Afterwards, Lin Qiushi shot Ruan Nanzhu a couple more texts, even asking where Ruan Nanzhu was. But no more replies came from the other end, so Lin Qiushi's anxiety grew more and more potent.
The rain continued to fall, and Lin Qiushi sat inside a bus station. The empty streets were enveloped by the wash of rain, and what was already a dimly lit road became only dimmer thanks to the ceaseless downpour. The entire world felt like the blur of a slowly melting oil painting.
Lin Qiushi felt a bit cold, and began to cough under his breath. He knew it was about time to leave, because on the other end of the rainfall, he could see a dark silhouette gradually approaching. Though he couldn't tell concretely what the figure was, it…obviously wasn't going to be anything pleasant.
So Lin Qiushi got up and started walking again. As he walked further and further, black frames appeared on both sides of the empty road. The frames hung from tree trunks, and some of the canvases showed off humans, struggling and hideous, while others were blank.
It was like the road before Lin Qiushi's eyes had morphed into an art gallery, with the owner's beloved artworks lining both sides. Only, some had not yet been filled, and Lin Qiushi was the artwork she was fixated upon.
Lin Qiushi looked at his watch. There were still two hours until daybreak, and just as he deliberated the best way to survive until then, he heard footsteps approaching from behind.
Lin Qiushi looked back over his shoulder and saw a skinless person watching him in the middle of the darkened street—it was Xu Jin's sister. The sister was lying flat on the wet asphalt ground, black hair splayed messily over her shoulders. Because she had no legs, she could only move forward by her hands, but she was not slowed down at all by this. In fact, she was more like a beast let out of its cage, rushing like crazy toward Lin Qiushi. Rain fell upon on her body and sluiced off fresh red liquid. Lin Qiushi too took off sprinting, only his speed was no match for Xu Jin's sister's at all, and in the space of a blink, she was behind him.
A gust of wind hit him from behind, and Lin Qiushi ducked to dodge the attack. He threw himself into the bushes at the side, watching as the monster landed exactly where he'd just been.
But that was just the beginning. Without Xu Jin's interference, her sister did not hold back any of her intent to kill Lin Qiushi. She seemed like she couldn't wait to slaughter Lin Qiushi in the most miserable way possible.
Back when Lin Qiushi was leaving that door, she'd slapped him on the back, resulting in a serious bout of pneumonia that had hospitalized him for a long while. Now that the chance to kill him was within grasp, she certainly would not be merciful.
Lin Qiushi rolled across the muddy floor, an embarrassing mess all over. He tried to get up and go but the mud-slicked ground made him fall straight back down. Xu Jin's sister took the opportunity to crawl toward him at top speed.
She crouched above Lin Qiushi's head, twisting her own to look at Lin Qiushi. Clear rainwater washed through her muscles, becoming scarlet and gamy. That liquid then dripped all over Lin Qiushi's face and body, and from where Lin Qiushi lied, he could see, slithering through her stark white teeth, a deep red tongue…
The monster flashed Lin Qiushi a ferocious smile. She met Lin Qiushi's eyes as if to enjoy Lin Qiushi's terror before dying.
"Why would she like you so much?" The monster lowered its head and mumbled into Lin Qiushi's ear. Those long nails glided across Lin Qiushi's skin and cleaved a cut across his cheek. Red liquid trickled out from where she cut, and Lin Qiushi could feel the heat of his own blood.
The moment seemed to be a dead end, but Lin Qiushi's gaze flitted past the monster and landed on a black frame hanging beside it.
He took a deep breath, and asked, "aren't you worried your sister will hate you if you kill me?"
"Hate me? On what grounds? She's the one who stole my skin and legs, she owes me."
The monster began to giggle, only her laughter was gratingly hoarse and sharp, as if a knife skidding across glass.
But Lin Qiushi smiled.
"Really? That's not what her eyes are telling me."
The monster saw Lin Qiushi's smile and froze, before whipping her head around to look. When she saw that there was nothing behind her, her fury at being lied to was instantly ignited. She clasped Lin Qiushi's shoulder and, with great force, tore a chunk of flesh clear off. But it was this gap in her attention that Lin Qiushi had to take advantage of—resisting the pain, Lin Qiushi leapt to his feet and caught hold of the hanging black picture frame.
The monster saw what Lin Qiushi had done, but did not understand what his actions meant. It was just a picture frame. Even if he hit her with it, she would not suffer much damage. This seemed simply like the last-ditch struggles of a man facing death…
But this sort of thinking disappeared the moment that picture frame made contact with her body. She felt a rush of cold that was difficult to describe enveloping her whole body. The scene before her eyes began to contort, and her body was taken by an immense force into another space, unable to move again.
The monster disappeared before Lin Qiushi's eyes. What replaced it was a blood red painting. In the painting, a skinless monster seemed to be struggling to burst its way free of the canvas paper.
