Row 18, Seat 1 chapter 5

The Activity That Must Be Stopped

Tom turned to the young man and said, “Since you’ve checked the archives, you should know who died in that seat. They were all bad people, really bad people. Jack Thompson and that colonel don’t need to be mentioned. What did that guy who came back do when he left Elmwood Town? He became a bandit outside, killing and looting. His hands were full of the blood of innocent people…”

The young man nodded, agreeing with Tom. He said he had been investigating this historical mystery for a long time without any clues. Then he thought that maybe there were still people related to or informed about this mystery who were associated with the theater. So he convinced the theater manager to let him sit in that seat that no one had sat in for decades, to see if anything strange would happen and to find some clues to solve the mystery. When he saw Tom hiding behind the screen and observing him from time to time, and then shouting and running towards him, he had a sudden inspiration and pretended to faint, which indeed lured Tom out.

The young man then asked Tom, “Sir, can you tell me how those people actually died?” Tom took a long drag on his cigarette and said, “There was a group in our town in the 1930s that robbed the rich to help the poor. Have you heard of it? The group was small, but they always kept their word. My father was a member of this group. They saw that no one sitting in Seat 18 was a good person; they were all scoundrels who exploited the people. So they decided to get rid of them. Any member of the group could take action against anyone sitting in Seat 18. Jack Thompson and the colonel were killed by different members of the group. The bandit who came back was poisoned by my father in his tea. After the war, when the world became peaceful, this rule was gradually forgotten. But during the social unrest in the 1960s, someone still took action against that deputy director of the council. Although that deputy director had done a lot of evil and personally killed several ‘undesirables’, my father couldn’t sleep for several nights after he found out. He said that now it was a new era, and such things couldn’t be done anymore. Before he died, my father told me all the secrets. He said he didn’t know who else was left in the group, but this kind of extra – judicial killing, no matter how just the reason, couldn’t be done in the future. He also asked me to stop others from doing it. So when this young man sat in that seat today, I was terrified. I was constantly worried that someone else would take action against him…”

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