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The lights in the warehouse had gone out, the bulbs shattered in the gunfight, so Wen Kexing heard them first: soft, rapid footsteps spreading out in the pitch-black dark. He counted five, ten, a dozen men. A circular beam of torchlight rounded the corner, illuminated the ground before him, moved to his sprawled legs, crawled up his torso, and finally shone on his blood-streaked face. Dazzled, he raised the hand that had been pressing on the bullet wound on his left shoulder. Through the wet, sticky gaps of his fingers, he glimpsed the torch and the rifle upon which it was mounted.
The footsteps, the lights, the rifles—following a silent signal, they converged without delay on the spot where Wen Kexing lay bleeding against a stack of wooden crates, surrounding him and leaving no angle for escape. A well-trained bunch, they kept their mouths shut and their rifles’ mouths pointed at him.
For a few moments, all was quiet in that warehouse save for Wen Kexing’s thin, shallow breathing. Then, following the sound of light footsteps, the encirclement parted, and the Scorpion King walked forward. He stopped a few deferential feet away from Wen Kexing, as if he had only come to pay respect to the last leader of the Ghost Valley Triad.
Inclining his head by way of a greeting, the Scorpion King said, “Valley Master, no wonder I hadn’t spotted you for a while. Turns out you’ve been relaxing here all along.” His gaze slid towards Mo Huaiyang’s corpse half-hidden in the shadows and the cold glint of the blade buried in his throat.
Wen Kexing thought that he should stand up, kill this man, and keep on living, but when he reached within his own self, he suddenly discovered that he could not muster even an iota of strength.
All he could sense was weariness.
Twenty years of indignity—having endured for so long for the sake of his goals, now that he had finally accomplished them all, was he going to die just like this?
The Scorpion King shook his head and clicked his tongue. “How shocking. How very shocking.”
Hearing this, Wen Kexing smiled lightly and asked, “What’s so surprising?”
“A man as impressive as you are, Valley Master, to be reduced to such a state… Truly no one knows where the wind would blow tomorrow, or how the wheel of fortune might spin.”
“Aren’t you mistaken?” The next breath Wen Kexing drew did not seem to fill his lungs properly, making his response sound exceedingly quiet and feeble. “All the years I’ve spent as the Valley Master, I haven’t had a single night of proper sleep. Tell me: what’s so impressive about that?”
The Scorpion King considered his words for a while before nodding. “You’re right. Men like us don’t have the privilege of sleeping peacefully through the night like common men.”
Wen Kexing grinned, which in the stark lighting resembled a grimace. The blood of countless others smeared on his face had dried into a mask, and now it cracked along his smile lines. “I don't dare compare myself to you. The reason I couldn’t sleep well was simply because I was afraid of being killed in the middle of the night.” He gave a profound sigh. “Now, there is no need to be afraid anymore.”
“Of course,” the Scorpion King agreed. “Since you’re going to die soon, there is no need to fear death.” He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a cigarette case and a lighter. “Last one for the road, Valley Master?”
Wen Kexing looked at him but did not reply. Instead, he asked, “Lao Meng—did you kill him?”
The lighter snapped open with a slick metallic slide. Wen Kexing watched the golden flame as if enraptured, seemingly deaf to the Scorpion King’s derisive laughter. “If I hadn’t done so, wouldn’t I just be waiting around for him to kill me? Valley Master, he swore loyalty to you but was secretly plotting for your demise. Why bother keeping a traitor like him in your thoughts?”
With exceeding caution, the Scorpion King approached Wen Kexing. He placed a cigarette between the latter’s cold lips and held the lighter up until the cigarette’s tip glowed and pungent smoke climbed towards the blackened ceiling. Then, very carefully, he withdrew.
After all, a dead snake’s head could still bite.
Wen Kexing took a drag of the cigarette, holding it with a trembling hand. His body seemed to slump even further against the crates. Still, he asked, “How many…of the ghosts are left?”
Although the Scorpion King was of the opinion that, for a man at death’s door, this Valley Master was holding onto too many meaningless concerns, he answered nonetheless: “Regarding survivors, do you even need to ask? Zhao Jing killed half; I killed the other half.” The Scorpion King regarded him with mild curiosity. “I never expected the Valley Master would turn out to be such a big-hearted man. You’re in no shape to take care of yourself, and yet you’re still asking after your men. Of all the Valley Masters in history, you must be the most compassionate.”
