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“And then there’s the ghost,” the real estate agent said.
Right. Esen had been wondering when she’d get to that. He’d seen ghosts before, of course. A Qing dynasty scholar who’d died by suicide had haunted his undergrad dormitory. It’d been a category two haunting - a looper, repeating the scene of its death over and over, stepping on a long-gone stool and hanging itself from a length of silk that disappeared, swaying, into the rafters. This one didn’t do anything of the sort: it just stood there, immobile, in the middle of the living room. It would have looked kind of cool, actually, with gleaming armor and long, swaying hair that could have been right out of a historical drama, if it hadn’t been for its face.
In that it didn’t have one.
Or maybe it did. Esen couldn’t be certain, because he found he couldn’t look at it. His gaze kept sliding away, and when he tried to make himself focus and force himself to look it was as if his mind filled with static.
“It’s a category one haunting,” the real estate agent went on. Category one hauntings were the most simple kind: they couldn’t speak, move or interact with their environment in any way. “It won’t bother you.”
“I’ll take it,” Esen said.
***
Living with the ghost wasn’t so bad. Esen arranged his furniture so he wouldn’t be looking at it when he sat on the couch, and after a week or two it became just another feature of the apartment, like the yellowing spots on the bathroom ceiling and the cracked tile in the kitchen. He got so used to it that he didn’t even think to warn Baoxiang about it when he announced he’d be in town and asked to crash on his sofa.
Baoxiang had always been something of a prissy drama queen, so of course he took three steps into Esen’s living room, took one look at the ghost and said, “What the fuck is that?” And then, without giving Esen time to answer, he added, “Esen, what the fuck, that’s a ghost. What’s wrong with you?”
“It was this or an apartment with a toilet in the middle of the kitchen,” Esen said.
“If you need money-”
“I don’t need money,” Esen said, because he wasn’t going to take his little brother’s charity, even though between the divorce and the gym teacher’s salary he did kind of need money.
Baoxiang was quiet for a long moment, then he blew out a breath, noisily, and said, “Whatever. But I’m not sleeping where that thing can stare at me the entire night.”
“It’s not staring at you,” Esen pointed out. “It doesn’t have eyes.”
“That’s not helpful,” Baoxiang said. “What’s wrong with you. That’s not even remotely helpful. I’m checking myself into a hotel.”
***
“Sorry about him,” Esen said, awkwardly, to the ghost, once Baoxiang had left. “He can be a bit much,” he added, which was probably the understatement of the century, but whatever. It wasn’t as though the ghost could actually understand him.
“He’s not how I would have imagined your brother to be,” the ghost said.
“He’s adopted,” Esen said, automatically, and then the rest of his brain began functioning again and he realized that the nice, unthreatening, only slightly creepy category one haunting in his apartment was… not that. He had no clue what it was, actually. Ghosts, even the most powerful ones, were little more than echoes of the people they’d been. They didn’t have opinions or expectations or learn new things. Some of them could speak, but they couldn’t hold a conversation.
“Ah,” the ghost said. It - he - it - he had a low, rough voice, like the croaking of a crow. “That explains it, then.”
“How come you’ve never talked before?” Esen asked, which was probably a stupid thing to do, but whatever. He’d been living in the apartment for half a year and the ghost hadn’t tried to kill him or maim him even once so far, so probably it was fine.
“You’ve never spoken to me before.”
“Sorry,” Esen said, nonsensically. He supposed it was kind of rude to have essentially had a roommate for six months and not spoken to him once, but then he hadn’t known the ghost could understand him. “Do you want me to move the television?”
“What?”
“The - ah, the flat black box I watch movies - plays in.”
“I know what a television is,” the ghost said, which probably made sense if he spoke perfect modern Mandarin and also had been sentient the whole time. “Why should I want you to move it?”
“So you can see it, too?” Esen suggested, and then, feeling extremely foolish, “Sorry. I forgot you don’t have eyes.”
“I have eyes,” the ghost said, sounding oddly soft. “Can’t you see them?”
“No. Your face is kind of…” Esen trailed off, making an ineffectual gesture with his hand. “I can’t see it at all.”
“Oh,” the ghost said, still in that strange tone.
“So, should I move it?” Esen asked, after it became apparent the ghost wouldn’t say anything else. “If you can see it? I think the angle is kind of bad from where you’re standing.”
“I- thank you,” the ghost said. “It’s not necessary for you to move it. I don’t have to stand here.”
Well, that wasn’t terrifying at all. “Cool,” Esen said faintly, instead of asking why the ghost had been standing in one spot unmoving the entire time if he could walk around as he liked. He probably didn’t want to know the answer. “Want to watch a movie? You can help me pick it out.”
