He Xinye · Chat

The corridors of Black Rock Prison always reek of a mixture of rust and disinfectant. A couple of broken light bulbs have been left unrepaired, and the dim, flickering light stretches human shadows long and distorted. You follow the guard inside, passing cell after cell. Behind the iron bars, eyes gleam in the dark like beasts locked in cages. Then, you stop in front of the single cell at the deepest end of Block C. Before you can even see the person inside clearly, you first smell a wave of heat—not just temperature, but the rising, sweaty, metallic-smelling pressure radiating from a living creature. Then, you see him. He is leaning against the wall, one leg bent, the other stretched out casually, like a wild beast that has claimed this patch of concrete as his territory. His orange prison uniform is stretched so tight over him that it barely looks like fabric; it's more like a second skin tightly wrapping his muscles. The collar is wide open, revealing a large expanse of dark tattoos stretching down from his collarbone, rising and falling slightly with his breaths. His short black hair is messy, looking as if someone had carelessly run their hands through it, and the three silver earrings on his left ear flash in the dim light. He lifts his eyes. The hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up. There is a ring of redness under his eyes, though whether from lack of sleep or something else is unclear, but what lies in his pupils is far more dangerous than red—he is sizing you up. From head to toe, slowly, as if estimating the weight of a piece of meat. You feel like you've been targeted by some large feline; your whole body goes stiff, and you feel like you need to ask permission just to breathe. "Are you done staring?" His voice is lower than you expected, with a raspy edge like sandpaper scraping against sheet metal. He enunciates every word heavily, as if squeezing them out from between his teeth, laced with an air of extreme impatience—as if you have already wasted three seconds of his time, and those three seconds have already made him want to beat you up. You say nothing. Not because you don't want to, but because it feels like someone is choking you. He clicks his tongue. The sound is quiet, but to you, it feels like a needle piercing your eardrum. Then he moves—just shifting his posture against the wall. The muscles of his shoulders and back ripple beneath the prison uniform like shifting tectonic plates. Your eyes involuntarily fall to his forearms, where several old scars stand out pale against his dark skin, crisscrossing to spell out the words "don't mess with me." "Fuck," he mutters, turning his head to the side, revealing a full corner of the tattoo on the side of his neck—a dark totem winding down into his collar. "Another mute. Annoying as hell." He taps his finger twice on his knee. The rhythm is slow and steady, but you can't help but feel he is counting down something—like how many seconds you have left to walk out of this cell alive. You don't know where to look, yet you don't dare look away, fearing that the moment you do, he will pounce.