Adrian felt his ears filled with a buzzing sound of unknown sense, which was similar to a kind of chaotic sonic spell that traveled through time and space. He tossed and turned unbearably for a long time before finally deciding to surrender to its formidable power. As soon as he opened his sore eyelids, his irises were promptly completely occupied by a face magnified to the limit.

"...Jason! What the fuck are you doing on top of me?!"

Jason flashed him a victorious smile. "I wanted to prove something. Your alarm clock doesn't work at all because it's too far from your ears."

"I don't even have that damn thing in my room!" Adrian said in a rage. "I hate anything that interrupts my sleep! Now, get that invisible alarm clock, including your stupid face, out of here!"

Jason made an extremely aggravated expression. "Dear, your just-woke-up mood is getting worst..."

"That's because it's not time for me to get up yet! Shit, I slept for less than five hours!"

"Well, well, you only need three or four hours of sleep to stay glowing all day, Your Majesty Napoleon. I know that as a freelancer, the happiest thing is to be able to enjoy dawdling in bed as long as you please, but for the sake of my hard-earned vacations, how about being less of a night owl for a day, okay?"

Adrian rolled his eyes at him, pulled the corner of the quilt, and turned around to go back to sleep.

"Adri, the weather’s great today..."

"Adri, there's a large casino complex that just opened..."

"Adri, the streets are full of sexy girls with hot bodies..."

Jason sighed helplessly and decided to use his trump card.

He jerked his face over with two hands, stuck close to his ears, and whispered with infinite affection in a deep and tender voice, "Dear, your sleepy-eyed look is so sexy that I can't control myself. I want to kiss your soft lips until glaciers melt and a comet hits the Earth..."

Adrian was completely startled awake, and reflexively kicked the adhesive thing on top of him.

Jason fell off the bed with a muffled thud. "Fuck! Why the hell did you do that so hard? I'm even embedded in the floor!" he denounced indignantly.

"Do I have to put up with your sexual harassment because you bribed the landlady with your winks to give a 20% discount on the rent? Don't even think about it!" Adrian tugged vigorously at the buttons of his pajamas, imagining that it was Jason's shameless skin that was being tugged. "Seems that if you don't meet your whim, you'll definitely cling to me like a pest. Spill it, what are you going to waste my time on today?"

Jason quickly lifted himself out of the floor and crawled back to the bedside. "Oh, I haven't pondered it over yet. I always feel like there's a bunch of fun wiggling its ass at me, so I gotta think about which one seek first..."

"If you want to go to the red-light district, don't expect me to accompany you." Adrian slipped a pair of dark blue, casual apple trousers up his legs, and the full-length mirror projected his smoothly defined upper body: it was slightly lean, but the muscles were very well-proportioned and sturdy, giving a sense of coordination and tension. The skin was a healthy honeyed color, glowing with youthfulness and energy, without the frailty and paleness of an indoor worker who hadn’t seen daylight for a long time.

Jason happily admired the fine view before him (he had immense respect for Rodin's well-known quotes, so he never wasted the searching function of his eyes) while pretending to complain, "Oh, indeed, that's really depraved. Only a holy church is suitable for our upright and honorable Mr. Westchester — shall we go to the church instead?"

"Yeah sure, if you're left unsupervised and go to church to tempt the priesthood, God will definitely send another flood."

"Don't make me sound so bad, I sincerely want to repent to the Lord."

"Repent of your embarrassing love record? 'Father, I've committed promiscuity...' Couple that with that perverted tone in your harassment just now — Gosh, do you want the father to jerk off in the confessional?"

"Adrian! I have to remind you that no matter how you attack me with malicious words, you won't gain any benefit from it!"

"No, the benefit is that it'll put you off certain stupid ideas, especially if you want to drag me along." Adrian put on a light blue striped knit jacket over his shirt and put on his glasses. "Okay, you've wasted a lot of my time again, and now you've got one minute to name a place I can accept, otherwise say goodbye!"

Jason stretched out his hands exaggeratedly. "One minute? Jeez, you don't know how painful it's to be forced to make a choice... Give me at least ten minutes?"