Wen Kexing opened his mouth and his shoulders shook as if he was laughing, but no sound came out. His expression had become strange, as if twisted out of shape, but he spoke with utter calm. “Evil ghosts are still evil ghosts, even on the brink of death. I’m afraid they might have given you some trouble.”
The Scorpion King did not seem bothered. “I have plenty of suicide soldiers. Having several hundreds of them die isn’t a considerable loss by any means.”
“I see.” Leaning his head against the crate, Wen Kexing closed his eyes. “You are a bold man, a man with panache. Truly deserving of your formidable reputation… Ah, Lao Meng. The tragic thing about him is that, up until the end, he believed that he was the player holding all the pawns, never realising that he was standing on the chessboard. Hilarious, isn’t it?”
By the end of his sentence, Wen Kexing’s lips were barely moving, his words becoming inaudible. His cigarette dangled limply from his lips, the cherry embers pointing downwards. Hot ash fell onto his chest, but he gave no sign of noticing, much less brushing it away. The column of smoke floated gently upwards and into the shadows undisturbed.
The Scorpion King, who was beginning to tire of the conversation, took this as a sign to finish things off. “Well, I’m glad we had this conversation,” he said, reaching for Smith & Wesson he always kept on his person for this purpose, among others. He had always liked handguns for the intimacy they conveyed. And revolvers could turn any situation into a thrilling gamble. “I think a man of your calibre deserves my personal touch. Leaving this to my subordinates would be rude.”
The hammer clicked into place. The Scorpion King smiled and said, “Please go on ahead to the Yellow Springs, Valley Master.”
When the Scorpion King placed his finger on the trigger and aimed the gun at Wen Kexing’s head, Wen Kexing opened his eyes and calmly looked up, bypassing the muzzle of the gun altogether and holding the Scorpion King in his gaze. His eyes were like two pools of utterly still, utterly black waters. It was as if he was not the one who was going to die.
Frowning slightly, the Scorpion King squeezed the trigger.
Whether the faithful Smith & Wesson went off or not, no one was quite sure, for in that moment, all hell broke loose. The man who called himself the Scorpion King thought he heard the faint sound of glass shattering in the distance, and then a sharp metallic hiss, and then a peculiar sensation in his right wrist, like an infinitely fanged bite. When he looked down, a void seemed to have opened between his right arm and his right hand, swallowing his wrist in a miasma of blood.
Someone somewhere was shouting, “Sniper! There’s a sniper!” His men were aiming their rifles any which way, all discipline forgotten. A torchlight swung towards the Scorpion King and for a flash he saw what was left of his wrist: exposed flesh, severed tendons, the white of cracked bones, the dark flood of blood. His revolver had fallen into the shadows. Before he could scramble to pick it up, the soldier who had been standing next to him fell to the floor with a wet, heavy thud and a brand new hole drilled into his head, just above his ear.
“Shooter at nine o’clock!” he shouted, fighting against the rising bile in his throat. “Kill the lights, you idiots!”
The lights fell, one by one, alongside the bodies, carelessly to the ground. A rifle went off in chaotic bursts as a soldier, in his death throes, emptied his magazine blindly. The Scorpion King found himself crouching next to a stack of crates for cover. Cradling his wounded arm, cursing all the while, he glanced at Wen Kexing. A fallen torch illuminated the man’s profile, limned with blood. His eyes were open, seemingly observing the bedlam, but his gaze was far away, as if he was somewhere else altogether, some place impossibly distant. His placid expression reminded the Scorpion King of a Buddha statue, witnessing the massacre laid at his feet with unfeeling eyes carved out of stone. Who knew whether he was still alive or he had finally succumbed to his wounds. Ghost Valley Master or not, having been besieged for a whole day and night, wasn’t he made of flesh and blood, after all?
