Are wandering ghosts afraid?

When Ni Haolang saw Jiang Songhe frown and open his eyes, he reflexively dodged. The high stool cushion could rotate, and his cerebellum was so numb from the alcohol that he was disoriented, and he visibly bent backward.

Jiang Songhe has often been picked on and beaten since childhood because of his grumpy face and eccentric personality. His quick eyes and hands are ingrained in his muscle memory. Even with his face stuck to the bar, he can still stretch out his long arms and legs, grab Ni Haolang by the collar above, and step on the bar stool's foot bar below to pull him back.

"Stop fidgeting." Jiang Songhe withdrew his hand and patted the table, gesturing for Ni Haolang to align his gaze with him and speak. "My eyes hurt."

Ni Haolang lay prone at a distance, staring intently at the crumpled tissue in his hand, speechless this time. Jiang Songhe's hand reached towards him again; he closed his eyes, shrank back, and held the tissue between them, shouting, "I was just trying to wipe you down, I didn't..."

"Did your dad hit you again?" Jiang Songhe pointed to Ni Haolang's still swollen cheek and asked vaguely.

"Huh?" Ni Haolang was taken aback, then hastily wiped his face with the crumpled tissue, focused the camera again, and saw a smear of paint on his face. He chuckled and said, "Well, you know, sigh! Tonight, I dressed up and sang a bit of a pretty female role~ I just wanted to amuse my family, but, sigh! I went too far~"

"..."

Jiang Songhe didn't have much experience getting along with his father, and he wasn't sure whether Ni Haolang's theories, such as "spare the rod and spoil the child" and "beating is a sign of affection" and "scolding is a sign of love," were right or wrong, whenever his father beat him.

Does being beaten more often and in more pain mean you're loved more? He didn't know.

So he tried to dodge the question by saying something like, "How can you sing a female role? Didn't you learn to sing a clown role?"

“Who says otherwise?” Ni Haolang’s face was probably still sore, his smile was a little stiff. “So I deserve to be hit…”

Here we go again. Jiang Songhe was utterly baffled and inexplicably a little angry: "If you don't want to laugh, then don't. Tsk, it's uglier than crying."

Ni Haolang sniffed and retorted in a completely irrelevant way, "You don't understand, a chameleon is still a dragon."

What do you mean by that?

The urge to grab Ni Haolang earlier belatedly rose from her stomach, and Jiang Songhe swallowed it down, her lips bulging.

I swallowed it.

Grass.

Jiang Songhe's eyes cleared for a few seconds, then she froze, looking lifeless.

"Hahahaha... Pfft..." Ni Haolang couldn't help but spit out a snot, quickly grabbed a tissue to pinch his nostrils, and mumbled, "Is it still the same taste? Is it any better now?"

"You fucking... ugh!" Jiang Songhe almost retaliated again, "Shut up."

"Okay, okay, I'll shut up~~" Ni Haolang rested his head on his arm and closed his eyes. "How about we both take a nap first, and then fight again when we wake up! Otherwise, hiccup, it'll be too embarrassing..."

Ni Haolang spoke slower and slower, mumbling and mumbling, and eventually fell asleep.

This liquor is strong and tastes awful. Jiang Songhe thought, if I take another sip, I'll be a dog. As he thought about it, his eyelids closed.

"I'm leaving, Songhe."

He hadn't actually slept very soundly, but strangely, his mind was racing with thoughts that kept Jiang Songhe from opening his eyes. He didn't know how much time had passed before the bartender woke him up.

"Hey, kid?" The bartender, as expected, brought up the fact that he had never drunk 100ml before. "Your classmate is unreliable too, why did he leave you here all alone?"

Jiang Songhe didn't respond. He stretched his shoulders and found that he could move them. He got up and looked around, only to find that Ni Haolang was indeed nowhere to be seen.

I took out my Nokia to check the time: 10:59.

He emptied all his pockets again, but found he hadn't brought any money.

"Ni Haolang!!! Are you even human?!"

Jiang Songhe took the unfinished bottle of absinthe with her, intending to show it off to Ni Haolang the next day. Little did she know that the two would not meet again for many years.

-

As midnight approached, fireworks lit up the night sky, randomly illuminating the dim and old Sanyanfang neighborhood. Only the sounds of the Spring Festival Gala broadcast resonating between the tenement buildings added a touch of Lunar New Year atmosphere.

Jiang Songhe was dazed and confused, his feet tumbling around. He didn't know how he had gotten to this messy place, and he was wandering around in circles in the corridors between the buildings, unable to find a way out.

"Damn it—I can't find my way home—" Jiang Songhe was starting to lose his composure, so he looked up to the sky and let out a loud shout.

