Just in Time Chapter 4
Translated by Sylver
Chapter 4: Obstruct
Dongyang Street, at the entrance of Xinnan Alley.
This was a very narrow alley. On one side of the entrance was an internet cafe, and on the other side was a car repair shop. It’s the hottest time of the day, and the noisy cicadas were giving people a headache.
Yun Fang stared at the bumpy ground for a while, and a broken white plastic bag whirled past him.
Yun Fang didn’t know why he was so impulsive, he shouldn’t have interfered.
He put himself in the situation back then, if someone had stopped him from killing, he would have killed the person who stopped him.
Thinking this way, Yun Fang’s legs uncontrollably stepped into the dark and narrow alley.
If someone could have stopped him back then–Yun Fang didn’t want to make such a speculation.
There was no such unrealistic fantasy in the life he had experienced.
In the midst of chaos, Yun Fang almost exhausted all his strength to pull away the furious young man. The cold light of the knife flashed in front of him, and in an instant, he grabbed the blade without hesitation.
Yi Chenliang stared at him with blood-red eyes, like a beast driven to a dead end.
“Get out of the way!” Yi Chenliang roared at him.
A sharp pain came from Yun Fang’s palm. He frowned, kicked Yi Chenliang’s shin, and before he could react, he kneed him hard in the stomach.
Yun Fang’s body was not strong, but his fighting experience was much more sophisticated than Yi Chenliang’s. Just by skill alone, he could make up for the lack of strength. Plus, Yi Chenliang had been beaten up quite a bit before he arrived, and these two moves directly made Yi Chenliang lose his ability to resist.
He snatched the short knife from Yi Chenliang’s hand, looked at “himself” who was beaten like a dead dog on the ground, and sighed.
He turned around and saw a person leaning against the wall looking at him in horror, shaking the short knife in his hand.
That was an ordinary-looking young man, with a garlic nose, his face full of acne, and dyed yellow hair. (TL: a huge, bulbous nose)
“Wang Youwei.” After many years, Yun Fang was surprised that he could still remember the other’s name. He walked towards him indifferently and stabbed the knife towards his neck.
“Ah–” Wang Youwei let out a miserable scream.
The short knife stabbed into the wall next to his neck. Yun Fang slightly bent over, his eyes coldly staring at him. The tip of the knife scraped across the brick inside the wall, making a grating sound.
The cold blade was against his throat, and Wang Youwei looked at him in horror, “Don’t, don’t kill me!” If the furious Yi Chenliang just now was like a mad wolf, then the person in front of him was like a calm snake. The wolf was hungry and bit indiscriminately, but the snake wanted to slowly grind its prey to death with its cunning and deceit.
Wang Youwei felt that this person would really kill him, and it was definitely not his first time killing.
Yi Chenliang, who had fainted on the ground, groaned in pain. Yun Fang seemed to come back to his senses, picked up the short knife, and gently patted Wang Youwei’s face, saying casually, “If you provoke him again, I will kill your whole family. Your sister, Wang Youlan, is in the third grade at the attached elementary school, right?”
Wang Youwei’s face was pale, “No, don’t, don’t, brother, I was wrong! I won’t dare anymore, I–”
“Get lost.” Yun Fang expressionlessly took back the knife.
Wang Youwei ran away in a rolling and crawling on the ground manner.
Yun Fang caught the knife with his left hand, and Yi Chenliang tried to take it back with every bit of his strength. His left hand was now trembling with pain.
Yun Fang randomly wrapped it with a jacket and kicked the fainted Yi Chenliang on the ground.
No reaction.
Yun Fang felt a bit guilty after the fact, his two moves were indeed a bit harsh. He squatted down and felt in Yi Chenliang’s pocket with his right hand, and sure enough, he found a key.
Forget it, be a good person to the end, saving can’t only be done halfway.
So he somewhat with difficulty, dragged the dead dog on the ground onto his back and walked familiarly towards the depths of the alley.
The old-fashioned iron lock was opened, and the big iron door painted with red paint was kicked open from the outside. This big iron door was quite old, and the paint on it had fallen off in patches, revealing the black iron inside.
Yun Fang looked at the familiar and unfamiliar small courtyard in front of him.
The courtyard was not big, there was a tall jujube tree in the middle, a well in the southwest corner, and it was still the old-fashioned water pump.
The courtyard was cluttered with iron sheets and steel bars, as well as some waste paper boxes. These were all things that Yi Chenliang had picked up bit by bit to sell for money.
