Ding Peichen had barely walked beyond the campus gates when Guan Heng sent a message: “I’m here. Where are you?”
He shared his location and waited beneath a crooked locust tree.
In truth, he did not particularly want to see Guan Heng. The reasons were complicated.
Guan Heng was the only person in Yucheng whom he could call a friend, yet every time Ding Peichen saw that face, an inexplicable irritation rose inside him.
Ten minutes later, a white sedan stopped at the entrance to the back street.
Guan Heng stepped out in a white T-shirt and jeans. He had high brows, a straight nose, and a brilliant smile.
For one disorienting second, Ding Peichen saw Yu Chong’s shadow in him. He immediately shook the thought away.
It had to be the unfamiliarity of three years apart combined with his lack of sleep. Why else would he mistake one irritating face for another that irritated him even more?
Guan Heng waved, jogged over, and smoothly took Ding Peichen’s backpack from his shoulder.
He leaned close and studied him. “You look awful. Didn’t sleep last night?”
“Not used to the new place,” Ding Peichen said perfunctorily.
Guan Heng fastened Ding Peichen’s seat belt, walked around to the driver’s side, then reached into the back seat for a gift bag. “Didn’t you throw your old one away? I happened to see this at the mall today. It looks a little like the one you used to have. Here.”
Ding Peichen leaned back and watched him lift out a medium-sized plush doll. It did resemble the old one.
Since the age of eight, Ding Peichen had slept holding the same doll and never replaced it.
The second replacement had come after April Fools’ Day in 2013. He woke from a coma that had lasted several months, and Guan Heng told him his doll had become too worn. Without asking, Guan Heng had bought him another.
Ding Peichen had been furious, but holding Guan Heng’s gift gave him a strange sense of peace, so he let the matter go.
Now he shook his head. “No. We haven’t seen each other in years. I’m the one who should give you a welcome gift.”
Guan Heng turned toward him with a frown. “Do I need a reason to give you something? Ding Peichen, why are you acting like this?”
When they reached the restaurant, Ding Peichen still did not accept the doll. He opened a can of beer and drank deeply.
Behind him, Guan Heng rambled about his day—the professor taking attendance, a new dish at the cafeteria, his roommate leaving his key in the dorm again.
Ding Peichen sat at the table. Guan Heng moved closer and pinched his cheek. “Why have you been ignoring me lately?”
“I haven’t.” Ding Peichen turned his head away.
“You have.” Guan Heng’s hand slid down his cheek and rested on his shoulder.
“I send ten messages and you answer one. I say I’ll come stay with you, and you tell me not to. What is wrong?”
The alcohol was taking hold, slowly dissolving the clarity Ding Peichen had forced himself to maintain all evening. Guan Heng’s fingers kneaded his shoulder again and again.
“Bathroom.” Ding Peichen stood, pushed the hand away, and staggered slightly.
The touch had lasted too long. His body was beginning to react with an inexplicable discomfort.
He opened the tap and splashed cold water over his face. The man in the mirror looked gray. Water dripped from his buzz cut, and the bruising around his throat had deepened to dark red.
A chill gathered behind him.
“Come out,” Ding Peichen said. “Stop skulking behind me.”
A hand was already around his throat, squeezing with murderous force.
His body arched backward until his spine pressed against the mirror. “Ngh—”
The hoarse voice spoke. “You thought that was all?”
Ding Peichen slid down the sink and collapsed onto the cold tile, gulping air.
He looked up at the blurred face and smiled in a way that was almost frightening. “Didn’t you say you would torment me? You hid all this time just to come back and squeeze my throat once?”
“I expected at least one broken bone. I’m disappointed.”
“You say I killed you. Fine. Strangle me now.”
The dark figure did not move.
“Do it.” Ding Peichen rose and stepped forward, blood vessels webbing his eyes.
“Aren’t you a vengeful ghost? Four years of resentment, and you came back to settle accounts with me!”
“I’m right here. Squeeze.” He tilted his head to expose the reddened skin. “Right here. You save yourself the effort, I save money on talismans, and we call it even!”
The moment the words left him, the shadow seized his chin. The force drove him back a step, and his spine struck the wall.
“What did you just say?”
“Four years of resentment…”
“Before that.”
“Call it even.”
The shadow’s face descended. Dense malice burned in its eyes. “We will never be even. You could spend this entire life paying, and it would not be enough.”
“Kowtow to me.”
“For every day of these four years, you will repay me a hundredfold.”
Ding Peichen’s contemptuous voice was as light as if he were teasing a dog. “What stray ghost crawled in here? You want me to kowtow? You think you deserve it?”
A hand clamped around the back of his neck and forced him downward. Immense strength threw him to the floor, and both knees struck the tiles hard.
The hand pressed on his head, driving him lower until his forehead nearly touched the floor.
“Kneel properly.” The voice breathed against his ear, damp, cold, and briny.
Ding Peichen kept his tone steady with effort. “You demand I kowtow and keep strangling me. At least tell me what I owe you.”
“On April Fools’ Day in 2013, you told me to meet you by the river.”
Ding Peichen froze, then frowned. “You went just because I invited you? Since when were you so obedient?”
Pain suddenly stabbed through his head.
April Fools’ Day. The riverbank. What had he done there?
Ding Peichen could say no more. He could not remember. His memory of that day was a shattered mirror, and he had recovered only scattered fragments.
River water. Reeds. Someone falling in. He had jumped in too.
But what happened before he jumped? Why had he gone to the river?
Ding Peichen pressed both hands to his temples. His body began to shake as the immense mental strain sent his tactile hunger spiraling out of control.
He needed to hold something. Skin against skin. He reached for Little Scar, but it was not there.
“From beginning to end, you’ve always been trash who needs something in his arms just to stay alive.” The voice sounded amused, but held no warmth.
In Yu Chong’s slender hand was the palm-sized doll miniature.
Its cloth hand squeezed the miniature’s stomach. Ding Peichen’s strength instantly vanished, and he nearly crumpled across the tiles.
“You—”
Ding Peichen panted and raised his head. In the mirror, that face looked down at him with the faintest curve at its lips.
Yu Chong pinched the back of the miniature’s neck.
Bone-deep cold immediately gripped Ding Peichen’s neck, like ice pressed to the skin and dragged down his entire spine. His knees weakened involuntarily.
Yu Chong squeezed the doll’s chest. Ding Peichen’s heart contracted hard. The pain was real.
No possession. No telekinesis. The ghost only needed to pinch the matching part of the doll, and Ding Peichen’s body would be completely controlled.
At last, he understood—the disobedient hand in class, the hand that had humiliated him before everyone.
He ground out the words. “So it was you.”
Bang, bang, bang!
Urgent knocking sounded outside the bathroom. Guan Heng called anxiously, “Peichen? Peichen, are you in there?”
The ghost vanished. The tension inside Ding Peichen loosened with it. He leaned against the door, breathing heavily, and waited before finally stepping out.
He told Guan Heng his stomach hurt and that he only needed medicine and rest. Guan Heng drove him home and wanted to come upstairs to care for him, but Ding Peichen refused without hesitation.
Guan Heng could only hand over the gift bag and tell him to rest.
Ding Peichen returned to his apartment, tossed the bag beside the door, and rushed to the bed to clutch the new doll.
A ghost could make a mess of his already disastrous life.
But letting it control him until he could not resist?
Ding Peichen refused.
He could not continue like this. He would not sit and wait to be destroyed.