Puzzle Madness

Chapter 38 Police Station
They stood at the bus stop, waiting for the bus that hadn't arrived yet. Doudou slipped two fifty-cent coins into the coin slot of the ticket machine and took a picture of the square button with "Route 20" written on it.

Sizzle, sizzle--
With the sound of printing, two receipts were spit out from the platform. Doudou took one and handed it to the mathematician:

"Hey! Speaking of which, I suddenly remembered something."

Doudou moved his thumb away to avoid getting it stained with fresh ink:

"I forgot to bring my homework—but there's no way I can go back and get it now. Damn it! I was thinking I'd take the bus and you could help me with the homework while I was there."

Because he had to go out, Doudou went back home and put on his usual pair of Warrior shoes; but he ended up forgetting his most important summer homework.

"Oh, it's really inconvenient to go back now. Forget it, wait until I finish everything today, and then you can start helping me with my math homework tomorrow!"

The mathematician stared at the receipt between his fingers, as if this was the only piece of paper in the world worthy of his attention:

"Well, now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't have left the community? Those people who helped me might not be able to find me."

He paused, and finally uttered a low sentence:
"--How about we go back now? I can go to your house and help you with your homework. The police will probably only search my apartment; they won't come to your place."

Doudou reached out and grabbed the mathematician's arm. His fingers dug into his flesh like iron hoops, causing the mathematician to grimace in pain.

"Eh? Didn't I just tell you that those guys who might want to help you are the bad guys?"

"And what's more! Do you think the detectives are all idiots? We're doing our summer homework right in front of them, squatting next to a crime scene? Do you think we're in a sitcom? Are we supposed to just walk right past the Serious Crime Unit?"

"And do you want to stay there and get caught? It's okay if you get caught, but it will be a big trouble if I don't finish my homework--"

Before they could finish their words, the bus stopped in front of them with a cloud of exhaust fumes and the sound of cicadas chirping.
-
The last bus in Mong Cai usually runs at 10:30 pm. The only exception is bus No. 20, which runs across the city.
Because of this, bus number 20 often appears in local ghost stories in Mong Cai. However, the authenticity of these stories is debatable – Doudou has taken it many times in the middle of the night, hoping to encounter some ghosts or monsters, but in the end, he didn't encounter any strange anecdotes.

At most, drunks would fight in the car - grabbing the handrails, rings and seats in the bus, and beating each other like performing gymnastics at high speed; this was quite exciting, and Doudou felt that it was as entertaining as wrestling.

But unlike usual days, Bus No. 20 was driving slowly today: it had none of the momentum of speeding on the main road.

The bus was empty. Apart from the driver, there were only two passengers, Doudou and the mathematician, huddled at the back. The bus's sound system was a bit broken, and the sound of "Purple Rain" was playing in a high-and-low pitch, sounding like a ghost's cry.

The mathematician buried his head in the cardboard box and muttered softly:

"I probably shouldn't have left Singapore. If I had turned myself in earlier, I might have been cleared of all charges by now."

Doudou picked at the sticker on the bus window, clicking his tongue:
"Oh, you think too much!"

"If you ask me, you did the right thing. I've never seen a wrongly accused person be vindicated right from the start of a story. I feel like if you were arrested at that time, you would have been shot in the head before you even got into the police car."

"Have you never seen this before? As soon as you get in the car, they put a gun in your hand and blow your head off with another one; they say you're assaulting a police officer."

He tore off the sticker that someone had stuck on it and threw it into the trash can:
"Well, mainly from movies and TV shows. But art comes from life. Oh! I think I mentioned this once before."

The mathematician scratched the bus's metal floor, which was covered with gum and spit, with the toe of his shoe:
"Real life is not a work of art. Ultimately, I shouldn't have applied to Nanyang Technological University."

He suddenly stuck his head out the window: Even at midnight, the wind was still hot. Most of the buildings on both sides of the street were dark, and the bus was driving alone on the road - no headlights could be seen in front or behind.

"No one should be following us, right? What do you think? Do I need to keep my eyes on the back?"

DouDou opened its mouth wide, clapped its hands repeatedly, and made strange noises: "Awaa ...

The mathematician finally pulled his head back and rubbed his shirt with his hands. He shook his collar and looked inside with a frown:
"My chest is really itchy. It's been itching for a long time. Why do I feel like I have eczema?"

Doudou watched the mathematician tug at his shirt:

"The weather in the autonomous prefecture is like this. Many of my classmates have had eczema. And people who are under too much stress can also get eczema - or is it urticaria? Anyway, it's something similar. Don't ask me, I haven't had it."

"It's normal. You've been wrongly accused and hunted. Normally, you'd have a fortuitous encounter, awaken special abilities, or at least have a girl suddenly appear and insist on marrying you. Having eczema isn't so bad, it's more or less a consolation prize."

Mathematicians were clearly not impressed by this itchy "consolation prize":
"I wonder where those agents who rushed in from the front came from."

Before leaving, Doudou dragged the bodies to the corridor outside to make it easier for the detectives who arrived later to clean them up:
"Oh! Speaking of which!"

"You're in big trouble, Doc. This is the first time I've heard the term 'corporate law enforcement': I've only seen Detroit outsource law enforcement to private companies in RoboCop. Jiaozhi Autonomous Prefecture doesn't do that."

"Doctor, I misunderstood you earlier. For a moment, I thought you were delusional or had a split personality, and you killed someone without even realizing it."

"Look now, there are actually people chasing you. And they're not just hooligans or thugs. They're all dressed like professionals."

The mathematician lowered his head, but the cardboard box creaked:
"By the way, are we still going to that radio station you mentioned?"

The mathematician felt himself immersed in this chaos and had begun to feel numb. He wanted to stay away from Doudou, the farther the better. But if he left this guy, he had no idea what to do next.

Doudou turned his head, his eyes seeming to be looking at a silly kid with a runny nose:
"Of course not!"

"Originally, we were going to play the announcement, which was... oh, to lure the snake out of its hole."

"Those dead guys up front were talking about corporate law enforcement, and they even threw a tear gas canister. It seems you're right about that. All those big companies are out to get you, and maybe even alive."

"But I killed them all at once. Even if we went to the radio station and screamed about it, the big companies wouldn't just send people to hunt us down. They're not stupid. Now that they know someone as powerful as me is protecting you, they won't send anyone else to die."

"So if you're not prepared, they probably won't come looking for trouble again—but I don't think there's enough time to prepare tonight; so using the radio won't work now."

"It's troublesome, really troublesome: if it's just me, I don't know where to go or who to kill."

"So—we're going straight to the police station now."

Hearing these two words, the mathematician raised his head suddenly:

"Ah? Go to the police? Turn ourselves in? And let the police protect us?"

Hearing this, Doudou was so shocked that his mouth opened wide and his eyes widened:
"What a psycho! How could it be possible—Oh, here it comes."

To the right of the bus, which was gradually coming to a stop, were the only two buildings on the street still shining brightly: the Mong Cai Municipal Hospital, diagonally across from the Mong Cai Municipal Police Station. Ambulances also honked by, sending patients to the emergency department.

The bus arrived at the station: from the rearview mirror, you can see the driver's suspicious eyes, looking at the two people whispering to each other.

What else does the mathematician want to say?
Doudou's hand wasn't big, but it gripped the mathematician's forearm with the squeeze of a hydraulic clamp, pulling him out of the car. For a short distance, the mathematician felt like both of his feet were off the ground, and he could only use his other hand and his armpit to hold the cardboard box tight.

(End of this chapter)