At two in the morning, Ding Peichen suddenly woke.
A bone-deep cold seeped through his thin pajamas from behind, as though something were pressed tightly against his back.
He froze and instinctively hugged the brand-new doll in his arms.
But the new doll was giving off an unnatural chill.
Ding Peichen tightened his hold. He could even feel it trembling faintly.
No. He was the one trembling.
He drew a deep breath, rolled over, and switched on the bedside lamp.
Dim light washed over the twenty-square-meter rental room. Nothing strange. No ghostly shadow. Only him and his new doll.
His eyes returned to it. The lifelike glass eyes gleamed strangely in the low light, and the almost-smile at the corners of its mouth was deeply unsettling.
“Fuck…” Ding Peichen muttered, kicking it toward the foot of the bed.
The intensifying cold did not fade. Instead, it crawled inch by inch up his spine.
Goose bumps broke across his skin. He lifted the hem of his pajama shirt, touched his back, and twisted toward the mirror on the wall.
His reflection showed smooth, pale skin. There was nothing there, but the icy contact was becoming clearer.
Ding Peichen rushed into the bathroom and blasted his back with the shower. The hot water scalded his skin red, yet the cold remained unmoved.
He shut off the water and braced himself against the sink, panting. His face in the mirror was deathly pale. Water dripped from his buzz cut, while his blue left eye shone with unnatural brightness.
“Cheap tricks,” he scoffed at his reflection. “I spent a fortune on talismans and hired more masters than I can count. You think this little stunt can—”
The bathroom light went out.
Darkness swallowed him. Ding Peichen went rigid, hearing his heartbeat accelerate.
Something rustled nearby. Something wet was crawling from behind the shower curtain, dragging itself across the floor.
No.
Not behind the curtain.
Behind him.
Ding Peichen spun around.
He could see nothing in the pitch-black room. From inches away, an icy breath seeped across his neck.
“Who’s there?” His voice came out hoarse.
No answer. A cold, slick sensation settled on his shoulder. A hand had rested there with eerie gentleness.
Ding Peichen held his breath. That touch. That temperature…
“Is it you?” His lips trembled.
“You… came back?”
The hand abruptly tightened. Its fingers dug into his skin with vengeful force, and the stabbing pain brought him sharply back to his senses.
Impossible. He was dead. He had been dead for years. How could he—
“It wasn’t me!” Ding Peichen roared. “I didn’t do it! You’ve got the wrong person!”
The hand released his shoulder.
Before Ding Peichen could breathe, it closed around his throat. Its river-cold, slippery grip crushed his windpipe and reeked of stagnant water.
With one violent jerk, it slammed him against the wall. The back of his head struck tile, sending pain through his skull.
He fought desperately but grabbed only empty air. The suffocation grew stronger.
In the darkness, a voice murmured against his ear. “The wrong person?”
It laughed softly and tightened its fingers. “Ding Peichen, you’re exactly who I came for—”
*
Twelve hours earlier.
Ding Peichen stood below his new apartment building with a suitcase and narrowed his blue left eye at the upper floors.
His right eye was an ordinary brown. His left looked like a bead soaked in ink. When he was young, relatives called it the mark of an ill-fated monster who had cursed his parents to death.
He had lived in Yucheng for eighteen years. His parents died in a car accident when he was eight. His relatives passed him from household to household, and his aunt called him unlucky—especially because that blue eye could see unclean things.
For example, a hazy gray shape was pressed against the fourth-floor window right now.
Ding Peichen looked away without expression and dragged his suitcase upstairs.
The movers delivered the larger items to his room. On their way out, they glanced more than once at the old doll leaning beside his bed.
The looks irritated him immediately.
What did they mean? That a grown man who slept with a doll was sick?
Or that the ragged thing belonged in the trash?
Fine. Into the trash it went.
Thump.
Ding Peichen did not hesitate when he threw it away.
The doll was called Little Scar. It was nearly as tall as he was. Its cloth was clean but worn from years of use, and black thread crudely stitched a snake-shaped crystal onto its right ear.
He had sewn it there himself at sixteen because he thought it looked distinctive. The stitches were crooked and uneven.
His uncle had eventually taken him in, but for much of those years, Little Scar had been his only company. He did not need it anymore.
He had been accepted into university and moved to a new city. It was time for a new doll.
“What are you looking at?”
Ding Peichen spat toward the doll, his beautiful blue eye darkening. “You’ve followed me for four years. Time to retire.”
He was always like this—snarling at empty air, cracked walls, and a cloth doll that could never answer. If he acted vicious first, perhaps all the cursed things in the world would be too afraid to approach him.
At a doll shop behind the university district, the owner leaned against the doorframe. “You threw it away?”
Ding Peichen dropped his cigarette, ground it beneath his heel, and said, “Yeah. Time for a replacement.”
“A pity.” The owner, Cheng, smiled. “That doll was old, but the craftsmanship was unusual. Especially the ornament by its ear—”
“Shut up. Is the new one ready?”
Cheng shrugged. “Almost. Want to see the scale model first?”
They entered the shop, and Cheng found the miniature made from the full design.
Ding Peichen gave it a few indifferent glances. The workmanship was crude and the expression vacant, but it would serve as a temporary placebo.
The real one was already in transit. Cheng promised it would arrive tomorrow at the latest. He only had to survive tonight.
Ding Peichen took the miniature home. After tidying up, he closed his eyes and tried to force himself to sleep.