There were two rooms in the courtyard, one was a hall filled with junk, and the other was where Yi Chenliang slept. There was only one wooden bed, and the sheets and quilt on it were gray and dirty, and the original color could not be seen.
Yun Fang threw Yi Chenliang onto the bed, familiarly took out a small iron box from under the bed, and found a key from the gap behind the brick at the head of the bed to open the iron box. Inside was a stack of banknotes and a photo.
The banknotes were both whole and broken, and they didn’t add up to more than a thousand yuan. The photo was a family portrait, and Yi Chenliang in it was still very young, about seven or eight years old.
The person on the bed moved a bit, Yun Fang put everything back in place one by one, stood by the bed and frowned at Yi Chenliang for a while, then turned and left the room.
Yun Fang had a lot of pocket money. Tang Yi stuffed him with three hundred yuan every week, and he also had scholarship money and New Year’s money from middle school in his card. With the current prices, it was not a small sum.
Much richer than Yi Chenliang. Yun Fang was a little schadenfreude, but his throat was bitter.
Yun Fang stepped into this small courtyard for the second time an hour later. He walked into the room with a bed and found that Yi Chenliang had already woken up. Seeing him was like seeing a ghost, and the horror on his face was not concealed at all, “What the f***?”
Yun Fang squinted his eyes and found that the current situation was not easy to explain.
He suddenly appeared in Xinnan Alley to snatch a knife and save people, and then he entered Yi Chenliang’s home in a familiar way. His left hand was wrapped in thick gauze, and his right hand was carrying a bag of medicine and a bag of small steamed buns. But before this, Yi Chenliang didn’t know who he was at all.
It was abrupt.
And hard to understand.
Yun Fang put the medicine and food on the bumpy bedside table, and when he looked up, he saw Yi Chenliang staring at him vigilantly.
Yun Fang sighed silently in his heart and turned to leave.
“Wait!” Yi Chenliang yelled at him from behind.
Yun Fang slowly turned his head to look at him.
“Who the hell are you?” Yi Chenliang had a fierce look as if he was ready to fight three hundred rounds, staring at him fiercely, “How do you know where I live!”
Yun Fang looked at him without changing his face, his tone was calm, “My name is Yun Fang.”
Yi Chenliang frowned and stared at him suspiciously, looking stupid as if he was bubbling. Yun Fang bet that he must be swearing in his heart now, ready to fight at any time.
Yun Fang didn’t want to get stabbed for nothing today, and tomorrow Yi Chenliang would still take a knife to find Wang Youwei, so he sat down on the stool calmly and said righteously, “Your score dropped too much in the last monthly test, the teacher sent me to understand the situation.”
He vaguely remembered that Yi Chenliang did very poorly in the first monthly exam of the first year of high school.
“What’s it to you!” Yi Chenliang rudely asked, “Where’s my knife?”
Yun Fang has never been used to wearing glasses, he pushed the frame with his hand, “What, are you still planning to stab someone with a knife, and then go to the juvenile detention center for a few years?”
Yi Chenliang was frightened by his cold and fierce gaze, but when he saw that he was also wearing a uniform from the same school, he became arrogant again. “Are you looking for a fight?”
Like a sick cat with puff up furs. Yun Fang commented calmly.
“Do you need help with the medicine?” Yun Fang looked at the broken corner of his mouth, always feeling a bit obtrusive.
Yun Fang stood up, Yi Chenliang was originally sitting on the bed, seeing this, he retreated vigilantly, and the wooden bed made a creaking sound.
Although he didn’t want to admit it, Yun Fang’s previous act of catching the knife barehanded and those ruthless moves left an indelible shadow on him.
Yun Fang looked down at the fifteen-year-old Yi Chenliang.
He had lived for thirty-five years and never felt pitiful. The unbearable past when he was young was nothing more than a light cloud when talked about at the dinner table later.
But now, looking at the blustering and gray Yi Chenliang in front of him, his heart suddenly ached.
When he first returned to twenty years ago, he thought Yi Chenliang was an irritable, rebellious, and unreasonable potential murderer, not a good thing. That was his own past, and he didn’t need anyone to pity him, even himself.
But he suddenly remembered that when he was fifteen years old, when he stabbed the knife into Wang Youwei’s body, he was also panicked and scared, and he had endless regrets.
It’s not that he wasn’t afraid, but it was useless.
At that time, no one helped him stop that knife.
“Yi Chenliang.” Yun Fang looked at his gray self, and a thousand thoughts in his heart converged into one sentence, “Let’s be friends.”