The late autumn rain soaked the asphalt road into ink-black. Elvira hugged her canvas bag to her chest and walked quickly through the alley. The back of her hand was still numb from being burned by hot coffee while working at a convenience store. The sound of her heels hitting the ground was particularly crisp in the narrow alley.
When three dark figures emerged from behind the switchboard, she smelled the scent of beer mixed with cigarette smoke.
"That girl looks familiar." The young man with dyed green hair tapped his palm with a baseball bat. The sound of the iron scraping against the concrete made her neck cold. "You're still carrying a schoolbag so late at night. Is there something valuable in it?"
Elvira retreated to the wall, wet moss rubbing against the hem of her coat. She reached for the utility knife in her bag, the non-slip texture on the plastic shell rubbing against her palm: "Only my student ID and textbooks."
"Then we need to inspect the goods." The other two blocked her way, and the cold light of the flashlight on her mobile phone flashed across her pale face. The plastic bag containing the fast food dinner slid to the ground, and the curry sauce spread out in the stagnant water, a dazzling yellow.
Just as his fingers were about to touch the zipper, a ball of silver light suddenly exploded from deep in the alley.
It was like someone had poured liquid moonlight onto a brick wall, and the light was so cold it made one's teeth tremble. Elvira saw the pupils of the leading thugs shrink violently, and the bats fell to the ground with a clang. As they stumbled back, they knocked over a trash can, and rotten vegetable leaves stuck to their pilled sweaters.
"Wha...what!"
"Eyes! That thing has eyes!"
The chaotic footsteps disappeared around the corner, and Elvira slid slowly down to the ground, leaning against the wall. Her heartbeat thumped in her eardrums, and she looked down at the torn buckle of her schoolbag, and found a long and thin scratch on the edge of her left palm - probably scratched by the nails on the bat.
But at this moment the wound is healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Tiny drops of blood flowed back into the skin, and the pink new flesh intertwined like vines in a fast-forwarded shot. Elvira blinked hard three times, and all she felt with her fingertips was the slightly warm, smooth skin.
"Is anyone there?" she called into the empty alley. Rain dripped down the iron railings of the fire escape, and in the distance, an ambulance siren wailed.
When she stood up, something slipped out of the side pocket of her schoolbag and fell into the puddles with a crisp sound. It was a palm-sized silver leaf with a dark golden wolf head totem embedded in the veins. Elvira wiped the water stains with her sleeve, and the residual temperature on the metal surface made her fingertips tremble - as if she had just picked it from someone's chest.
On the way home, she always felt like someone was following her. Every time she looked back, she could only see the advertising curtains fluttering in the wind, or the flickering light spots when the automatic doors of convenience stores opened and closed. When she passed the seventh intersection, she finally couldn't help but rush into the 24-hour drugstore.
"What do you need?" The cashier looked up from the game on his phone.
"Bandage." He remembered that the wound had disappeared before he could finish his words. He grabbed a vitamin tablet from the shelf instead. "And this."
The glass door reflected her messy chestnut curly hair and the flash of silver light outside the door. When I chased her out, all that was left on the street were the shining road signs washed by the rain.
The sensor light in the corridor of the apartment building had been broken for half a month. When Elvira was groping for her keys in the dark, she heard the baby crying at night from upstairs. The light leaking from the crack of the door drew a thin yellow line on the ground, and the figure of her mother curled up on the sofa was coated with a layer of virtual edges by the blue light of the TV.
"There's baked rice in the microwave." The hoarse voice was mixed with the sweetness of cough syrup.
"I'll go deliver the medicine on the morning shift tomorrow." Elvira put the cold dinner into the refrigerator and glanced at the medical bills piled on the dining table. The top one had the bold words "owed" printed on it, and the toner was a little blurred by the air conditioning.
Back in her room, she held the silver leaf bookmark under the lamp. Two dark blue diamonds were inlaid in the wolf's eye position, and they glowed blood red when they were turned against the light. Her breath stopped when she turned to the back - there were numbers in cursive script engraved on the petiole, which looked like the date: 11.05.2015.
The search bar on her phone popped up a news flash from three years ago: On November 5, a natural gas pipeline exploded in the city center, seriously injuring seven people but killing no one. In the accompanying picture, twisted steel and concrete piled up into a small mountain, and a firefighter held a little girl covered in dust in his arms. Elvira subconsciously touched the crescent-shaped scar below her collarbone, which was her only memory of that day.
The wind outside the window suddenly picked up, and the unclosed blinds slammed against the window frame. When she rearranged the bookmarks and prepared to wash up, she found that the wolf head that was originally facing right was now facing left. The canvas bag containing the sculpture tools was tilted in the corner, revealing a half-cut charcoal pencil and crumpled sketch paper - there was a silver scratch on the sketch of the wolf relief, as if someone had lightly scratched it with a fingernail.