Adrian looked at his wristwatch. "You have thirty seconds left. Tick-tock."

"How about Angels of Death Bar? The new resident singer there is a beauty... Chrysus Grand Casino Stadium? There's a baseball gambling party today..." seeing that Adrian was about to gesture that time was up, Jason blurted out in a hurry, "Cutting-edge electronic technology products exhibition, Corona Park, New York Hall of Science?"

"Deal."

Facing the irreversible defeat, Jason muttered in contempt, "Okay guys, the Boy Scouts summer camp activity has begun!"

As a result, during lunch, Jason vented his complaints accumulated for a long time under the knife and fork. He ate nearly two people's weight himself, because Adrian promised to pay for him in order to stop his incessant nagging mouth.

They were now sitting in the open-air dining bar of the Prairie Lake Restaurant in Corona Park, Queens. Outside the arc-shaped tables a circle of graceful, idyllic wooden railings surrounded them, which blocked the blue, waveless lake water beneath their feet from the softening afternoon sun. Since the regular lunch time had passed already, there were few customers in the bar. Jason had almost finished eating and was leisurely looking around the landscape when a man sitting in a corner not far from them caught his attention.

The man felt like a piece of sharp and clearcut black metal. He was wearing military-style boots and stretchy dark jeans, and his legs were full of strength and graceful lines. The black undershirt was covered with a slightly worn leather jacket, and rigid sunglasses were placed on the bridge of his nose. He was tall, his skin a dark bronze, and his black hair seemed too short but showed an exceptionally vigorous and capable feeling. The muscles of the face, which true age wasn't really visible, were stretched taut, like the never-loosening strings of time.

A stylish cool guy, brimming with the charm of mature men, Jason evaluated in his mind. He must be very popular with the kind of young and brisk, or enthusiastic women. However, what made him curious wasn't his appearance, but his attitude towards food: he gulped it down quickly as if he hadn't eaten for three days, yet there was no sign of pleasure or satisfaction, as if eating it just because it was necessary to maintain the normal functioning of the body, a monotonous and annoying task that must be carried out regularly. For ordinary people, the pleasure of satisfying their appetite and stimulating their taste buds was like an insulator that couldn't conduct electricity to him.

Jason watched him with interest until Adrian knocked his fork on the empty dinner plate in front of him with a light ding.

"Jason, you can't see someone decently good-looking and show a look of lust, begging for dissatisfaction. This is a public place. You nonetheless have to care about social ethics," Adrian said to him seriously.

"Lust and dissatisfaction?" Jason lowered his voice and exclaimed, "You're overstating it! I'm just a little curious — the kind of thing that any normal person has, except for you."

Adrian clicked his tongue at him and didn't continue this senseless topic.

Jason was about to get up when he suddenly asked in a whisper, "What's that?" He pointed at the top of a tall building in the distance, where a dot of intense, piercing light shone like the refraction of a small piece of diamond in the sun. "The reflection of glass? But that's the rooftop..."

The man in the corner abruptly overturned the white tabletop, leaping out of his seat with an unimaginable and astonishing speed and moving so fast that it was practically impossible to see clearly, retaining only a shadowy afterimage in the retina. At the same time, a bullet that flew out of nowhere shot on the erected tabletop, and passed through it without any hindrance whatsoever, leaving a clear hole on the floor tile surface and a muffled noise.

There was a cry of fear around. The man had long jumped three meters away, his panther-like strong body sweeping through the rows of tables and chairs and rushing out of the bar in the blink of an eye to disappear outside the tempered glass door.

"Hey, he hasn't paid the bill yet!" The manager suddenly slapped the cash register and shouted.

Jason stared at Adrian flabbergasted, and the look of astonishment on the latter's face was no less than his. "What was that just now? It was like a movie performance... My God! A real murder — that bright light was the scope of a sniper rifle!"

"It seems so. Your curiosity accidentally saved the prey's life." Adrian pulled his arm a little nervously. "Let's hurry up and get out of here before Mr. Killer's anger descends on your head from a thousand meters away!"