Lin Qiushi's hand—the one clasping the painting—loosened its grip, and the roll of paper hit the ground in a splash of water. He covered his bleeding wound with one hand and pushed himself off the ground with great difficulty.
His clothes had been dyed red by the blood, but thanks to the wash of rainwater, it quickly reverted to its original color. The place where he was wounded washed out to a miserable white, and Lin Qiushi took a roll of gauze from the bag on his back, giving the injury a rough bandage job.
The backpack was utterly soaked through, but fortunately, Lin Qiushi had already put everything into plastic bags, so the things inside could all still be used.
Lin Qiushi sat on the ground catching his breath, thinking what a sight he must be right now. But the rolled-up painting beside him began making strange noises, like the thing trapped inside was still struggling and trying to break free of the portrait's restraints, unwilling to succumb to its fate.
Lin Qiushi stumbled to his feet, and continued forward with a hand bracing the wall.
His phone vibrated—a new message had arrived. Lin Qiushi quickly fished out his cell phone and saw Ruan Nanzhu's texted reply.
Ruan Nanzhu had written his location, which was actually a school near city center. He told Lin Qiushi, however, not to go looking for him just yet, that the situation where he was wasn't great. If Lin Qiushi were to go, worse conditions likely awaited.
Indeed. Ruan Nanzhu had been crossing doors for so many years now, and had faced countless more monsters than Lin Qiushi ever had. Now, all those ghouls had returned in a surge; a riot of a hundred ghosts was precisely so.
Lin Qiushi clutched at his phone, reading Ruan Nanzhu's text word by word over and over again. By the time he came back to himself, he found that he was once again back in the center of the asphalt road. And the long black shadow had once again appeared behind him, keeping with Lin Qiushi at a distant that was neither too close nor too far away. No matter how much Lin Qiushi sped up, he couldn't get rid of her.
Due to his injuries, Lin Qiushi's footsteps were slowing. Power kept seeping out of his body, and just as he thought he couldn't make it any further, just as he was about to collapse to the ground, a soft voice began to call for him softly in his ear.
"Lin Qiushi…" It was a woman's voice like sweet canary song; Lin Qiushi even thought it was just his own hallucination, but the call continued on: "Lin Qiushi, Lin Qiushi, Lin Qiushi…"
"Who…"
Lin Qiushi's sharp hearing once again came of use at a critical juncture. He pushed out the white noise of the rain and finally found the source of the call, only—the source was a bit unbelievable. It was coming from the pavement in front of Lin Qiushi, even though the road was thoroughly empty of everything.
Lin Qiushi called out, "is that you? Zaozao? Is that you?"
He thought the voice was Tan Zaozao's, but couldn't be sure. He could only call her name and keep walking along the path toward where the voice was coming from.
By the time Lin Qiushi got to the source of the voice, he still couldn't see anybody around—until he heard, from the ground before him, Tan Zaozao's continuous calls.
Startling, Lin Qiushi looked down, and saw a puddle of rainwater in the road.
Because the rain was so strong, it couldn't drain immediately. And so water puddles both big and small had formed along the streets. Streetlamps tossed down faint illumination, reflecting Lin Qiushi's form in a puddle. But from that puddle also arose the figure of a woman in red, waving to him frantically: "Here, over here!"
Lin Qiushi, "Zaozao?"
"Qiushi, hurry," Tan Zaozao said. "She's coming!"
Lin Qiushi didn't need to turn around to know that the thing was not far behind him, because he could already hear its footsteps through the rain. He looked at Tan Zaozao and clenched his jaw. He tried to just test the puddle at first with a foot, but found empty space beneath his step. Then he fell entirely into what ought to have been a thin puddle of water.
Fortunately the fall wasn't deep. Lin Qiushi sat there, catching his breath, before realizing that he'd appeared in some sort of decrepit house, and that above his head there wasn't a ceiling, but instead a thin layer of water…
"It's been a while." Tan Zaozao smiled at him sweetly. Her hair was down, and she was wearing that beautiful dress Lin Qiushi had last seen her in. "Qiushi."
"It's been a while," Lin Qiushi replied.
He'd done his emotional preparations after seeing Li Dongyuan yesterday, but still, seeing Tan Zaozao again gave rise to a complicated feeling that was difficult to describe deep in his heart. He asked, "how have you been doing here?"
"Pretty good," Tan Zaozao said. "At least I can help out the people I like."
Her eyes curved up, and her grin was truly happy.
"That's good."
There was a lot that Lin Qiushi wanted to say, but he didn't know where to start. So the two fell to silence, until Tan Zaozao's mouth parted quietly.
"She's coming. No matter what you see, you cannot speak."
Lin Qiushi nodded.