The shouts crested and gradually receded with every whisper of the sniper’s bullets, punctuated by impotent retaliatory gunshots into the surrounding predawn darkness. In the communications system, the Scorpion King heard his second-in-command say, “The King and the target are still inside. Ground team beta, do you copy? We need eyes on the roofs! Sky team, there is a—” Suddenly, he, too, disappeared, as if the shadows had plucked and swallowed him whole.
Then, as silence fell in the warehouse, save for the occasional pained whimpers from the floor and the Scorpion King’s own laboured breathing, the encrypted private communication line in his ear crackled to life.
It was a man’s voice, of an indeterminate age and accent, without affect—flat and controlled, divulging nothing. The Scorpion King’s immediate thought was that it spoke of a select number of professional operatives belonging to a certain breed and echelon. Low and slightly husky, it could even be described as having a somewhat soothing quality. However, its words were anything but: “I see you.”
The Scorpion King’s eyes rolled frantically in their sockets as he sought out the sniper’s line of sight. “Who are you?” he demanded. Groping in the shadows, his left hand chanced upon a dead man’s rifle, which he immediately aimed at Wen Kexing’s head.
“Who are you,” the voice echoed, some tension seeping into its tone, “to dare to raise your hand against my man?”
The Scorpion King’s head whipped towards Wen Kexing, who had remained slumped against the crates all the while, indistinguishable from the dead. The cigarette the Scorpion King had given him dangled still from his mouth, slowly but surely being reduced to a column of ash.
In a flash, recognition dawned on the Scorpion King. He pursed his lips, digesting the sour realisation. Through gritted teeth, he managed to force out a chuckle. “Mister Zhou. What a surprise.”
At the mention of the name, Wen Kexing’s prone form shuddered. With great effort, he raised his head towards the Scorpion King. For the first time and with astonishment, the Scorpion King found that Wen Kexing appeared human.
Wen Kexing’s eyes, however, seemed to look past the armed man standing before him and into the distance, at a different man altogether. To this man, Wen Kexing laughed softly and said, in a low voice, “Idiot. Why did you come here?”
The voice replied dryly, “Tell him I’ve come to collect his corpse.”
For a few moments, the Scorpion King stood there rooted by silent rage in the abandoned warehouse. The best of his men lay scattered at his feet. He had the most fearsome leader and the destroyer of the most powerful triad in the world in his sight, staring down the barrel of his gun. He was within touching distance of the the intangible something that sat at the pinnacle of this long, bloody struggle for power; all he had to do was reach with his trigger finger.
The Scorpion King might be a gambling man, a vice that he flaunted openly, but he also prided himself on being a practical man. “All ground teams and sky teams, fall back.” Judging by the scattered responses he received, he seemed to have lost most of his eyes stationed on the rooftops. He clicked his tongue in displeasure. “An elite has arrived. We won’t hang around to humiliate ourselves.”
He looked down the sight of his rifle once more at Wen Kexing. Cognisant that Zhou Zishu still had eyes on him, he gave a bitter grin. “It seems that I will be taking my leave earlier than expected, Valley Master. May we meet again.”
Wen Kexing gave no sign of noticing him, much less of a reply. Finally lowering his rifle, the Scorpion King noted that Wen Kexing’s eyes had glazed over. As he turned around to leave the warehouse, making his way between the corpses of his subordinates, he uttered a rare prayer: for the Ghost Valley Master to have died, and for Zhou Zishu to come and find nothing more than his corpse.
He arrived as a stirring in the shadows.
A pair of black boots, followed by a pair of close-fitting black trousers, walked into the light of an abandoned torch and stopped before Wen Kexing. Wen Kexing realised that he was dressed in all-black combat gear, identical to the Scorpions. Wondered, not without some amused glee and possessive pride, how long this shapeshifting fox spirit had been hoodwinking the king of the Scorpions.
Wen Kexing sucked in a nicotine-laced breath. It felt like it barely filled his lungs. When he took the cigarette from his mouth, he realised his hand was trembling from the blood loss. Still, smiling, he managed to rasp out, “You should watch out…”
Almost swifter than the eyes could see, Zhou Zishu drew his handgun and twisted his body in one motion. A shot—someone low on the floor, hiding in the darkness and amongst the dead, gave an aborted shout, which devolved into wet, pitiful gurgles before falling eternally silent.
