At eight o'clock in the evening, at Subway Station Exit B. The wind was strong, blowing the aroma of roasted sweet potatoes from the roadside far away.
I held the sealed document bag and stood under the streetlight. Everyone looked like an undercover agent.
"Li Puru?"
A familiar voice sounded behind me. I turned around.
Zhang Xiaoyu stood under the streetlight, not wearing a mask. The exhaustion from the subway was gone from her face, and her eyes were as bright as stars.
That face, I finally remembered. It was the transferred student who cried outside the toilet in the third grade of primary school. Fifteen years had passed, and she had lost her baby fat, but the dimples at the corners of her mouth when she smiled were exactly the same as when she was a child.
"On the first day you transferred to our class in the third grade of primary school, you handed me a lemon candy outside the toilet and said 'Have a candy, and you won't be afraid anymore.'" She walked towards me with a smile, "I've remembered this sentence for fifteen years."
Memories flooded in like a tide. I thought it was just an insignificant little thing. I never thought that someone would remember it for fifteen years.
"I get off work at this time every day and take this subway just to wait for you." She held out her hand, "Give me the document."
I handed her the document bag. She opened it and glanced at it, and her face changed instantly.
She grabbed my wrist suddenly: "Bad! Run!"
The harsh sound of tires scraping the ground came. Two white vans stopped suddenly at the intersection. The doors opened, and eight men in black suits jumped out.
The leader was a thin, lean man holding a walkie-talkie, with fierce eyes. There was an old scar on his tiger's mouth—exactly the same as the scar on Aunt Wang's hand when she entered last night.
"Catch them! Grab the document!"
Zhang Xiaoyu pulled me and turned to run into the alley.
"What's going on?!" I shouted as I ran.
"The document contains the list of 3,000 Puru volunteers! And the test report of Kangfu's counterfeit candies! The people from the Warm Winter Association want to steal it!"
She pulled me into a narrow alley. There were old residential buildings on both sides, not even a streetlight. The footsteps behind us were getting closer and closer.
The pursuers behind were about to catch up. Zhang Xiaoyu turned left, but I pulled her suddenly.
"Take the fire escape! Don't run further in!" I gasped for breath, my mind racing even in extreme hypoxia. "The left side is a blind spot for surveillance, but there's a dead end fifty meters ahead. The fire escape on the right can lead to another building, directly to the main street!"
It was the instinct of a product manager—when you arrive at a new place, you first build an information architecture diagram in your mind. Even when escaping for my life, I habitually broke down the surrounding routes into the shortest paths.
She was stunned for a moment, then immediately trusted my judgment. We climbed up the creaking iron stairs.
The pursuers behind crashed open the iron gate at the alley entrance, and the beam of a flashlight swept over.
"Don't let them get away! Chase them up!"
When we climbed to the second-floor platform, I looked back and saw that the flashlight beam had already reached the stair turn.
"Jump over!" I pointed to the 1.2-meter gap between the two buildings.
Zhang Xiaoyu did not hesitate, ran up, jumped. She twisted her ankle when she landed, but she didn't make a sound and kept running.
We walked along the corridor to the stairs of another building, rushed down all the way, and finally crashed open the unit door and rushed into the crowd on the main street.
The crowd at the evening rush hour was bustling. Food vendors and off-duty passers-by packed the entire street.
We mixed in the crowd, turned several corners, and shook off the pursuers.
Hiding behind the glass door of a 24-hour convenience store, we leaned against the wall and gasped for breath. Because of her sprained ankle, half of her body leaned on my shoulder.
I took two cups of hot soy milk from the freezer next to me and handed one to her.
She took it and took a sip. Her eyelashes were covered with steam. The light hit her side face, overlapping with the tear-stained girl from fifteen years ago.
"How did you... know the right side leads through?" She looked at me, with something in her eyes I couldn't understand.
"Occupational habit." I gasped, "Breaking down paths to find the optimal solution."
She suddenly laughed. Not the polite smile from the subway, but a real relaxed smile.
"Why did you establish this Puru Organization?" I asked, "Just because I gave you a candy back then?"
She lowered her head and stirred the soy milk, falling silent for a while.
"I didn't establish Puru just to repay a favor. It's because fifteen years ago, there was a period of time when I lost all my memories. I didn't remember who I was, where my home was, or even... if I had a father."
She looked up at me, her eyes shining.
"The only thing I remembered was the taste of the candy you handed me. Later, I found out that there was a secret hidden in that lost memory. A secret related to Kangfu Group."