"Mommy, Mommy..." The moment she heard the noise, the little girl ignored Jiaming's attempt to hold her back and bolted out first. Her clear, childish cries echoed down the pitch-black corridor; then she seemed to trip over something and fell, scrambled up and kept running, and in moments burst into that dimly lit room.
"Let go of my mommy! What are you doing... let go... ah... let go, let go..." The girl's shouting came from inside. Jiaming moved through the darkness without a sound, one hand feeling along whatever was beside him as he went: doorframe, broken window, wall, a lump of stone, a wooden club...
At the edge of the room he risked one quiet look, then charged in with the club. Apart from the blonde woman and the little girl, the room held only one man in work clothes, tall and heavily muscled, his pants already half off. The girl was clawing and pounding at him like a mad thing; he had thrown her to the floor several times and she still kept trying to get up. Only one man—that makes things much easier...
The bean-sized bulb in the room buzzed and sputtered, blinking bright and dim like a flickering eye. The man didn't dare kick up too much of a fuss; he simply pushed the little girl down to the ground again—then something jolted him alert, and he whirled around in alarm. A short figure was sprinting at him, planted one foot on the small cabinet beside him, and launched through the air over two meters of floor, club raised high.
"Wham—" Caught off guard, the man could only throw up one hand. The club snapped clean in two across his wrist, and the front half still smashed into the back of his head, and his vision swam with a wave of dizziness.
Right behind it came a burst of agony at the back of his knee: the instant Jiaming landed he drove the broken club down like a stake and shattered the man's kneecap outright. The man was opening his mouth to scream when gray filled his sight—Jiaming swung up a small sack of something, cement or whatever it was, and slammed it straight into his mouth and nose—then whipped out the knife in his hand and slashed lightning-fast between the man's legs.
A small piece of something flew off into the darkness. From Jiaming's charge, his leap and his landing, barely a blink had passed; the big, strong-looking man crashed to the floor already unconscious from the pain, his mouth packed with mud and ash so that he hadn't managed even one scream. At the sight of blood gushing like a spring between the man's legs, Jiaming gave a cold laugh, tore open his filthy shirt and bound up the wound at his groin.
"...Next life, if you still can't land a woman, remember to hire one."
Once he was sure the man wouldn't die, Jiaming looked back. Heidi was weeping at the blonde woman's side, crying "Mama, Mama..." over and over. Seen close, the woman was dressed even more raggedly than Heidi.
With no one to turn to and nowhere to go—and the two of them had been sheltered young ladies of good family—there was no telling what they had suffered this past month and more.
Her face was frighteningly pale, her whole body trembling, the corners of her mouth and eyes bruised and cut, and a pair of translucent lace panties, shredded and flung aside, plainly the handiwork of the man who had just become this century's last eunuch.
He walked over and felt the woman's forehead, then sighed. "The fever's already bad, and no telling how long you've let it go. You need a hospital right now. Can you get up?"
"I—I..." The woman had been gravely ill to begin with, and the fright had drained her last scrap of strength and left her worse than before. She curled in on herself, and it was a long while before she managed a whole sentence. "...C-can't go to a hospital... Heidi, Heidi, she..."
Jiaming frowned. He'd worked as a killer long enough to know that everyone had troubles they couldn't speak of, so he asked no more. "Don't worry. I'll help look after Heidi. If you can't go to a hospital, fine—I have a place to stay near here, and medicine. Let's get you there first. Heidi, help your mom up onto my back."
Jiaming was only fourteen and not tall, and taking the blonde woman on his back gave him a decidedly strange feeling; but such things hardly mattered at a time like this. He had four years of training behind him, after all—he got a grip on those two full thighs, and the three of them soon made their way down out of the condemned building.
If he'd had some explosives or the like, he could just blow the building up and wipe out the corpse and every last trace of it...
He thought it over and smiled to himself. He could feel those two waves pressed against his back: sick as the woman was, down to her last breath, she still had a devil's figure that would make any man drool—of that there's no doubt. Crossing street after street, Jiaming's imagination could not help but wander.
Feeling those big waves at his back, he couldn't help thinking of Zhang Yahan. Hers was a little smaller than this, but it had the Chinese virtue of restraint and proportion, and he was rather partial to that pair... The woman's legs were clamped tight against him, and with nothing on underneath, rubbing and rubbing the whole way—much like what Lingjing and Shasha had been up to in bed that day. Wait, those are underage girls—cut that out, cut that out. I'm a good guy...
Not every killer was grim and cold. Back when he ran jobs, Jiaming had liked to let his mind run off in every direction to ease the tension, and over time it had become a habit. Before long the three of them reached a small residential block and climbed to the second floor of an old building; Jiaming dug out a key, opened the door and went in.
