As soon as class ended, Ding Peichen hurried to the back street to collect his order.
The new doll sat in an elegant box at the front counter.
He opened it for a look. It was human-sized, with movable joints, short brown hair, a lifelike face, and eyes that reflected the light softly.
Cheng adjusted his glasses. “Made exactly to your specifications. It’s filled with memory foam, so when you hold it, it will slowly conform to your body.”
“The clothes are removable and washable. If you’re interested, you can order more outfits. The eyes are glass, so they won’t catch the light in that creepy way plastic does—”
Ding Peichen closed the box. “How much?”
“Fifty thousand.”
A new doll. Five figures. Expensive. Fucking expensive.
But he could afford it. His parents’ inheritance could support his spending for one or two lifetimes, assuming his relatives ever stopped hounding him.
Ding Peichen handed over a bank card.
As the owner processed it, he looked at him again. “That old one… you truly don’t want it? Objects kept for so long can develop a spirit.”
Ding Peichen sneered. “A spirit?”
“You mean the sort that strangles someone in the middle of the night, then starts crying first? I’ve seen more ghosts than you’ve sold dolls.”
He carried the new doll out without looking back.
So he did not see Little Scar inside the dumpster, still waiting to be collected. The loose snake-shaped crystal near its ear turned faintly in the direction he had gone.
Ding Peichen walked back to the apartment alone. The stairwell light was broken again. He climbed six floors in darkness, found his key, and opened the door.
He threw the new doll onto the bed and sat beside it in a daze.
The room was tiny. A single bed, a desk, a wardrobe—that was all.
The miniature remained where he had left it, lying silently in the spilled incense ash.
He stared at its crudely molded plastic face. One eye was larger than the other, and its expression remained vacant.
Yet something felt wrong. As he watched it, he felt it watching him.
Yellow talismans covered the walls. A small incense burner sat near the window, though he had not yet burned incense since moving.
A string of bells hung from the doorframe. The master who sold it claimed it had been consecrated and would ring if anything entered.
If Ding Peichen had brought these objects and a life-sized human doll into a dormitory, his roommates would have been terrified. He had chosen to rent a place alone instead.
Over the past five years, he had tried everything.
Eight hundred yuan wasted on exorcism talismans. Two thousand wasted on a ghost hunter who claimed three generations of family knowledge. Sutras. Moving houses…
He had tried it all, but the nightmares never stopped.
Those wet hands. Those pale, rigid arms reaching from the calm river. That face staring at him through muddy water, eyes that would never close.
Yu Chong’s face.
Ding Peichen’s heart lurched. He shook his head and stopped thinking about it.
He began cleaning the room, not because there was much to clean, but because he needed something to distract himself.
At the bottom of a box, he found a small metal case with a broken lock. It opened with almost no force. Nothing valuable lay inside, only faded photographs and a few trinkets.
One photograph showed two boys of fifteen or sixteen standing beside a river.
The boy on the left had an arm around the other’s shoulders and wore a brilliant smile. The boy being held looked awkward and frowned, but the corner of his mouth curved faintly upward.
Yu Chong again.
Without hesitation, Ding Peichen tore the photograph into pieces and dropped them into the trash.
When he finished, he lay down and watched the sky darken beyond the window.
He pulled the new doll into his arms. The memory foam slowly molded itself to him, soft and yielding. Little Scar had always been hard, and it carried a musty smell no amount of washing could remove.
“This will do.”
He fell asleep that way.
*
Until now.
At two in the morning, invisible hands held Ding Peichen against the wall. His breath stalled, and his face flushed red.
“Let… go…” he forced out.
The voice pressed close to his ear, damp cold rolling over him. “Let go? Ding Peichen, do you know how I spent these four years?”
Unable to speak through the grip on his throat, Ding Peichen shook his head desperately.
“The river was cold. So cold. When I fell in, I swallowed mouthful after mouthful. I couldn’t open my eyes.”
“I tried to scream, but water filled my mouth. I tried to swim upward, but someone held my head down—”
“No…” Ding Peichen rasped.
The voice laughed softly, saturated with hatred. “They held my head beneath the water.”
“Then I heard them laughing. Several voices tangled together, shrill enough to cut. One of those voices… I knew very well.”
Ding Peichen’s pupils contracted.
“Right beside my ear, it said: Die, Yu Chong.”
The hand released his throat.
Ding Peichen collapsed to the floor, gasping. His throat burned with raw pain.
He lifted his head and forced his eyes wide, trying to see what was reflected in the mirror.
A blurred human figure stood there.
It wore an old-fashioned school uniform with a distinctive badge pinned to the chest. The shadow slowly turned, and Ding Peichen saw its face.
A wet wolf cut framed it, short in front and long behind. Broken bangs covered half of a scarred eyebrow while water streamed to the ends of the hair.
The face had grown sharper than it had been at fifteen or sixteen. The skin was unnaturally white, the lips purple, and the sunken eye sockets looked bottomless.
It was Yu Chong.
Yu Chong, dead for four years.