Zhou Zishu let out a derisive huff. “Do the Scorpions not have any other strategy other than playing dead? Who would fall for that twice?” Out of old habit, he extracted his lighter and a cigarette. He caught himself right before the tip touched the flame. After a brief internal struggle, he sighed and stowed the cigarette away.
Wen Kexing stared at him for a while, entranced. A smile split the corner of his lips, bloody. With his one good hand, he reached up and out towards Zhou Zishu.
Holding the lighter so that he could take a good look at Wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu frowned. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a light on you,” Wen Kexing whispered. “I’m catching it to take a look.”
Zhou Zishu raised his eyebrows but did not comment. He toyed with the lighter in his hand, flicking it on and off, plummeting them into light and shadow and back again. “Actually, there is no such person as Hanging Ghost Xue Fang, right?”
Wen Kexing was looking at his palm, seemingly enraptured by whatever he had captured. There was only the dying cigarette, the Scorpion King’s parting gift, in his hand, and there was a touch of madness in his flickering profile. He closed his fist, chuckling. His breathing was weak, and when he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “You’ve figured it out.”
“What about the key?”
“Gone. Threw it off a mountain…about two years ago.”
Zhou Zishu nodded slowly, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Without the key to decrypt it, the Lapis Armour was a bunch of useless gibberish. All of the strife and bloodshed between strangers, affiliations, and even blood relatives this past year and a half, that in the previous day had culminated into near mutual annihilation, had all been for junk data that was worth less than the storage space it took up.
“Took me three years to bring Sun Ding up to where he needed to be,” Wen Kexing reminisced. “He never knew, of course. Without my help, how could an idiot like have gone up against the likes of Xue Fang or Meng Hui?”
This reminded Zhou Zishu of his days working for the scion of the Helian conglomerate alongside Jing Beiyuan. It was one of Jing Beiyuan’s favourite aphorisms. Two sides in a conflict tended to be volatile: any day, one could annihilate the other, or conversely the two might come to an understanding. Three sides, however, would keep each other in check, maintaining an equilibrium.
As the only one with a complete perspective of the playing board, the status quo was Wen Kexing’s to maintain or break. “You incited Xue Fang to steal the key.”
The corner of Wen Kexing’s lips tugged upwards. “I didn’t have it, but they all wanted it. Thirty years ago, the Ghost Valley hadn’t had the strength to be in direct conflict with the Five Lakes and only managed to steal the key from its safekeeping.”
Turning his head to the side, Wen Kexing coughed twice. What came up were fresh globules of dark red blood, which he carelessly wiped with the back of his hand. It did little to improve his bloodstained appearance. “Long Que and my father chanced upon Mrs. Rong, who entrusted the key to my father. Mrs. Rong died soon after, and Long Que disappeared, taking the secret with him.” He looked at Zhou Zishu and asked, “Wouldn’t it have been nice had that been all there was to it?”
Zhou Zishu frowned, catching on. “Whoever caused Mrs. Rong’s death and framed Rong Xuan—there was a fourth party. Was it Zhao Jing?”
Wen Kexing laughed, although no sound came out. “They’re all dead now, anyway.” He took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled slowly, his pitch-black eyes watching Zhou Zishu through the thin veil of smoke. “You know what the most ridiculous thing was? My father never knew what the key was. He only knew it was an important thing, and to protect it he took his wife to that mountain village and lived in hiding for ten years.” A dream-like expression settled on his face. “When I was nine, a bad omen arrived in the village. An owl—”
“Enough,” Zhou Zishu interjected. After a beat, looking at Wen Kexing, he softened his tone and said, “That’s enough. It’s in the past now. You don’t have to—”
Ignoring him, Wen Kexing went on, “My parents thought their presence would endanger the village. They left me there in someone’s care, but I ran away to follow them. When I found them…” He sucked in a shuddering breath that seemed to rattle in his rib cage. “When I found them, my father’s body had been torn in two. They had tied his arms to a car and his legs to another, and the content of his gut was spread all over the tarmac. My mother—you couldn’t see her face at all, only a blood mask. They had cut her nose off before killing her. Do you know how I managed to recognise her?”
