Work Text:
Lu Bixing is, frankly speaking, a romantic. He is not shy about it, though sometimes it does pose an inconvenience to his love life, which is ironic, he knows, but you just, can’t help it, you know? His dad once said he got it from his mom, and his mom smiled indulgently, meaning that he’s wrong and she loves him so she lets it slide, but we all know the truth. His dad smiled back, adoringly, and kissed her hands. Lu Bixing thought they were just pot and kettle. But that’s not really the important thing, isn’t it?
The important thing, the essential thing, the foundational thing is that Lu Bixing has always thought that he’d meet the love of his life in that perfect, soap-opera-like moment: the sky would be raining heavily, and he’d be without an umbrella, and she’d have one, and they’d share the small respite from the pouring sadness that is the rain, and there’d be arm-touching and discrete laughing, and they’d exchange knowing glances of a future to come.
Or he’d be at an ancient bookstore, second-hand type, a labyrinth of its own right, and he’d be reaching for a book when his hand touches hers, then he’d apologize and she’d smile shyly, face dusted a lovely peach color. They’d fall into talk of literature and poetry and all the things in between, and he’d ask her out in that same bookstore and she’d say yes.
And that’s it. That’s how he’s expected to fall in love and drown in the romance of love. Of course, it’s not like Lu Bixing spends his whole day and life thinking only about this kind of thing - he does have a life, and a very hectic one of that. It’s just that, he’s a romantic to heart, and the notion has always nestled somewhere inside his heart, that he’d be prepared for whatever comes his way, and he’d make this the most romantic meeting ever, even if it’s just on a sidewalk or any other innocuous place.
But turns out, Lu Bixing thinks, looking at the bloody mess on the floor, the can of tuna rolling next to his feet, and the very, very naked man standing in front of him, that he is so not prepared for anything.
.
.
Lu Bixing knew, on a very technical level, that the BeijingSuperstar is haunted, on the very first day he worked here.
It was because Mr. Monoeye Hawk told him that.
“This place is haunted, kiddo, do not try to go to Aisle 5 at 6:34 am, or you’ll be eaten.”
“Huh?” He said, because what the fuck .
“You heard me, kiddo.” The man shrugged, his one eye brooding and sharp, a strange thing for a supermarket owner to have. “ Good luck out there. If you survive the first week, I’ll give you a raise.”
With that, he lightly pulled his eyepatch - an honest to god black eyepatch - and walked away.
“What the fuck.” Lu Bixing said again, because what the flying fuck.
“He’s not joking.”
Somebody sneaked up next to him, so silently that Lu Bixing did actually yelp a little bit. Turned out it was a teenage girl, with badly dyed hair and smoky eyeliners that does nothing but accentuate how sleep-deprived she was. “ ‘M Mint. Cashier.” Her eyes stared straight at him, as if daring him to say anything about her unconventional name. The eyeliners helped deepen his fear.
“ I’m Lu Bixing. I’m the new RA.”
“Cool.” Her tone indicated there was nothing cool about that. Well. He’s not that offended, anyway. This is just a means to an end that is his humongous student loan, and he did plan on surviving at least this week just so to see if the raise is a joke or not. Better not start the day by throwing hands with his new co-worker.
God, this is ridiculous.
Lu Bixing shrugged his head, and tugged the tag on his shirt. It’s just a plastic case with a slip of paper hastily written Lu Bixing - feel free to ask me! . Mr. Monoeye Hawk’d told him when handing out the uniform that if he lived through the week (again, what?), they’d give him a real tag to congratulate his survival.
“Seriously, it’s so annoying having to order a new tag every day.”
Lu Bixing tried not to think of the possible implications, and got started on his tasks.
God, this wage raise better be worth it.
.
The wage rise was worth it, fuck.
Lu Bixing, to everyone’s surprise (even his), had survived the first week. His fingers and one leg had gotten an extremely close encounter with the ghost of a Kraken that escaped from its seafood section. ( He lost some of his eyebrows, and a gaze on the nape, but all things considered it’s not the worst outcome) Lu Bixing also met the other employees of the store: Rockhead, White, and Jingshi. They’re of the same age as Mint, meaning 3 years younger than him, and all are good kids. Well, maybe his definition of good can be a littleee bit broad. But they have potential. And they saved him from that Kraken ghost. So. Good kids.
