When it was almost time to leave, Ke Bu returned to his room and casually packed a few clothes along with a handful of necessities. By the time he finished and came back out, the living room was already empty. The apartment, newly cleaned and once again neat and vacant, looked as though no one had ever visited at all. The cold emptiness made panic rise inexplicably inside him. He walked outside, and his gaze finally found Zhi Li. With both hands tucked into his coat pockets, Zhi Li stared directly at the warm winter sun. The sight of his profile sent a tremor through Ke Bu’s vision. Is it because I haven’t dared to properly look at your face lately? Is it because the light inside the house has been too dim? Or maybe, every second, you’re simply producing more of that lethal poison that sends my heart into chaos.
“Where is everyone?”
“They went to the station first.”
“Mm.” Ke Bu walked forward step by step and raised a hand to cover Zhi Li’s eyes. “Stop looking. You’ll give the sun an inferiority complex.” He stood on tiptoe and lightly kissed the corner of Zhi Li’s mouth.
Ke Bu lowered his hand and pretended nothing had happened as he locked the door, hiding everything he wanted to hide. Then he raised his head and looked at the house. Once they returned from the trip, he would go straight back to school. This house, which carried all the happiness and sorrow of Ke Bu’s childhood, had become the final period at the end of his family’s story. Stripped of the right to live there, he would have to leave it forever.
A hand covered Ke Bu’s eyes from behind. “Stop looking. You’ll make the house cry.” Zhi Li bent down, tilted his head, and lightly kissed the corner of Ke Bu’s mouth.
Everything Ke Bu had only just managed to hide could no longer be hidden at all.
Once they met up at the station, the noise never stopped, not even after they boarded the train. A group of people with such distinctive clothes and personalities inevitably attracted attention. They squeezed together inside a sleeper compartment. The roomier upper berths on either side were left to Zhou Xin He, Su You Yan, and Zhi Li, while everyone else crowded onto the lower berths. Ke Bu was the first to claim the spot by the window. With the sky already dark, there was no scenery visible outside; the glass reflected only everything inside the compartment.
The smells of all kinds of snacks mixed together, and the books and magazines they had brought were tossed everywhere. Zhang Luo took out his laptop and put on some music. None of this was unfamiliar to Ke Bu. Every train trip with these people looked exactly like this.
Eventually, it was lights-out time in the train carriage. Come to think of it, this was the first time they had ever departed at night. The moment the compartment went dark, even the voices disappeared. Zhang Luo’s voice drifted eerily through the darkness. “Story time.”
“Again? Last time it was a suspense story. What are you planning this time?” Ke Bu asked weakly.
“To suit the atmosphere at night, obviously it has to be a ghost story.” Zhang Luo switched on a flashlight and shone it upward beneath his face.
None of them were looking at him. Instead, they were watching Chu Hao Yu, who had taken advantage of the darkness to secretly climb toward the girls’ upper berth. He apparently hadn’t expected Zhang Luo to switch on a flashlight either. He froze awkwardly, silently climbed back down, pretended absolutely nothing had happened, and asked with innocent curiosity, “What ghost story?”
“Chu Hao Yu’s Road to the Underworld,” Ke Bu answered.
“Why is everyone always targeting me?!”
“Why do you think?”
Ying Xiu Jie gestured for both of them to be quiet. “Telling a ghost story might really summon a ghost. My virgin’s urine can finally prove its worth.”
“If you pee in here, you’ll immediately become the ghost.”
“M-Maybe we shouldn’t tell a ghost story,” Zhou Xin He suggested in a tiny voice that everyone ignored. “How about something heartwarming instead?”
Gong Zhu hugged a pillow against the wall and urged, “Hurry up and start.”
“Wait. Let me decide who the protagonists should be.”
“Can’t you just use random names? Last time you used me and Zhi Li. If you use me again this time, I’ll kill you.”
“Using the same names every time would be boring. I’m doing this for your sake so it’ll be easier to follow. If I call them Xiao Hong, Xiao Hong, and Xiao Hong, five minutes later none of you will know which one I’m talking about.”