Zhou Zishu watched him without a word.
“Ever since I was so small, I’ve always liked beautiful people,” Wen Kexing told him, smiling slightly. “I thought my mother was the most beautiful person in the world. I liked to cling to her, always asking to be carried, so I got used to seeing her shoulder blades. Even when I die, I won’t be able to forget.”
“That’s how the key fell into the Ghost Valley’s hands. How did you…?”
Something flashed in Wen Kexing’s eyes. “Me?” He tilted his head and laughed, laughed, and laughed, until blood and spittle ran down his chin, until the breath left him and his voice ran out and his shoulders shook silently, until Zhou Zishu was unsure whether he was laughing or sobbing. Hoarsely, he said, “Me? I was too shocked, too terrified to run. When the ghosts spotted me, I was convinced I was going to die. One of them grabbed me, and I bit his hand bloody. The others laughed. He called me a lunatic and threw me to the ground, right next to my father’s body. At that moment, scared out of my wits, I came up with something.”
Zhou Zishu moved as if he wanted to stop Wen Kexing right then and there, but in the end, he restrained himself and did not say anything, simply swallowing hard.
“I… They all watched me as I got on all fours and bit into my father’s corpse. Tearing his meat off was harder than I thought. Each bite, I had to chew for a long time before I could swallow. But I kept going. I thought: well, what’s the difference—wasn’t I made of his flesh and blood to begin with? I kept going until none of the ghosts was laughing anymore. The leader said that surely I wasn’t a human boy, that I had been born a natural ghost, and that it might be interesting to bring me back with them.”
This time, Zhou Zishu did not stop himself. Crouching down, he placed his hand on the side of Wen Kexing’s head, cradling his face. Wen Kexing’s gaze was unfocused and the skin of his cheek was freezing cold, likely due to the blood loss. Sensing the warmth of Zhou Zishu’s palm, he subconsciously leant into the touch.
“I’ve been here for more than twenty years,” he whispered. His lips were barely moving, and he did not seem to care whether or not Zhou Zishu could hear him. “I spent the first twelve years desperately surviving, desperately climbing upwards, desperately… Then, having finally claimed the top seat, I began preparing for my true objective.”
Picking up on the situation, Zhou Zishu said quietly, “From the shadows, you helped Sun Ding rise through the ranks, causing Xue Fang and Meng Hui’s factions to feel threatened. Then, you lured Xue Fang into stealing the key for himself. You killed him and destroyed his body and the key in secret, while letting everyone believe that he had run away. While the Ghost Valley forces exerted all of their might to hunt down Xue Fang, you watched as Sun Ding and Meng Hui formed their own plans while suspecting each other…”
“In this world,” Wen Kexing sighed, “there is only one thing that could destroy evil ghosts.”
Zhou Zishu tilted his head in understanding. “The human heart.”
Wen Kexing turned his head abruptly to the side and coughed long and hard. It sounded as if his lungs were being pulled out of his throat and his rib cage was being cracked open. Even after the attack had ended, he felt like he could not catch his breath, no matter how much air he tried to suck in. His whole body spasmed. Zhou Zishu held him as still as he could and gripped his jaw, forcibly keeping his airway open.
Only once Wen Kexing had settled into a shallow but somewhat regular breathing pattern did Zhou Zishu loosen his bruising grip on the man. Inspecting Wen Kexing’s wounds, he murmured, “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You need urgent medical attention.”
Then, looking Wen Kexing in the eye, Zhou Zishu said, “I need to ask you: do you want to live?”
For the longest time, there was no response forthcoming. Zhou Zishu remained silent and still, kneeling next to Wen Kexing.
When Wen Kexing finally opened his mouth, it was to ask: “Are you going to leave?”
Zhou Zishu gave a slight smile and shook his head.
Seeing this, Wen Kexing clenched his jaw, grabbed onto Zhou Zishu’s arm, and pulled his own body upright, using all that was left of him. All the while, he was speaking with as much voice as he could muster: “Live—why wouldn’t I want to live! Why couldn’t I live? In this world, the wicked could keep on living shamelessly, so why couldn’t I live on? I have to…”
His words were slurring together, his consciousness fading. He ended up pitching heavily forward, straight onto Zhou Zishu’s chest, who sighed and gathered his limp body into his arms.
