Lockdown Night: a Tiger Lives Next Door to Me

On the day Qingyun County was closed, I was so hungry that I had no choice but to knock on the door next door. The man behind the door was chewing gum, smiling carelessly, and threw two packages of biscuits casually: "You're lucky, the passenger was left behind yesterday." Later I learned that this neighbor who drove a rental car was the "heartthrob" of Qingyun County. There are constant ambiguous messages on WeChat, and even the lady owner of the milk tea shop downstairs keeps giving him extra pearls. But I don't find him lovable at all. He always makes fun of me for embarrassing things when I shoot materials, and never says "return" when he lends me things. I thought he just had a bad personality, but I didn't pay attention to the details that were horrifying to me: he loved to eat bloody food and always disappeared on full-moon nights; when friends were gathering, he smiled and punched, but his fingers curled up into claws unconsciously. It wasn't until I came across the dark red traces of dryness on the floor in the abandoned factory he often visited, and found a sharp bone knife engraved with tiger stripes under his pillow, that I realized that I was chilling. It turned out that this man who was careless about everyone and didn't even bother to take his feelings seriously was hiding something more terrifying than "indifference". When he was still smiling and asked me: "Do you want to go to the mountains to see the moon?", I clutched the "gun" given by the trapper in my pocket. Only then did I realize: His carelessness was just a disguise, and even the moments when I occasionally thought "he doesn't seem that bad" were the beginning of me falling into the trap. He may have wavered for a moment, and I did have feelings that I shouldn't have, but on one side is the safety of mankind, and on the other side are natural enemies. Even "liking" between us has become a luxurious original sin, and what I have to do is to tear open his hide before he exposes my vigilance.