Chapter 03
The side of the notebook was dirty, probably because it had been thrown away before.
Chen Huai instinctively wanted to turn to the first page, but his fingers paused again, his gaze falling on the blue flame floating in the air.
Qin Yao did not stop him. She drifted a little closer, and Chen Huai remembered that she had already lost her memories from before she died, so she probably did not know what exactly was written in her diary either.
He turned past the notebook’s title page, revealing a blank page.
The second page was blank too.
Chen Huai frowned and quickly flipped through every page of the notebook. He did not see a single word.
“You didn’t write anything at all in your diary?” He was almost angry enough to laugh.
Qin Yao spoke with complete conviction. “Impossible! I definitely wrote down a lot of things. It’s just that those memories have to slowly come back before they can appear in the notebook.”
She was feeling a little guilty too. Slowly, she drifted a little farther away, her voice growing quieter as well. “...Anyway, you should put it away first.”
Chen Huai fastened the clasp again. Just as he was about to slide the wardrobe door shut, he noticed an old photograph lying inside the box.
It was a black-and-white photo of a parent and child. It looked very old, yellowed with age, and the edges were badly damaged.
As if possessed by something, Chen Huai stopped with one hand resting on the wardrobe door. The light outside streamed through the gap he had left open and into the wardrobe, like a soft, weightless ribbon falling across the photograph. Chen Huai lowered his gaze as well, staring at the picture for a long time without moving.
There had been times when he, too, had wondered what this “Xiao Yao” Old Man Sun was always talking about actually looked like. What kind of well-behaved child could inspire someone to miss him like this? Why had his own fate not been so fortunate?
But from the old man’s frequent ramblings, Chen Huai had realized that this “Xiao Yao” was not a good child at all. He often skipped class to play video games, and once, as a prank, mixed soapy water into the old man’s cup and gave him diarrhea for several days. He was always going against him, yet Old Man Sun still talked about him all the time.
Chen Huai stood in front of the wardrobe for quite a while. Qin Yao floated beside his shoulder.
“Do you want to see?”
His hand dropped to his side. His lips moved. “See what?”
“Old Man Sun’s memories. The ones even he himself has forgotten.” Qin Yao settled onto the photograph. “I can let you see them. Consider it a deposit on our deal.”
In the yellowed old photograph, there was only a broad, sturdy man with a stern-looking face and downturned mouth, beside a small black shadow. Its outline looked like that of a child, but its features could not be made out.
Light gradually spread from Qin Yao’s body. Like morning mist suddenly rising, it filled the entire room in an instant, cold and chilling. Chen Huai’s vision slowly blurred, and vaguely, he heard her speak with a low sigh.
“But you won’t find the answer you’re looking for.”
She always seemed to know everything. She did not seem like a ghost that had emerged from his wardrobe at all. Rather, she was like a throbbing blood vessel pulled from his brain, able to see through every thought in his heart before he had even said a word.
The excessively bright light stung his eyes. Qin Yao was like one of those multicolored disco balls hanging in a bar, her body swelling larger and larger, like a cheap balloon inflated to the point of bursting.
Chen Huai turned his head and closed his eyes for a moment. In an instant, his eardrums trembled slightly as an enormous noise crashed over him. He opened his eyes and found himself standing at the entrance to the workers’ residential compound.
Time had rewound to 1986. Chairman Deng had appeared on the cover of Time magazine in the United States, the Queen of England had made her first visit to China, Chen Peisi had performed the now-classic Spring Festival Gala skit Mutton Skewers, and Sun Fusheng’s son had been born.
Only then did Chen Huai learn that Old Man Sun had not always been small and thin when he was young. In his younger days, he had done heavy manual labor at a textile factory. No wonder he was so muscular.
A few bicycles sped through the old alleyways in twos and threes, their bells ringing. Chen Huai did not have time to dodge. He had barely turned to the side when he realized that a bicycle had passed straight through his body.
