was like a meteorite sunk in a cold pool, the only real anchor I could grasp at this moment.

Images in my mind uncontrollably churned, cut, and flashed back, like an ice-tempered dagger, repeatedly piercing my heart.

The night grew deeper, and that damned door remained motionless.

Just as my concentration wavered from waiting too long.

A very faint sound, almost swallowed by the night wind, suddenly entered my ears.

It wasn’t from that door; it was from higher up.

All my muscles instantly tensed, like a spring compressed to its limit.

Extremely slowly, extremely subtly, I raised my head and looked at the dilapidated window on the second floor of the Midnight Diner.

The curtain wasn’t completely drawn.

In a corner, a very narrow gap was left, no wider than a finger.

Just in that instant, the faint light in that gap flickered very slightly.

It wasn’t the disturbance of the wind; it was that… infinitesimally small change in light and shadow caused when a figure briefly pressed against the gap to peek out, obstructing the light.

My heart lurched, then settled heavily back into place, beating more slowly and powerfully.

The sound of blood rushing through my veins seemed clearly audible.

The mixed odors in the alley disappeared, the hum of distant traffic disappeared; only my steady breathing remained, and the solidified darkness in that curtain gap.

He was there.

He had known I was below all along.

The cold night wind swirled, picking up garbage bags from the ground, brushing past my feet with a soft rustle.

Time lost its meaning; only a silent standoff solidified and stretched in the air.