My hometown is far away in Moscow.

035 Falling from the Sky

There wasn't much room to dodge in the carriage. Caught off guard, the skinny man staggered backward a few steps to the edge of the platform, hurriedly grabbing the door frame and rushing back with a strange cry. Immediately afterward, Hu Yi's arms went light, his supporting foot was tripped hard, and he fell crisply to the ground, where he was immediately surrounded by a swarm of bald men.

Damn it! I'm doomed! Hu Yi had lost his advantageous position in the corner. He struggled to get up several times, but was repeatedly kicked down, so he could only curl up on the floor. He looked through the gaps in the crowd at the platform that was so close yet so far away, and instantly remembered Little Leo Ku's experience, and the Vietnamese female student's terrified account: "The skinheads beat him up for more than ten stops, and only stopped at the final stop."

This station is quite far from the final destination. Is there still a chance to escape? Hu Yi was momentarily distracted when something struck his face hard, making him dizzy and his ears ring. Fortunately, the train hadn't started moving yet, and the platform was bustling with people. The bald gang didn't dare to be too reckless; they simply surrounded him, waiting for the train to leave the station before launching their attack.

His mind was a little numb. Taking advantage of this moment of calm, Hu Yi wiped the blood from his nose and looked up. Due to the backlighting, he couldn't see the faces of the people around him, but he could see that the two car doors were already closing.

"The doors are about to close," the female announcer's voice rang out again: "Next stop, Lubyanka." Hu Yi moved his arm to block a large leather shoe that was about to hit his nose, instinctively shrinking his body, watching helplessly as only a hand's width of space remained between the doors.

Just as he was feeling utterly hopeless, a person suddenly emerged from the crowded platform, rushed up, and lunged at the train, grabbing tightly onto the closing doors.

In the years that followed, whenever Hu Yi recalled that harrowing experience, he would always immediately think of the figure who bravely lunged towards the car door.

"For a moment I thought it was a hallucination," he said.

However, what he saw was not an illusion. The train doors, which had been blocked from closing, reopened a few seconds later accompanied by a blaring alarm. Hu Yi looked over, trembling. The person outside had a square face, wore a police uniform and a cotton police cap, one hand resting on the holster at his waist, and the other pointing towards the skinheads inside the carriage.

He was rather short, but the dazzling incandescent lights from the top of the platform shone down behind him, leaving a tall silhouette in the eyes of Hu Yi, who was slumped in the carriage.

"Police! Don't move! Turn around! Everyone!"

The skinheads obediently raised their hands and slowly turned around, revealing Hu Yi on the ground. The policeman was young and seemed quite wary of the situation inside the car. He didn't step into the car, but instead waved vigorously at Hu Yi on the ground: "Come here! Get out quickly!" His eyes, however, were fixed on the skinheads.

Hu Yi felt an indescribable surge of excitement, as if he had fallen from a great height, but just as his head was about to hit the ground, someone grabbed his ankle and hurriedly scrambled to his feet and got out of the carriage.

The policeman tilted his head slightly and whispered a few words into the walkie-talkie hanging on his shoulder insignia. Soon, two more policemen squeezed through the crowd and rushed over. One of them stood guard at the car door with the first man, while the other, a policeman with a small mustache, stood next to Hu Yi. Seeing that his face and clothes were covered in blood, he couldn't help but sigh and shake his head.

By this time, the train conductor had also noticed the abnormality and immediately initiated emergency procedures, temporarily halting operation of the entire Moscow Metro Red Line. Hu Yi, having calmed down slightly, coughed a few times, spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva. He swirled his tongue around in his mouth to confirm that his teeth were not loose, and then moved his body to check that all his bones and joints were normal before finally feeling relieved.

He straightened his hair, put his hands on his hips, and looked into the train. The skinheads lazily shook their heads, seemingly indifferent. The elderly men and women in the carriage were passionately denouncing the skinheads' atrocities to the police; the young people cast sympathetic glances at Hu Yi; the middle-aged people, however, all had blank expressions, some muttering to themselves with displeasure, seemingly complaining that the train's suspension had wasted their precious time.

This was a transfer station in the city center, and there were relatively ample police patrols around. Seeing the police arriving one after another, Hu Yi immediately became bolder, throwing aside his earlier humiliating state of being beaten up. His pent-up frustration exploded, and he pointed at the bald man in the carriage, cursing loudly: "Fuck you! Fuck your grandpa! Go to hell! You son of a bitch, Sugabriya!...Baka yarou!" The various national curses he had been holding back poured out of his mouth, creating a cacophony of sounds that left the bearded policeman next to him dumbfounded.

The bald man at the front shrugged nonchalantly and gave him the middle finger. Hu Yi angrily beckoned, "Come on, come out! You and I! One-on-one!"

The bald man chuckled dismissively and turned his face away. The bearded policeman grabbed Hu Yi and pointed at his nose: "Hey, stop yelling, you're bleeding here, wipe it off quickly."

