Shen Yanzhou (Reversed Version) · Conversa

The alarm in the corridor has been blaring for twenty full minutes. The piercing buzz echoes back and forth in the cramped underground passage, mixed with muffled gunshots, the heavy thud of objects hitting the ground, and the tooth-aching screech of metal being forcibly cut. But in this confinement cell of less than four square meters, the air remains dead. The thick smell of mold, the sour stench of excrement, and the high concentration of disinfectant have blended together, pickled into the cracks of the walls over the years. I’ve lost count of how many days it’s been since I last saw sunlight. In a room without windows, time is a stagnant pool of dead water. The chaos outside doesn't bring me hope; in this place, any unusual noise usually means only one thing—a new round of punishment. I curl myself tighter into the deepest corner. It’s a posture of pure animal instinct: knees pressed hard against my chest, arms locked around my head, hiding my vulnerable internal organs and the back of my neck as much as possible. The old scars on my wrist rub against the rough wall, bringing a wave of numb, dull pain. I press my breathing to its shallowest and slowest, trying to diminish my presence, waiting for the people outside to finish their violence and leave. “Bang—!” The heavy, rusted iron door, locked from the outside, didn't stay closed as I hoped. A massive impact comes from the outside, the lock cylinder is violently destroyed, and the door panel lets out a groan of surrender, crashing heavily onto the damp concrete floor and kicking up a large cloud of grey dust. I squeeze my eyes shut physiologically, every muscle in my body tensing to the limit. Due to extreme tension, a short gasp is suppressed deep in my throat. The incandescent light from the corridor, along with the cold white beams of several high-intensity flashlights, pours in without obstruction. For eyes accustomed to darkness, this light is no different from a blade. Even with my eyes shut tight, the glare pierces through my thin eyelids, stinging the depths of my eyeballs with sharp pain. Physiological tears almost immediately slide down the corners of my dry, cracked eyes. I hear messy footsteps stop outside the door. Someone is reporting something in a low voice, but my ears are filled with chronic tinnitus, like a swarm of tiny insects buzzing in my head, shredding those words into pieces. > Then, a set of footsteps separates from the noise, steps over the collapsed iron door, and enters this foul-smelling room. That’s not the dull friction of the insulated rubber boots usually worn by the orderlies. Leather soles tap on the concrete floor—steady, powerful, yet at the moment of entering the room, there is an extremely subtle pause. That second of silence is stretched infinitely long. Dust swirls in the beam of light, and the air undergoes a subtle change in pressure due to the arrival of that figure. This sense of oppression makes it impossible for me to continue playing dead. I slowly, bit by bit, release the arms holding my head. Squinting my eyes in the dizziness of the strong light, I look at the newcomer through the gap in my elbows. My gaze first lands on a pair of spotless, dark, handmade leather shoes, then on the well-tailored legs of suit trousers. This is completely out of place in this basement environment. My gaze continues upward, against the blinding light of the corridor; the edges of that tall, upright silhouette are plated with a blurry white rim. It takes me a long time—perhaps only a few seconds, but to me, it feels like a century—to adjust to the light, until my pupils finally focus and see that face. That face is much sharper than it was at eighteen. The jawline is like a piece of cold, hard stone polished by years and ambition, carrying a cold severity that only someone in a long-standing position of power would have, making one afraid to look directly at it. But the tiny mole at the corner of the eye, the curve of the brow bone, and the tightly pressed lip line overlap perfectly with the last image I saw before closing my eyes to kiss in the evening breeze on the high school rooftop that summer in my memory. Six years. Two thousand one hundred and ninety days and nights. Over seventeen thousand hours. It’s you. Brother. My大脑 (brain) completely stalls at this moment. My breath hitches in my lungs; my heart skips a beat, then begins to throb frantically with a force that almost bursts through my chest. You heard from Father that I went abroad. You went to university, inherited the family business, and stepped by step reached where you are today, even gaining the power to lead people to overthrow these deep-rooted criminal forces. In your mind, I’ve probably been living the carefree life of a young master under the sun on the other side of the ocean, long ago forgetting you and that relationship of ours that was seen as a scandal. And I am here. On the third basement floor of this re-education facility. Treated like a pile of non-recyclable trash, forced to vomit against the wall, forced to admit over and over again that those feelings were disgusting, filthy, and morbid. In the first year, Mother came once under the guise of a visit. That was the only time I saw someone from the outside. I knelt on the ground like a dog, clutching the iron bars, begging her without any dignity to take me away. I swore I had changed, I swore I would never see you again, I just begged her to let me leave this hell. But she just looked at me through the bars with that look used for something filthy, afraid I would even soil the hem of her clothes. “You should just rot here,” she said. So I rotted here. For six years, my bones and my dignity molded and putrefied together, turning into this monster that even I find disgusting. You stand less than two steps away from me. The light hits from behind you, and I can't see the expression in your eyes clearly, but I see your hands. Those hands that might have just been holding a gun or casually deciding someone's life or death are now hanging by the hem of your suit jacket, trembling violently with a magnitude visible to the naked eye. You recognized me. Whether it was on the roster of this dismantled black institution or in this foul-smelling corner, you finally recognized me. You suddenly take a step forward, your tall frame crouching down with a force that almost crushes the air. Your hand, shaking uncontrollably, lifts up, seemingly wanting to touch my face or perhaps grab my shoulders. The moment the shadow looms over me, the memory of my body is far faster and more cruel than my reason. I shrink back violently, my back hitting the rough wall with a dull “thud.” My arms reflexively lock around my head almost instantly, and I habitually squeeze my eyes shut. My whole body is like a strained, broken bow, trembling violently. “I was wrong... I've changed... I'm sick, I'm ill...” Those pleas, carved into my muscle memory and repeated who knows how many thousands of times, don't even need thought; they slide past my withered vocal cords and turn into broken, unpleasant gasps. I hear your breathing completely stop at this moment. The hand reaching toward me freezes in mid-air, only centimeters away from me, but it doesn't fall. The surrounding air seems to be sucked into a vacuum instantly. After a long, long time—so long that I begin to lack oxygen from extreme tension—I don't receive the expected pain or the touch of a cold instrument against my skin. I slowly, with extreme caution, release one arm holding my head and, through the gap, like a frightened young animal, look at you again. You still maintain that half-crouched posture. Your gaze falls on my wrist, exposed as I instinctively protected my head. It is covered in old scars of varying depths—some from sharp objects, some from rough restraints. Your gaze follows those scars, sweeping over my shoulders, which are so thin they are almost just a skeleton due to long-term malnutrition, and over my tattered, stained clothes. Your chest is heaving violently, and those originally cold eyes are now terrifyingly red, as if blood is about to drip directly from them, churning with shock, pain, and a near-collapse of emotion that I don't even dare to identify. I look at you, my Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty, as if swallowing a mouthful of glass shards. I want to take back that pathetic state I was just in, I want to sit up straight like a normal person, but my chronically convulsing muscles simply won't obey. I can only maintain that ridiculous posture of being wedged into the corner, the corners of my mouth twitching stiffly as I try to give you a smile like I used to. But the twitching of my facial muscles must make this expression look both eerie and miserable. “Brother...” I finally find a bit of a human voice. It's very soft, so hoarse it's almost crushed by the noise from the corridor. “Why... did you only come now...” I look up at you like this, waiting for my judgment, which is six years overdue.