His face stung from the cold wind, and he was sweating profusely from walking for so long. It was like experiencing both ice and fire. He kept clutching his Nokia in his pocket, fiddling with the buttons but then letting go. He couldn't count on his family coming to pick him up.

He resigned himself to his fate and slowed his pace, thinking he might as well find a deserted place to freeze to death.

The goal shifted from finding the exit of the residential area to finding the most secluded and inconspicuous corners.

The figure, resembling a withered tree, wandered around carrying a fluorescent green wine bottle, repeatedly muttering "can't find home." Under the illumination of two rows of red lanterns by the roadside, it looked exactly like a Black Impermanence carrying a lantern and demanding lives.

Tap, tap, tap.

Jiang Songhe vaguely heard footsteps coming from not far behind him, some deep and some shallow. At first, he thought it might be someone who lived there. After walking for a while, he felt something was wrong. Even if it was on the way, it shouldn't be this convenient.

Robbery under the cover of darkness? They won't even let someone die in peace if they want to.

Tap, tap, tap, bang!

Jiang Songhe stopped abruptly, swung his fist and turned to strike, but only managed to hit the air.

His gaze shifted downwards, and he saw a seven or eight-year-old child wearing a worn-out cotton coat that was so shiny it reflected light, looking up at him with his two chapped, red faces.

Jiang Songhe opened her palm and covered the child's skull, then pushed him away and glared at him, asking, "Little brat, what are you doing following me? Trying to...steal something?"

"No, no, no!" the child stammered, waving his hands repeatedly. "I, I wanted to avoid..."

Is it love?

Jiang Songhe shoved the wine bottle into the child's arms and made him hold it. He then reached into the inside of his down jacket and rummaged around for a while before pulling out a velvet pouch.

"It's the New Year, I can't let you work for nothing." Jiang Songhe pulled a longevity lock out of her purse, and it took her a while to separate the necklace and pendant parts. "It's platinum, here you go."

Jiang Songhe bent down at a 90° angle to smooth out the circle of silver light, then pinched both ends and wrapped it around the back of the child's neck. After fastening it in the dark, he straightened up and saw that the child's eyes were still staring straight at the longevity lock in his hand. He sneered, "Heh, you're quite greedy."

After saying that, he snatched the wine bottle from the child's arms, turned around and continued drawing the dragon, waving his hand and saying, "Pawn it to buy a new outfit, kid."

Tap, tap, tap.

Jiang Songhe noticed the child was still following, and turned around impatiently, saying, "That's enough, I can't give you any more."

Tap, tap, tap.

Jiang Songhe is fast, and so are the children.

Jiang Songhe is slow, and so are the children.

Jiang Songhe stopped, and the child stopped too.

"Stop fucking following me! Tsk...you can't find your way home either?" Jiang Songhe strode up to the child, shoving his forehead to scare him. "Are you done yet?...Are you running a fever?"

Then the child coughed a few times, looking pitiful, and said, "Brother, I'm cold."

...Who is your brother?

Jiang Songhe let out a very light "grass" from the corner of his mouth, then unzipped his down jacket, picked up the child by the waist, and the cold wind rushed into his clothes, making him shiver. He shoved the bottle of liquor into the child with annoyance: "Here you go, don't spill it on my clothes."

With a dirty little devil in his arms and a gust of wind blowing, Jiang Songhe became a little more awake and his eyes could focus again. He counted the apartment numbers on the upper floors and finally found the exit of the community.

After much searching and effort, Jiang Songhe finally found a dilapidated old green bungalow with a sign that read "Big Pharmacy." After a moment of mental preparation, he lifted his new sneakers, which were covered in mud and in no better condition, and parted the shiny cotton curtain that revealed no trace of their original color.

Behind the counter, a sales clerk with ramen-noodle hair and a white coat was watching the Spring Festival Gala while munching on sunflower seeds, completely undisturbed by anyone coming in.

Jiang Songhe only remembered he had no money after entering the house. He weighed the child in his down jacket and saw that the child hadn't reacted at all the way. He thought to himself, "Damn, could he have fainted from the fever?" So he did some mental preparation and then walked to the counter.

"Um... how much does the fever reducer cost?" Jiang Songhe asked awkwardly.

The sales clerk tilted his head slightly, pulled out a box of generic paracetamol from the counter, and slapped it on the counter: "Thirty-eight yuan and eighty cents."

Jiang Songhe pretended to reach into his pocket, racking his brains for a way to ask for credit. He reached into his pocket from the left and then from the right, until the sales clerk lost interest in watching the Spring Festival Gala. He actually managed to pull out three one-yuan coins from the pocket outside one of his sleeves.