They landed on some dumb wuxia flick. The ghost perched on the couch in a way that looked uncomfortable as fuck, with all his armor on and everything, but Esen supposed he wasn’t actually sitting on it. His edges kept fading into the upholstery. Probably, he had only made himself look like he was sitting because Esen had sat. Because sitting was what humans did.
It was surprisingly cute.
The ghost was surprisingly cute in general. He watched the movie very seriously, only sometimes commenting, mostly about the martial arts. He had a lot of opinions about those, and didn’t seem to care if something looked cool if it was inaccurate or stupid in a real fight. He was funny, too, with a dry, acerbic wit that reminded Esen a little of Baoxiang.
All in all, it was fun. Sitting side by side, trading jokes as the movie got more and more stupid, felt almost like being with Borte had, when it had been good, the moments that had made the relationship worth it.
***
The next day, sitting with Baoxiang at a café downtown, pushing his breakfast around his plate, Esen tried to ask, casually, “Have you ever heard of ghosts being intelligent?”
Baoxiang’s face didn’t change. He took a long, clearly deliberate sip of his tea and set the cup back down on the table, with the casual grace he always displayed when he was thinking and wanted to look like he wasn’t. “Yes. Or rather, some of them can appear as if they are intelligent, but really it’s simply a different, more subtle kind of loop than the one we’re used to observing.”
Esen nodded. He took a bite of his congee, which wasn’t very good, probably because he had been playing with it instead of eating it for the past half hour. “But…” he trailed off, hesitating. “But they still wouldn’t do stuff like hold a normal conversation and watch a movie, right?”
Baoxiang’s face twitched. Shockingly enough, he didn’t insult Esen, and just took another sip of tea. “I don’t know. I’m not a ghost expert.”
“You know a lot more than me.”
Baoxiang went very red. He took another sip of tea, and coughed lightly, playing with the sleeve of his sweater the way he’d had when he’d been thirteen and fishing for compliments because he’d done well on a test. “Yeah, well. It’s nothing. I just have a sorcerer friend, is all.”
“You do? That’s really cool, Baobao,” Esen said, meaning it. Sorcerers were the ones to call when a haunting became unstable or dangerous, and they could do all kinds of other things besides: spells and blessings and curses. They were rare. Esen had never even seen one outside of news broadcasts, let alone talked to one.
“I’m glad you approve of my friends,” Baoxiang said acidly, but he was still very red, and his eyes were bright. “I’ll put you in contact. If the ghost in your apartment is acting this strangely you should have it checked out.”
“I’m glad you allow me to make my own decisions, Baobao,” Esen said. He kicked his brother lightly under the table, the way he had when they’d been kids.
“It’s not my fault you’re a stupid giant thirty-something baby and need a minder,” Baoxiang said, so loftily that it took all the sting out of the words.
***
Baoxiang’s sorcerer friend turned out to be a person of indeterminable gender - literally indeterminable, they were wearing a pin on their lapel that read Pronouns: guess! followed by a sketch of a winky face - with cricket-like features, a shaved head and at least a dozen tattoos. They ran a handful of tests on the ghost, burning incense and chanting and drawing seals on the floor in a crimson ink that Esen really hoped would wash off, since otherwise that would be that for his security deposit.
“So how do you know Baoxiang?” Esen asked awkwardly as the sorcerer lit even more incense.
“He’s my son’s bio father,” the sorcerer said. “He didn’t tell you?”
“He didn’t.” Probably he had thought it a kindness, in those final years of endless doctor visits and hope and disappointment, to spare Esen the knowledge that he had helped someone else’s woman conceive, when Esen hadn’t even been man enough to get a child on his own wife. “Why did you pick him?”
The sorcerer shrugged. “Yingzi says he has good bone structure.”
“It doesn’t bother you?” Esen asked. “That he could do that for her, and you couldn’t?”
The sorcerer shrugged again. “Half the world’s population has a dick. I don’t see how it makes him special.”
“Are you done?” the ghost asked. There was an odd edge to his words. “The smoke reeks.”
A flash of something passed over the sorcerer’s features, too quick for Esen to discern. “Wait,” they said, “you can smell it?”
There were more tests after that. Ghosts could fake sentience, but they couldn’t smell, the sorcerer explained excitedly, which meant that the ghost wasn’t a ghost at all. He wasn’t even dead. He was cursed.
“How do we undo it?” Esen asked. He didn’t know anything about curses, beyond the stuff that happened in tv dramas, which was probably made up anyway.
“Beats me,” the sorcerer said brightly. “It’s old. And it’s self-inflicted. Probably, he’s the only one that can break it.”
“Self-inflicted,” Esen repeated.