The footsteps in the rain paused above their heads. Through the thin puddle, Lin Qiushi could see the fringe of the woman's black dress and the top of her pointed hat. She'd detected Lin Qiushi and Tan Zaozao's presences, and bowed her head just enough to show half of her awful white face.
Lin Qiushi met her gaze straight on from beneath.
The woman's mouth tore open into an eerie smile. Then she turned, and walked away.
"She left?" Tan Zaozao seemed to find that strange too. "That shouldn't be…"
Before she'd even finished speaking, the woman's footsteps approached again. Lin Qiushi was just wondering if she'd gone off to get something when he saw her lift a hand, showing them a painting done up in a black frame.
And when he saw the figure in the painting, Lin Qiushi stopped breathing—it was a woman in a long dress and an expression of sheer terror, stretching her hand out. And the woman looked exactly like Ruan Nanzhu when they'd gone into the Woman in the Rain door.
Tan Zaozao also saw the painting, and after a scare, quickly covered Lin Qiushi's mouth with her hand, afraid that he would make a sound.
Lin Qiushi stared at the painting, the emotions in his chest in turmoil. But the woman cracked another grin, the corners of her lips splitting wide as she said, "don't you like her? Why don't you come save her?"
Lin Qiushi took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He flipped out his phone and once again sent Ruan Nanzhu a text, asking how the situation on his end was.
But he was getting no reply. Lin Qiushi's gaze was fixed on the painting, staring so hard he could burn a hole in it.
The woman looked at Lin Qiushi's expression and began to guffaw. She took the painting out of its frame, gesturing to tear it apart.
"If you don't come out," she said, "I'm going to destroy the painting. Then you'll never see her again."
When Tan Zaozao heard this, she shook her head frantically at Lin Qiushi, signaling for Lin Qiushi to stay silent.
Lin Qiushi kept a death grip on his phone—because he used too much force, the wound on his body once washed white by the rain had begun to bleed again.
When the woman saw that Lin Qiushi wasn't moving, a low roar came from her lips. Then, she tore the painting in her hands in half and tossed it roughly to the ground.
Lin Qiushi watched her motions, jaw tightly clenched.
Tan Zaozao kept an anxious eye on Lin Qiushi. Only after the woman had left and her steps had faded did Tan Zaozao say, "there's no way that's Ruan-ge's portait, you have to trust in Ruan-ge."
Lin Qiushi stared at the phone in his hands, unswayed either way by Tan Zaozao's words.
"Qiushi…" Tan Zaozao said. "She has to be lying to you. Maybe that painting is really just a simple painting."
Lin Qiushi felt a bit tired. He sat at the bedside with his head against the wall, looking up at the raining sky above him. From his lips came two words: "It's fine."
But Lin Qiushi's expression didn't look anything close to fine. Tan Zaozao sat down next to him, looking for a topic of conversation that could ease the tension a bit.
"What are things actually like for you here?" Lin Qiushi asked. "Do you have daytime? Or are you just stuck here?"
"Hm, me?" Tan Zaozao said. "My current situation's kind of crazy. At night I have memories from the day, but during the day I remember nothing of the night."
As she spoke, she kept an eye on Lin Qiushi's expression.
"Maybe everything that happens at night is simply a dream to daytime-me."
Lin Qiushi was silent for a while, before asking, "have you seen Qianli?"
"Qianli? Why would I see Qianli?" The moment Tan Zaozao said this, she jerked into realization at the meaning hidden in Lin Qiushi's words. Her eyes went huge. "Qianli, he—No way. How could that be!"
In Obsidian, Lin Qiushi and Ruan Nanzhu aside, the person Tan Zaozao was closest to was Cheng Qianli. She'd never thought that Cheng Qianli would also…
Lin Qiushi exhaled a light breath. If Tan Zaozao's reaction was so, that must mean she'd never seen Cheng Qianli.
There was more Lin Qiushi wanted to say, but he felt a sudden onslaught of drowsiness. He could only see Tan Zaozao's mouth opening and closing, but had no comprehension of what she was actually saying.
The irresistible sleepiness shut Lin Qiushi's eyes for him. He collapsed in a corner, and fell asleep in an instant.
Some unknown amount of time later, an alarm woke Lin Qiushi from his dreams. He opened his eyes and saw warm sunlight outside.
Lin Qiushi pushed himself out of bed, checking the time. After speeding through wash-up, he was out the door and rushing to the airport.
In the car he checked his text messages, but didn't see Ruan Nanzhu's answering text. It was like everything that happened last night had all been a really strange dream. Only his shoulder, still faintly aching, reminded Lin Qiushi that it had been real.
The shoulder that had been injured by the monster now wore a blue and purple handprint. Though it looked scary, it wasn't so painful, and so Lin Qiushi didn't bother much with it.
