Although I didn’t understand a word he said, he did transcend the language barrier with his nimble hand movements, and I sidestepped back to the entrance of the airport in order to stay away from a collision with him, inadvertently triggering the automatic door.
Seizing the chance, the police officers caught up, shoved him down to the ground violently by punching him from behind and began kicking, pummeling and battering him mercilessly with their steel-made batons – mostly going for his already blood-stained forehead – while chortling wickedly. The hysterical wail of the defenseless man, who was futilely attempting to protect himself by hugging his bleeding head and squeezing his bruised inner thighs together, was so heart-wrenching that it made me feel like I could feel the pain being inflicted on him. It was so brutal I had to swivel my eyes away unwittingly so as to resume normal respiration when his groan dwindled into the sound of a breathless murmur, which presaged his death. It all happened in a flash of time, and that’s why I was just standing and watching for some ten seconds. And by the time I was able to react, I looked around for help, though I realized it was a mistake in no time.
The pedestrians, all had a heavy dusk mask clamped on, were acting like they hadn’t even registered the man’s presence; everyone just walked straight past him without even casting a glance at him. So I despised them all. I despised them all for turning a blind eye to such an atrocity. And I thought to myself, if no one would help him, I will. So I stepped forward uncompromisingly, my head shot up and my mouth parting. But as I was about to say something, I realized I was unable to produce a voice regardless of how much I wanted. It wasn’t like I was suddenly a mute, but it was my dramatically convulsing throat that prohibited me from speaking.
The quivering then began intensifying to a point that I had to clear my throat twice in a row to suppress it. But even so, even the quivering in my throat did mitigate, I couldn’t possibly stop the trembling from spreading down to my fingers and to my toes and to every part of my body. And it occurred to me that I had been frightened the whole time but I just didn’t realize. So I scolded myself, scolded myself for my untimely timidness – I could somehow understand why the people all turned a blind eye by then, maybe because the same thing that made them do so had permeated my mind too.
Then, as an irresistibly growing compulsion aroused by the grunt of the man stimulated me to at least give the two evil-doers a glare of contempt, one of them noticed it, glowered back at me with a pair of piercing black eyes, frowned, and strode toward me, flailing his arms quickly, and I had to admit he looked ferocious as I shivered more at each step he took.
And when he was close enough, he placed his baton on my shoulder intimidatingly, injecting terror into me by further unnerving me, as if he was goading me to punch him in his ugly face, “You got a problem with me!?” he then barked.
We were so close that I could feel his harsh exhalation, which was very stomach-churning, on my face. And he glared into my eyes snobbishly like he could do whatever he wanted, like murdering and beating me to death, without having to worry about the ramifications. And I reflexively craned backward to evade his piercing eyes and gulped nervously when my impulse to punch him petered away, tension was high though.
“Walk away, and you’ll be fine,” the officer whispered and tried to press me down with the baton on my shoulder, so I had to take a step backward to find my balance.
After emitting a coarse breath sound, he turned around, walked away and unleashed a kick, aiming precisely at the forehead of the suffering man, who had already passed out, probably ending his life with this one sharp blow, when he was within reach. And that’s the moment I knew I had to choose a side. Either I would simply walk away, staying out of trouble, or I would march forward and reason with them, knowing they would kill me. And so, a tranquil contemplation ensued.
But by the time my pondering ended, the two officers had already left, with the dead body together, and I swiftly snapped my head around because I wanted to tell them what they had done were completely wrong, at least it was morally unjustifiable, at least the last kick was unnecessary, at least they could’ve just handcuffed him and bustled him down to the police station, at least…, but then I suddenly realized one thing that gave me a terrible shock at that moment.
I didn’t even know what kind of a sinful crime the headband man had committed before jumping to the conclusion that they could’ve just handcuffed him. I didn’t know, but that’s the moment I first acknowledged the power of terror, and that’s the moment I realized my trembling had actually begun even before I took that step forward, and that’s the moment I found myself no different from those cold-blooded passers-by, and that’s the moment someone patted my shoulder and jolted me out of my dismaying panic. I believed I would’ve sunk into a more dreadful mood – for this matter I have made her a two-layered chocolate birthday cake a few days later after meeting her at the pond side on that same road trip with Kaylen, who had deliberately kept me from knowing that Kriss would be with us on that day just because he thought it’s funny, though I have never regretted telling her about my dreadful mood back then – if not for her.
“Hey, are you all right?” said she, with a coarse tone.
“Sis!?” I said without thinking, glimpsed over my shoulder at once and saw the SIM card dealer’s staff. “Sorry, I thought…”
“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s not your sis. But I just want to let you know you should have just walked away earlier. Never ever think about stopping them. There’s no stopping them alone,” she warned me kind of angrily like I was a child behaving badly, but her voice was wobbling dangerously.
I didn’t know what to say to her back then, maybe still in shock. So I had simply expressed my gratitude to her and showed her a helpless look. Then she walked off in a way I couldn’t tell if she was stomping, maybe half-stomping, when I noticed there was a blood-stained feather of a white pigeon landing right in front of my feet.
As I happened to see a puddle of blood on the edge of the pavement, I stomped on it resentfully.
CHAPTER FOUR
After taking another few minutes to gather my mind, I shook my head and headed back into the arrival hall as I decided to approach the staff again.
“Hi, I’m wondering if you know why this message kept popping up every time when I tried to launch this app?” I asked and showed her the message.
“Wait, let me see,” she said with her sweet voice back and took my phone. “Oh, I’m sorry to tell you this, but this app is banned.”
“Banned?”
“Yes, as required by law, this kind of apps that will potentially disseminate confidential information of the country are banned, and, as a personal advice, I suggest you uninstall it now, before they find out you have it installed on your phone. You won’t be fond of what they will do to you when they discover it.” And she gave me back my phone.
I felt a little bit weird as what she had implied was kind of perplexing, though not as ludicrous as what I had encountered before. And at that time, I just wasn’t able to see the stupidity of acquiescently deleting the app just because the government wouldn’t like me to have it installed on my phone – perhaps I had already got used to this new culture I was drenched in back then, I don’t know. But anyway, I then quickly got my phone back and uninstalled it.
“Why did they do such a horrible thing to him?” I asked on a whim, then realized it might be an improper question to ask, and so stared at her to see how she react.