Ding Aonan, terrified the person ahead would change his mind the next second, scrambled to keep up.
The apartment blocks near the back street were old, and the stairwell lights were broken too—even daytime was pitch dark inside.
Ding Aonan stumbled his way up to the fourth floor, and the moment he stepped through the door, a faint smell drifted into his nose.
He couldn't place it. It was fishy and astringent like river water, but underneath that he caught a thread of something crisp and clean.
He figured it was some weird perfume Ding Peichen had bought.
He stepped over the threshold and swept the rental room with a look.
Not big: a desk, a wardrobe, a table, a sofa—and then a single bed.
Ding Aonan's eyes locked onto the life-sized doll on the bed. Sunlight fell across its ankle; the material looked unbearably real. At this moment the doll's glass eyes were pointed straight at the door.
What the hell was this thing?! Some inflatable doll? Why did it even have a—
Ding Aonan's jaw practically hit the floor, and he backed up two steps on instinct.
He'd roughhoused and bickered with Ding Peichen since they were kids and had never known he had this kind of kink.
He wrapped his arms around himself without thinking and scrubbed at his own arms, the very picture of wariness—naive and comical, terrified his cousin might do something unspeakable to him.
Ding Peichen didn't notice any of it. Didn't think there was anything wrong at all.
A 1.5-meter single bed couldn't squeeze two people. Rolling over alone was a struggle.
He walked to the bed, bent down, shifted the life-sized doll against the wall to clear a small space, then patted the pillow.
"You sleep here tonight."
Ding Aonan swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing. "Then... where will you sleep?"
"You've only got one bed? It fits two. You're skinny as a beanpole, we could squeeze—"
Ding Peichen cut him off, expressionless. "You want to sleep on top of me?"
Ding Aonan's neck stiffened, and he muttered, "Fine, the bed it is. What are you being so fierce for."
A slight curve tugged at the corner of Ding Peichen's mouth. "I've got somewhere to be tonight. Sleep by yourself."
Ding Aonan was still wrapped in some inexplicable chill, standing there like an idiot.
Eventually he plopped down on the bed without ceremony. His solid frame tipped the single bed sideways; the boards groaned under the load.
Yu Chong's jet-black eyes tracked Ding Peichen's movements from the door to the wardrobe, then to the bathroom.
By the time Ding Peichen came out of the bathroom, Ding Aonan was grabbing the life-sized doll's arm and stuffing it under his head as a pillow.
Ding Peichen's brows knitted, his voice rising. "What are you doing?"
Ding Aonan answered like it was obvious. "This thing's softer than your brick of a pillow."
The doll's arm crumpled in his grip, squeezed into a wrinkled mass under his palm.
Ding Peichen yanked the doll back. "Don't touch him."
"Che. It's just a dumb doll. Who'd want to touch it." Ding Aonan grumbled outwardly while cursing inwardly—his cousin had a rotten temper and a ridiculous number of rules.
Not long after, the air around them grew colder and colder.
Yu Chong sat propped against the window using his hidden power; even Ding Peichen's blue eye couldn't see him.
His wolf cut hung loose, and his pitch-black eyes swept back and forth over Ding Aonan.
Ding Aonan noticed nothing. He just shuddered for no reason and said, disgusted, "Why is it so cold in here? Is the AC turned way down?"
Ding Peichen glanced at him. "The AC broke ages ago."
"If you're cold, find somewhere else to sit."
Ding Aonan naturally wasn't willing, and muttered a few more complaints at the floor tiles.
Before heading out, Ding Peichen leaned against the desk, standing loose and easy, and asked Ding Aonan—still scrolling his phone—"Hey. Are you afraid of ghosts?"
Ding Aonan frowned. "What?"
Ding Peichen deliberately lowered his voice, laying it on thick. "Ghostsss. Scared or not."
The other man gave a dry laugh. "Who the hell are you trying to scare!"
Ding Peichen shrugged, unhurried, even letting himself sound eerie. "Not scaring you."
"But if you sleep in my bed, something might come strangle you in the middle of the night. Or it might not."
"Depends—on his mood that day."
The words went in one of Ding Aonan's ears and out the other, but his face had already drained white. He couldn't tell whether Ding Peichen was bluffing or what.
And right now the doll's glass eyes were fixed coldly on him, and he felt creeped out to his core.
What Xu Baimei had sent him to do wasn't done yet, so in the end Ding Aonan concluded his cousin was just messing with him.
Reject superstition. Trust science.
Ding Aonan repeated it to himself over and over. No way it was really as spooky as Ding Peichen claimed.
Ding Peichen, watching that visibly rattled look from the doorway, curled his lips and left the rental room in a good mood.
That afternoon Ding Peichen went to the tattoo parlor in a deep alley off the back street.
He stepped inside. Boss Cai was lasering a tattoo off a customer—a girl yowling with every pass.
Ding Peichen found a chair and sat down to wait.
Boss Cai looked up at him. "Not afraid of the pain?"
Ding Peichen pulled off his jacket and draped it over the chair back. Underneath he wore a black tank top, both fair arms bare.
The inside of his forearm was a catalog of scars—bite marks, knife cuts, scrapes, all kinds. Boss Cai's eyes ran over them. "Where?"