This was a house Jiaming's short-lived parents had bought. After the two of them died it became Huang family property, but the Huangs did not covet a trifle like this, and by the time Jiaming was twelve he had the key. A simple three-bedroom with a living room, the furniture old. He laid the blonde woman on the bed in the bedroom, then went to the kitchen, lit the gas stove to heat water, brought out a medical kit and took from it some medicines and vials for minor ailments.
"If you'd come to me with a broken arm or a broken leg, no problem. But of all things you had to have a cold, with a fever dragged out this long. I just hope there's no pneumonia or other complication, because otherwise it's the hospital no matter what."
He fed the woman some medicine, then had her lie face down on the bed, lifted her filthy nightdress and gave her two shots in the backside. Wild as his thoughts were running, his hands stayed steady and precise as ever—a qualified killer usually has to moonlight as half a surgeon.
That done, the woman, wrapped in the quilt, finally stopped trembling. Worn out as she looked, she insisted on asking, "Who... who are you? That day... was it you who saved us?"
"Me? I'm an outstanding student of the People's Republic's Four Modernizations, a young man of lofty ideals who models himself on Lei Feng. Never did make three-good student, but I still help an old lady across the road once a week. My two wives are lesbians, and my life's goal is to become a doctor, so for now just rest easy and stay here as my guinea pig." He rattled the whole thing off in one breath in fluent English with a London accent, then put on a harmless smile. "By the way, Heidi's mommy, what's your name?"
She gazed weakly at Jiaming for a while, and a smile surfaced on her face too. "I... my name is Marilyn. Salieri."
"Salieri..." Jiaming frowned. "As in the Salieri family of New York... that Salieri?"
"Salieri..." Marilyn nodded weakly, looking groggy, on the verge of sleep. "I never thought a child like you would know of it..."
"All right, Salieri it is." Jiaming nodded. "Sleep first, you're worn out. If you haven't died by tomorrow, then pick out whatever you feel like telling me. Though Marilyn Monroe is a lovely name—are you sure you have to be a Salieri? That surname is no fun at all..."
Still muttering, he took Heidi out and fixed a basin of hot water, then sent her into the room to strip off her mother's dirty clothes and wipe her whole body down with a hot towel. He himself sat on the sofa in the living room, sunk in thought.
"The Salieri family... Ai, to end up in this state in the Mafia—so the underworld really is nothing good..."
The Salieri family was one of the New York Mafia's families.
Twenty minutes later the little girl came out limping, carrying the dirty basin and towel. That fall in the corridor had hurt her knee to begin with, and by now walking had grown awkward for her.
He told her to sit still on the sofa, brought clean hot water from the kitchen, rinsed out the towel, and had the girl wipe the dust and grime off her knee first, so the medicine could go on afterward. But the wound was a bad one; after a few careful wipes her eyes were already brimming with tears, and then she held the towel out to Jiaming and said pitifully, "Big brother."
"Don't tell me you want me to wipe it for you?"
"Hm?"
"...You'd better do it yourself. My sense of pain is duller than most people's—if I do it you'll definitely cry. Doing it yourself, you'll know where it hurts and where it doesn't. Be a good girl, do it yourself."
"I... I won't cry."
The girl's face was mulish, so Jiaming said no more. He lifted her dirty calf onto his lap, wrung out the towel and began to wipe gently. Slow as he was about it, it still hurt her badly; glancing over now and then, he saw her pressing her lips hard together, little cheeks puffed out, her face a picture of stubborn endurance—and he had to laugh.
It took a while before the knee and the little foot were clean. The girl's skin was fair and smooth, fine as porcelain; Jiaming mischievously ran a few fingers over the sole of her foot, which set her giggling on the sofa. He applied the medicated oil and wrapped the bandage. Then he went to the bathroom, ran a bath, and brought Heidi a little stool.
"Careful you don't get the bandage wet. Sit here and wash yourself clean, and I'll go get you some pajamas. Be good."
He tapped the tip of Heidi's dirty little nose, shut the bathroom door and went to the inner rooms to look for clothes, Marilyn's coughing drifting out now and then. He searched for a good while and found only one long shirt that would just serve the girl as a nightgown; but when he brought it over and called through the bathroom door, however he called, there was no answer.
"Heidi..."
"Heidi!"
"I'm coming in."
He took out a length of wire and opened the bathroom door, and there beside the tub the naked little girl sat on the stool, fast asleep just like that, towel in her hand, only half of her washed clean.
He sighed, went over and patted her cheek, and got only a sleepy "Mm" for his trouble. With no other choice he picked up the towel and wiped her whole body clean as fast as he could, then pulled the long shirt over her.
As he carried her into the other bedroom, the girl curled up in his arms like a little lamb and rolled over with a comfortable squirm.
So I've picked up a daughter... Jiaming thought.
Uh, CJ here is not a lolicon. I go for both lolis and mature ladies—that point needs stressing.
Vote...