Little Octopus - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Yu Chenghuai’s Story (Her Boy)

If I could do it all over again, I would rather have never met her.

Through the sniper scope, she looks like a broken doll held captive by the criminal. Her clothes are torn beyond recognition, her hands are bound behind her back, and her shoulders are bruised and swollen. Her body is covered in terrifying scars and bloodstains.

A dagger has carved a deep, crimson mark into her neck.

I am hidden at the high point, my hands trembling slightly.

She hasn’t moved for a long time.

I speak into the comms, “…Hostage situation is critical. Requesting immediate permission to neutralize the target.”

“Dayu, negotiations are underway. We will definitely rescue the hostage! Hold your position, do not fire…”

“The hostage is in bad shape…”

“Stay calm! Dayu! Obey orders!”

Cold sweat flows from my forehead into my eyes, stinging sharply, but I don’t dare to blink, nor do I dare reach out to wipe it away.

My scope remains locked on the target, not relaxing for a single second.

In my six years and through hundreds of missions, this is the one that has terrified me the most.

October 1, 2018.

I actually managed to get a ten-day long holiday during National Day.

This was my first long break since I was selected from the military academy as a top shooting prospect for the Special Operations Brigade.

My family decided to spend the holiday Retracing the Long March.

That was when I met her.

She was the kind of girl who could brighten a room. I couldn’t say exactly what it was about her that was so beautiful; in my eyes, every part of her was perfect.

At the time, she was fretting because she had used a farmhouse restroom and didn’t have a single yuan in cash to pay for it.

I pulled out five yuan and paid for both of us.

She said thank you.

Her voice was crisp and soft.

Outside the farmhouse, there was still a massive traffic jam. I looked toward the foot of the mountain, knowing the road would clear soon.

I walked over to my family’s car and tapped on the window. “Don’t wait for me when the traffic clears. Just drive straight to Wenchuan.”

“Is there a mission?” My mother asked, sounding a bit nervous.

“No. I’m going to go chase you a daughter-in-law.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah. Remember, don’t worry about me later. Just go.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her get into the driver’s seat of a Wrangler.

I kept a distance of about three to five hundred meters from her-not too close, but enough to ensure she would see me from time to time.

As expected, the traffic cleared quickly. I waited behind a bend and only started running when I saw the front of her car appear.

She soon drove up beside me, honked her horn, and slowed down.

“Need a lift?” Her tone carried the delight of running into an acquaintance.

I turned to look at her and smiled. “Yes.”

She froze for a second, then her cheeks flushed slightly.

She was cute enough to hit the bullseye of my heart.

I climbed into the passenger seat and gave her the explanation I’d prepared in advance.

She didn’t doubt me for a second, even saying she would get me back to my family once she could get in touch with them.

I said thank you.

“What are you thanking me for? I’m just repaying a debt.”

“Ha! I guess this is a case of ‘a drop of help returned with a gushing spring.'”

Beautiful, innocent, lively, and kind-that was my first impression of her.

There was no cell signal, and without GPS, she seemed a bit lost.

The Wrangler followed the road signs in the opposite direction of Wenchuan. I pretended not to notice.

I lowered my head, feigning to check my phone for a signal, then looked up at the scenery outside the window.

The car wasn’t new. Her driving could only be described as barely smooth, and there was a faint scent of the cleaning agent often used by used-car dealerships.

This was likely a recently purchased second-hand car.

A girl, a used Wrangler, traveling alone.

I guessed she had just ended a relationship and wanted to give herself a fresh start that was both free-spirited and ritualistic.

When we reached a nearby small town, I called my family. After hanging up, I told her that we had taken different routes and were now far apart.

I said I would hail a taxi to meet up with them.

By the side of the road, I quietly asked a taxi driver, “Will you go to Jiuzhaigou?”

I intentionally named a place much further away than Wenchuan.

Every taxi driver looked at me like I was a lunatic. “Not going there, kid. Go take the long-distance bus yourself. It’s so far, who’s gonna drive you there?”

I raised an eyebrow; I was only afraid you’d say yes.

At that moment, the heavens cooperated, and a light rain began to fall.

I returned to her car. “Looks like I can’t leave tonight. Let me treat you to dinner. I’ll go find them tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she agreed readily, without any hesitation.

We found a place that looked clean.

Her ex-boyfriend sent a video call, and she asked me to pretend to be her current boyfriend to get rid of him.

Tsk! Why pretend?

I’m sitting here right now precisely to make this status real…

Because it wasn’t picked up for a long time, the video call disconnected automatically.

She looked at me with eyes that were a bit flighty and nervous.

I stood up and sat down next to her, resting my hand on the back of her chair. “Call him back.”

Coincidentally, I knew her ex-boyfriend. We were in the same class in middle school. He was the famous “pretty boy” heartthrob of our class.

I could kill five little “pretty boys” like him with one punch.

He said that after all these years as brothers, I was actually stabbing him in the back.

I really wanted to tell him that being classmates doesn’t make us brothers. Which of my brothers hasn’t faced life and death with me countless times?

I told him to stop pestering my girlfriend.

I was dead serious.

He started snapping like a mad dog, calling her his “sloppy seconds.”

In that instant, I wanted to use fifty punches to kill that idiot two hundred and fifty times over.

Finally, the conversation ended with him saying he wanted to go and “exchange pointers” with my uncle.

After hanging up, she cupped her hands to me in a martial arts salute and said, “Many thanks to the hero for drawing his sword in aid.”

I smiled and ordered a can of Want Want Milk for her. “Drink this milk, and forget that jerk.”

While we were eating, I asked her where she was planning to go on her road trip. She said she was heading west all the way to Dali.
“But this is the Western Sichuan Route.”

