The punch landed on Xie Zhi with a dull thud.
He slowly rubbed the shoulder blade that had taken the blow. With one elbow braced on his bent knee and his other long leg stretched down the steps, he was silhouetted against the cool moonlight, looking like the melancholy, head-bowed handsome hero on the opening page of a comic… if only his other hand hadn’t been holding a bowl of tomato-and-egg noodles.
“Sorry.” Xie Zhi buried his face in the crook of his elbow and spoke in a muffled voice. “That thing is of the same Sequence as me. The attraction is irresistible. I’ve used up too much favor-power, and I couldn’t control myself in my unstable state. I was rude to you and to this little dog with a patch missing from the top of its head. I’m very sorry.”
Ji Tan watched Xie Zhi peek at him through the gap by his elbow with one eye and frowned slightly. “You’ve changed.”
Xie Zhi immediately sat bolt upright, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “How have I changed?”
Ji Tan said, “You actually apologized for accidentally revealing the greedy, ugly face of a capitalist. What a surprise.”
In an instant, Xie Zhi was neither melancholy nor weak. He stiffened with indignation. “How am I some greedy capitalist?”
Ji Tan leisurely ate a mouthful of noodles. “Then who pocketed two years of my performance bonuses?”
At those words, Xie Zhi deflated like an inflatable toy with its valve core pulled out. He wilted all over again. Without arguing further, he picked up his bowl, tilted back his head, and drained it in a single gulp.
Noodles, soup, and all, everything went into his mouth.
Noodles entered his sorrowing heart and turned into tears of longing.¹
Elio’s Note ¹: The line playfully alters a famous Chinese poetic image in which wine enters a sorrowful heart and becomes tears of longing. Here, Xie Zhi solemnly substitutes noodle soup for wine.
Ji Tan’s mouth twitched as he watched Hero Xie, in the throes of his overdramatic fantasies, gulp down noodle soup as though it were liquor.
“But I still have to say this. Carrying that book around is like a child walking through the market with a gold brick in his arms. It’s dangerous,” Xie Zhi said seriously, setting down his empty bowl. “You need to let… me put a disguise seal on it. Otherwise it’ll keep activating without warning. Just like today, even an E-rank ghoul could recognize it.”
That was a problem.
Ji Tan pulled the book out from under his backside. He’d tossed it about and sat on it repeatedly, yet its snowy-white A4 pages didn’t have a single folded corner or smudge. They looked freshly printed, with edges still sharp enough to cut a finger.
“To seal an object of this level, I’d have to take it to the Central District. That should take about three days,” Xie Zhi said, reaching into his own pocket. “Until then, you should first…”
Ji Tan recalled one proposal.² “Still sounds an awful lot like a scam.”
Elio’s Note ²: “Recalled one proposal” parodies the notification that appears in Chinese messaging apps when someone retracts or unsends a message. Ji Tan is, in effect, withdrawing his offer before it has even been made.
Xie Zhi: “…”
Ji Tan looked at Xie Zhi, whose face was still rather pale. The man did seem weaker in the Western District than in the Northern District. When Xie Zhi had used the proposal on the roof of Huo’s Hospital, he hadn’t so much as changed expression or shown a quickening pulse.
Ji Tan silently despised himself for feeling sorry for a capitalist just because of that face. On the other hand, Xie Zhi really had ended up in this sorry state while saving him. By any measure, Ji Tan ought to give him something in return.
Ji Tan held out the proposal and said carefully, “Since this is useful to you, then…”
Xie Zhi froze. He looked sharply into Ji Tan’s eyes, his breathing suddenly quickening. “Tan Tan, you…”
“…are so good to me.”
“You can rent it.”
They spoke at the same time and stared at one another.
The swelling tide of emotion came to an abrupt halt.
Xie Zhi gave a dry cough. He accepted the proposal and took a little box from his pocket, keeping his hands very busy. “All right, I’ll rent it. Those three days while I take it to be sealed will count toward the rental fee. As it happens, I’m having some trouble in the Central District and could use its help.”
Ji Tan had no idea why Xie Zhi had managed to make three different movements in the space of a second.
“Wear this. It can defend against physical attacks of C-rank or lower.” Xie Zhi opened the little box, took out a purple men’s ring, and slipped it onto the index finger of Ji Tan’s right hand.
Well, this was a lot more convenient than using the proposal as a shield. Ji Tan twisted the ring around. It felt warm to the touch, and when he touched it directly with his left hand, there seemed to be a faint electric current.
“This is the rent?” Ji Tan asked, holding up his hand.
“Mm. The rent for these three days.” Xie Zhi nodded.
Ji Sinan stood a short distance away, staring at the scene in disbelief. He shouted, “What are you two doing?!”
After a great deal of commotion, the two of them took nine blows from a broom between them: two for Ji Tan and seven for Xie Zhi. In exchange, they won Ji Sinan’s temporary forgiveness, and he did not throw the yellow-haired fellow, who had supposedly been “gravely injured” while saving someone, out of the house.