Lu Bixing also witnessed, firsthand, what exactly happened at Aisle 5 at 6:34 am. and.
Let’s just say it’s not a pleasant sight.
Not.
At.
All.
He made a promise to himself to never actively think back, so that he could save that minuscule thing in his brain called sanity.
And to be honest, Lu Bixing did think of just. Dropping. Because. Fuck.
Fuck.
He still loved his life, thank you very much.
But then, on the last shift of Sunday, Mr. Monoeye Hawk dropped by and looked fairly impressed at Lu Bixing's existence, and promptly called him to the office. They had a short chat and when Lu Bixing walked out, he actually got enough to pay for the next 2 weeks’ food.
And so, here he is. Second week in, learning how to maneuver the genuinely haunted supermarket, and realizing how much of a shitshow he’d signed in general.
“You’ll get used to it.”
White told him when Lu Bixing asked how he could be so nonchalant about all of the, well, haunting. The kid laughed and patted him on the back.
“You’ve survived the first week, then you’ll do the second. And the third. And well. When you’re familiar enough with this place, it’s not that terrifying,” He paused, shrugging. “The money helps, too.”
His voice does not change, but Lu Bixing could see the glint in his eyes, a bit too old and broken for an 18-year-old. He didn’t ask, but hummed quietly.
“ It does, doesn’t it. Now, tell me more about what I should never do if I still value my life. Cause I sure need them.”
White laughed again.
“You betcha.”
So, it turns out that the BeijingSuperStar is built on, allegedly, the door of Hell. On the ground of this place alone there’ve been a massacre of 12 people by a junkie who wanted a limited edition of Mario Bros. signed by Shigeru Miyamoto on its release, an arson of a nursery that was also an old-fashioned psychiatric hospital, and a somewhat weird ritual of a cult which worshipped not the Devil but the 11th Amendment that resulted in, well, not a bloodbath but a lot of people did cry and the town folks never talked about that again.
All in all, very cursed.
“But then why does Mr. Monoeye Hawk want to build a supermarket on this land?” Lu Bixing asked, incredulously. “Also, do you know his real name?”
“If I knew, I would go buy a lottery ticket.”
“Valid.”
“But I heard… that he made a deal with the Devil himself.”
Lu Bixing laughed. “What?”
“It’s true. Heard that right after he lost his eye, he built the supermarket. There was a fire, too. Nobody knew how it started, but Mr. Hawk just cursed and walked inside the burning building, and it just. Went out.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. Real creepy,” White said. “ People said he sold his soul to the Devil, and in turn, he had to guard this place for him.”
“But then he built a supermarket here?”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe he’s bored. I mean, if I were to guard a place forever, I should make it count, right?
“Besides, supermarkets are also a type of mortal hell, don’t you think?”
And at that, White laughed so hard his voice cracked. Lu Bixing offered an awkward laugh, but before he could reply, they got interrupted by a screaming toddler and his crying mother. They held hands, but the toddler was a black void so Lu Bixing wondered how they could do it.
“Hello, where can I find the diapers?” The mom said, still sobbing. Lu Bixing tried not to look too much at the baby.
“On your left, ma’am,” White said. “Next to the Tumeric shelves.”
“Thank you,” The woman said, her tears now soaking the entire front of her shirt. The toddler screamed, and they walked away.
Well. Lu Bixing did not know what Hell looked like, but this supermarket sure is a deformed, LSD- induced image of what he’d imagined.
.
It turned out they ran out of the brand of diapers the woman asked for ( “Ms. Archer’s spiderweb proofed fun wrapping for baby Antichrists ”) and so Lu Bixing got asked to check the storage room. Usually, this means a small little room in the back, with sad stacks of boxes and outdated decorations for Halloween and a SALE OFF board. But this supermarket has an actual basement for storage, with rows of shelves of boxed goods that are i) so general nobody actually buys them but you have to have just in case or ii)so specific nobody actually buys them but you have to have just in case. This time it’s probably the latter.