He did not know how much time passed before he snapped awake and sat up irritably. The fine prickling pain had returned to his arms, spreading from his fingertips to his back.
He clenched the miniature in one hand, lay down again, and forced his eyes shut.
The old building’s windows did not seal properly. Wind squeezed through the gaps. Ding Peichen drifted to sleep, woke, and repeated the cycle several times before finally sinking into a deep slumber.
In his dream, a black river flowed without sound. He stood on the bank, his feet trapped in mud.
A pale hand broke the surface at midstream. Its fingers clawed spasmodically at the air before the water swallowed it again.
A gurgling voice came from below, too muffled to understand.
Ding Peichen tried to run, but the mud had risen past his knees. The river’s fishy stench thickened.
The surface abruptly went still. A head emerged from beneath the water.
The man’s head hung forward, black hair plastered over his face as water streamed from his body.
“Found you.”
The muffled words sounded, and Ding Peichen jolted awake.
Gray light fell across the mottled wall. His body was slick with cold sweat, his limbs too heavy to raise.
The miniature remained clenched in his palm, its hard edges digging painfully into his skin.
He grabbed the idiotic-looking thing and hurled it at the incense table at the foot of the bed. “Can’t even let me sleep in peace!”
It struck the burner. Ash poured down and scattered across the floor.
Ding Peichen did not look at it again. He got out of bed and walked barefoot through the ash.
A thin strand of black smoke seeped from the incense table. It crept across the floor, touched the miniature’s feet, and slowly sank into the cloth.
Ding Peichen wiped his face, dressed, and left without noticing.
His new university campus was enormous. Neat rows of ginkgo trees lined both sides of the roads. Keeping his head down, he walked directly to the lecture hall.
He was not late. Only a dozen or so students were scattered through the room. He entered through the back door, chose the farthest corner, opened his notebook, and forced himself to stare at the presentation.
His eyelids felt painfully heavy. Last night’s sleeping pills had not fully worn off, and several days of nightmares had pushed his body close to its limit.
He needed to touch something warm and solid. Little Scar was gone. What could he hold now?
His hand dropped unconsciously. The instant his fingertips touched the cold armrest, an invisible hand smacked the back of his head.
He pitched forward and nearly struck his chin on the desk.
Ding Peichen whipped around. There was only a white wall behind him.
He faced front again, heart accelerating. His blue eye burned faintly. Something was near him.
A finger flicked his forehead hard.
“Who is it?” he hissed.
He clenched his fists and started to rise, but a hand abruptly pressed down on his shoulder. Immense strength pinned him to the chair. No matter how he struggled, he could not move.
Students in the rows ahead turned around, bewildered.
Then his right hand lifted on its own.
Ding Peichen stared at it hanging in midair, his mind blank.
He tried to lower it but could not. As though possessed by a will of its own, the fingers opened toward the empty wall behind him and slowly raised the middle one.
The students’ expressions went from confused to utterly baffled.
Ding Peichen was stunned too.
He struggled for several seconds and realized he did not even know whom to curse.
Something wet and cold traced the back of his neck, lifted his collar, and slid down his spine.
“You dare—”
Ding Peichen shot upright and crashed into the chair ahead with a tremendous bang.
The entire lecture hall fell silent. Everyone turned to stare.
But the seat beside him was empty.
A girl in the row ahead with Dora-style hair looked back cautiously. “Are you… all right?”
Ding Peichen ignored her. He looked down at his shaking hand. The sensation had been too real—the unmistakable feeling of skin being touched.
He clenched his fist and slowly sat. The horrible damp chill remained on his back. A faint red mark stretched across the back of his hand from wrist to thumb.
He inhaled deeply and forced himself to calm down.
“What are you staring at?” he asked the girl coldly, pulling his hand into his sleeve.
The professor set down the microphone. “Does that student have a question?”
Ding Peichen lowered his head, turned, and fled the lecture hall.
The bell rang just as he left the washroom. He had taken only a few steps down the corridor when someone called, “You’re Ding Peichen, right?”
He nodded and studied the young man in glasses, discreetly stepping back to create distance.
“Don’t you remember me? Su Henshan, from Simiao Middle School!”
“I’m teaching your lab course this term.”
Su Henshan tucked the roster under one arm, pulled a fruit candy from his pocket, and offered it. “You didn’t look well in class. Didn’t sleep? Some sugar might help.”
Ding Peichen had no memory of his face. He refused without taking the candy. “I don’t eat sweets.”
Su Henshan smiled, returned it to his pocket, and showed no embarrassment. “Then drink something warm. There’s a water room nearby.”
“By the way, are you still in contact with him?”
Ding Peichen stopped. “Who?”
“Yu Chong. Weren’t the two of you—”
“I don’t know him,” Ding Peichen cut in sharply.
Su Henshan clearly had not expected that. He adjusted his glasses and grew serious. “How could you not know him? Before I transferred, you two were always together. You were close, weren’t you?”
“You remember wrong.”
How could Ding Peichen ever have been close to someone like that? It was the name he least wanted to remember.
He sometimes wondered whether he had been blind to spare that person even a second glance.
Su Henshan did not press him. “Maybe. It has been years.”
Ding Peichen heard none of his afternoon classes. The teacher’s voice buzzed in his ears while Su Henshan’s words and that person from the county town churned through his thoughts.
He and Yu Chong had been close? Impossible.
Yu Chong was dead.
Ding Peichen had caused his death.
Of course he deserved to pay a price.
Perhaps a lifetime without sleep, forever drowning in nightmares.