Chapter 17 Clockwise: Watchers in the Shadows

The door opened inward abruptly, as if all my previous preparations had been seen through, the camera in the jacket pocket, and the fruit knife wrapped in paper in the trouser pocket.This sudden incident made me panic, and I didn't know what to do for a while.But soon I put the tension behind me.When the door opened I saw a face contorted with panic like mine, just by chance, like so many things that happen every day, no big deal.The house seemed to become a besieged city in an instant, he wanted to come out, and I couldn't wait to squeeze in from his side. Wrong body to let him pass.The room is facing the sun, and the light pours in like water, but from my angle, the light is not so sufficient, or in other words, not as bright as imagined.

Blocking the lighting of so many private houses under your feet, what you get can only fill one room at most, and it's just just right. I tiptoed in and took a closer look.This is a small suite, with a few desks, a water dispenser and bookshelves outside, the door inside is ajar, and only a bed can be seen through the crack of the door, probably someone wants to stay here at night.I counted them, and there were 5 people in total, all of whom were concentrating on their work. No one seemed to notice my presence. They didn't even raise their heads, and they were so quiet that they couldn't bear to be disturbed.

There was nothing suspicious. I let go of the camera in my hand. I had turned off the flash and took pictures when I was at home, but my palms were already covered with a fine layer of sweat due to the tense relationship, as if I was in summer.Approaching the desk of one of the editors, his eyes looked back and forth like a scanner, and finally stopped on the manuscript he had revised. The ink printed on the A4 paper reflected the sunlight outside the window, spreading out and turning into a faint halo. "In another 514 days, I will no longer be a child. Some yearn, some fear..."

This beginning is not the first time in my impression, it is related to someone I know well. wheat?Yes, it is wheat.I saw it on his computer a few days ago. Although I can't remember what the title is, this interesting and hazy beginning has been deeply imprinted in my mind.Why are these guys sorting out Maizi's manuscripts?I looked at the hands of other people, and they were full of familiar sentence patterns. The stories left by Maizi in high school appeared at such a time and on such an occasion. What purpose do they have?Kill Maizi, then promote him as the pioneer of the "Renaissance", and finally make a profit by selling his words?Roughly so.I turned on the power of the camera, and clicked and clicked in this small space, like a grain of wheat temporarily blocked by inspiration.

This series of actions finally caught their attention. I didn't give too much explanation, but just shrugged helplessly at them to show that this has nothing to do with them. I don't know if what I want to express can be received correctly. .After feeling almost done, I exited the room, but did not take the door politely. I took out my mobile phone and pressed the green button, and pressed it again, and the familiar number came into view.Beep, beep, but none of the phones in the room rang. Is the information provided by the friend wrong?No, this is absolutely impossible. This room is the editorial department of "Maicheng Daily", and there are a lot of Maizi's works. The most direct thing is that Shubei disappeared here last night. These cannot be all coincidences.

After about the fourth beep, the phone was picked up. "How about it, Xia Tian, ​​are you satisfied with my studio? I think you have seen that what they are revising is Maizi's novel." "Where are you?" "Me? I'm everywhere. Have you got what you want? Frankly speaking, if he hadn't left so suddenly, this plan would have been delayed for a long time." "Can I understand that you used some special means for a certain purpose?" "Are you suspecting that Maizi's death is related to me?" I didn't speak, I found the call recording software from the phone's function menu, and opened it skillfully.

"I have enough reasons to let me have such an idea." "Of course, I confirmed your determination last night." "Last night?" I tried to imagine a pair of eyes pretending to look at me casually at a distance not far from me. I walked out of the alley, followed me to drink coffee for two hours, and watched me in the car. Stay overnight inside. "I called you last night, maybe I forgot it?" Telephone?Could it be that when I opened the call log, the number displayed on it was indeed left by Maizi, I was too careless, otherwise I would have been more fully prepared to come here.He used this number to call me, so last night he was with Shubei, and he learned from Shubei that I already knew something about this conspiracy, so he took the initiative to expose himself, trying to use this method to make Do I dispel my suspicions about them?It's too simple, think of me too simple. "I don't think this move is so clever. If it succeeds, you will be cleared of suspicion, but if it fails, you will probably be buried."

"Looks like you still can't trust me." "That's right, I have the key that Maizi left for me before he died, and the door he pointed to is right here, in front of my eyes." He probably transferred the phone call in the office to his mobile phone, and then Is that telephone line unplugged?It's really a clever method. If he chooses to escape, I may need more time to find him. Maicheng is not big, but it is not an easy task to find someone. "Right in front of your eyes, Maizi has been here before. I think we should find a place to have a good talk. If your belief is strong enough, maybe you can get the answer you want from me." He smiled, like the dull thunder in summer, but not so exaggerated.