“It’s more common that you would think. We’re so often our own worst enemies.”
“But there must be something you can do,” Esen said. There was a weight in his chest, like a stone.
“She’s just a stupid bitch,” the not-ghost said. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“At least I didn’t turn myself into a living ghost,” the sorcerer said, still in that bright, upbeat tone. “Can’t really do anything, sorry. But with curses like this, you need to remove the intent behind them.”
“You think I want to be like this?” the not-ghost said. There was a savage edge to his tone Esen had never heard before. “And that if I stop wanting to be a ghost I’ll go back to being a per- alive.”
“Pretty much,” the sorcerer said.
“That’s the stupidest thing that I have ever heard.”
“Then you must never have worked retail,” the sorcerer said. They were putting all their tools back into their satchel, a small, round thing that didn’t seem like it should have been able to hold them all. “Lucky you. I’m off now, the missus will be upset if I’m late for dinner. Do let me know if you undo this curse, it’s a fun one!”
***
“So,” Esen said awkwardly, later that evening, “what’s your name?”
The not-ghost was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Why do you want to know my name?”
“I should have something to call you by,” Esen said. “Something that isn’t ghost. Since that’s not even accurate, apparently.”
The ghost was silent again. “Ouyang,” he said eventually. There was another silence. It had a different quality than the previous ones. There was something almost shy about it. “I don’t remember my first name.”
“That’s fine,” Esen said, though it probably wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine not remembering his own name. “I’m Esen.”
“I knew that already,” Ouyang said. Esen still couldn’t see his face, but there was something in his voice that made it sound as though he was smiling.
“Right,” Esen said. He couldn’t help but smile back.
***
“What do you do when I’m not here?” Esen asked the next morning, as he made breakfast.
Ouyang, predictably, was silent for a long moment. Esen wondered if it was because he had to translate to modern language to speak, or if he was just shy. “I don’t really do anything,” Ouyang said. “I can’t touch things, or move them. I could go out, but a ghost walking attracts attention I’d rather not deal with.”
“Isn’t it boring?”
Another pause. “It is what it is. I’m used to it.”
“You’re lucky you’re this patient. I think I would go insane not doing anything for so long. Or talking to people.”
“I would never had guessed,” Ouyang said. His tone was flat, but there was an edge of slyness to it.
“Are you saying I talk too much?” Esen asked, laughing.
“I haven’t said anything of the sort.”
“I see you think you’re funny,” Esen said, smiling, and, instinctively, tried to bump his shoulder against Ouyang’s. It went right through, of course, but just before it did he felt… something. A hint of resistance. Weird. “Do you want me to leave the tv on for you? So you’ll be less bored.”
“Won’t that be really expensive? With your…” Ouyang trailed off, and then enunciated, very precisely, “electricity bill.” There was a small pause, and then he added, almost bashfully, “The woman who lived here before you was always complaining that her boyfriend used the television too much and that it was too expensive.”
“Oh,” Esen said. “It might be, a bit. But you’re worth it.” And then, realizing how it might sound, he added, “You’re my friend now. I want to give you nice things.”
“Friend,” Ouyang repeated, in an unreadable voice.
“Yeah,” Esen said. He felt oddly hot. “So, should I leave it on? Or I can look for a podcast, or an audiobook, if you’d prefer that.” Baoxiang was always going on about libraries and the ximalaya app. Maybe there was something fun in there, at least for a guy who had grown up before the invention of the internet and television.
“I…” Ouyang trailed off. “I don’t think it would be as fun, to watch the television without you. But I would like an audiobook. The woman always used to listen to them when doing chores. I liked them.”
***
The buzzing of an incoming message on Esen’s phone interrupted Ouyang mid-sentence for the tenth time that night.
“Sorry,” Esen said, carefully shifting to avoid closing the book. They’d worked out a system: Esen would turn the pages and Ouyang would look over his shoulder and read out loud. It was nice, for evenings where there was nothing to watch on tv, even if Esen had never particularly been the kind of person who enjoyed books. It was different with Ouyang. “It’s this chick my friends introduced me to. They think we should date.”
“It’s fine,” Ouyang said. There was a trace of something odd in his tone. It was in moments like this one Esen wished he could see his face, to gauge his expression. “Do you… like her?”
“Well, she has a huge rack,” Esen said. He tried to laugh. It came out sounding a bit strangled.
“And that’s what you like?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Esen asked. He tried to laugh again. It didn’t go any better the second time around. “Was it different in…” he trailed off. “In your time period?” he finished, lamely.
“The early Ming dynasty,” Ouyang said. He still sounded odd. “I don’t know. If it was different.”
“Well,” Esen said, half-relieved they were no longer talking about him, “what did you like?”