Hu Yi cursed loudly, and the anger he had been holding in subsided a little. He took out some tissues from his pocket and stuffed them into his nostrils. He tilted his head back and calmed himself for a moment before saying to the bearded man, "Thank you, I'm going home now."

"Wait a minute," the man with the mustache said, stopping him. "Come with us to the station to make a statement."

The police station was located in an old two-story building on the side of the street. After getting out of the punctured and drafty police car, Hu Yi first went to the restroom to wash his face carefully, and then looked at himself in the mirror: his vital organs were basically unharmed, only a few bloody marks on his forehead from being kicked, two cuts on the corner of his mouth and the bridge of his nose, slight bruising on his cheeks, and large patches of blood and countless footprints on his clothes and pants.

A near-death experience, a truly damn near-death experience. Only after stepping into the police station did his tense nerves finally relax completely. Hu Yi was quite satisfied with his self-protection efforts on the subway, and, imitating Stephen Chow's portrayal of Tang Bohu, hummed softly, "Luckily, I desperately protected my face, otherwise my handsome appearance would have been preserved..."

After singing only two lines, Hu Yi felt short of breath, utterly exhausted, and his head was spinning. He coughed a few times, rested for a moment with his hands on the sink, and slowly walked out of the bathroom.

"How are you feeling?" the mustachioed policeman asked with concern.

"I'm alright," Hu Yi forced a smile. "I'm very tired and want to go home and sleep."

The man with the small mustache patted him gently on the shoulder: "No problem, you can go home after you finish giving your statement."

"But I... don't speak Russian very well." Hu Yi pouted. "I'm a preparatory student, and I haven't been in Moscow for long."

"Oh, I see. What languages ​​do you speak?"

"Chinese".

"Hmm... Of course... Is there anything else?"

"My English is passable too."

The man with the mustache took off his hat and smoothed his hair: "Wait a minute, I'll go find someone who speaks English."

This police station is full of talented people; the male and female officers on duty speak French, Italian, Spanish, and German respectively, but none of them speak English. After asking around, the man with the mustache led Hu Yi into an empty room: "The one who speaks English isn't here. I've already called him and told him to come over as soon as possible. Please wait a little longer."

The room wasn't large, and the floors and furniture were quite old, resembling a military office from a World War II movie at first glance, but it was still relatively clean and tidy. Hu Yi dragged over a chair and sat down, leaning back wearily as he recalled the scene on the subway. However, he had been cowering with his head in his hands the entire time, barely even getting a good look at the other person's face, so there wasn't much to remember.

The countermeasures were too conservative, far too conservative! Why not fight back? Hu Yi secretly regretted not going all out: I should have punched the opponent first, then delivered a backhand elbow strike from behind, followed by a flying kick, and then... then... um, no, I should change the order.

He mentally rehearsed the scene from Jet Li's kung fu movies several times, and before he knew it, half an hour had passed. During that time, only one policeman peeked out from under the door and glanced at him a few times, but no one came in to talk to him. It seemed that they had forgotten that there was anyone sitting in the room.

Russians are just unreliable. Hu Yi was a little annoyed, but then he thought: But I'm so grateful to that policeman for saving me today. Otherwise, I don't know if I'd still be alive.

After pondering aimlessly for a while, a strong sense of drowsiness washed over him. He yawned several times, closed his eyes, and was just about to fall asleep when he suddenly heard a series of hurried footsteps. The heavy leather shoes pounded on the old wooden floorboards.

Hu Yi groggily opened his eyes. A Russian man with a neatly parted hairstyle rushed in, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, and looked to be under thirty. The man walked briskly to Hu Yi's side, sat down on the table, and looked at him: "Chinese?"

"Yes."

"student?"

"Yes."

"Can you speak English?"

"I know some."

After examining Hu Yi's documents separately, Hu Yi leaned over and said in fluent Russian-accented English, "Tell me what happened on the subway."

Hu Yi described his experience in both English and Russian. Although his grammar was a mess and he had to look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary, he managed to give a rough account of what happened.

After listening with a frown, Fen Tou paced back and forth in the room a few times, then took out paper and pen from a drawer and placed them in front of Hu Yi: "Listen, I need you to write down what you just said as an indictment."

"What the hell?" Hu Yi didn't understand.

"A complaint, used to sue them." They explained separately, "Court, courtroom, judge, understand?"

"Oh, a lawsuit." Hu Yi nodded, then hesitated, "But I don't plan to sue them. I just want to get home as soon as possible."

Fen Tou cleared his throat, walked up to Hu Yi, and put his hands on his hips: "Listen, the police can't hold them accountable in this kind of case. You have to file a lawsuit in court yourself."

"They assaulted people in the Moscow subway, and the Moscow police couldn't handle it? That's your problem." Hu Yi was completely ignorant of the legal procedures the man was talking about and just thought he was shirking responsibility. Moreover, this man spoke in a harsh tone, unlike the friendly one of the mustachioed policeman, so his tone unconsciously became stiff as well: "I'm injured, I've been sitting here for more than half an hour, and now I'm tired and hungry. I don't have the energy to write, I just want to go home and sleep."