She clearly hadn’t expected to take the wrong path, let alone one so far off. Compared to when she started this morning, she was now over two hundred kilometers further away from Dali.

I wanted to laugh, but I had to hold it in.

I coughed to hide my amusement and gave her two suggestions: one was to head back and take the highway to Dali, and the other was to come with me to Western Sichuan and join me in Retracing the Long March.

She hesitated. I told her she could give me her decision when we parted ways the next day.

She sensed the intent behind my words, but she didn’t refuse.

In a place where she couldn’t see me, I grinned with self-satisfied abandon.

During the Golden Week, every hotel in the city was packed. After much effort, I finally found a room, but there was only one twin room left.

Nice.

“How about you stay here, and I’ll find an internet cafe to crash in for the night?”

“It’s a twin room! Two beds! Are you afraid I’m going to plot something against you?” she asked, a hint of indignation in her voice.

“Why are you stealing my lines?”

The hotel didn’t have an elevator, so I helped her carry her luggage up.

Why are girls’ suitcases so heavy?! It was heavier than the half-carcass of a pig I used to carry for the cooking squad. I even suspected there might be half a pig hidden inside that suitcase.

But when she looked at me with a touch of wonder and said how amazing I was, I silently lowered my other hand, which had been about to reach out and help balance the weight.

“This is nothing. I could carry you and run a thirty-kilometer raid.”

“What branch of the military are you in?”

She reacted quickly. Hearing the word “raid,” she immediately asked about my branch. Most people would have asked me what a raid meant.

I reflexively replied, “You’re so quick to catch on-you’re not a spy, are you?”

She rolled her eyes at me. She was still adorable.

“Infantry. I can’t say more than that.”

I wasn’t exactly lying; infantry is a broad category.

I am a sniper. My unit, the Special Service Assault Team, is the typical kind of unit that cannot be spoken of. Everything about the unit is classified as top secret.

People might have heard of many famous special forces units, but in reality, there are quite a few units like ours in the country that cannot be mentioned.

We cannot have our names exposed to the public even if we die as martyrs; we won’t even have a gravestone after death.

Sometimes, the exposure of one person could mean the destruction of the entire team or even affect a massive strategic deployment.

That’s why whenever I leave the unit, I wear a black bucket hat to hide my face.

My family only knows that I’m a special forces soldier. They don’t ask about anything else, and even if they did, I wouldn’t tell them.

Even while on leave, I maintained the routine from the unit. When I woke up in the morning, she was still asleep.

She slept very quietly, her cheeks flushed pink like a peach.

I ran a lap around the entire town and brought breakfast back for her.

The moment I opened the door…

She probably thought I had left, so she had forgotten to close the bathroom door…

We both froze. Her face turned beet red instantly.

I looked away, pretending to be calm as I closed the door for her. “You really don’t treat me like a stranger.”

When she finished getting ready and came out of the bathroom, her face was red enough to fry an egg. “I thought you’d left.”

I figured as much.

I handed her breakfast. “Do I look like the type of man who abandons someone after a night together?”

“…” She lowered her head and slurped her noodles without a word.

“How do you write the characters for your name, Zhang Xiao??”

Actually, I had known for a long time. I had seen her ID card when we checked in yesterday.

I knew and remembered her name, ID number, birthday, and address.

I was just looking for a topic to chat about.

“Zhang’ as in the Zhangtai Willows, and ‘Xiao’ as in Spring Dawn.'”

“Oh, Zhang as in ‘octopus’ and Xiao as in ‘got it,'” I said intentionally to make her forget the earlier incident.

“Hey!” She punched me in the chest.

Well… she forgot pretty quickly.

“My name is Yu Chenghuai.”

“…Oh.”

“You can call me Dayu.”

“…Then if you put our names together, doesn’t that literally make us an ‘Octopus’?”

“Are we a ‘couple’ already?” I laughed.

She also lowered her head and smiled secretly.

She didn’t dislike me.

That was great.

My family was so curious about what kind of sacred being this girl I was pursuing was that they actually showed up. They only told me once they reached the hotel entrance.

Originally, I wanted to say that if she didn’t want to travel through Western Sichuan today, I could go to Dali with her.

I didn’t know whether to call them divine assists or pig teammates, but in short, she ended up following us on the path of Retracing the Long March.

Only, the person staying in the same room as her became my younger sister.

Sigh…

I became her driver and tour guide.

I told her about the Commander of the Second Company and the Twenty-Two Assault Warriors during the Flying Capture of Luding Bridge; I spoke of how the Red Army, dressed in rags and struggling with every step, crossed these grasslands before us that were once filled with marshes and snow; I talked about the 609 steps under the Long March Monument, symbolizing the 609 battles…

This has been my heart’s aspiration since I was a child. When I set foot on the places where my predecessors shed their blood, I only felt a surge of passion and a sense of shared glory.

I wasn’t a good storyteller; I could only recount that history in a straightforward manner. But she listened very intently, not finding it boring or showing any impatience at all.

I was very close to her, close enough to see the shimmering tears in her eyes.

Close enough that if I leaned in just a little more, I could kiss her.

“If you keep talking, I’m going to develop a Suspension Bridge Effect for you,” she said.

I looked at her and smiled, wanting my smile to reach her heart.

When we returned to Wenchuan, I was supposed to have seven days of leave left, but I suddenly received a call from my captain. I had to return to the unit immediately.

She knew I had something I wanted to say to her.

But after thinking about it, I decided to wait until I could explain after this mission.

I took two steps away, but I really couldn’t help myself and turned back. I whispered in her ear, “Don’t forget me.”