A fully loaded Smith & Wesson lay forgotten next to a wooden crate. As an extra precaution, Zhou Zishu took it and stuck it to his waistband. Then, returning to Wen Kexing, he tucked the man’s limbs close to his body and, with some effort, pulled him upright.
At this moment, Wen Kexing regained consciousness momentarily. Zhou Zishu did not realise this until he heard a soft voice asking in naïve curiosity: “Where are we going?”
“Back to the human world,” Zhou Zishu replied.
When Zhou Zishu slung Wen Kexing over his shoulders, the fabric on his back grew moist with blood near instantaneously.
Turning to leave, Zhou Zishu spotted the cigarette the Scorpion King had given Wen Kexing on the ground. Most of it was ash now, but it lay smouldering still on the concrete floor. After a brief pause, he brought his foot down on it, grinding the stub beneath the heel of his boot, making sure that every last ember was snuffed out. Only then did he walk out, taking with him his man.
The rest he left for the shadows to devour.
They weathered the storm of media coverage in a succession of properties that ostensibly belonged to Ping’an Holdings but that Zhou Zishu knew were part of Jing Beiyuan’s personal investment portfolio: a non-descript two-storey unit in a suburban housing development complex, an empty storefront in an up-and-coming neighourhood, a flat situated in a busy shopping street above a florist who asked no question and was almost certainly working for Jing Beiyuan—a veritable tour of the country’s suburbs. Most thrillingly, Zhou Zishu watched as patrol lights swarmed the dock and surrounded the warehouse where he picked up Wen Kexing mere hours ago through the window of a luxurious high-rise condominium across the bay. The television was playing a news segment about the murder of the enterpreneur and politician Zhao Jing. There were titillating speculations that his death was related to the gang war that erupted the day before. The killer remained at large, the motive undetermined. Meanwhile, Wen Kexing lay unconscious in the next room, his wounds freshly bandaged beneath the silk duvet.
After Wen Kexing woke up, once he could stand up and walk around some, they started to make their way south, to where Wuxi and Jing Beiyuan were waiting. For some reason, Zhou Zishu chose the leisurely scenic route, keeping close to the coastline, and refused to drive for more than a few hours a day, claiming his body could not handle it. Wen Kexing, with his arm in a sling, was indisposed still. Fifteen-year-old Zhang Chengling gamely offered to drive and was laughed all the way to the back seat by both Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing for his troubles. No one dared to bring up the suggestion that Zhou Zishu might be stalling, much less ask what he was stalling for. Should he not survive the upcoming surgery, he wanted to enjoy what was left of his days on the road.
Entering the last leg of their journey, the address Jing Beiyuan sent them was the quaintest yet: a villa perched on the hillside overlooking a small town nestled in the cupped palm of a green valley. Unlike the other barely furnished properties, there was a lived-in quality to the place, with personal touches Zhou Zishu immediately recognised: the liquor cabinet was stocked with Guizhou Maotai and expensive Japanese whisky; in the study, volumes of poetry leant against non-fiction books on science, politics, and history, while by the window a plush armchair, complete with a throw blanket, kept watch over the garden in its owner’s absence. The closet did not contain any article of clothing, but the bedsheets they found smelled of laundry soap still. Jing Beiyuan and Wuxi probably came up here somewhat regularly.
On the second day of their stay, while cleaning the car, Zhou Zishu unearthed an almost full pack of cigarettes and a lighter from beneath several strata of gas station bills and candy wrappers. After dinner, Zhang Chengling sat hunched over his phone on the living room sofa, engrossed in a mobile game Zhou Zishu had never heard of, as if he were an ordinary teenager on a Saturday night. Zhou Zishu opened the window of the master bedroom to the glimmering vista of the city below. Although it was summer still, this high up, the night air had some bite. When Zhou Zishu sat on the windowsill, the cigarette carton in his pocket pressed into his thigh, like a coy reminder.
Wen Kexing was taking a shower; Zhou Zishu could hear the water running. After a quick glance at the en suite bathroom door, Zhou Zishu held onto the window jamb and hoisted his legs onto the ledge. Standing up, he grabbed onto the eaves and swung his body up onto the roof in one smooth motion.
