Chapter 3 Fire

• Ben put the diamond ring in his coat pocket and continued riding his misshapen tricycle to head home.
• Although November in London could not be regarded as cold, it was cold enough, especially at two to three o'clock in the morning.
• Even so, Ben held a cigarette between his lips and hummed an unknown tune as he pedaled slowly. He seemed easygoing, but no one knew how tired he truly was and the difficulties he faced.
• He had to go through this road every night after closing his stall. It usually took him nearly an hour to reach his accommodation. He set up his barbeque stall on a backstreet of the University Town, but he lived quite far from it in a tenement in a slum area.
• Suddenly, he noticed an old apartment complex he passed by daily covered in flames. The apartment complex had around seven floors. The fire was burning from the second to the fourth floor and spreading upward.
• "Fire." Ben jumped from shock and quickly parked near the entrance to the apartment compound. There were a few people gathered there, pointing at the apartment complex. Since it was past midnight, there were not too many people.
• Ben had just gotten down from his tricycle when someone shouted, "Did you see that? There's someone on the third floor. Someone is still on the third floor."
• Ben glanced in the direction the person pointed and noticed a balcony on the third floor. The roaring flame was on the verge of spreading there, and a human figure waved something that looked like clothes or a bed sheet, calling for help. Unfortunately, the figure only appeared for a while before the flames obscured it from view.
• "We need to save that person," Ben shouted at the spectators beside him.
• "Why don't you save that person yourself? You can go if you wish to get yourself killed." Someone in the crowd laughed at Ben.
• "That's right. What does it have to do with us? The firemen are probably arriving soon."
• "You are all heartless." Ben scolded them and rushed back to his tricycle. He took off his coat and poured a bottle of mineral water to wet it. After pouring two bottles of mineral water, Ben draped the wet coat over his head. He glanced up, confirmed where the figure had appeared and dashed into the apartment complex.
• He ran up the stairs. The fire raged, raising the surrounding temperature and shrouding the place in smoke. Thankfully, the fire had not engulfed the whole place. Ben tightly covered his nose with one of his coat sleeves and ran to the third floor. He found the room where the figure was seen and began kicking the door. The door was not strong in the first place. The high temperature and damage caused by the fire made it even easier to kick the door down.
• As soon as the door fell, waves of heat gushed out of the room, causing Ben to retreat a few steps. Since he had come this far, he could not return without saving the person. Thus, he gritted his teeth and dashed in. He did not care whether the flame was burning him and kept running until he reached the balcony. There, he forced his eyes open in the smoke to look for the trapped person and finally found the person despite the low visibility.
• "Are you awake? Can you walk?" Ben kneeled and shook the person on the floor as he shouted.
• However, there was no response at all.
• Thus, Ben did not delay and quickly covered the person with his wet coat. Then, he carried the person onto his back and rushed down the stairs. All he could think of was to get out of the building as soon as possible. He did not wish to die here.
• As soon as he got out of the burning building, he let out a long sigh of relief, thankful that he did not perish there.
• At the same time, the firefighters arrived and were prepared to put out the fire. The ambulance and the police cars were there too. The police cordoned off the area with barricade tapes. A crowd gathered beyond the barricade tape, and numerous people took out their phones to snap photos of Ben.
• As soon as Ben came out of the building, two firemen rushed to him and took the rescued person from him. Once the firefighters and ambulance staff took over, Ben turned around and walked out of the police barricade straightaway. He was exhausted. He wanted to get home as soon as possible and sleep well.
• However, when Ben used his coat to cover the trapped person, he completely forgot the diamond ring the BMW woman gave him as security. He also did not notice that when he took his coat back and left, the ring stealthily fell out of his coat pocket and into the coat collar of the person he rescued.
• Then, Ben returned to the tenement he resided in. It was a wizened building constructed in the seventies, and its bare brick walls were covered with thick layers of dust. Furthermore, the cleanliness here was terrible, and its inhabitants questionable.
• Although everyone said this place was terrible, Ben felt it was good because it was affordable. He only had to pay five hundred a month for a room of thirty square meters. It was a bargain in a city of high rent and astronomical housing prices.
• Ben lived on the first floor. The corridor before his door had a pile of smelly trash, but he was long used to it, so he didn't mind. He pushed his tricycle and parked it by the window of his room. Then, he got into his room and soon came out with a bucket. There was only one tap on the whole first floor. Thus, he went to the tap at the end of the corridor, filled the bucket with water, and placed it at the doorway of his room. Then, he came out of his room wearing shorts and began to wash his body. It was cold in November, but Ben was used to it. He had to bathe every night due to the nature of his work.