"Three yuan, can I have one?" Jiang Songhe handed out three coins with the air of a handful of coins.

The sales clerk refused sharply: "If I can't get it, who am I supposed to sell the rest to after I've cut it open?"

Hearing the sound, the child kicked his legs, and Jiang Songhe breathed a sigh of relief: "What can you get with three yuan? This child still has a cough."

The sales clerk noticed two small feet sticking out from under the bulging hem of the down jacket, and her attitude softened slightly. She took out a small white medicine bottle from a simple cardboard box on the shelf and replied, "...Licorice tablets, they can help relieve fever, but they're not very effective."

"Then let's go with this one."

-

After buying the licorice tablets, Jiang Songhe planned to take the child to the nearby guardhouse, but the area was so deserted that even the guardhouse was abandoned. Jiang Songhe was feeling the effects of the alcohol, and his head was starting to ache; he was too exhausted to walk any further after a night's walk.

He sat cross-legged on the low steps of the guardhouse, laid the child down with his arms open, quickly turned the child around in the crook of his legs, and then wrapped the child back into his down jacket and made him sit properly.

Jiang Songhe unscrewed the small medicine bottle, shook out two pills, caught them with the bottle cap, and said, "Open your mouth."

The child obediently did as instructed: "Ah—"

As he swallowed it, he seemed about to express his gratitude, but Jiang Songhe interrupted him: "It says to take it sublingually, don't talk."

The child shut up and didn't say anything.

Jiang Songhe stopped walking and felt a bit cold, so he took out the wine and drank a few more sips. After a while, he said to the child, "You shouldn't go with strangers, and you shouldn't eat anything given to you by strangers, especially medicine."

The child stirred, trying to crawl out of the down jacket, but Jiang Songhe pressed him back down: "Tsk, you can't be exposed to wind when you have a fever."

Fireworks began to appear more frequently in the night sky. Jiang Songhe stared at them in a daze, but couldn't understand what was so interesting about them.

It felt like there were three knocks on her heart, like a knocking on a door. Jiang Songhe sighed and asked, "Want to see?"

The child nodded inside the down jacket. Jiang Songhe asked, "Finished eating?" The child nodded again.

Jiang Songhe put down the wine bottle, grabbed both ends of the zipper to create a small window, and let the child look through it. The child seemed to want to look but wasn't quite sure how, and then he heard the child ask, "Brother, what's your name?"

"My name is," Jiang Songhe said, feeling uncomfortable being called "brother," so he lowered his voice and pretended to be mysterious, "a wandering ghost, are you afraid?"

"Don't worry, you have a down jacket, new sneakers, and you even gave me a sparkly silver necklace. I like you," the child said confidently.

"Sweet talk." Jiang Songhe chuckled, not taking it seriously, and casually scooped up a handful of snow from the ground below the steps. "Hold on yourself."

Jiang Songhe clasped his hands together, and in a short while, the snow was rolled into an irregular little ball.

Then he put one leg down and swished it around in the snow a few times, picked up two round, withered leaves, and inserted them symmetrically into the narrow end of the snowball. He then unscrewed the bottle of licorice tablets, poured out two tablets, and pressed them into the empty space not far from the leaves.

"I can't give you that longevity lock," Jiang Songhe muttered to herself, holding a snowball. "I really do have a younger brother, born in the Year of the Rat... Ha, what's so great about having a brother who's a wandering ghost..."

The child tapped Jiang Songhe's chest again, knock knock knock.

"What now?"

"Being your younger brother must be very happy."

"...Happiness my ass."

Amidst the deafening gongs and drums, and the crackling of firecrackers, a synchronized countdown echoed through the streets and alleys—

Ten, nine, eight, seven...

"Brother, today is my birthday, I want you to make me a little mouse..."

The child's voice was very faint, but Jiang Songhe still heard it. He looked down and saw the child's hand, which was sticking out of the down jacket, about to retract. So, at the last second of February 6, 2008, he put that cold ball of flesh into the small palm.

The shouts of "Happy Year of the Rat" were drowned out by the deafening roar, and the dazzling lights were so bright they made it hard to open one's eyes.

Jiang Songhe said to the child, "Happy birthday, little devil."

...

The next morning, Jiang Songhe, who had slept sitting up all night, was woken up by her cell phone ringing while warming herself with a strange child in the cold wind.

He answered the phone with a sore back and aching muscles.

"Hello? Is this the family of Jiang Chenghai and Shen Jun? This is the North Branch of the Jingting City Public Security Bureau. Please bring valid identification to our bureau within 48 hours to identify the body..."

With a sharp crack as his phone fell, Jiang Songhe woke up from his dream in a cold sweat.

"I think I... had a nightmare..."