“No one could tell them apart like that!”
“Exactly. That’s why choosing the protagonists is extremely important. You people entertain yourselves for a bit while I think.”
“Entertain ourselves with what? If you’re not starting, I’m going to sleep.”
Ying Xiu Jie suggested, “Why not just use Ke Bu and Zhi Li?”
“No. Ke Bu’s an atheist who doesn’t believe in ghosts or monsters. He doesn’t fit.” Zhang Luo fell into an entirely unnecessary struggle over the matter. He shone the flashlight at Zhi Li. “Zhi Li, have anyone to recommend for a ghost story? At least one of them needs to be afraid of ghosts.”
Zhi Li didn’t answer. He took out his phone. The moment the person on the other end picked up, Zhi Li mechanically repeated Zhang Luo’s question. “Have anyone to recommend for a ghost story? At least one of them needs to be afraid of ghosts.”
“Chen Ge and Mo Ka.”
Elio’s Notes: Chen Ge and Mo Ka are the main couple from Angelina’s separate novel The World Is a Little Sweet. Zhang Luo is borrowing them as the protagonists of his ghost story; The World Is a Little Dark is a playful riff on that novel’s title.
The person on the other end gave them two names and hung up.
And so, thanks to the recommendation of an unidentified person, the protagonists’ names were decided.
Zhang Luo covered his face in a thick layer of powder, added lipstick, and shone the flashlight upward. He was someone with absolutely no limits when it came to doing things, and right now he looked more terrifying than an actual ghost. “Please remain quiet during the story. That way, I can make sure not only you, but the ghost lying over your shoulder can hear it too. Shh. Here we go. The story is called: The World Is a Little Dark.”
[Black smoke from factories smeared across the sky. The surfaces of rivers and seas were covered with the corpses of all kinds of fish, while the heaps of garbage piled across every mountain resembled abstract paintings. The colors of the world were growing darker and darker, and its stench increasingly pungent.
People walked through the streets wearing masks. Environmental activists had vanished without a trace, because whether anyone protested or started caring now, it was already too late. The sound of a lock turning came from inside an apartment. A masked man entered carrying food covered in dust. He tossed it onto the sofa and complained, “Prices keep getting higher. Is this garbage even fit for people to eat? Hey, are you listening to me?”
Hao Shuai removed his mask and called toward the boy standing on the balcony. Without turning around, the boy answered quietly, “I’m listening.”
“What are you looking at?”
“Someone who looks like scenery.”
“What are you talking about, Mo Ka?”
“Did I say something?” Mo Ka seemed not to have noticed what had slipped out of his mouth.
Hao Shuai covered his mouth with his mask and pushed open the floor-to-ceiling window. He sighed. “The nineteenth floor used to be high enough to see a beautiful view. Now there’s nothing left to see.”
“There’s still something to see.”
Mo Ka wasn’t looking into the distance. His gaze was directed downward, at the boy standing on the balcony of the eighteenth floor. A pale shirt, so clean and pure that it made Mo Ka remember the clear blue of the sky he was beginning to forget. Several times, he had wanted to ask what brand of laundry detergent the boy used. Even more often, he had wanted to ask the boy’s name. There were very few things left in this world that Mo Ka still wanted to know.
“That guy’s actually standing on the balcony without a mask. Does he not want to live either?” The reason Hao Shuai used the word “either” was that reports of suicide had become so common that even the news could no longer be bothered covering them. He narrowed his eyes and examined the eighteenth-floor boy’s profile carefully, then suddenly smacked his fist into his palm. “I remember now. He’s a freshman who just started at our school. His name is Chen Ge. He’s pretty popular. Have you been staring at him this whole time?”
“Who—who’s staring at him?! Neither I nor my ass is interested in that sort of thing! Chen Ge, Shen Ge, whatever. I’m going to forget that hard-to-remember name in the next second!”
“Why are you reacting so strongly? I was only joking.”
Perhaps it was his imagination, but Mo Ka thought that for one second, the boy’s gaze had met his own.
The boy named Chen Ge looked strikingly out of place in this world.
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