He had returned.
“You… really came back?”
Yu Chong hooked a finger beneath one of Ding Peichen’s pajama buttons and began undoing them one at a time.
Ding Peichen tried to push him away, but the ghost pinned his raised hand against the wall.
“Don’t move,” Yu Chong murmured. “Let me take a good look at you.”
He had not reached the third button before Ding Peichen lost patience. “Seen enough? I’ve gained some weight these past few years. Nothing else.”
“You open buttons like you’re unboxing a package. Did dying ruin your fingers?”
The vengeful ghost stopped but did not answer.
He lowered his head and pressed his icy face to Ding Peichen’s chest. “Your heart is racing. You’re afraid.”
Ding Peichen’s muffled voice came through gritted teeth. “No shit…”
The dark figure bent until their eyes met. “Good. I have no intention of letting you live comfortably.”
Ding Peichen glared. “Could you show a little professionalism? If you’re dead, act dead. Stop throwing tantrums just to remind me you exist…”
Yu Chong dragged a hand across his chest, leaving a faint red scratch. “I haven’t forgotten you for a single day in four years, and now you tell me to behave like a corpse?”
Cold fingertips touched Ding Peichen’s cheek. “Do you know what I thought about every day?”
Ding Peichen stared into those hollow eyes. His blue left eye burned as though the heat would pierce the pupil, and he could not speak.
“I thought about how I would take revenge when I found you.” Yu Chong’s hand slid from his cheek to the bruised ring around his throat. “Strangle you?”
“Too merciful.”
“Are you afraid of water? Oh, that’s right. You are. Terrified. I can see it.”
“But drowning you would also be too merciful.”
Yu Chong’s hand descended to his collarbone. “So I found a better way.”
He tilted his head, making his sharp face appear even more uncanny. “I’ll teach you what it means to wish you were dead.”
The black shadow dispersed.
The force pinning Ding Peichen vanished. He fell backward onto the bed and gasped for air.
His wretched life had already been unbearably dull. He had stumbled through it like a stray dog chased and beaten through the streets, with no one caring whether he lived or died.
Now a ghost had appeared, claiming to hate him and promising to torment him forever.
Ding Peichen sat on the bed holding his new doll from two in the morning until dawn.
The ghost did not appear again, but his blue eye burned faintly. The thing remained nearby.
He went to the bathroom, opened the tap, and splashed cold water over his face. His reflection looked gray and exhausted. His lips were cracked, and pale red finger marks circled his neck.
He raised a hand and touched them. The skin was only cold.
Tactile hunger was not a condition he could explain to ordinary people.
Since he was eight, his skin had felt as though a layer had been peeled away. Every sensation was magnified several times.
Worse was the vacuum left by a lack of touch. When his skin went too long without contact, he began to tremble and suffer heart palpitations.
Pillows were too soft. Blankets were too light. Only a realistic human-sized doll, densely filled and weighted like a real body, could satisfy the need.
Every night, he had to hold one to sleep—face buried against its shoulder, arms wrapped around its waist, using contact to confirm that he existed.
He knew it was an illness, so he never told anyone.
After drying his hair, Ding Peichen’s phone rang. He answered Guan Heng’s call.
“I’m in Nancheng. Want me to pick you up tomorrow? I can take you for that boiled fish you’ve been craving.”
Ding Peichen draped the towel over one shoulder. “Whatever.”
After the call ended, he sat on the bed and leaned against the new doll.
Its softness allowed his nerves, taut for an entire day, to relax slightly.
His phone vibrated again. Guan Heng asked, “Did you replace that old doll? If it’s inconvenient, I can buy you a new one.”
Why did the entire world care about his bedding?
He replied, “Bought one.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
Ding Peichen tossed the phone aside, turned off the light, and lay down. In the dark, he embraced the new doll. At last his body received the pressure it needed, and the anxiety at the center of his chest eased.
Tomorrow, he decided, he would find a reliable Taoist master. Whatever had attached itself to him, there had to be a way to remove it.
The next morning, Ding Peichen raced into the classroom as the bell rang.
His hair was uncombed, his jacket wrinkled, and his face bloodless. Dark circles stood out beneath his eyes.
The Dora-haired girl in the back row stared. “What happened to you? Did you get into a fight?”
Ding Peichen ignored her, flung his bag onto the desk, and dropped his head to sleep.
She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Hey, you really don’t look right today.”
“Why is your lip split? What’s that on your neck?”
Ding Peichen touched his throat. His fingertips found a tender spot, and he frowned.
The girl pulled a small mirror from her bag and held it in front of him.
He examined himself. His lip was broken, as though someone had bitten it hard. Near his Adam’s apple, a faint red mark lay along the side of his neck—not quite fingerprints, but close.
He remembered the hands around his throat. “…A dog bit me.”
The girl plainly did not believe him, but his expression was so terrible that she did not dare ask more. She whispered, “Be careful,” then retreated behind her textbook.
Ding Peichen gave a soft, mocking laugh.
A dog was exactly right.
A dead dog.