Lu Bixing went down the dimly lit storage room - this, at least, is no different than other supermarkets. God, he was shown where to turn on the other lights, but it required 3 candles and one mop. Jingshu snickered at him the second time he fell into the booby trap, and he hadn’t been back since. But apparently, today was time to face the music, huh?
He took a deep breath, and walked into the basement. An arrow flew past Lu Bixing, leaving him only seconds to tilt his head just right, so that it flew into the Uncle Sam needs you? poster right at the head of Uncle Sam, and thus deactivated the first booby trap.
Well, that went well.
Lu Bixing took another step, right on a cracked tile. Nothing happened.
He breathed out loudly.
“Today seems like my lucky day, huh?”
He took another step, onto another innocuous tile. Again, the room is silent in its near darkness, and Lu Bixing felt optimistic enough that he could reach the altar in 10 minutes.
He should have known it’d have been his downfall.
.
“Fuck.”
Idly, Lu Bixing thought he’d been swearing more than he’d done his whole life in the 2 short weeks here. Not that it’s his fault, really. What else could one say when he accidentally knocked over a demijohn(?) of the blood of the sorrow (????) when falling backward over an opened can of tuna which still had tunas in and smelled somewhat like Axe body spray, cutting his hand over the sharp edges of the can, and slapping said hand onto a spell circle and accidentally, accidentally activated it?
See? Fuckkkk.
Lu Bixing hastily stood up, not knowing what to do. The spell circle was glowing slowly, the light a menacing snake curling around ancient sigils, and Lu Bixing shudders. Not that it was because the sight scared him (it did), but because there were cold, frosty winds blowing in the room. The winds came from nowhere, and were now focusing in the middle, whirling together into a -
Wait.
No.
Lu Bixing resisted the urge to scream because that would do no one any good, and tried to find the emergency button to alert the ones above. The small-scale tornado was not moving anywhere but inside the circle, which was either a good sign or a really bad sign, but for sure he couldn’t solve this alone. He crouched down and felt the floor, the dim light making it hard to guess if it’s the emergency button or just a broken tile from countless booby traps gone wrong. God, it would help if he just had a light right now. But no, it had to be opened through a series of ridiculously intricate tricks that required at least 3 people’s work but only one did! Lu Bixing swore a little more, just to distract himself from the still bleeding cut on his hand, and looked back at the now medium-scale tornado. The light on the floor lit up even brighter, and goods were being sucked up into the whirlwind. The room was now freezing cold, ice creeping up in the corner of the basement.
For the first time in a very long time, Lu Bixing felt hopeless. He stopped searching for the emergency button - the sound right now must have been loud enough for everyone above to be worried. Instead, he held onto a shelf, closed his eyes, and prayed that he wouldn’t be sucked up and die in a weird-ass haunted supermarket because he only didn’t know how to turn on the light and get some sad diapers for weird mother and child and he should’ve -
The wind stopped.
It was so sudden, Lu Bixing didn’t realize for 30 seconds. The air felt frozen by the silence, it felt dizzy. He opened his eyes, stood up, and looked around. The basement looked like, well, a tornado had swept by, which meant total chaos. He still had enough limbs, so a positive thing. The lights on the floor also disappeared, another upside.
The bad thing was, there was a man standing in the middle of the circle.
A naked man.
A handsome, naked man.
. He was tall, and fit. Not extravagantly broad and muscled, but rather lithe and androgynous looking. His skin was pale and smooth, making him look like a Greek statue - carved out from white marble and eternity. The only thing that made him look not like a statue but a living being was his midnight hair and eyes so grey they turned translucent under the dim light. Those eyes were cold, but so striking that Lu Bixing feared if he looked into them any longer, the ground under his feet would disappear from the intensity.
“Where am I.” The man said.
“Uh.” Lu Bixing replied.
He cringed at himself, but before he could say anything else, the man narrowed his eyes at him. Or more exactly, at his hands.
Lu Bixing looked down, and realized that while it’d slowed down, the wound didn’t stop altogether. Probably because of all the ruckus, and that the cut was not that small…... Wait. Was that...blood dropping down from his face?
