Chapter 23

It was only after she grew up that she slowly came to understand.

For a mother, most likely, nothing mattered more than her child's safety.

Liu Zhiyi: "I really was a little terror as a kid."

She jogged up to the sixth floor and came to the master bedroom.

Having pushed through every obstacle to get here at last, Liu Zhiyi looked at the door and felt, of all things, that nervous flutter of coming home after a long time away.

But she pushed the door open anyway.

The moment she did, a rush of thoughts crossed her mind.

Holes, fish, ribs…

The weather wasn't hot, but her mother's body had been lying in the room for almost three days now.

She should have rented a refrigerated coffin; there'd been so much to deal with these past days that she'd clean forgotten…

It was a complicated feeling, honestly.

On one hand she didn't want her mother buried; on the other she didn't want to watch her mother's body… decay.

But what Liu Zhiyi smelled was osmanthus.

How could there be a smell of osmanthus?

Liu Zhiyi pressed the light switch.

The light didn't come on.

Liu Zhiyi was puzzled.

The osmanthus scent grew stronger and stronger, thick enough to make her head swim.

She took a step back — and before she could get out the door,

the door behind her swung shut.

—Bang.

---

—Bang, bang, bang.

Liu Zhiyi's head went suddenly heavy, and her body dropped as if the weight had gone out of it.

She opened her eyes to a wash of black, her head reeling, as if she'd just surfaced from a nightmare.

"Liu Zhiyi? Liu Zhiyi?"

The door was being pounded, bang bang bang, and at the same time someone outside was calling her name.

Liu Zhiyi blinked again, and after a few seconds her eyes focused enough to make out the thing on the floor.

A pale-yellow liquid was running across the tiles, several big shards of glass mixed into it, and on one of the shards she could just make out the two characters for osmanthus.

Had she knocked the perfume bottle over and smashed it?

Liu Zhiyi rubbed her head — and the perfume smell on her palm made her sneeze.

"Liu Zhiyi? Are you all right? Your grandma called me — said you weren't picking up your phone."

Liu Zhiyi sat on the floor a while before she could dig the owner of the voice out of her memory.

It was the next-door neighbor — a kind sort, who hadn't made a fuss.

Otherwise she really couldn't have kept her mother's body at home for the wake; if the neighbors had reported it to the community office or the police, her mother would have had to be sent to the funeral home.

"Liu Zhiyi?"

The voice outside rose another notch, and faintly a man's voice came through too.

"You don't think something's happened? I heard something smash in there — should we call the police?"

At that, Liu Zhiyi scrambled up off the floor at once and opened the door.

"No, no, no — auntie, uncle, I just…"

Looking at the neighbor couple standing there in their pajamas, the words caught halfway.

Hadn't she just been in the dungeon?

Liu Zhiyi stalled.

The neighbor auntie: "How many nights have you gone without sleep?"

Liu Zhiyi thought about it; her head was badly muddled, and for a moment she couldn't quite get her bearings.

"…I haven't counted."

The auntie exchanged a glance with her husband.

"Xiao Liu, go get some sleep for now; my husband and I won't bother you. If you need a hand with anything, come knock for us."

Liu Zhiyi's head was a mess, but she was grateful for the couple's kindness.

"Thank you, thank you — sorry to have troubled you, I really am…"

Once she'd seen the neighbors off, Liu Zhiyi shut the door.

She walked to the window.

Even deep in the night the city blazed with light, and the charred-cumin smell of grilled skewers came drifting over on the night wind.

She was out of the dungeon?

Liu Zhiyi: "Cat?"

She walked a circuit of the living room, but the cat didn't answer.

Lost in a fog, and with no way to reach the cat, she could only search the living room a few times over, then even opened the security door and stepped outside.

Even at this hour there were a dog-walker or two moving about the complex, and from not far off came the hiss of tires sliding over asphalt.

This was the city at night — bustling, noisy — nothing like the silent emptiness of the dungeon.

Only now did Liu Zhiyi believe she was really out of it.

Why, though?

Pulled into the dungeon out of nowhere, and out of it again just as senselessly.

Liu Zhiyi still hadn't worked out what her obsession was.

And the cat — the cat was gone too.

No knowing whether it was alive or dead.

Liu Zhiyi found that even out of the dungeon, she wasn't glad.

Because she'd worked nothing out, and managed nothing.

Liu Zhiyi lowered her head, took out her phone, and texted her grandmother that she was safe.

She half-doubted, really, whether the dungeon had been some nightmare of hers — but she pulled up her sleeves and trouser legs, ran her eyes over the wounds on her arms and legs, and turned instead toward the hospital.

While her wounds were being treated, the hospital nearly called the police; it was only after she explained for a long while that they let it drop. Partway through she took a call from her grandmother, and spun some nonsense about why she hadn't answered the night before.

Then her grandmother brought up the ground burial again.

Liu Zhiyi was already feeling frayed.

"Grandma, you can't go back to the countryside — it's barely been any time since your fall!"

In a careless moment, Liu Zhiyi scratched a piece of scab right off her hand.

"No — even with the bleeding in your head stopped, no; you can't even walk steadily, how would you get back there?"

She couldn't hold it in, and shouted:

"Can't you just not make things harder?!"

The moment the words were out, Liu Zhiyi regretted them; before she could get an apology out, the other end hung up.

Liu Zhiyi took a few deep breaths and called back.

No answer.

All she could do was send a few texts of apology, then ring the nurses' front desk at the hospital where her grandmother was staying; only after making sure her grandmother was in her ward did she let out a breath.