Jason raised his hands in agreement with his suggestion. They immediately paid out of the restaurant and headed for the parking space near the park entrance.

Jason got into the driver's seat and started the car. Adrian pulled open the front passenger's door and was about to hop in when a chaotic gunfire came from behind them. Amidst the noise, a bullet even hit the inside of the door, leaving a dark, smoking hole in the flannel.

Adrian was instinctively stunned, and another stray bullet left a stamp on the opened car door. It was skillfully symmetrical with the original one, like the deep eye sockets on a skull's face, and a pair of sinister eyes full of gunpowder.

Jason shouted anxiously, "Adri! Get in the—"

A figure rolled up to them like the wind, squeezed in through the open gap in the car door, and slammed it shut with a bang.

"Drive!" Something hard pressed against Jason's waist, and he didn't have to look down to sense the icy metal shell of the object and the perilous odor it gave off: it was a gun!

"My friend's still out there," Jason said in a pleading tone. "At least—"

"Drive! Now!" the man with the gun yelled, his murderous and extremely impatient tone made Jason feel that the bullet from his waist would be released before the next second. I'm sorry Adri, even if you come up, it's not much safer than outside. He gritted his teeth and violently stepped on the gas pedal; the black Opel let out a roar and rushed out of the white line.

"There are three cars chasing behind you. You have to get rid of them," the man said, threatening him with the muzzle of the gun.

Jason took a look at his sunglasses-wearing profile, which exposed a cold, harsh, granite-like silhouette that fully lacked negotiation, and he sighed inwardly. "No sweat, I guarantee I can throw the current F1 champ out of sight, as long as you keep your gun away from me. My waist will be poked out of a hole. In any case, I'm the one who saved your life at the restaurant, remember?"

"...It's you." The man took a closer look at him, his tone easing slightly as he moved the gun away from him a little bit to observe the situation in the rearview mirror.

The cars behind were in hot pursuit, and the sound of bullets hitting the car caused a ringing echo in the small cabin. The rear window was shattered, and raindrops of glass shards flutteringly sprinkled on their backs. Jason shifted gears and speeded up as he shouted, "God forbid they hit a tire!"

The man beside him loaded his revolver with bullets and said calmly, "They won't." He then poked half his head and arm out from behind the seat, aimed steadily, and opened fire. Jason saw from the rearview mirror that the bullet passed through the empty rear window, penetrated through the windshield of the Ford Lincoln that was biting close behind, and opened a bloody hole in the middle of the driver's forehead, as accurate as a movie.

"Ten points!" Jason grinned from ear to ear. The panic expression had vanished from his face unknowingly, and an ineffable sense of excitement wandered through his whole body alongside the secretion of adrenaline. Yes, he loved this feeling! It's like blood flaming from head to toe, cells hissing, and a dangerous storm sweeping everything away! His eyes, like sunlight through green leaves, suddenly lit up, as if the transparent but hot blaze inside was completely ignited, exuding such a dazzling and shocking beauty.

"Speed has begun! Gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts!" he shouted in an impassioned tone announcing the beginning of the party, and he slammed the steering wheel. He ran diagonally onto the overpass and raced past all kinds of vehicles, shuttling unscrupulously through the lanes against traffic, and passing oncoming cars by millimeters several times, regardless of the furiously honking cars crashing into each other behind him. The wind whistled through the broken window, and his brilliant blond hair fluttered in the air like a flag of freedom, as if he was about to break free from his body and soar.

At the moment of traffic light switching at the intersection, the black Opel rushed straight past like a mad bull. A silver-ashen Buick trailing behind lacked a second to evade and rammed ruthlessly into the cabin of a large-length truck, making an explosive noise.

"That was the last one," the man beside him said with a hint of appreciation. "Head north, take interstate 87 and off 90. We must leave New York."

"You said 'we'!" Jason said happily. "I like that word! My name's Jason Spencer, and you are?"

The man hesitated once and replied, "Gavin Landis."