Running wildly for hours at that night was the most horrible thing that Jiang Youyou would never forget in her life. Wherever she arrived she could be aware of someone chasing after her, maybe one of the gangsters of the pyramid marketing group, or a policeman, or An Hua.

The area behind the railway station was very dark. The dark area made one feel safe. There were a lot of fleabags in the region and Jiang Youyou searched out one with exceptionally dim light and rushed into the washroom in the corridor, washed face in the mirror, until the bloodstains faded away.

"How much for one night?" When she came out of the washroom, Jiang Youyou spoke with trembling voice, but she forced herself to calm down.

"Fifty yuan if you have the ID card, sixty without it. There are also rooms priced at thirty yuan, without washroom. The washroom is on corridor." The woman sitting at the front desk eating watermelon was middle-aged, in a thin white s.h.i.+rt, through which her lufflike b.r.e.a.s.t.s were vaguely visible. She even didn"t lift her eyelids when she spoke.

"I"d like a room for thirty yuan." Jiang Youyou"s ID card was taken by An Hua. It was impossible to go back for it, and now the thing she was most eagerly to do was taking a bath.

The key to the room was almost rusty. The middle-aged woman finally raised her head when Jiang Youyou was to pay for the room. Her face was covered with dense yellow blotches, irregularly arranged from the forehead to the neck. She gazed steadily at Jiang Youyou"s eyes and said, "there is hot water in the room. Don"t come out if you hear some sound in twenty-yuan room at night."

Jiang Youyou turned back to take out a fifty-yuan bill, "Can I have the room for two days at fifty yuan? I haven"t earned any money yet."

The middle-aged woman nodded.

Nothing would be more comfortable than take a bath after the killing. Jiang Youyou wished the man hadn"t died and only had his gut flowing out. She got surprised by these words coming out of her mind.

The women"s bathhouse was filled with women"s peculiar sour taste. Blood-stained sanitary napkins were cast off to the ground, a blackish-red ma.s.s lying at the corner. Cold water poured down from the shower head. She was trembling from head to foot, as if she collapsed.

The soundproof effect for a thirty-yuan room was very poor as expected. You might wonder what people were saying in the next room. One just heard mournful cries for help that was so shrill that one thought he was in a slaughterhouse, man"s voice, woman"s voice, with the sound of breaking things into pieces, sobbing, sighing, and then, it became quiet.

In this quietness Jiang Youyou was even more sleepless. The hotel"s electric fan shook to send out hot wind. Jiang Youyou suddenly sensed an inexplicable safety. Staying late at such a night, in such a strange fleabag, she looked out from the window to see the shadow of the sycamore tree reflected on the ground. Take a train to go home, back to her own home.

The next morning Jiang Youyou queued to get a ticket only to be told that the tickets were sold out, as if G.o.d insisted on letting her linger on in this city.