Chapter 16
It was getting close to nightfall, but neither the rain nor the snow showed the slightest sign of stopping, falling in a steady rustle.
The trees by the roadside no longer had any leaves left to be torn off by the violent wind, only a few pitiful bare branches, lashed and shaken by the pellets of snow.
After the second story ended, the deathly stillness of this world seemed to grow a little heavier. The weather turned extremely harsh, and the nighttime temperature dropped even lower. Chen Huai buried his chin into the blanket, and the coolness in his hands and feet seemed to slowly begin to warm again.
He dreamed.
The perspective in the dream wavered and twisted like an unsteady lens. Everything was like a reflection in water, ripples spreading outward in circles upon circles. Only one person stood at the center of the rippling surface, a silver illusion.
By all logic, that should have been Qin Yao from the past. But she never truly took on a human form. The edges of that silver shadow gradually blurred into the water. Her mouth opened and closed, repeating only one name:
“Broken-Tailed Fish, Broken-Tailed Fish.”
Chen Huai felt the icy water surge up, swallowing him as well. He heard Qin Yao’s voice say:
“You still won’t wake up.”
“…”
It was like his heart had been cut open with scissors. When he opened his eyes, his face was deathly pale. It felt as though all the warm blood had drained out through that gaping wound in his chest cavity, leaving even his mind blank.
Qin Yao was no longer a wisp of ghostly flame. She had taken on a human form. Her long hair was dampened by the rain drifting in from outside the window, hanging over her shoulders. She lifted her eyes blankly, leaning over the desk by the window, idly poking a red roly-poly toy with a big round belly, then reaching out her hand to catch the slanting rain.
But all the rain passed straight through her body. Qin Yao could not touch anything. Only her heavy, damp eyelashes trembled, veiling her somber eyes.
She looked over. Chen Huai lay on the bed, meeting her gaze. He heard a faint jingling sound, so he forced open his throat, dry to the point of sticking, and asked, “What is that?”
Qin Yao smiled faintly and raised her arm, brushing the tail of the wind chime a few times. “A little thing I brought from over there. It seems like I can still touch it here. I strung it myself when I used to live alone there.”
Her hand curled slightly, then dropped again, propping up her cheek as she said blankly, “Because it was too quiet there. I was alone. Day and night, there was no sound, no one to talk to. Only it could make a noise.”
Chen Huai glanced at the time. It was only three in the morning, but because of that dream, most of his drowsiness had already dissipated. He pulled on a thick coat and sat up from the bed. When he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, he realized the corners of his eyes were actually damp. What the hell.
Uneasy, he spoke to Qin Yao. “Why not keep a pet? Better than something dead like that.”
“I can’t keep them alive.” Qin Yao gave a bitter smile. “Chen Huai, in this world, I’ve never managed to keep a dog or a cat alive. Even flowers die in my care.”
She glanced at him from the side and let out a deep sigh, then muttered softly, “Probably someone’s getting back at me. Petty.”
Chen Huai was badly distracted and didn’t catch what she said at all. The damp breeze from outside the window slowly blew away the restlessness in his chest. He let out a long breath. His shoulders gradually sank, and his body no longer felt so tightly wound.
“Is that so,” he replied absentmindedly. “Then you’re just unlucky.”
Qin Yao pursed her lips a few times. Knowing he was out of it, she couldn’t be bothered to argue with him, so she lifted her eyes and went back to fiddling with her wind chime.
The red roly-poly toy on the old windowsill swayed left and right under her poking. Outside the window, a stretch of clematis vines blended into one. The wind chime she had strung herself hung from the sill, ringing softly.
She said wistfully, “I always remember that I need to go to a temple in Shancheng Alley to pray for blessings. And that I need to write a letter to the resident at No. 136, Mati Street.”
Chen Huai lay to the side, pressing at his phone. The screen’s light illuminated his eyes in the darkness.
His brows twitched, and he laughed as he cursed her for being pretentious.
“What, isn’t it enough for a female ghost to drain my vitality? You still want to go find some old lover from before?”