He had become a phantom like Qin Yao. The only difference was that he could still maintain a human form.
Right... Qin Yao?
Chen Huai looked around, even pulling open the collar of his down jacket to peer inside, but he could not find that blue thing anywhere.
The next second, he heard someone call his name from behind him.
Chen Huai turned and saw a girl who looked like a student sitting on the steps of the compound across from him. She wore a white top and blue trousers, her black hair straight. Tilting her head, she blinked at him with bright, watery eyes and a smile.
Many people were coming and going through the alley, returning home from work. Suddenly, Chen Huai felt a dull ache in his chest, as though someone had struck it with a hammer, not too hard and not too lightly. His ears began ringing along with it. He seemed to hear something as indistinct as an electric current, but he could not make it out clearly.
While he was distracted, Qin Yao stood up from the steps and sighed. “What? You can’t recognize me just because I look different?”
Chen Huai did not speak for a long time. His gaze moved from her eyebrows to her eyelashes, then to the slightly upturned corners of her lips.
Qin Yao stared at him for a moment. Her eyes lowered briefly. She fell silent for a second, then looked up again and pointed behind him.
“Still came a little too late. His daughter’s already five.”
The tangled mess of thoughts in Chen Huai’s mind slowly drew together. For the moment, he pushed down that strange feeling in his heart and turned his attention to Sun Fusheng at the entrance of the compound.
Sun Fusheng held the hand of a little girl with two pigtails and red flower-shaped armbands, while in his other hand was a bottle of bubble solution he had bought for his daughter.
Qin Yao and Chen Huai silently followed him. The moment one foot crossed into the compound, they heard an argument coming from the doorway on the left.
Sun Fusheng’s wife, Tang Juan, had their newborn son in one arm. With the other, right in front of their eldest daughter Guoguo, she poured the bubble solution out onto the ground by the door.
Tang Juan berated her husband. “Buying things blindly all day long? Are we made of money? We can’t even scrape together enough for our son’s milk, we’re living entirely off that pathetic salary from your factory, and you’re still buying useless things like this.”
She casually tossed aside the empty bottle. It rolled several times before coming to a stop at the little girl’s feet. The girl stayed quiet, neither crying nor making a fuss. She looked at her stepmother’s expression, then bent down to pick it up, only to be sharply scolded by Tang Juan again.
“Did I tell you to pick it up?”
Tang Juan grabbed her by the ear and made her stand outside the door with Sun Fusheng. She also said that from now on, Sun Fusheng would have to hand over all his wages and see if he still dared to spend money carelessly.
“Sorry, Daddy.” She clasped her hands behind her back and spoke in a tiny voice.
Sun Fusheng could only sigh. “It’s okay, Guoguo. Once Mommy’s done being angry, she’ll be fine.”
Guoguo fell silent. Tears began dropping from her lowered face, one after another. “This mommy isn’t nice at all,” she said through her sobs.
As she spoke, she gently nudged the empty plastic bottle with the tip of her shoe. The bubble solution quickly evaporated, leaving only faint water marks on the ground.
Sun Fusheng glanced toward the entrance. Chen Huai thought that, since he had become a ghost too, Sun Fusheng could not see him anyway, so he did not bother hiding. To his surprise, Sun Fusheng spoke in his direction.
“Which family are you looking for?”
Chen Huai froze for a moment, then heard Qin Yao answer, “I live across the way in the Petroleum Workers’ Compound. I just moved in and thought I’d come around, get to know more people.”
Sun Fusheng nodded and said nothing more. Chen Huai stared at her strangely.
“How come you have a physical body and I don’t?”
Qin Yao shrugged. “Dead people have their own world. You’re not dead.”
Now that she had been seen, Qin Yao could not very well linger any longer and could only head back first. Usually, around dusk, the people in the compound would bring out little stools and gather by the entrance to enjoy the evening breeze and chat. She could come back then and join in without arousing suspicion.
“You have a house here?” Chen Huai asked.