“You sleep on the sofa.” Ji Sinan tossed Xie Zhi a thin quilt.
“Why should I? Why don’t you sleep on the sofa?” Xie Zhi teased Ji Sinan out of habit, regretting the words the moment they left his mouth.
Ji Sinan silently lifted the broom.
“No, no!” Ji Tan hurriedly stopped his brother. “You two sleep in the bedroom. I’ll take the sofa.”
Both men stared at him in shock. Ji Tan saw nothing strange about his suggestion and reached for the quilt. “What’s the problem? Didn’t you two sleep in bunk beds back in school?”
Xie Zhi held on to the quilt, refusing to let Ji Tan take it. After struggling for a long while, he managed to say, “No, we didn’t. Our dorm had loft beds with desks underneath.”
Ji Tan: “…”
Xie Zhi cleared his throat. “I’ll sleep in the living room. To keep the ghouls away.”
Ji Tan did not insist. Seeing how late it was, he yawned and went to his room to sleep.
He slept rather restlessly that night. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t using the proposal as a pillow.
His dreams were a riot of strange images. Clawing, snarling patches of color crowded together, piling over and devouring one another. At last, the colors parted like cream being spread aside, revealing an eye without eyelashes behind them. Red lines traced an eye with two symmetrical pointed ends. It looked exactly like the one his brother had drawn.
The eye hung high in the sky in place of the moon. Then one became two, two became four… Soon, the sky was full of simple line-drawn eyes. All of them stared at Ji Tan in the dream. Then, together, they blinked once, very slowly.
“Hah!” Ji Tan suddenly sat upright. When he turned and saw someone sitting at the desk in his bedroom, he let out another startled cry. “Aah!”
Xie Zhi, who had been flipping through the proposal, jumped and turned toward him. “What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”
“I dreamed about the Eye of Argus.” Ji Tan wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Xie Zhi stood and handed him a tissue. “Probably because you came into contact with favor-power yesterday.”
“You don’t seem surprised at all,” Ji Tan said, puzzled.
“Mm. Argus really exists. That being is the god of this world, and favor-power comes from Argus.” Xie Zhi said it as casually as if he were discussing what to eat for breakfast.
Ji Tan was stunned.
Before he could digest the meaning of Xie Zhi’s words, a heartrending wail suddenly sounded outside.
Many people had gathered in the alley. Uniformed officers from the Public Security Office had just left, and the neighbors were standing around Sister Xu’s courtyard across the way, pointing and whispering.
“What’s going on?” Ji Tan hastily washed his face and went outside.
The front door of the house stood open. His brother was nowhere to be seen, but he had left a note on the table:
[Food’s in the pot. Remember to eat. Big Brother has gone to work.]
“Good afternoon, Little Ji.” A man from the neighborhood who was watching the commotion greeted Ji Tan warmly from outside.
Ji Tan checked the time. He had actually slept until noon.
“Sister Xu’s son has come home,” the man gossiped quietly as Ji Tan walked over to stand beside him. “He’s arguing with his father about getting her treated.”
Ji Tan frowned.
Of the thirteen neighbors caught up in last night’s ghoul cult gathering, five had been lucky enough to survive, including Sister Xu. For reasons no one knew, she had eaten very little of the flesh, and the silver-clad officers’ injections had saved her in time. But her sanity level had fallen below forty. There was nothing the Order Administration Bureau could do about that, so they had simply sent her home.
“Aaaah!” Sister Xu let out an inhuman howl from inside the house.
“Dad, I’ve brought the loan sharks here. We can borrow some money to get Mom treated!” A youthful boy in his teens, wearing a crisp school uniform, begged his father with tears in his eyes.
Sister Xu’s husband, dressed in oil-stained work clothes, stood smoking without saying a word.
“With your house and your job as collateral, you could borrow a little.” Two muscular men in electric-blue undershirts stood in the courtyard, looking around with a folder in their hands, as though calculating how much the house, father, and son might be worth altogether.
Sister Xu’s husband drew a sharp breath, inhaled the last of his cigarette in one pull, threw the butt to the ground, and ground it viciously beneath his toe. Then he slowly shook his head. “Her sanity level is only in the twenties now. To get her back to where she can barely manage everyday life would cost at least two million.”
“Dad!” The boy cried out in disbelief, tears the size of beans spilling from his eyes. “I can leave school and get a job. We can pay it back together.”
“I’m just an ordinary pipe worker! I can’t repay that much money!” Sister Xu’s husband roared in angry frustration, pushed past the son blocking his path, put on his hard hat, and left for work.
The boy called after him several times in despair, but his father never turned around. He could only look toward the two burly men. “Uncles, can I borrow it in my own name? I’m a top student at Jiade Middle School. I have a scholarship, and I… I can work, too.”
The moneylender was unexpectedly courteous. He patted the boy’s shoulder with a hand as broad as an iron palm-leaf fan. “Sorry, kid. You’re a minor. You can’t take out a high-interest loan.”