When he said this, his tone wasn’t pleasant. His gaze was lowered, his expression dark and unreadable. Qin Yao smiled, though it wasn’t clear what she was smiling at. In the end, she didn’t respond. Chen Huai looked even more displeased. He turned off his phone and pulled the blanket over himself to sleep again.
But the sound of the wind chime was too irritating, tinkling and clinking, ringing all night.
At the start of the year, there were banquets everywhere. Relatives at home took turns hosting. Wherever there were slightly larger gatherings, there would be children setting off firecrackers, bundled up like stuffed tangyuan. They would light the fuse, then cover their ears and run more than ten meters away to hide. The moment the firecracker went off, they would be so happy they could jump.
Qin Yao stood nearby, watching with envy. Chen Huai kept his hands tucked in his pockets as he looked at her, thinking that eager, longing expression of hers looked like a drooling little puppy, her eyes glistening.
“Didn’t we buy firecrackers to set off on New Year’s Eve?”
Qin Yao shot him a look, her voice cool. “You’ve got the nerve to say that. Stingy bastard. You only bought one box, and you spilled half of it yourself.”
It was actually pretty funny. When Chen Huai handed it to her, he didn’t hold it steady. Half the box tipped over at once, and crack crack crack, it started exploding. Both of them were startled. At the time, Qin Yao was still very weak and didn’t have a human form, so a ball of blue flame on the ceiling went darting around, crashing into walls, while the person on the ground hopped around a few times. When the firecrackers finished exploding, the two of them just stared at each other, one high, one low.
Chen Huai didn’t want to recall something that embarrassing, so he changed the subject. “Will you stay in human form from now on?”
Qin Yao looked at her hands and clenched them hard. “Maybe I’ve absorbed enough yang energy. Or maybe… I’m about to go back.”
The person leaning against the wall flicked his fingers slightly. His eyelashes lifted and fell as he said, pretending indifference, “Back into your body?”
Qin Yao ran over, tilting her head, insisting on seeing his face. Chen Huai let out a soft scoff and deliberately turned the other way so she couldn’t look, even raising a finger to press against her forehead and push her away.
So she burst out laughing. “What, if I go back, will you feel lonely?”
Chen Huai did not look at her. He stayed silent for half a minute.
“Maybe.” His voice was so light a single snowflake could have covered it.
The curve of Qin Yao’s eyes deepened. Within that brimming smile, there seemed to be something else hidden, something unspeakable, and it made the expression grow heavier.
But that heaviness could not be seen by the person in front of her. So she pretended ease, dusted off the hem of her clothes, then turned back with a smiling gaze and called to him, “The bus should be here soon. Let’s go to the hospital. I think I’m about to wake up.”
When they left Yuan Qing’s place, both of them had heard the contents of her phone call and roughly understood that the Qin Yao in the hospital was showing signs of waking. Chen Huai did not know whether this had anything to do with her recovering part of her memory from Yuan Sheng’s photograph.
The city center hospital was more than ten kilometers from where Chen Huai lived. After transferring buses a few times, it took about an hour to get there. After the New Year, more people gradually came to visit patients. The stall of the aunt who had been selling dumplings downstairs the last time was gone, probably because regulations had been enforced more strictly lately.
The attending physician in charge of Qin Yao’s bed was still the one named Cao Yu. Compared to last time, the duty office was much livelier. Cao Yu seemed to remember him and raised a hand in greeting.
“You come more often than her parents,” Cao Yu said. “I wanted to ask you last time, do you have a deeper relationship with her?”
Chen Huai’s mouth opened, but his brows pressed down. “Just friends.”
Qin Yao seemed to glance at him. Chen Huai opened his mouth again, instinctively wanting to refute something, yet unable to figure out what exactly he wanted to refute. In the end, he pressed his lips tightly together again.
One living person, one ghost. They had only been bound together by something inexplicable. Calling it friendship already seemed too much.
“Just friends?” Cao Yu turned slightly to look at him, then lowered his lashes to the floor with a bitter smile. “Don’t wait until you lose something to learn to cherish it.”
It sounded like there was a story behind those words, but Chen Huai had no interest in hearing it. He had already seen too many stories that left a lingering sadness.
“Can she wake up?” Chen Huai asked.