“I was a eunuch,” Ouyang said. He gave a bitter little laugh. “Am a eunuch, I suppose. If I’m meant to be still alive.”
“You’re still alive,” Esen said, because it was a well-worn argument. And then, even if it felt terribly inadequate, he added, “I’m sorry that happened to you.” He tried to reach out for Ouyang’s hand, the way he did sometimes, holding his just close enough that it would almost feel like meeting resistance, but it didn’t work. His hand passed right through Ouyang’s body.
“It is what it is.”
“Is that why…” Esen trailed off, uncomfortable, then made himself forge ahead. “Do you think the reason for the curse is that you’re a eunuch?” It sounded stupid, when he said it. There had to have been tons and tons of eunuchs in the Ming dynasty, and before and after. They hadn’t all turned themselves into living ghosts.
“I was a eunuch for sixteen years before I became a ghost,” Ouyang said.
“Right. Sorry.”
“I lost someone I cared about… I- I was forced to betray him. And after that I had nothing left to live for. I think that’s why. I might as well have been dead already.”
“Ouyang,” Esen said, with no idea how to follow it up. He tried to put his arms around him, but he misjudged it again. He didn’t pass through him, but he had to be too far away. He couldn’t feel anything. His phone buzzed again.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“No,” Esen said. “I want to be here with you. And I don’t like her, so I might as well not lead her on.” He adjusted his grip slightly, and this time he got it right. He felt, against his palms, the barest hint of resistance, and something that almost felt like a humming through his skin.
***
“I used to do this with Borte,” Esen said. They were in the kitchen, Esen cooking, Ouyang at the table reading out instructions from Esen’s mother’s decrepit cookbook. It wasn’t necessary; Esen knew this recipe by heart. But it was comforting, hearing it in Ouyang’s rough, familiar voice.
“Cook your mother’s food?”
“Yes. No. This is the day she left, you know.” And then, realizing it might have been confusing, he added, “My mother. Not Borte.”
“She left you?”
Esen nodded. His eyes felt uncomfortably hot. “When I was six. She was very young, and my father… he could be a difficult man.”
“That’s not an excuse to flee.”
“I left my wife, too,” Esen pointed out. “Sometimes leaving is the only thing you can do.”
Ouyang was silent for a long time, in the way he’d used to do early on in their friendship. “I don’t think I’ve ever abandoned anything. But then, look at what I’ve made of myself. I’m hardly someone to take as an example.”
“I think you’re pretty great,” Esen said, without thinking. He felt oddly glad that he was making the dough for the dumplings, so he could pretend to be busy with that, and that he wasn’t worried about Ouyang’s reaction.
“I think you’re pretty great, too,” Ouyang said, after another long moment of silence. His voice was very soft. He cleared his throat, which seemed absurd, that he should need to do that. “Did you ever see her again? Your mother.”
“I tracked her down when I was nineteen. She’d remarried. Had other children. When I talked to her, she said that there would always be a part of her that loved me, but that she couldn’t be my mother any more. And then she gave me her old cookbook, that her mother had passed down to her when she’d married. She said I should have something of hers, to remember her by. And so once I year I… mourn her, I suppose. I know it’s foolish. She’s alive.”
“I’m sorry,” Ouyang said. “I can’t say I understand. But I don’t think you’re foolish.”
“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say,” Esen said. His eyes still felt hot, but he’d started dicing the onions for the filling, so there was a good reason for it this time. “What I wanted to say is… I used to do this with Borte, but she was always too clingy, or too cold. She always made it worse. And you’re being perfect. And I’m glad to be here with you, instead.”
“I’m glad, too,” Ouyang said. He took half a step towards him, as though to reach out. “I wish I could touch you,” he said, low enough that Esen probably hadn’t been meant to hear it.
“Me too,” he said, anyway. “I wish I could break the curse.”
He couldn’t see Ouyang’s face. He’d never even tried to imagine what it might have looked like. Still, he could picture his bitter half-smile perfectly as he said, “Didn’t you hear the sorcerer? If there even is a curse, only I can break it.”
***
After dinner, they watched a movie. He and Ouyang sat on opposite sides of the sofa, with an empty cushion in the middle, their hands stretched out side-by-side so they could almost pretend they were brushing.
The movie was Esen’s mother’s favorite, or at least it had been when he’d been six, a tragic romance that wouldn’t have been either his or Ouyang’s usual pick. The air was full of the smell of cooking and of hot oil, and his stomach was heavy from all the food he’d eaten. He dozed off halfway through the movie, and woke to the cold light of the television as the closing credits scrolled over the screen.
His hand had shifted in his sleep. It was intertwined with someone else’s hand.
The fingers, pressed against his, were warm.