Artifact Report

Chapter 280: Chai Si: Excellent Luck
Chai Si remembered what happened next, but it was not a memory.

Human memory always takes oneself as the main subject: looking out through one's own eyes, through this body, remembering the smell and sound, the touch and light... and then emotions arise, whether it is laughter or anger.

Chai Si's "memory" is more like reading a diary written by another stranger.

Every event—or, rather, every image—seemed like rootless duckweed, floating in memory without any particular order. Only through rational analysis and judgment could one know which event came first and which followed.

For example, the resident suddenly reverted to Daisy Monroe's appearance: messy brown curls casually tied to one side, slightly dry lips, bright eyes, a slight sheen of sweat on the forehead - Mom opened her mouth.

She seemed to be being pulled back by some force, her feet hooked into the carpet like claws, tearing it apart, and she retreated inch by inch with a cracking sound. She stretched out her hand to Chase and said anxiously, "Chase, please, hold on to me, okay? Mommy is going to--"

Chai Si looked at her as if in a dream.

The right side of his chest was pierced, and his left arm was pinned beneath Damian; unable to move, he just stared.

The next second, the hand, along with the mother, was sucked out of the suddenly broken and detached airplane door. Along with Damian's passage, it rapidly shrank and disappeared, being sucked into a dark vacuum that could no longer be seen.

He later reflected that it was at that moment that Damian truly died.

That was the last time Chase saw Daisy Monroe.

He lay beneath Damian's body, as if immersed in a pouring blood bath, soaked by his brother's last body heat, warm and wet, his consciousness blurred.

The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps in the corridor vaguely brought him back to his senses - accompanied by a loud bang, Uncle Kai broke open the door, stopped at the door, and was stunned for a second or two.

Without saying a word, Kaironan rushed straight towards Chase.

The next moment, his brother's body, which had been warming him, was lifted from his body, and a sense of emptiness and coldness rushed in.

Uncle Kai, who was always calm and at ease, let out a cry that was almost inhuman from his throat. The next moment, he didn't even dare to speak loudly.

"Damien?" He called softly and pleadingly in a trembling voice, "Damien, wake up, open your eyes... Damian?"

At that time, Uncle Kai probably had already realized that Damian had died on the spot.

But he still picked up the phone, yelled at 911, and hugged Aunt Hai who was about to rush into the room, staining her white nightgown with blood. He slapped Chai Si's cheek and asked him what had happened...

For the next few memories, Chase had to carefully arrange them in the correct order.

He was lying on the hospital bed, and Uncle Kai listened to his story with a gloomy face.

What he experienced at that time was a completely different kind of fear. He didn't know what Uncle Kai was thinking or what he would decide. Chai Si couldn't even confess through narration, because even in narration, he didn't dare to tell the whole truth without reservation.

Uncle Kai's eyelids were half-closed, and his slightly cloudy gray-blue eyes looked at him from the shadows, as if Chai Si was a wild beetle he had never seen before.

Aunt Hai's occasional high-pitched cry could be heard from far away in the corridor.

During his hospitalization, there were days in a row when the bedside was empty, as if the whole world had forgotten that there was a Chai Si in the hospital. On the day of discharge, Chai Si sat at the bedside in a daze, not knowing where to go, where he could go.

One day during my hospital stay was Damian's funeral.

When his narration became unsustainable, after a few long minutes, Uncle Kai stood up from the bed.

Chai Si remembered that he raised his head, feeling afraid and vaguely hopeful. At that moment, he almost wanted to lean over and beg Uncle Kai - he didn't know what to beg for.

Uncle Kai's face was calm and composed.

"You don't have to go back to Kai's house anymore."

He turned around and walked out of the ward without looking back at Chai Si.

Chai Si sat blankly in the hospital corridor.

He sat there for too long, until the nurse came and asked him what was wrong, when his parents would come to pick him up, and whether he should call his parents.

He remembered leaving the hospital with a Target plastic bag in his hand: a change of clothes, a few packets of painkillers, a half-empty bottle of mineral water, and a pudding left over from the hospital meal.

That was all that was left of Chase Monroe in the world.

He had to remind himself that he had to hold on to all his memories, even the later experience - only by fully recovering could he continue to be the same person and bear the same sin.

Chai Si stood in the darkness, unable to tell for a moment whether he had already turned thirteen; unable to tell whether the months of wandering the streets were really over.

The middle-aged man who was drunk late at night looked him up and down for a while, then squatted down beside Chai Si.

How old are you? Did you run away from home? Do you need money?

Uncle can take you out for dinner.

As he spoke, he reached out and touched Chase's knee.

A few minutes later, the man was kicking and howling as he rolled back and forth on the road. His mouth was full of blood, tears and mucus, his nose was crooked and tilted to one side, and a bloody front tooth rolled into the sewer.