The background noise of the hospital was chaotic. From time to time, birds, blinded by the snowy haze, would crash into the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows, their dull thuds mixing with the sound of tires crushing snow on the road below, clogging the ears.
“A few days ago, there were strong vital signs, but it only lasted for a short while. Her consciousness seemed to sink back down again.”
“Is the brain injury severe?”
“After the surgery, the wounds are no longer a major issue. But the patient still hasn’t woken up. It seems more like a lack of will to survive,” Cao Yu said, thinking. “In other words, like someone having a beautiful dream and not wanting to wake.”
Through the window fogged with condensation, Chen Huai looked at the silver figure inside. Even now, he still could not see clearly the face of the person lying on the hospital bed, yet he felt he had already seen through her entire life.
Qin Yao tilted her head, looking at the person in the ward. Her eyelashes lowered gently, then lifted again, quiet, with a trace of confusion. Chen Huai realized he always found it difficult to read her emotions.
Cao Yu pushed up his glasses and looked at him a few times. “You look very worn out. Are you sick, or just not resting well?”
Chen Huai froze for a moment. He did feel that even his lips were cracked. The past few days, his sleep had been filled with dreams, and after waking he had been running around over the matter of the photographs. He had not truly slept well for several nights.
“It’s nothing,” he replied dryly. Cao Yu told him to drink a cup of hot water before leaving.
Day by day passed, yet the snowstorm only grew more intense. It was likely that before long the roads would be closed to traffic. The heating in the office was turned up higher. Cao Yu poured him some water, then sat at his desk reviewing a patient’s report. Another doctor came over and joked, “Looking over the same patient’s report again and again every day. That’s not very impartial, Doctor Cao.”
Cao Yu smiled, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Someone once asked me to wait until she wakes up.”
Chen Huai cupped his hands around the warm mug, then suddenly spoke, interrupting their conversation. “Who?”
A vague guess stirred in his mind. He felt it might be the “old lover” Qin Yao had mentioned.
Cao Yu looked at him with amusement. “You care this much, yet you just denied it.”
Chen Huai choked on his words for a moment, then answered stiffly, “It’s normal for friends to care about each other.”
Qin Yao snorted and wandered around the office.
“The one who came to ask me,” Cao Yu’s voice slowed, his words drifting, “was the child of a very important… deceased friend.”
As he spoke, Qin Yao had already moved to Cao Yu’s bookshelf. Tilting her head, she scanned across a row of books as if searching for something. Chen Huai’s thoughts followed her there.
He latched onto the thread of thought and asked Cao Yu again, “That friend… wouldn’t happen to live at No. 136, Mati Street, right?”
Cao Yu froze, his mouth parting slightly, seemingly surprised that he knew the address.
“No. But she worked at No. 136, Zhongxin Road.”
At the same moment, Chen Huai saw Qin Yao’s finger come to rest firmly on a book. She beckoned to him, urging him repeatedly, “Come here, come here!” A blue glow began to shimmer around her body again.
Chen Huai took a deep breath and stiffly shifted the topic away from Mati Street to that book. “Can I take a look at your book, Doctor Cao?”
Cao Yu looked somewhat puzzled. He had intended to ask how Chen Huai knew that address, but Chen Huai’s sudden interruption cut him off.
“That one… Wandering[1]?” Cao Yu stood up and pulled the book out, his gaze settling on it, deep and heavy.
“What a coincidence. This is the book of that friend who already passed away.”
He flipped it open, and a photograph slipped out from between the pages.
In the warm air blown by the heater, it drifted unsteadily, like a snowflake, and landed by Chen Huai’s feet.
Chen Huai glanced at the face of the woman in the photograph. His throat tightened instantly, as if he had swallowed a handful of sand and gravel, blocking his airway so he could not breathe. A buzzing filled his mind.
Qin Yao bent down, her finger pressing onto the photograph. She lifted her eyes to look at Chen Huai and smiled.
Chen Huai wanted to tell her to stop, but she had already pulled both of them into the photograph.
In the blinding white expanse, only her soft murmur remained:
“Before I wake up, I’ll give you what you want most.”
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