At 10AM, Lin Qiushi got on his plane. There were still about two hours until his destination. He was tired, but couldn't really sleep. His mind kept playing over and over again the scenes he saw last night. He couldn't be sure if the torn-up portrait was Ruan Nanzhu or not, and the matter weighed on his thoughts like a giant boulder.
But everything got its answer sooner or later. Lin Qiushi decided to wait for Ruan Nanzhu's text tonight, and if Ruan Nanzhu didn't message him, he'd go straight to the school that Ruan Nanzhu had mentioned.
Caring confounded[1]; that was logic Lin Qiushi understood, but when it truly applied to himself, he still couldn't bring himself to be indifferent.
He forced himself to rest for a bit on the plane. The moment the plane landed though, he was dashing out the airport again, calling a taxi and speeding toward a certain location.
In the taxi, the driver thought Lin Qiushi was a tourist here to travel, and introduced the city's sights with enthusiasm. Lin Qiushi answered on and off, lifting his wrist ever so often to check the time.
At 2PM, Lin Qiushi arrived at a plain little district. On memory alone, he sprinted for a particular door in a particular building.
Ding dong, ding dong. After two chimes of the doorbell, a young man's voice came from inside the door: "Who is it."
Lin Qiushi's lips trembled, but he didn't manage to speak.
Moments later, the door before him opened, and a boyish face appeared in Lin Qiushi's sight. He blinked those pretty cat-eyes at Lin Qiushi and asked, "who are you looking for?"
Lin Qiushi stared at that face, and tears began to fall just like that. He reached out and, despite the boy's look of panic, wrapped him up in a tight embrace.
Finally, he called out that name: "Qianli."
The Cheng Qianli inside the door was scared to death. On instinct he wanted to struggle, but faced with Lin Qiushi's tear-stained face, he could only manage a quiet: "Dage, do you have the wrong guy? I don't know you?"
Lin Qiushi released him, wiping away his tears with one hand.
"Qianli," he asked, "are you doing well?"
Cheng Qianli was frightened enough to attempt secretly shrinking behind the door, but Lin Qiushi saw through him at once, moving to hold the door open.
"Don't be scared, I'm not some weirdo." But as soon as Lin Qiushi said this, he had to scoff—from his words and actions, none of him seemed like a normal person.
"Oh," Cheng Qianli replied. "But I…I really don't know you."
"You…" Lin Qiushi said. "Are you an only child?"
Cheng Qianli nodded.
Lin Qiushi let out a breath. "I…" The words were at the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them back.
"Never mind, it's nothing," he said, as he turned around to leave.
Then came, however, Cheng Qianli's hesitant voice.
"Um…Do you want to come inside and have a popsicle?"
Lin Qiushi, "aren't you afraid that I'm a bad guy?"
"Yeah I am." Cheng Qianli scratched his head. "Don't steal stuff from my house, alright? I'll call the cops."
Lin Qiushi stared at him, thinking Cheng Qianli ah Cheng Qianli, even if you get another life you're still as foolish as ever…Inviting a stranger in just like that—if he actually wanted to do anything, could a kid like you even fight back? Lin Qiushi sighed, and very seriously reprimanded: "You should never invite strangers into your home ever again."
Cheng Qianli, "ah?"
Lin Qiushi, "do you hear me? No inviting strangers in!"
Cheng Qianli stared at him in panic.
"But you're a stranger too!"
Lin Qiushi, "you're Cheng Qianli, I'm Lin Qiushi. Okay, now we know each other, and we're no longer strangers."
"Oh." But even so, Cheng Qianli still felt that something was off. Before he could figure out what it was however, Lin Qiushi was already stepping into his house.
Once inside, the sight that greeted Lin Qiushi was Cheng Qianli's living room. Everything was placed the same as he remembered, with just one thing missing—the memorial portrait of Cheng Qianli placed in the center.
The first time Lin Qiushi came to Cheng Qianli's house, he had been driving Cheng Qianli's parents home. They cleaned the entire house together, and at last placed the black and white portrait carefully in the very center spot of the living room. Then they'd lit incense sticks under it, alongside Cheng Qianli's favorite food. His mother had muttered about how foolish her son was, wondering if he could even find his way back. His father didn't say a word, just kept lighting cigarettes one after another.
As for Cheng Qianli's brother Yixie—he'd stood in front of the portrait for a very long time. He'd been all cried out, and had stared with lifeless eyes at his little brother in the portrait. There had been no more light in his features, only unbreathing death.
"It was all my fault." Then Cheng Yixie had said something that stuck in Lin Qiushi's memories for a very, very long time. He'd said: "If I hadn't been there…"
Lin Qiushi came out of the memory, cast a gaze around the room, and wiped his face clean. He thought that at least in this world, Cheng Yixie's wish had come true in another way.