Chapter 41

Ning Shu went to sleep, and some time later something in her jumped and she came wide awake.

She looked at the time. One in the morning.

The body keeps its own hours, and she had never once woken at this time before. Tonight she had come awake out of nothing, with no warning at all.

And then she caught it. There were footsteps in the corridor.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Coming nearer, and then going away again, perfectly regular.

Strange. Who would be awake and wandering about at this hour?

The woman who looked after the block?

There was no reason for it. It was the small hours and her work had finished long ago.

The footsteps came nearer again.

Ning Shu listened hard. They stopped. They stopped right outside the door of their room.

Something was wrong.

She pushed the quilt back and looked towards the door.

The corridor light came in under it, and there was plainly somebody standing outside.

Something in her dropped. At this hour, who would be standing outside their door?

Then Ning Shu saw Yi Qiu sit up in the bed opposite, and Yi Qiu made a sign at her to be quiet.

Whoever it was stood outside for about five minutes and then went away.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

The footsteps went off down the corridor.

Yang Qing's voice came, shaking. "Did you. Did you all hear that?"

"I heard it." Fang Ruoyun was awake too. "What was that?"

"I don't know."

None of them slept well for the rest of the night.

For several nights after that, at about one in the morning, the girls heard the same footsteps outside.

And it was not only their room. Girls in the other rooms said they had heard it too.

Yi Qiu asked the woman on the ground floor, who said she locked the doors at ten and went round the block every night as usual, and no thief or anybody else could have got in, and they had most likely misheard.

Ning Shu shook her head. "It isn't a thief."

Something in her said it might not be a person at all.

That night Ning Shu drew a charm in cinnabar on yellow paper and put it up on the door of the room. Yi Qiu and the others were doubtful about it. "Will that do anything?"

"We'll know when we've tried it."

So that night they stayed awake until two, and the footsteps never came.

With Ning Shu's charm on the door they slept soundly for several nights, and the others thought she was a wonder.

At break, Fang Ruoyun came running in from outside and said to Yi Qiu and Ning Shu, "I've asked the girls next door and the ones opposite. They're still hearing the footsteps."

"So we're the only ones who can't hear it?"

"It must be Ningning's charm. It's incredible."

One of the girls asked Ning Shu nervously, "Could you draw one for our room? That noise has us all awake every night."

Ning Shu looked at her. She had two thick shadows under her eyes.

Ning Shu drew her one without hesitating and told her to put it on the door that night, and the girl did, and came rushing up to her in morning reading the next day. "The footsteps have gone. They really have."

Ning Shu explained. "The charm holds off foul things. It'll hold off anything ordinary."

Word got round from that girl, and several more rooms came to Ning Shu for charms. They did not ask for nothing either. Every one of them turned up with a bag of fruit or snacks, until room 403 was so full of food that Yang Qing joked they had enough laid in for winter.

Then, a few weeks of quiet later, the dormitory staff went round the fourth floor and took every charm off every door and said they were not to put them up again. Charms on the walls of every room, promoting superstition, it would not do.

The girls went and protested several times, and the woman would not move.

And the odd part was that once the charms came down, the footsteps came back.

Every night, deep in the night, that thud thud thud going along the corridor, working on everybody's nerves.

Then one evening Yi Qiu came back to the room full of it. "Last night the girls in 409 opened their door and looked out while the footsteps were going past."

"God, that's brave."

Fang Ruoyun and Yang Qing crowded round. "What did they see?"

Yi Qiu held it back a moment. "Guess."

"Oh, just tell us."

Yi Qiu said, "Nothing at all. There was nothing in the corridor."

"Aah." Fang Ruoyun yelped. "Then what is going on?"

"Nobody knows. But I've asked on the third floor and the fifth, and they've never heard any footsteps at night."

Yang Qing said, "So the footsteps only happen on our floor?"

"Yes."

"That's horrible."

That night when the footsteps came, Ning Shu opened the door herself, and as she had expected the corridor was empty and there was nothing in it.

The dim yellow light fell on walls the colour of bone and a draught came along the passage, and there was nothing to see.

