With that, Yu Chong stood and looked down at him. “As for the soul-suppressing talisman, keep it.”
“So you don't lie awake all night.”
Then he dissolved from Ding Peichen's sight like a wisp of black smoke.
Only a little model remained on the floor—the model from Ding Peichen's rented room.
Ding Peichen lay panting on the floor. Sunlight fell across the skin at the back of his neck, red from being gripped.
He didn't know how the ghost knew he couldn't sleep, or how Yu Chong had brought the model out of his room.
Keep the talisman? Was Yu Chong offering him charity?
Ding Peichen picked up the model and pushed himself upright against the wall, resentment stirring inside him.
However far he'd fallen, he hadn't fallen so low that he would accept charity from a wandering ghost. Besides, what gave a ghost the right to know his body better than he did?
If the talisman couldn't suppress Yu Chong, was he supposed to keep it as a souvenir?
He snatched the neatly folded paper from his inner breast pocket and threw it in the bin. Clutching the model, he left the restroom.
The bell had already rung, and students were streaming out of their classrooms. With no classes that afternoon, Ding Peichen decided to collect his bag and return to his rented room.
Only a few people remained in the lecture hall.
Dora was chatting and laughing with several others. Seeing him, she waved. “Ding Peichen! Over here!”
“You haven't left yet? They said you weren't feeling great.”
Sunlight spilled through the window onto the desks. Bag over his shoulder, he came a few steps closer. “Didn't sleep well.”
Dora looked at the faint shadows beneath his eyes, half convinced. She handed him a sheet of paper. “Club recruitment form. You're always alone and never talk. Want to join our drama club? You're good-looking. You could stand onstage as scenery, if nothing else.”
Ding Peichen frowned, glanced at the form, and said, “No.”
Several attempts at persuasion failed to move him.
He gripped his bag strap and turned to leave, but Dora called him back. “Do you know a computer science student named Situ Sheng?”
Frowning, he shook his head. Sunlight shone on his close-cropped hair, lending the weariness on his face a languid edge.
“He was asking about you all over the group yesterday. Said you were the most—” Dora gestured in circles with both hands. “The most something he'd ever met. I've forgotten the exact words. Anyway, it was over the top. Be careful. He gets pretty obsessive when he pursues someone.”
Ding Peichen had nothing to say. Men and women alike had pursued him over the past four years, but he had always kept them at arm's length.
He didn't socialize or get close to people. If someone insisted on chasing him, he was willing to do something thoroughly repellent to frighten them off.
In his second year of high school, for instance, someone from the next class had put a love letter in his desk. That afternoon, Ding Peichen found him, tore up the paper before his eyes, soaked it in a water bottle, screwed on the cap, and handed it back. “Your feelings, concentrated into one bottle. Keep it as a souvenir.”
The boy could neither take it nor refuse. From then on, he went out of his way to avoid Ding Peichen.
For those who refused to give up, Ding Peichen had another approach. After evening study, he would invite the person onto the school roof and cut several bloody lines into his own forearm in front of them, warning them without expression.
Come near him again, and next time it wouldn't be his arm.
Terrified, they never appeared again.
So he couldn't even be bothered to remember this Situ Sheng whom Dora mentioned.
He casually folded the form she'd given him, stuffed it into his pocket, and left the lecture hall.
Back in his rented room, Ding Peichen took the model out of his bag and set it on the desk.
Its eyes had been squeezed into different sizes, leaving it blank-faced.
This was what Yu Chong had used against him.
He didn't understand how it worked. But whenever Yu Chong touched any part of the model, the corresponding part of his own body reacted. Every sense engaged, as though someone had really pinched him.
He already suffered from touch starvation. In everyday life, he avoided all unnecessary physical contact. Once it happened, he couldn't stop himself from clinging to the person.
And over these years, the one who had overloaded his body most was this vicious ghost.
Tormented until his symptoms flared, he couldn't even fight back. Instead, he could end up burying his face in the other's arms, seeking relief.
It was infuriating.
He placed the model on the desk. It still wore the same foolish expression. “This is what you use against me, is it?”
Ding Peichen opened a drawer and found an unopened roll of thin cord. He wound it several times around the model's waist and tied a knot.
“Keep playing, and I'll tie you up.”
He knew it was useless. The cord restrained a cloth doll, not the ghost. But at least it made him feel a little better.
By the time he finished, his skin had begun to itch again. His touch starvation stirred wildly.
He abruptly gripped his own wrist, but that slight pain couldn't fill the hollow yearning beneath his skin.
He needed to touch something solid. Something that would respond.
Putting down his tools, he went to embrace the human-shaped doll at the foot of the bed. Memory foam slowly molded itself to him, its softness enveloping him.
