Ding Peichen stared at the message and thought: back when his parents died in that car crash, this aunt had been the first one to come out swinging, calling him a cursed thing reborn, and flat-out refusing to take him in.
Later it was his uncle, Li Jiu, who came and got him, and after that Auntie Xu had never shown up again. Now she was reaching out all on her own—and she'd even brought Ding Aonan along.
There was only one reason he could think of. She'd come for money.
Ding Peichen still didn't reply. He lounged in bed until ten before dragging himself up to wash his face. He studied himself in the mirror—sunken eye sockets, slightly chapped lips. Sleepless nights, and yet his skin was oddly fair, without a single breakout.
He changed into a clean black hoodie and went out.
The Hunan restaurant wasn't crowded at noon. Auntie Xu Baimei sat by the glass window, more than half her hair gone white. She looked much older than Ding Peichen remembered—but those eyes were as shrewd as ever.
Beside her sat a burly man in his early twenties, buzz cut like his, wearing a loud floral shirt, head down, scrolling his phone.
Xu Baimei's gaze brushed past Ding Peichen, uncertainty flickering across her face at first.
The moment she made out the blue of his left pupil, she shot to her feet, wrinkles piling into a fawning, welcoming smile. "Peichen! You've grown so tall! Sit, sit!"
Ding Peichen walked over in a few strides and stopped at the booth, hands in his pockets, contempt written all over his face. "What do you want? Who told you to come?"
Xu Baimei's expression stiffened, but her words stayed warm. "Aiya, can't I come see you without a reason? You're at school in Nancheng all alone, and your cousin and I happened to be passing through, so we thought—"
Ding Peichen cut her off, merciless. "The fastest route from Yucheng to Nancheng is a three-hour drive. That's quite a long stride for an aunt."
"Did you take the coach? Must have stunk in there."
The smile wouldn't stay on Xu Baimei's face anymore. Ding Aonan, beside her, kept playing on his phone, showing zero interest in smoothing things over.
She shoved him. "Aonan. Say hello to your cousin."
Ding Aonan gave Ding Peichen a careless nod and went back to his phone.
Xu Baimei sighed and pushed the menu over. "Order first. We'll talk while we eat. They do your favorite here—stir-fried yellow beef."
Ding Peichen was blunt. "I don't do lunch. Say what you came to say."
Xu Baimei studied that icy face for a few seconds, finally ran out of patience, and the smile on her face shifted into a cold, calculating once-over. The little brat wasn't as easy as he looked.
She leaned back against the booth, mouth turning down. "Fine. Then I'll be direct."
"Your father's estate—it isn't right for you to keep it all by yourself. When your uncle took you in, everyone assumed he'd hold that money in trust. And what happened? Now no one even knows where he is, and you—a brat—have run off to Nancheng with all of it, without so much as a word to anyone."
"How are the adults in this family supposed to stop worrying?"
Ding Peichen almost admired the sheer nerve of it—the way she dressed up her own greedy concerns as flawless propriety, when you only had to prick one hole for the spite and scheming to come flooding out.
He raised an eyebrow. "So?"
Xu Baimei's eyes darted around, and she pushed Ding Aonan's shoulder forward. "You ought to share some of that estate with your cousin, don't you think? You are blood relations."
"That money belongs to the Ding family. It can't just—"
Ding Peichen couldn't help laughing, as if he'd heard the joke of the century. "That's my parents' estate. Legally it has nothing to do with any cousin."
Xu Baimei's face darkened at once. The malice in her eyes could no longer be contained; her voice climbed half a register, drawing stares from every table around them.
"What's that supposed to mean? You want to swallow the whole thing?" She jabbed a finger at his nose. "Back when your father was in business, it was me and your uncle scraping together loans to keep him afloat. Now you turn around and deny it—"
"Where's the IOU?"
Xu Baimei frowned. "What?"
Those cold blue eyes fixed on her. "If you say they borrowed from you, show me the note. I'll take it to court and pay back exactly what I owe."
His hard-and-soft, nothing-sticks posture seemed to scare her; her mouth opened and closed without a word.
Finally, Ding Aonan lifted his head, impatience creeping over his blunt, honest-looking face. "Mom, why are you wasting words on him—"
"Shut up." Ding Peichen shifted his gaze to the other one. "What was your name again? Ding... Aonan. Dropped out before finishing high school to apprentice at an auto repair shop. What does my family's estate have to do with you?"
His eyes swept over Ding Aonan without pausing. "I've seen that exact shirt of yours in a trash can, curry stains and all. Did you fish it out yourself, or did someone fish it out for you?"
Ding Aonan's face flushed red. He shot to his feet, the undersized floral shirt stretched taut over his muscles. "You fucking—"
Ding Peichen stepped forward. He was a third of a head shorter than Ding Aonan, but the glare he leveled more than made up for it. "Want to fight? Perfect. Someone's been choking me these past few days and my whole body's stiff. Just what I needed, a stretch."