He made his way across the shingles carefully, until he found a spot on the gabled roof that he liked and sat down facing a view of the valley. Then, he took out a cigarette, placed it between his lips, and held the lighter to it, cupping the flame from the wind. The smoke filled his lungs with sweet nicotine heat. When he exhaled, the night breeze snatched every clove-laden wisp away, not letting Wen Kexing know, even after the sound of running water had stopped and all was quiet in the house below.
Who knew how long he sat there, nursing his cigarette, which felt oddly stolen, like his days as of late—never mind that he had paid for them, and paid in full at that. So he was still on the roof when the blackout happened: first he saw in the distance the street lights stitched along highways disappear as if unravelled by a giant invisible hand, and then darkness rolled swiftly across the valley and swallowed the town, its buildings, and its people whole.
For a moment, he sat petrified in the primordial night. There was no light save for the glow emanating from the tip of his cigarette, and even that was dying.
He imagined Zhang Chengling groping about blindly in fear downstairs, but it was much too dark for him to risk the descent off the roof.
Then the moon came out: a waning crescent, barely a presence, muddled by thick clouds, a sorry excuse of a light source, but a moon nevertheless. Zhou Zishu found that he could move again. However, before he could go very far—or, in fact, anywhere at all—a pale white hand shot out of the pitch-black dark to grip the edge of the roof with its long, long fingers, nails scratching against the shingles.
Although he prided himself on not indulging Wen Kexing’s insanity, Zhou Zishu leapt forward to catch Wen Kexing as the man tried to hoist himself up, pulling Wen Kexing onto the roof before he could injure his shoulder further or plummet to the ground. Zhou Zishu was unsure which one would have been worse; privately, he held onto the idea that a good knock to the head might be just what Wen Kexing needed—see if that could knock some sense into him.
Wen Kexing smelled like the herbal shampoos Jing Beiyuan preferred. His hair was slightly wet still, dampening his collar; Zhou Zishu imagined the blackout happening while he was drying his hair: the sudden stillness, quietness, darkness. And now he had gone and got himself dirty all over again. Zhou Zishu took a long-suffering drag of his cigarette. “You mad man.”
Brightly, Wen Kexing said, “Since you disappeared in the middle of the night only to be found on the roof of all places, I think that makes two of us.”
Zhou Zishu did not deign to respond to that claim, but he was magnanimous enough to allow Wen Kexing to sit next to him on the shingles. Which he almost instantly regretted, seeing Wen Kexing hold a brand new, unlit cigarette up, as if trying to inspect it by the feeble moonlight.
Surreptitiously, Zhou Zishu felt for the carton of cigarettes in his pocket. Sure enough, it was missing one too many.
“Ah Xu, didn’t Dr. Wuxi say—” But he seemed to think better of it and gently said, “I thought you quit.”
Zhou Zishu sighed, “I did.”
Wen Kexing rolled the cigarette between his fingers. “When did you sneak out to buy this?” An idea occurred to him, bringing a grin to his face. “Don’t tell me you got Chengling to buy it for you.”
Zhou Zishu thought about this for a while. Then, in a quiet, careful voice, he said, “Bought it about a week into infiltrating the Scorpions.” He cast a sidelong glance at Wen Kexing. “So around two weeks after you left.”
Looking into Zhou Zishu’s eyes, deeper even than the surrounding night, Wen Kexing felt as if a second blackout had happened, leaving him stumbling in the dark in a manner the first blackout failed to do. He sat there for a while, groping blindly for a suitable response. When he realised he could not find any, he laughed in surrender, ignoring Zhou Zishu’s frown, which he felt rather than saw. Then, he stuck the cigarette between his lips and bent down, chasing the tip of Zhou Zishu’s cigarette with his.
“What are you doing?” Zhou Zishu asked.
“Trying to catch some of your light.” Wen Kexing smiled at him, eyes crinkling into crescents. “Ah Xu, won’t you have pity on me?”