Lu Bixing hesitantly touched his face, and his hand came out red. Huh. It’s been such a long time since he got a nosebleed.
“What are you.” The man said again, his voice low and emotionless, as if he didn’t really care what the answer was.
Maybe he wasn’t.
Lu Bixing wondered what the man (hah) was. He looked human enough, but no human could appear suddenly from a tornado caused by ancient spell circles. He didn’t look like trying to kill him immediately either, standing there being handsome and aloof. Maybe it’s because he didn’t consider Lu Bixing as a threat. Or he wanted to play before eating his prey.
Maybe.
But then, guessing what the man wanted wouldn’t exactly help Lu Bixing either; no one had come yet, and even if he got the motive right, he wouldn’t have the ability to outright anyone in this basement. So Lu Bixing thought, what the heck. Screw this.
“You’re in the basement of a haunted supermarket due to a teeny weeny small mistake that we’ll fix soon. I’m Lu Bixing, your RA. What can I help you with?”
The man's eyes glinted.
“You summoned me?”
“Ahaha, why do you say that?”
“Do you know who I am.”
The man looked at him.
“....Do I need to?”
The man looked away. Lu Bixing almost sighed.
“Doesn’t matter.
State your wishes, Lu Bixing, son of Lu Xin.”
Lu Bixing gawked at him. “You know my old man?”
“.....”
“Oh, sorry sorry that doesn’t matter. What do you mean by `wishes’ ?”
This time, something akin to emotion finally showed on his perfect face. He squinted his eyes lightly at Lu Bixing.
“Then why did you summon me? No foolish creature would ever disturb Hell. ”
“I told you it was a small mistake! I want nothing!”
Those grey eyes looked straight at him again. God, Lu Bixing half wanted to cower in fear.
(Haha, God .)
“Look, trust me, sir, this is a mistake. I mean, I don’t even know who you are, how can I want something from you? So like, can you just...forget this whole encounter and go back?”
“.....”
“........please?”
“.....”
Unexpectedly, the man turned to look down at the spell circle. Lu Bixing felt a glimmer of hope, that maybe this meant he was actually going away? And the worst things would only be rearranging the shelves. He could do that. He could even take the reprimands from Mr. Monoeye Hawk if it meant he got to keep being alive, because he was so sure at that conversation the price for a wish, wanted or not, was his soul. I mean, all the movies and books said so, and the man, while beautiful, was so intimidating that Lu Bixing felt a bit weak in the knees.
Just a little.
Anyway, things were going super well. This was just some weird glitch in the everyday life of a haunted supermarket, and summoning a-demon or something was a normalcy here! He’d be fine.
Lu Bixing looked at the man, standing at the middle of the circle, still naked. He really had a beautiful body, had Lu Bixing been any less confident in his own skin, he’d have been envious. That said, the man now had a slight frown on his face, and Lu Bixing realized with a startle that nothing was happening.
….Well. He’d survive, right?
The man snapped back at him, his eyes piercing. Lu Bixing took a step back.
Right ?
Immediately, the man was in front of him, a few centimeters away. That was too close. His hands grabbed at Lu Bixing's collars, and he was lifted up like a doll.
“The portal doesn’t open. What have you done ?” the man seethed.
He’s definitely going to die here
“What did I do????”
Right at that moment, the door to the basement slammed open. Monoeye Hawk was standing there, with all of his one-eyed glory. In his hand was a mop and a saber. Peeking from behind was White, Jiingshu and Rockhead. Mint was probably appointed to stay and watched the supermarket.
Monoeye Hawk shouted.
“ Kiddo, are you alright!”
Lu Bixing could cry, really. He briefly wondered what sight they were seeing; the basement looked like a wreck from a tornado ( it was), blood on the floor, him being hoisted up like a doll by a naked man. But before he could answer, the man put him down and said to Monoeye Hawk.
“What are you doing here, you Siamese cat?”
Monoeye Hawk looked like he’d been slapped on the face with a smelly fish, and pointed the saber in his hand at the man.
“YOU!!!!” He roared. “YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!!”
Needless to say, things got messy after that.