Zhang Ya …
He called her name silently, but to Chen Ge's unease, he did not get any response.
He turned to look behind him. The night was dark, and there was no light, so he could not see his own shadow.
"What are you doing?" The man noticed Chen Ge's strange behavior, and he whispered, "You don't look so good."
"This is the first time I've heard of this profession. What do you need to do every day?" Chen Ge had been through a lot, so he immediately adjusted himself and changed the topic.
"Every year, there are about one million suicides worldwide, and this number is far more than murders. However, due to the stigma and silence, this topic rarely enters the public's view. Actually, what we should do is face it. When a person shows signs of suicidal tendencies, we should help them and cure them. We should not use that incomprehensible gaze to blame and isolate them. "
"No one is stupid enough to look down on life. When a person is really pushed to that point, only they can understand the pain they suffer."
The man seemed to be reminded of something. He looked at the endless night sky. "I am a suicide intervention hotline operator. My daily job is to reach out to those who walk to the edge of the abyss and tell them that there are people in this world who are willing to help them. I cannot drag them out of the abyss, but I can tell them that there are still beautiful things in this world."
"That number is the suicide intervention hotline?" Chen Ge nodded. "No wonder the few people spoke to me in such a strange tone."
"They are not being strange. If you were in the same situation as them, you would probably be in the same situation as them." The man turned back to look at Chen Ge. "Actually, those who are determined to die rarely call our hotline. Those who choose to call the hotline at the end of their lives actually retain a trace of love for this world deep inside their hearts. Their incompatibility, their strange behavior, is actually asking for help from the people around them. "
"Asking for help?"
"That's right. Suicide is not a temporary action. All kinds of reasons will be buried very early on. Those negative emotions and things will accumulate in the heart, and then one day, because of a certain point, it will be triggered, and in that instant, the person will be drowned in negative emotions. Many suicides are foreshadowed, but the people around them rarely notice it. If they had noticed it earlier and made changes, the tragedy could have been avoided. "
The blood on the man's shirt was slowly fading, and the blood tattoo on his left cheek was also fading.
This was the first time that Chen Ge had encountered something like this. All the Red Specters that he had encountered before, no matter the time, their blood red coat would not change, but this Red Specter before him appeared to be different from the other Red Specters.
The man did not mind Chen Ge's gaze. He was probably just looking for someone to talk to. "I've heard many reasons for suicide. The factory went bankrupt, and to make a comeback, he owed a huge amount of money to the loan sharks. At the end of his life, he still did not dare go home. At the time, when I answered the call, I could hear the man in his forties crying. His only wish was to see his child. There are too many similar things. Every night, people become more fragile. Midnight to 3 am is the busiest time for us. That was also the time when I failed my first rescue attempt. "
The tracks were in the middle of the road, and the man and Chen Ge maintained a distance from each other.
"Do you still remember the first call that you made?"
"I remember."
"The author once called me before he died. I could hear the madness in his voice, but I underestimated his determination. I thought he was just looking for someone to talk to because his voice was so calm. When I was talking to him, I could not feel anything off about him. It was just a normal sadness. " When the man said that, the blood tattoo on half of his face started to change slightly. The blood vessels wove together to form another person's face.
"I remember it very clearly. That was the first time I failed to intervene. Even now, I can still recite the entire conversation between us." The man's voice was pained. "I saw him on the newspaper the next day, and I regretted it. He had given me his last hope, but I had ignored him. I was responsible for that tragedy.
"From then on, I would be more careful when I talked to people, but things did not get better.
"One month later, I failed again. That day was the man's thirtieth birthday. He purposely chose that day to say goodbye at the place that he missed the most. " The man was probably talking about the patient with Nobita Fat Tiger Syndrome. Chen Ge could hear the pain in the man's voice.
"A human life disappeared before my eyes. I had a chance." The blood tattoo on the man's face started to change again. Chen Ge realized that every time he talked about a person, the blood tattoo would change. Based on his experience dealing with ghosts, the lingering spirits of those suicides seemed to have entered the man's body. In other words, perhaps the man had singlehandedly shouldered the lingering spirits of all the suicides on the other side of the phone.
"The third intervention failed on the second day. Initially, I planned to visit the previous suicide victim in person." For the first time, the man's tone changed. "He was really a kind person. I once asked him if he had any wishes at the last moment of his life. His answer was that he was worried that if he died at the landlord's place, the landlord would not be able to rent out the place, so he purposely moved to another place. He had already left the electricity bill and the rent he owed in his suitcase, but he did not have any friends, so he hoped that I could inform the landlord and hand over the money.
"I chatted with him for a long time until he fell asleep. I should have called the police, but I didn't even know where he was.
"Before I could recover from the previous suicide, I ran into another one."
"He was suffering from cancer, and he was tormented by his illness. Unlike the other suicides, this one called me in the morning, and he had given it a lot of thought." At this point, the man turned to Chen Ge again. "My job is to pull a person out from the swamp of death, but that day, I did not do that. Perhaps it was because of the mental pressure, or perhaps it was because I had been continuously stimulated, but I did not try to persuade him to embrace life but respected his choice. "
Every time the man mentioned a suicide victim, the blood tattoo on the side of his face would change.
"I did not do what I was supposed to do, but did I do anything wrong?"
The man's expression became even more confused. "All the phone records at our place are kept, and that phone call was no exception. However, for some reason, not long after his death, the last phone call between us was made public."
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