“Yeah. I guess it’s money someone burned for me after I died.”
Chen Huai said nothing.
Qin Yao eyed him suspiciously. “Wait. Me saying that didn’t just make you even more determined to die, did it?”
He said coldly, “I haven’t gotten what I want yet. I don’t want to die that badly.”
Qin Yao thought that was true. Chen Huai still had not found any news about his mother.
Qin Yao unlocked the door to her home with her key. Chen Huai muttered vaguely, “Anyway, no one will burn money for me when I die.”
“Someone will. At least one person, probably,” she said quietly.
The look Chen Huai gave her was strange. “What, do you have a Sharingan or something? Can you see the future?”
Qin Yao looked away. “I was just trying to comfort you... Honestly, taking my kindness for granted.”
Half the sky darkened, and it felt as though everyone in the world were slowly being sealed inside an airtight box, mouthful by mouthful swallowed by the darkness. She held the keys loosely from her fingertips, the silver fishtail charm swaying lazily. She had only just looked up when the sky went completely dark.
The flow of time had no discernible pattern at all. It was as though even an NPC’s life was merely governed by the protagonist of the world. When he moved quickly, time moved quickly. When he moved slowly, time moved slowly. Chen Huai had originally planned to ask whether, according to this timeline, they would have to stay here for decades until Sun Fusheng jumped off a building, but now it seemed that would not be necessary.
Several families of workers from a nearby oil factory lived in the Petroleum Workers’ Compound. Qin Yao lived alone in the largest house at the very back. She had no known background and no parents, and had moved in all by herself. The aunties next door all assumed something had happened to her parents and thought she was rather pitiful.
Chen Huai stood beside the wooden table by her window, his eyes lowered as his fingertips stirred several sheets of paper. Not a single word had appeared in that diary yet, apart from the strange title on the title page.
The room felt very much like his own little rented apartment. Although it was considerably larger, the way the furniture had been arranged was exactly like his own. He had no idea what kind of strange tacit understanding that was.
There was also a bookshelf in Qin Yao’s home, about half a person tall, sitting directly on the damp floor. It held many books, including quite a few that had not even been published in this era, yet they had somehow appeared on her shelf.
The covers were already quite worn. Chen Huai gave them a cursory glance and found many detective novels, most of them belonging to the social mystery genre, with relatively few classical puzzle mysteries. It seemed she was not particularly interested in that kind.
Qin Yao casually tossed her keys onto the desk, then went to stand in front of the bookshelf as well. Her fingertips slowly slid over the spines as she sighed solemnly.
“I must have wanted to be a writer when I was alive. I just don’t know who gave me so many books. And they’re all old books. They weren’t even willing to burn me a single new one. So stingy.”
Then she seemed to have a sudden realization.
“No wonder there’s a book title written in that notebook. Maybe I was planning to send my diary manuscript to a publisher and have it turned into a book.”
“There are books like that, though. The Diary of Anne Frank, for example. It was written in diary form by a Jewish girl and became very famous.”
Chen Huai found the whole idea utterly absurd.
“That had historical significance and the background of its time. We live in a peaceful era. What could we possibly write that would have any value?”
Qin Yao turned her head to look at him. Chen Huai watched her eyelashes flutter again and again, like reeds by a pond stirred by the evening breeze, slow and unhurried, carrying an air of comfortable leisure.
“Are our lives really that peaceful? I wouldn’t say so.”
“You don’t remember anything, do you? How would you know whether your life used to be good or not?”
“Instinct, I guess. It feels like most people in this world don’t live all that comfortably.” She smiled. “If my life had been good, I wouldn’t have been floating in the air when the two of us met.”
“Oh, right.”
Her fingertips brushed over a book with a dark green cover on the shelf. She pulled it out and began making another wild guess.
“Do you know The Blue That Is Dying but Not Yet Dead[1]? Maybe we’re the same.”
She looked into Chen Huai’s eyes.
“I’m your hallucination. Your true self.”
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