Chapter 6 — May You Be Forever Alone

He desperately wanted to purchase a niche for a columbarium, yet the cemetery manager ruthlessly drove him away with a stiff broom.

"You vile creature who murdered your own wife, do you even dare to show your face here? Get out."

Fu Wen Sheng did not strike back; he merely shielded his head with his hands and retreated in silence. Every morning, he began scraping together a few coins from collecting scrap materials. He would buy a portion of leftover food from the cheapest, lowest-quality ultra-spicy hot pot available. Crouching beneath a cold bridge, he forced himself to swallow large, burning gulps of fiery red chili oil. The spice tore through his stomach lining, inducing wave after wave of bloody vomiting. Yet, he clenched his teeth shut, refusing to stop, until a passerby, unable to bear the gruesome sight any longer, called an ambulance for him.

Inside the hospital emergency room, a thick, coarse gastric lavage tube was forcefully jammed down his throat. Fu Wen Sheng struggled with all his might, tearing off his oxygen mask and grabbing the attending physician tightly by the wrist. His mouth was smeared with a grotesque mixture of blood and crimson chili oil.

"No anesthesia," he pleaded, his voice raspy and broken like a shattered bellows. "I beg of you, absolutely do not give me any anesthesia."

"I must feel, without the slightest deviation, the exact agony she endured when she died."

My soul floated silently near the ceiling of the hospital room, looking down from above at the writhing, convulsing body on the medical bed. I watched the thick veins bulge across his temples from excruciating pain, his hospital gown drenched in cold sweat, yet my heart remained utterly devoid of any ripple of emotion. Fu Wen Sheng clutched desperately at the white lab coat of the chief physician, tears and mucus streaming down his face as he wept and begged.

"Doctor, crush the life out of me right here. Snuff out my breath so I can descend into the dark earth and warm her freezing fingers. She was always the one who feared the cold the most."

A nurse walked over with a look of profound disgust, prying open his filthy, calloused fingers one by one. She forcefully administered a heavy dose of a strong sedative straight into his intravenous line.

"If you knew it would come to this day, you should never have done what you did back then," the nurse said coldly before turning on her heel and walking away.

Before the sedative could take its full effect, through eyes heavily bloodshot and growing increasingly dim, Fu Wen Sheng seemed to catch a glimpse of me. He saw my delicate figure standing quietly beside the window, untouched by blood, completely free of any allergic rashes.

"Qing Yan," he whispered, mustering every remaining ounce of strength as he stretched out an arm riddled with needle tracks, trying desperately to grasp at empty air.

I watched his hand reach into the void. Without a moment's hesitation, I dissolved into countless brilliant points of blinding light. Slipping straight through the glass pane, I soared directly up into the vast, open sky, leaving behind not even the hem of a garment, leaving his outstretched hand frozen forever in an eternity of nothingness.

Five winters later. Fu Wen Sheng had completely lost his mind, leaning heavily on a rotting wooden stick he had picked up from the street. Rummaging through a street-corner dumpster, he fished out a piece of frozen beef tripe that someone had discarded. Paying no mind to the filth clinging to its surface, he shoved it frantically into his mouth and chewed. On a massive electronic billboard overhead, a news broadcast echoed across the square.

"Yesterday afternoon, the inmate Ta Nan Yan, currently serving her prison sentence, suffered a severe allergic reaction while completely unattended. In her despair, she clawed violently at her own throat, suffocating to death on the cold tile floor of her cell."

The surrounding crowd of onlookers paused in their tracks, bursting into rounds of triumphant applause. "A vicious, wicked woman like that deserved a miserable death."

Fu Wen Sheng squatted beside the dumpster, listening to the shrill, piercing wail of the ambulance siren echoing from the television screen. It was the exact same siren that had shrieked outside the hospital windows the day he pushed the doctor away years ago. Terrorized, he hurled the piece of tripe from his hand. Like a cornered rat, he scrambled frantically into a foul, stinking drainage ditch beneath the bridge. Wrapping a ragged, filthy burlap sack tightly around his trembling frame, he shivered uncontrollably.

"Do not arrest me. I will pay. I will pay for everything."

It was a night of fierce, blinding snow. The heavy blizzard buried every single bridge across the city. By early morning, Fu Wen Sheng's ten stiff, purple-black fingers were dug deep into the frozen earth. His posture in death was grotesquely twisted, bearing an eerie resemblance to the tragic manner in which I had perished in the foyer years ago.

Sanitation workers discovered his corpse and, with utter disgust, used a large iron pitchfork to heave his frozen, rigid body into the collection truck, casually tossing a reeking, garbage-stained tarp over him that reeked of pungent decay.

Space and time shifted in an instant. My eyes snapped open, blinking against the luxurious softness of an extremely plush bed. Warm sunlight streamed into a cozy, modern girl's bedroom brimming with state-of-the-art technology, while a subtle, refreshing scent of citrus lingered gently in the air. I sat up and reached for the smartphone resting on the bedside table. On the screen, the system's final settlement statement flashed a brilliant golden light.

"Escape successful, mission completed."

Gazing at the words, the corners of my lips curved upward into a profound, relieved smile. I opened the group chat interface and casually shared a handful of premium seafood hot pot vouchers—rewards gifted directly by the system—with my roommates and best friends.

"Girls, tonight we are going out for seafood hot pot. The non-spicy kind."

The group chat instantly exploded with a flurry of joyful, cheering stickers. I pushed open the floor-to-ceiling glass door and stepped out onto the balcony, inhaling deeply of the crisp, clean winter air, entirely free of any suffocating trace of chili oil. The nauseating memories of that seven-year conquest mission shattered completely into dust within the quiet sanctuary of my mind.