"I don't think this is a good way, at least my safety cannot be guaranteed." "Well, you arrange the time and place—is this enough to show my sincerity?" I was silent for a while, thinking of the editors correcting wheat stories at their desks.That feeling, that feeling like time stopped, and it also seemed to speed up suddenly, throwing me away. "Okay, I'll think about it and I'll call you later." Sure enough, it went too smoothly. How should we deal with the current situation?There probably won't be much to gain by staying here. They must have packed up all the key things before last night, but what can there be?I thought about it, and I couldn't think of anything that should have appeared but hadn't.

Talk in person?Is he out of self-confidence that can make me give up continuing to pursue my thoughts, or has he prepared a whole set of coercion and lure?As he implied, this is a game to see who can get more information beneficial to himself from the other party.If this is the case, then it will be of great benefit to me. Even if he knows all the clues I know, it will not affect anything. On the contrary, if I can extract a trace of evidence from him, then I can Put him to death. He can outline such a meticulous conspiracy, shouldn't he show his feet at such a critical moment?No matter how you think about it, there is no one percent possibility. There must be other purposes.

I took the elevator downstairs and my car was still parked quietly on the side of the road. I finally understood that it was the complete observer of my life, quietly following my appearance and disappearance, and quietly roaming in time , parked quietly on the side of the road, quietly meeting my gaze. I turned around and looked at the dark alley behind the bustling city. I didn’t know what was going on with Aoi. Although I really wanted to cross the road and go around the labyrinth of paths to see her, but when I thought of the picture that looked up and longed for some message from me, face, I just can't muster the courage.In contrast, I would rather have a cup of intriguing coffee with the "editor-in-chief" that Shubeikou called. "At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the coffee shop opposite your office building." I told him the time and place concisely. In such a busy street, they still dare not do anything to me. "Okay, young man, take it easy, as I said before, I didn't do anything to Maizi, and of course I won't do anything to you - then you will understand the relationship between me and Maizi. Okay, that's it Bar." I still hung up the phone, and the busy signal replaced the blank, so what should I fill in the blank in my mind?What about my life after Maizi left? Time flies, I have been lying in the car, smoking the cigarettes I bought from the supermarket before, the soft pack of Hongtashan, not my favorite kind, but it can also bring short-term comfort.From time to time, someone would look in through the windshield, and even hear the conversation of two small children. "Kick it to see if it makes a sound?" "It should be, you try." They still failed to turn their thoughts into actions in the end, and even if they did, I probably didn't want to bother at this time.My mind is fully occupied by the upcoming meeting, and I can't figure out what kind of purpose he has anyway. If it were me, I would definitely not make such a dangerous decision. What was he thinking about? Probably before the meeting, I will not get the answer, and whether I can know it after the meeting also carries an uncertain label.Let's take it step by step. I'm not a strategist. What I've learned in the past few years is just walking and staying. I never have a long-term plan. At most, it's just a short period of time from summer to winter. It seems very long, but when looking back at the memory and comparing it over a long period of time, it can only feel like a run. It was nearly 3:00, and I suddenly found a man in his 50s standing in front of the coffee shop, wearing a neat suit, smoking cigarettes non-stop.After a while, I found that the frequency of raising and lowering his hand when smoking was almost the same as mine. Strictly speaking, it was almost exactly the same.I deliberately slowed down, but like my shadow, he also kept the same posture as me and stopped. Who is he? Watching him throw the cigarette butt in his hand on the ground and stamp it out, at the same time I also threw the cigarette butt in my hand out of the window.He stood on the side of the road and looked at his watch, looked around again, and then opened the door of the coffee shop and walked in. It's 3 o'clock, I guess, he is the one who started these things, the one who was waiting for me.He sketched out the whole incident, and maybe, as I thought, Maizi's death was also planned by him.I locked the car, saw the opportunity and quickly ran to the opposite side of the road, and looked in through the window. The light was so dim that it was difficult to see even if I opened my eyes wide.Someone was staring at me, and this feeling came to my mind again, and I couldn't help shivering. Pushing open the door and going in, at a glance, I found someone waving at me in the corner. It was not the person I saw just now who had a tacit understanding with me. It seemed that he was not as big as I said. It should be Under 45, or like the rest of the information about him, has been carefully kept under wraps. "Hi, I'm Zhuang Ziyue, the editor-in-chief of Maicheng Daily." "That's Shubei's immediate superior?" "We—Shubei, Maizi and I are just partners, and there is no relationship between superiors and subordinates. I provide the overall idea, Shubei is responsible for the operation, and Maizi provides daggers and guns, that's all." He said Then, he waved in the direction where I came in. Are you calling the waiter? "A glass of mocha, how about you?" "Mocha, it's better not to put sugar." "It seems that our preferences are similar. We were here before, to be precise, on this table, we described the future era." "It's very similar to the Munich