He buried his face in the doll and drew a deep breath. The new doll should have smelled only of freshly finished fabric. Yet now, inexplicably, there was a faint fishy river smell.
Ding Peichen abruptly let go. The doll fell onto the bed with a thump, long arms spread, glass eyes facing the ceiling.
The fabric was perfectly dry. He had imagined it. He must have.
His body itched uncontrollably. He could only step forward and pick the doll up again.
He covered his left eye with one hand, feeling it throb beneath his palm.
His blue eye kept burning.
He lifted the pillow. The protective talisman he had left beneath it was gone.
His heart tightened. He immediately got off the bed and stripped away the sheets and bedding, but couldn't find it.
Gone. Nowhere to be found.
He crouched on the floor, panting.
A cool breeze swept through the window. Looking up, he saw the neatly folded soul-suppressing talisman spread flat, weighed down by a damp pagoda-tree leaf.
He had thrown that talisman into the restroom bin. Had Yu Chong retrieved it?
Ding Peichen went over and lifted the leaf. Droplets slid from it onto his palm.
“Good evening, dear murderer.”
A voice sounded behind him.
He turned.
Yu Chong sat at the edge of his bed with his long legs crossed, wolf-cut hair falling over his shoulder. The ghost's hand hovered above the doll's neck.
Despite his wretched state, Ding Peichen forced out a cold smile.
Yu Chong tightened his fingers, squeezing the doll's neck.
Ding Peichen's throat immediately constricted. Suffocation surged into his head, utterly beyond his control.
Only when his entire face had reddened did Yu Chong reluctantly release his grip and toss the doll aside.
Ding Peichen coughed several times. “Instead of going off to be reincarnated, you come here and mess with my doll?”
Yu Chong's expression was cold, though his mouth curved slightly. “Your doll smells of river water. Didn't you notice?”
“What if I did?” It certainly carried a smell that shouldn't have been there. “Did you pour dirty water on it?”
“I'm not that bored.” Yu Chong tapped a fingertip against the little model's collarbone. A cold, unpleasant sensation immediately spread across Ding Peichen's own.
He lifted the model. “You tied a cord around it. Thought tying it up would tie me up too?”
Barefoot, Yu Chong advanced one step at a time.
Ding Peichen gritted his teeth. “It's my model. I'll do what I like. None of your business.”
Yu Chong scoffed and picked up the talisman by the window. “Fine. The model's none of my business. What about this?”
“I kindly leave it to keep you alive, and you turn around and throw it in the bin?”
Had Yu Chong appeared just to argue over something so trivial? Ding Peichen found it absurd.
He glared. “Yes, I threw it away. And?”
Yu Chong closed in, his icy hand suddenly clamping around Ding Peichen's neck.
His breath stalled. At once, he began craving the relief Yu Chong's touch brought. But to stay alive, he clenched his fist and struck the back of that hand hard, his voice broken. “Let—let go, you damned ghost.”
Yu Chong leaned close, his head beside Ding Peichen's ear, his breath terrifyingly damp and cold. “Listen carefully, Ding Peichen. Destroy the charity I give you without my permission again, and I won't stop at choking you.”
With that, he dissolved into black smoke.
The tangled, bound model was hurled onto the floor.
Just like Ding Peichen, coughing with his face flushed scarlet, collapsed on the boards until he finally recovered.
A few more seconds in Yu Chong's grip, and he too would have left the living world to join him.
Yet Yu Chong had let go. Didn't the ghost hate him? Why not simply choke him to death?
Ding Peichen lowered his head and stared at the doll Yu Chong had tossed aside.
After one glare, he left it alone. On shaky legs, he stood and opened a drawer, finding a palm-sized tin.
It contained unused razor blades. Ding Peichen took one and pressed its cold, sharp edge against his fingertip.
With only slight pressure, blood welled up and began to fall, drop by drop.
He drew a deep breath. Only by redirecting the pain could he divert that sickening, greedy hunger for touch.
He had to see people tomorrow. Cuts on his arm would be hard to explain.
He stared at the blood on the floor, then threw the blade in the bin.
There were no classes that weekend. Ding Peichen had planned to find someone to give him a tattoo, but just after nine, his vibrating phone woke him. A message from an unfamiliar number appeared on the screen.
“Peichen, it's your aunt. Meet me at the Hunan restaurant on the back street at noon.”
After coming to Nancheng, he had canceled his old number. Apart from Guan Heng, he had given the new one to nobody.
And Guan Heng didn't know Xu Baimei. He had no idea how she had obtained it.
Expressionlessly, he deleted the message, rolled over, draped a leg across the human-shaped doll's waist, and went back to sleep.
Ten minutes later, the same number called. Ding Peichen stubbornly refused to answer. Eventually the caller hung up and sent another message.
“Your cousin Aonan is here too. He says he wants to see you.”