Zhou Zishu thought of the lighter in his pocket that Wen Kexing must have felt while stealing a cigarette. Glancing at the one he had been smoking all the while, he said, “It’s almost out.” And it was: it had been burning down almost to the filter between his fingers. He pulled his hand away from Wen Kexing and placed the cigarette on his mouth.
When Wen Kexing sat up, Zhou Zishu turned his head such that the tips of their cigarettes touched. Not wanting meet Wen Kexing’s eyes, Zhou Zishu lowered his gaze to watch their cigarettes instead. There was only a flickering red glow left on his end, more ash than embers; it was a surprise the wind had not put it out yet. Wen Kexing tilted his head to angle his cigarette better.
Right as Zhou Zishu thought that it would never happen, as if trying to spite him, a spark flew off the tip of his cigarette and landed onto Wen Kexing’s, whereupon it burrowed through the white wrapping paper and vanished. For a few beats of silence, nothing happened, but soon the night breeze grew thick with the sweet scent of mint, clove, and tobacco. A bright orange light consumed the tip of Wen Kexing’s cigarette from within, blossoming outward into a plume of fragrant white smoke. Still in contact, what was left of Zhou Zishu’s cigarette suddenly lit up anew, ashes and all, and Zhou Zishu’s throat filled with heat.
They sat like that for a while, shoulder to shoulder in the dark, sharing smoke and embers alike. Theirs was the only light on earth for miles.
Wen Kexing turned to the side to tap the ashes off his cigarette and said softly, “Ah Xu, you should quit smoking. It’s not good for you.”
Zhou Zishu took the cigarette out of his mouth and extinguished it on a roof tile. There was little more than the filter left, anyway. Tomorrow, a late summer rain would descend upon the valley and wash it away. “I should,” he agreed.
Wen Kexing watched him with unreadable eyes. “You should take care of yourself better.”
“What,” Zhou Zishu laughed. “Don’t I have you to do that now?”
“If you’ll have me,” Wen Kexing said solemnly, “I promise I’ll take very good care of you.”
Having said that, Wen Kexing took a deep, long drag of his cigarette. Reaching for Zhou Zishu, he slotted their lips together. It would be a stretch to call it a kiss. Instead, Wen Kexing poured prickly sweet smoke into Zhou Zishu’s lungs, whereupon it spread to suffuse his rib cage and wrap around his insides, leaving no corner alone and untouched.
When they parted and Zhou Zishu exhaled, his breath clouded the night sky with more than just mist. “You’re mad,” he muttered, throat warm still from Wen Kexing.
“You can’t say I don’t pamper you.” Wen Kexing had the temerity to sigh.
Zhou Zishu watched Wen Kexing smoke for a while before something came over him and prompted him to say: “Lao Wen, back in that warehouse…”
Wen Kexing hummed curiously in response, blowing smoke rings towards the stars.
“I promised you that I wouldn’t leave.” Quietly, Zhou Zishu continued, “So you can rest assured that I will keep my word.”
It took a while for Wen Kexing to respond, during which Zhou Zishu watched the smoke rings dissipate one by one in the wind. Chuckling lightly, Wen Kexing ground his cigarette against the shingle beside him, much like Zhou Zishu had done, and said, “You know what, Ah Xu, I’ll quit smoking, too, in solidarity.”
Whatever vices Wen Kexing had—prostitutes, bad erotica, good food, spreading falsehoods—Zhou Zishu very much doubted smoking was one of them. He rarely saw Wen Kexing smoke to begin with. When they first met, the man never carried any cigarette or lighter on him.
“Besides,” Wen Kexing added, pointedly ignoring Zhou Zishu’s raised eyebrows, “I’ll have to live a long, healthy life so that I can take care of you for as long as you live.”
Where did that unfounded confidence come from, Zhou Zishu wanted to ask, but he did not say anything, for Wen Kexing was hovering over him. Wen Kexing’s eyes, normally pitch-black, held an odd glimmer of light.
At that moment, the valley lit up beneath their feet as power returned to the town in a jolt of radiance. The hum of wires and electronics coming back to life pricked their senses before the brain relegated it once more to the background. Faintly, Zhou Zishu thought he could hear Zhang Chengling shout in relief downstairs.
Closing his eyes, Zhou Zishu reached for that strange light.