---

On Saturday Ning Shu arranged to meet Fu Nansheng.

He was out of hospital, with his broken arm still in a sling.

"You're not looking well." Fu Nansheng sat back in the sofa under the green shade and looked at her. "Shadows under your eyes, too."

Ning Shu thought he looked very well himself. The sun came in at an angle through the glass and lay across his shoulders and marked out the line of him, and it made his skin look fairer still.

There was no denying he was good-looking, and in a completely different way from Lu Zheng.

There was more of the soft and the still in him, like snow in spring sunlight, like a white mountain under a blue sky. Lu Zheng was more like a fire burning in hell. One look from him could put you to ash.

"You're looking well."

"I'm off work while I mend. Of course I'm looking well."

Ning Shu nodded. "There's nothing better in this life than sleeping until you wake up on your own."

Fu Nansheng's mouth went up at the corner. "When you're older you'll find there are better things than that, little sister."

Ning Shu thought, who is anybody's little sister? Counting what is actually inside my head, you ought to be calling me older sister.

"I came to you today because I want to ask you something."

"There it is. You only ever want to see me when you want something."

Ning Shu said, "Naturally. Every second of your time is money. I wouldn't dare waste it without a reason."

Fu Nansheng drank some of his coffee and smiled faintly. "You're being rude about me."

"I wouldn't dare."

"Go on, then. What is it?"

Ning Shu told him about the footsteps in the dormitory block, and when he had heard it Fu Nansheng laughed. "One small ghost come out to frighten people, and you've made a special trip to ask me about it. I don't believe you came to ask anything. I think you wanted an excuse."

Ning Shu blinked at him. The man thought a great deal of himself.

"The trouble is it won't show itself in front of me. There's no sign of it anywhere, and every night it's out there frightening everybody, and it's a nuisance."

Ning Shu saw the smile on Fu Nansheng's face get deeper and decided to stop talking.

Did the man seriously believe she had invented all this to get him out for a coffee?

Fu Nansheng left off teasing her. Since she had asked, he answered. "My guess is that the thing is afraid of you and doesn't dare show itself."

"Afraid of me?"

"Of course. With your heavenly eye open and the demon-subduing staff in your hand, what ordinary little ghost would come near you?"

"It never shows itself, so there's nothing I can do."

You cannot cook without rice. It kept out of her way, and Ning Shu had neither the time nor the patience to play hide and seek with it.

Fu Nansheng smiled, keeping something back. "As it happens, I know a way to make it come out and speak for itself."

"Which I'll have to pay for, I suppose?"

"Everything out of your mouth is money. It's very vulgar."

Ning Shu laughed. "You're the guilty one shouting first. Every single time I've come to you with a question, the price came before the answer."

Fu Nansheng thought about it. "That's fair. We're not close, after all. We're not even friends."

"So how much?"

"I don't want your money this time."

"Then what."

"I'd like us to be friends."

Fu Nansheng smiled easily, and when he did there were small hollows at the corners of his eyes.

"Friends." Ning Shu thought about it. "All right."

"I mean it properly. The sort of friends who stand by each other." He put weight on the standing by. "I'll sort out a great many things you don't understand. And when I'm in trouble, you put everything you have into helping me."

Ning Shu understood him. Fu Nansheng's fate ran thin and his luck was bad, and he needed to be a vine on somebody else's wall to get through life smoothly and in one piece.

He knew a great deal and his head was quick, and when something puzzled her she could genuinely go to him with it.

And with what she had and the luck she carried, sheltering Fu Nansheng would not be difficult.

It worked both ways.

She agreed without hesitating. "Done. We're friends from now on. We stand by each other and we both come out of it in one piece."

Fu Nansheng said, "Then as friends we'll be seeing a good deal of each other. Working together, going over things. Can you make the time?"

Ning Shu thought, and said, "I can."

Fu Nansheng raised an eyebrow, and was satisfied with the arrangement. "Now. About these footsteps in your dormitory. I have a method. We draw the snake out of its hole."

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