conspiracy. Perhaps what I want to hear more is your description of the whole thing, from the beginning of your cooperation, to the death of Maizi, and the reason why you are sorting out his manuscript in your editorial room." "Okay, let's start from the beginning. The name of this project is '513', a number with special meaning to me——On May 13, more than 20 years ago, I entered the editorial department of Maicheng Daily, At the same time, I sealed my dream. Until a year ago, I accidentally saw the works of Maizi, and I was very excited by his writing style of advocating structural skills and burying a lot of clues and metaphors.” He took the coffee and handed it to me. A glass, and then continued, "Since then, I have been brewing this plan, and began to find ways to get close to wheat. In fact, he has been helping me write a book manuscript before he died. I found him not long ago. At first he He was not willing to cooperate with me, but he called me a few weeks later to tell me that he had thought it over and decided to join. I contacted Shubei during this period, and the three of us hit it off. My code name is '5', and Maizi is '1' ', Shubei is '3', which has no deep meaning, just like the note left by the wheat in your hand. If you insist, '5' can be the deformation of 'r', red is the heart and ego, the wheat is 'blue', representing wisdom and freedom." He actually knew about the note.If so, then "3" is the yellow that symbolizes the body and life among the three primary colors.I lowered my head and took a sip of coffee to cover up my surprise. It was "513", or Maizi's unique abbreviation for Shubei. "That's right." He saw through my mind, "Maizi is not a person who will evade responsibility, since he has to choose to die for some reason, then he will definitely hand over some unfinished things to someone he trusts, In other words, his will is being passed on by you at this moment. I called you last night, in fact, just to confirm this." "To be honest, I can't believe what you said. Of course not all of it. It is undisputed that you cooperated with Shubei. As for the others, I don't think it is true. That is to say, in my opinion, Maizi Your death is related to you." "Why are you so sure? Intuition? Sometimes intuition cannot replace rational thinking." "You're right. Maizi's will was indeed passed on to me in some way, and it was this unruly pursuit of freedom and truth. At first I suspected Shubei, but as the investigation deepened, I realized that it turned out that He is also just a small pawn to complete part of your conspiracy—that is, to use his relationship with Maizi to obtain useful information for you." "So, how do you explain this?" He took out a contract from his briefcase, which was the publishing rights of some of Maizi's works, "As an old friend for many years, you should be able to distinguish his handwriting, right?" I almost spit out the coffee in my mouth before I could swallow it. "In this way, you can't deny my cooperative relationship with Maizi. Of course, I still have a lot of evidence to prove everything I said, as long as you want to read it. I don't know what made you doubt me and Shubei. Maizi's The death is indeed suspicious, and I was also investigating secretly, but found nothing. I think, in a certain way, you must have been misled by some kind of force, that's why you traced me through Shubei." "Some kind of power." I repeated. "My inference is that Maizi's death can bring you a lot of tangible benefits. Obviously, by publishing Shubei's record report on "Maicheng Daily", you have put Maizi became an advocate of the so-called 'Renaissance', and at the same time began to publish a collection of his works." "If the wheat is not dead, he can bring me greater benefits. What I need is a real, living person to be the spiritual leader of this movement, not a false name and a pile of old manuscripts. You can go to Calculate this account, and then come to discuss with me whether Maizi's death is a loss or a benefit to me." I stopped talking. Too smooth progress will not bring me a satisfactory ending. It has always been the case, and of course this time will not be an exception. The two of us were silent like this. I don’t know if Maizi had a long silence with him in the same environment before, or did we have a very speculative chat with him?I dare not think too much, the more I think, the more complicated things become.Although it is there like that, it will not be moved by my subjectivity.Is it really the wrong direction? He successively showed me some records of conversations with Maizi, including text messages and pen and paper records. It was Maizi's handwriting, which could be recognized at a glance, 513, it was 513; in the end, what convinced me was a picture of them A group photo of the three of them in the studio on the 11th floor opposite. In the photo, Maizi smiled as if he was 20 years old and full of dreams about life. The corners of his eyes curved downward, revealing a color that can reach blue to the bone. "That's it, I have to go up and see how the manuscript is proofreading. Maizi's death disrupted all my plans, and a lot of work I did before was in vain. Fortunately, he has signed the copyright of his previous works. Give it to me, otherwise, I really don’t know how to continue.” Like a helpless old man, the blue of wheat scattered from his body and hit my yellow body one after another. Walking out of the coffee shop with him, he invited me to take a look at the studio together, but I declined.Now that I have returned to the origin of the maze, I actually feel that the wheat city is too big, so big that I can't confirm my existence, and I can't continue to search for the treasure left by the wheat.I was waiting for the green light on the side of the road, and when I was about to step across, I was hit hard from the side by a bicycle.I stabilized my center of gravity, and then I heard the sound of metal hitting the ground. "Are you okay?" I stretched out my hand, but I had to pull her up when I was bumped, "...Mixiang?"