Chapter 10

Liu Zhiyi's heart gave a few violent thuds.

She held down the urge to jump away and made herself stand where she was.

It was a huge improvement over the start — at least she no longer sprang back the instant something frightening happened.

Liu Zhiyi felt her nerve had come a long way; even in a spot like this she could still let her mind wander.

And that wasn't all — she felt the little hand she held move a few times, as if to slip out of her grip.

Liu Zhiyi: "What's wrong?"

She thought maybe she'd seen something.

But the child mumbled a few times, and a complaining voice message came through the watch.

Zhi-Zhi: "Your palm's all sweaty."

Liu Zhiyi: "…"

Under Zhi-Zhi's complaining, she could only let go and dry her palm on her clothes, sneaking looks ahead as she wiped.

Because she couldn't see, even as she looked she worried a ghost's face might suddenly jump out at her.

Zhi-Zhi: "Don't be scared, they can't see you."

Liu Zhiyi turned her head. "Didn't you just say someone had noticed me?"

Zhi-Zhi: "I said seems! Grown-ups usually can't see you."

Little kids tended to miss the point when they talked; they needed steering.

Liu Zhiyi: "So when would a grown-up see me?"

Liu Zhiyi waited a while. First she heard a stretch of vague filler sounds, then felt an inexplicable patting on her arm — Zhi-Zhi seemed to be adding gestures to the description.

After all that, Liu Zhiyi still didn't grasp what Zhi-Zhi was trying to say.

Talking with a child this small — this was sometimes where the difficulty lay.

Liu Zhiyi glanced at the watch, checked the position of the red dot outside the market once more, and got ready to coax the words out of Zhi-Zhi slowly.

Just then her watch buzzed, and she looked down.

The task had updated.

Liu Zhiyi's spirits jumped, and she opened it at once.

[Children can always see and hear what grown-ups can't. Grown-ups just don't much like these things they can't see or hear — be careful: grown-ups can't see you, but they can touch you.]

Reading that line on the task screen, Liu Zhiyi understood what Zhi-Zhi's patting on her arm had meant.

She realized she wasn't very sharp with some clues — some things, even set right in front of her, she couldn't reason out; she had to rely on the watch to steer her.

But she'd found a new problem: maybe Zhi-Zhi was too young and couldn't express things clearly, so she couldn't count on getting accurate information from her.

And unable to see the grown-ups herself, relying only on Zhi-Zhi's word for where they stood carried a fair bit of risk.

So how was she to pin down the grown-ups' positions?

Liu Zhiyi thought of how, before the two-faced Buddha's head fell, she'd used the watch's camera to see the ghost hands pressed over her eyes.

Could the camera see ghosts?

With that in mind, she stood the watch face up again.

This kind of scene again — Liu Zhiyi could have sighed.

She remembered how one gust of wind had been aimed only at her face; if she didn't line the camera up right, a ghost's face might just jump into frame.

Liu Zhiyi closed her eyes and took another deep breath.

Back in the living room, "mama" scaring her and dredging up her grief both at once, she'd learned the game was out to break her nerve.

For now she could only hope it wouldn't be too horrible a ghost face.

Bracing herself, Liu Zhiyi turned on the camera.

Afraid of seeing the "person" Zhi-Zhi said was standing in front of her, she didn't dare turn her head, and could only roll her eyes awkwardly to one side to dodge whatever horror might be about to show on the watch.

Unexpectedly, the view was clean — no spattered blood, no gore across the floor, no bodies past describing…

None of the bloody scenes horror films always had.

The market looked just as it did to her own eyes — bright and clean, if a little grey on screen because the watch's resolution was low.

Too normal — normal enough that it struck Liu Zhiyi as abnormal.

She moved her arm, panning the lens farther out.

For fear of catching a ghost's face, she kept the lens tipped slightly down, not daring to point it straight ahead.

And as she raised the lens, Liu Zhiyi saw several pairs of legs.

Some near the produce stands, some out in the aisle — looking just like people doing ordinary shopping.

Liu Zhiyi quickly steadied herself and gave her head a hard shake.

She couldn't fully control her own mind right now; she could only shake her head until she was a touch dizzy, and empty it that way.

Then she moved the lens up further.

This time she saw the "people" whole.

Nothing like what she'd braced for — these "people" looked perfectly normal too, no deformed limbs, no terrible faces.

Men and women, different clothes, even different builds — some heavy, some thin.

Looking just like ordinary "people."

A perfectly ordinary sight, and yet it left Liu Zhiyi uneasy.

But mercifully there was nothing beyond what she could bear, and Liu Zhiyi let out a breath.

It was just that these "people," from the moment she'd started filming until now, hadn't moved at all.

In such a normal picture, people who didn't "move" — that bit of wrongness actually set her mind a little more at ease.

It was a horror game, after all; too normal was its own kind of frightening.

Was this what being gaslit felt like? Liu Zhiyi gave a wry laugh.

She shook out her hand and rolled her shoulder.

She'd been too tense, holding her arm up to film all that while, and with the injuries from the fall on top of it, now that her body had loosened, all of it ached.

This might be a bit of trouble in a moment, she thought.

The "people" weren't moving, but their placement was bad — left to right, in varied poses, they happened to have her hemmed in.

She held the watch up and looked a few more times, and once sure they hadn't moved, said quietly:

"Let's go, Zhi-Zhi."

She knew these "grown-ups" couldn't hear her, yet some nameless pressure made her lower her voice without meaning to.

Zhi-Zhi: "They're in the way."

Puzzled, Liu Zhiyi swung the watch left and right, and saw nothing blocking them.

—Huff.

She heard the sound of wind — or rather, of breathing.

Now that she could see through the watch, she could place the sounds more precisely.

The wind on the left came from a "woman" in a long-sleeved shirt; the wind on the right from a "man" turned sideways on the phone.

And straight ahead?

Liu Zhiyi could still feel that wind on her face — very close.

But when she raised the watch and looked ahead through it, there was only a "woman" a little way off, her back to her.

So where was the wind coming from?

Without the wind from left and right throwing her off, she could judge the source of the wind ahead more clearly now — she saw the hair at her cheek lifting from below, wind blowing up from underneath.

Liu Zhiyi slowly lowered her head.

An ashen face, eyes wide, appeared on the watch screen.

Of course Liu Zhiyi hadn't been able to find this face before.

Because its owner had crouched down, head tipped up.

Just looking at her like that.