"Besides—you couldn't beat me in middle school, and you can't now. Don't humiliate yourself."
The knuckles Ding Aonan was clenching bulged, a beat away from exploding. Xu Baimei hurriedly grabbed his arm. "Enough, enough, not in someone's shop—"
She pulled him behind her and stepped forward herself, tilting her chin up to stare at Ding Peichen. "Your wings have hardened, I see. Have you forgotten who collected your parents' ashes from the crematorium?"
"Have some conscience."
Ding Peichen snorted, letting every word of the lecture slide right off him.
"Auntie, back then not one person in the Ding family wanted me. You said I was a lone curse reborn, fated to kill father and mother, that whoever took me in would pay for it. And now you want to talk to me about conscience?"
Xu Baimei went completely silent. The guilt was real—but so was the resentment still smoldering in her eyes.
Ding Peichen wasn't finished. "Besides, what does this money have to do with Ding Aonan? He makes three to five thousand a month at the repair shop. Why would he need money from me? Saving up for a floral shirt without curry on it?"
Ding Aonan swore off to the side and looked ready to throw hands, but Xu Baimei held him back.
Then she seemed to finally snap. Her palm cracked against the table, hard enough to make the dishes jump. "Ding Peichen! Don't push your luck! Have you forgotten who collected your parents' ashes at the cremation? Who—"
Ding Peichen cut in. "You."
"I know it was you."
"And then you took the receipt to my uncle and billed him four thousand seven. You inflated it by two hundred, didn't you?"
"Was that the two hundred you planned to put toward your own one square meter of grave plot?"
Every table in the restaurant was looking over now. The waiter stood frozen, menu in hand, unsure whether to approach.
Xu Baimei's voice died entirely. She hauled Ding Aonan toward the door.
Ding Peichen didn't linger either. He stepped out over the threshold, and his phone buzzed with a message.
He looked down. It was from Guan Heng. "Where are you? I passed by the back street and saw someone who looked a lot like your aunt. Did she come find you?"
He was fairly sure he'd never shown Guan Heng a photo of Xu Baimei. How did he know what she looked like?
Before he could reply, another message followed. "Don't carry this alone. Wait for me."
He pushed through the glass door. The cold, restless autumn wind hit him head-on. He stood on the steps and drew a deep breath; the fingertip under the bandage was seeping blood again.
It hurt. But not enough.
He wanted it to hurt more.
He texted Guan Heng to wait for him at the tattoo parlor, then walked along the sidewalk and turned into an alley.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of floral shirt behind him.
He stopped. The floral shirt behind him stopped too.
Ding Peichen turned his head. Ding Aonan stood at the mouth of the alley, glaring at him—fierce and cowardly all at once—not daring to make a move.
"Why are you following me?"
Ding Aonan stepped forward and answered in a rough voice. "You drove my mom off. What about me?"
"You've got legs. Walk wherever you like."
"You—" Ding Aonan squeezed his fists, the jade pendant on its black cord swinging against his chest. "I've got nowhere to go. So I'm staying right here."
Ding Peichen studied him thoughtfully. Ding Aonan had probably swallowed Xu Baimei's line—finish the job, then come home. If no money changed hands, he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Ding Aonan was a few days younger than him; a little brother, technically. Spoiled rotten by Xu Baimei since childhood, no spine of his own—wind blows one way, he leans that way. No doubt she'd sweet-talked him into this trip to Nancheng too.
Ding Peichen decided to take him back to the rental room first.
He turned and kept walking. Downstairs at his building, he fished out his keys and, from the corner of his eye, noted that Ding Aonan was still there—stuck to him like a medicated plaster you couldn't peel off.
One clingy ghost was already one too many. Now here came a clingy human to match.
He stepped inside, turned, and braced one hand against the doorframe, blocking Ding Aonan outside. "Where are you planning to sleep?"
"You... your room," Ding Aonan said.
"You live alone anyway. What's one more person."
Ding Peichen said nothing, but it was hardly just him in there. There was also a damp, malevolent ghost that had crawled out of a river.
Since Ding Aonan wanted to stick to him, fine—he'd let him find out what sharing a room with a ghost every night actually felt like.
With any luck, Yu Chong would scare him off for him—scare him so badly he'd never set foot in Nancheng again.
Ding Peichen frowned, feigning annoyance. "You ever meet a relative who ignores you for years, then wants to move in the moment you meet?"
Ding Aonan took forever to stammer, "Th-then, are you throwing me out?"
But Ding Peichen just dropped his hand and jerked his chin toward the stairwell. "Come up, then."
Ding Aonan stood frozen on the roadside for a few seconds, clearly not expecting it to go this smoothly.
Ding Peichen headed upstairs and called back, "Weren't you staying? Keep up."