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The noises of the hospital were always beyond intolerable for Wang Yi. Squeaking wheelchairs, blaring lights from ambulances, wails of grieving families, they all bother him so, dig into his skull like dull knives. Back when he had weekly sessions with the child psychiatrist, each walk down to the office was the longest thirty seconds of his life, all adding up to a total of two hours and ten seconds.
Even as an adult, the sounds are still sickening. Only soft beeps from the monitor linked to Nuonuo grace him with patience. Sharp tinges of heartbeat green shapes themselves into proof that she is alive. Wang Yi has the rhythm memorized, a pattern that he prays will never get a pulse too fast or slow.
Zhang Lan hasn’t forgiven him. She shouldn’t. That’s why he is visiting after hours, quietly slipping through the cracks of the back window.
A small comfort is how quiet the dead of night is. There’s still the dripping of the IVs and small moans of pain, but it’s not something Wang Yi can’t handle. The emergency staircase is completely silent, his footfall not even letting out the faintest echo. Once Wang Yi reaches the fourth and final floor, his hand lingers on the door’s handle, where Nuonuo will be beyond.
He stops himself from making the final step.
The first reason for hesitation is instinct; the second is the hint of blood he familiarized himself with. Iron tangs pierces through the hospital’s sterility, speaking louder than the noise. And slowly but surely, he hears footsteps ringing from the stairwell, growing with each tread.
For every mission, there is a protocol. Wang Yi must protect Nuonuo.
He weighs between an ambush and a confrontation. As an assassin, it’s his job to make the kill simple and clean, but that’s not an option when there’s a hostage hidden behind the door. The only reasonable target for the intruder is him. He has to draw out the fight.
The knife hidden inside his coat all times is pulled into his hand. After making sure Nuonuo’s room is locked, Wang Yi announces his presence with footsteps of his own, this time loud and clear.
A figure finally reveals itself. The green emergency lights trace an outline of robes. His mask is closed, no expression to be found except bared marble fangs and hollowed out eyes.
The uncharacteristic silence tells everything Wang Yi needs to know.
There is none of the usual yipping from the creature he always totes around, not even a growl. Its eyes glow in the dark, round and bright red. Its claws are stained a similar shade.
Violence is the first answer that pops up in his mind. That’s how Wang Yi always solved his problems— the easiest way out. However, ever since the day that left Nuonuo hospitalized, he started curbing himself.
Reflection is not what Wang Yi is particularly good at. He is able to mechanically assess, but he isn’t capable of profound introspection— only superficial facts of what mistakes he made.
Now that Nuonuo is even more vulnerable than she was as a child, he developed a compulsion to recount all his victims, obsessively trying to remember the kills he has forgotten. Like picking scabs. Each one has a death wish for him, and he wishes they would strike him down. Because the worse alternative would be his daughter taking them in his stead.
Maybe that’s what the Johnnies would want. After all, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. A man takes a boy’s father, the boy takes the man’s daughter. He tries to trust the compassion he’s seen in Little Johnny, but both of them know best how fickle trust is. Sheng’s curse came back to him in the worst way he could have imagined.
There is a click, and the mask retracts from Little Johnny’s face. His expression shows nothing but cold resolve, yet his mouth twitches, as if he’s trying to pry something out of himself. He briefly opens his mouth but clamps it, hurt flashing across his eyes before it’s hidden away by the mask again. (Those eyes are not the eyes of prey that Wang Yi keeps a catalogue of, but a predator.)
For the first time in his life, the silence is more unbearable than noise. Wang Yi wishes for the sound of death wails, pigs squealing, children hollering and jumping and stomping and all the maddening noises in the world that bring out his deep and righteous fury. Because if this feeling is guilt, then he can’t stand the quiet festering at all, eating him alive.
The creature is the one who takes initiative, pouncing over. Everything feels like slow motion.
So this is what Sheng felt in his final moments, Wang Yi dully realizes. There is no time for goodbye, something he has probably robbed Johnny of too.
He was never afraid of death, and the revelation that he probably will never see the sun rise once more is not particularly shocking. Age has made him weaker and more contemplative of the idea. It’s somewhat satisfactory, even. A bare minimum of fondness was established between him and the young man, so dying at his hands seems fitting enough.
But it’s the thought that he will no longer be able to see Nuonuo again that he objects to.
The hold on his knife steadies. He regains the strength to assemble his footwork. His focus zeroes onto the creature, slowly shifting itself green.
If this will be his very last mark, then he doesn’t intend to fail. After all these decades, Ghostblade finally fights to protect instead to kill.