He was angry and in pain, and he screamed for help and asked someone to call the police. His voice echoed far away from the street. Chai Si was still young at that time, and he suddenly panicked. He grabbed the bag and turned around to run away.

Later he thought that if he was caught, at least he would have a place to eat and sleep for the next few days.

How long had he been wandering around? Even Chai Si couldn't remember.

The red plastic bag was wrinkled and worn, with patches of white worn out.

Chai Si developed an incomprehensible loyalty to it.

He carried it through the streets and alleys, put it under the bus stop awning to avoid the rain, and tied it around his waist when carrying furniture - oh yes, later he lied that he was over sixteen years old and found a daily wage job in a moving company that did not require identification.

Along with the young movers, Chai Si carried sofas, tables, and televisions... He sweated profusely all day, silent and silent. There was nothing much to say, and besides, he was afraid that if he spoke too much, his age would be revealed. Every day was much the same: he collected his meager salary, bought a few sandwiches, and ate them in the park, watching the sun slowly sink behind the treetops.

The city center park has public taps and toilets, and benches for sleeping, which is enough.

During those days, he hardly felt any physical pain.

He was in a daze, his mind always floating above his back, and only physiological instincts supported his actions; the world moved forward day by day, but he stayed where he was.

Once, when passing by a church, Chase stopped.

After pausing for a moment, he gave up the idea and continued walking forward.

First, if there really is a heaven after death, it would not be the place he goes to, and it would not be the place where he sees his mother again.

Second, if there is a God who arranged all this, Chai Si must kill him.

So for the time being, I guess I can only continue to live like this.

He had no watch or cell phone, and could only rely on fragments of human nature to know the date and time: newspapers in the newsstand, TV news in the window, the wall clock, someone took out a cell phone to check, and people's words.

Later, Chai Si felt that it seemed unnecessary to know what day it was - as long as he could still go to work the next day and get his daily salary, what did it matter to him where the day went?

Look no further.

Thirteen-year-old Chai Si gradually began to realize how long a lifetime was. Even the length of a day made him feel like he had just woken up from a dream, and he was at a loss as to what to do.

Sometimes he would hypnotize himself that he had actually been living like this since his mother died; the Kai family, the hunters, the private school... were all a dream of a tramp.

It was precisely because he began to avoid dates and times that he didn't know what day it was when Uncle Kai found him.

At that time, he was working with his coworkers to lift a heavy wooden wardrobe into the truck bed. Even though he was taller than most people his age, it was a difficult and heavy job for him. When a black car drove into the lane, his shoulders were burning with pain.

When Chai Si raised his head, Kailonan just opened the door and got out of the car.

For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating.

Kylo Ronan looks older than he did a few months ago.

He seemed to be trapped in a layer of gray-white fog, unable to escape for months; his pair of gray-blue eyes were hazy and turbid due to the fog, and more than half of his hair had turned white, with only a few strands of black hair remaining.

Kaironan looked around, his eyes moving from the truck, the furniture... to the towel on Chase's shoulder.

He sneered softly, as if it was self-mockery or a sneer.

To this day, Chai Si still doesn't know why Uncle Kai changed his mind and found him again.

"…You've been doing this?"

Chai Si opened his mouth, but no sound came out and he could only nod.

"go home."

While speaking, Kailonan had already turned his head again and opened the car door, still seeming unwilling to look at Chai Si even once more.

Chai Si didn't move.

"Why...why?" he asked in a dry voice. "I..."

"I've already lost a son."

Kailonan looked at the black roof of the car without looking back and whispered: "Why lose another one?"

"But, Aunt Hai..."

"she does not know."

Kilronen, still looking across the street, replied with her back to him. "I just told her it was Damian's access that killed him. That's the truth, isn't it?"

All along, Chai Si felt like he was walking in a dream; only the dream of that day made him afraid that he would be woken up by accident.

Chai Si even forgot whether he had told his coworkers. He just held the plastic bag tightly, walked with a shaky step, and got into the car with Kaironan in a daze.

The driver turned around and called softly, "Master."

As they drove to the Kai family mansion, Chai Si sat alone in the back seat, crying silently the entire way. If Uncle Kai heard his uncontrollable sobs, he didn't show it.

When I walked back into the mansion, Aunt Hai was sitting alone in the dining room. The sun had already set, and the house was engulfed in shadows. There was not a single light on in the dining room.

In front of her was a half-empty bottle of red wine, but no wine glass.

Chai Si could feel that it was not the first bottle of wine she drank today.

"Damian is dead."

Aunt Hai didn't turn around and spoke incoherently to the bottle of red wine.

Chai Si couldn't move.

"Now you are his only son...you are so lucky."

(End of this chapter)