Ding Peichen tugged at the tank's neckline, exposing the sharp line of his collarbone. "Here. A snake."
"Not much flesh there," Boss Cai frowned; it would hurt, no way around it.
Ding Peichen was obstinate about it. "What do you care how much flesh there is. Just do it. Even if it kills me I won't come after you."
Boss Cai didn't waste more words. He let Ding Peichen pick a design, worked at the station a while, then pressed the transfer paper against his collarbone.
As the edge pressed into the hollow of his throat, a cool sensation spread—almost ticklish.
He loved the feeling of things pressed against him, touching him—even just a sheet of paper, even a stranger's fingers.
Anything with warmth could pin down the itch crawling under his skin.
Ding Peichen drew a deep breath. When the needle bit into the skin over his collarbone, every muscle from his neck to his arms went taut.
The needle chiseled against bone, again and again, a dull ache that set his teeth on edge.
He lay back against the chair, his breathing going from rapid to steady.
Boss Cai's hand was rock steady, one stroke after another guiding the machine. The line followed the curve of the collarbone downward, ink seeping into skin, until a small length of winding serpent gradually surfaced.
Scales layered over gunmetal gray; the snake's body coiled out along the upper edge of his pectoral, the head finally coming to rest near his heart, tongue flickering—as if the next second it would lick into the gaps between his ribs.
The needle stabbed down, again and again.
Hurt. Hurt like hell.
But this pain was his call—unlike the sudden suffocation the vicious ghost named Yu Chong loved to hand him.
When Boss Cai paused to change needles, Ding Peichen held up a mirror and looked at the skin over his collarbone.
More than half the snake had emerged, ink coiled on both sides of the bone, its body seeming to dart in and out of the skin beneath the collarbone.
The corner of his mouth curved. He liked the feeling of marks left on his skin—didn't matter what kind. His skin was not allowed to sit empty.
By the time the whole piece was finished, dim dusk had flooded in outside the shop. Boss Cai laid a layer of plastic film over his collarbone and told him to keep it dry.
The fresh tattoo under his collarbone throbbed with heat, like a real snake writhing against his skin.
Ding Peichen barely listened. He shrugged on his jacket and headed out; the collar brushed the fresh ink, and the pain made his stomach clench in spasms.
But he didn't pull the jacket open. He let the sting seep all the way down into his bones.
A few steps from the mouth of the alley, Ding Peichen spotted Guan Heng standing silently under a streetlight, ragged bangs slightly over his brows.
The man tilted his head, and the moment he saw Ding Peichen, the corner of his mouth bent into a smile.
But Ding Peichen didn't walk on. This person's stance, his whole manner, overlapped with someone else's.
Like who.
Like Yu Chong.
Ding Peichen's heart skipped. "Why are you here."
Guan Heng walked over unhurried, brows knitted, his whole face full of grievance. "Yesterday you told me to wait for you at the tattoo parlor, and you never came. I... I waited around here for ages."
Ding Peichen was even more confused. If he didn't show, why wouldn't Guan Heng just call? Standing there like an idiot all night.
And now he was staring at him all pitiful, as if Ding Peichen had wronged him beyond bearing.
Ding Peichen showed no mercy. "Did the sewer eat your brain? If I didn't show, you couldn't call and ask?"
Guan Heng's head sank lower. "Phone died—"
Ding Peichen: "..."
He didn't bother asking anything else; he had no appetite for more spectacularly stupid answers.
Guan Heng's gaze slid to Ding Peichen's open collar—the plastic film over his collarbone, a length of black line showing at the edge, stark against pale skin.
His eyes practically nailed themselves to it. "You got a tattoo."
"Mm."
Guan Heng raised his left hand, fingertips almost grazing the skin above Ding Peichen's collarbone. "Did it hurt?"
Ding Peichen stepped back; the touch landed on nothing. "Don't touch me."
Guan Heng slid his hand back into his pocket, his face betraying no embarrassment, and gave a low laugh. "You never used to get things like this. You were afraid of pain."
He took a step forward. "But now, you've changed..."
He stared into Ding Peichen's deep blue eyes, the straight nose, the lightly pressed lips. "Remember that year? Four years ago, the river behind Simiao Middle School. The water was filthy, murky—you couldn't see the bottom from the bank."
But in Ding Peichen's memory, the river behind the school had always been clear, the current singing, fresh and clean.
Lean down and you could see fish and tadpoles swimming.
Yet on the day Yu Chong drowned, the water had been unusually murky.
Ding Peichen's expression stalled slightly. He didn't know why Guan Heng was bringing this up now.
Guan Heng's palm touched the side of his neck, stroking slowly. "Back then, the two of you both sank down. That river water—"
Ding Peichen backed away on instinct, dodging the touch. "How many times have you said this? Every time we meet you find a new way to recite the same paragraph."
He had no patience for more. He frowned in disgust and spat toward the curb. "You're like a broken record. Annoying."
The yellowed streetlight lit Guan Heng's face half bright, half dark.
His expression stiffened, but the warm, honest smile soon returned. "A-Chen..."
Ding Peichen cut him off instantly, snarling, "What did you just call me?"