Chapter 24

She hadn't expected that outside the dungeon, real life wouldn't be much more peaceful either.

Liu Zhiyi rubbed her eyes.

She'd meant to contact the funeral home for a refrigerated coffin, to freeze her mother first, and while she was at it see whether she could borrow a vehicle from them to take her mother back to the old home.

Luckily, back in her mother's home village, the village head had agreed to let her mother be buried there.

Some country places are like that — a daughter married out can't be buried in the ancestral grave.

Her mother's village wasn't so feudal about it, but between contacting people, and slipping cigarettes and cash to line up the Daoist and the four big men to carry the coffin, Liu Zhiyi was worn ragged.

She'd only just gotten everyone lined up when her grandmother insisted that in the first days after a death you mustn't move the body carelessly, or the soul would be in great pain leaving it — she wouldn't let the body be taken back to the countryside until a few days had passed.

Liu Zhiyi spent hours sweet-talking the neighbors upstairs and down, and slipped them some money too, before they'd let the matter of a body being kept in the flat go without complaint.

Honestly, the day she went into the dungeon, Liu Zhiyi had been at the very end of her strength.

She'd been strung tight the whole time, with so much to do, never a moment to let go.

She ran through the plan for the next few days in her head. Since the inpatient ward didn't open until eight in the morning, that meant from now until eight she had nothing she had to do.

…At last, a moment to relax.

The thought had barely formed when she felt her body ache — her limbs sore beyond bearing, her eyelids leaden; all the pain and exhaustion she'd held down came bursting out at once.

Liu Zhiyi forced herself into a taxi and went home from the hospital.

She fell asleep against the back seat almost the moment she got in; it took the driver waking her before she came round a little.

But the fog didn't lift from her body.

Liu Zhiyi was still so tired. She wanted so badly to sleep.

She opened the bedroom door.

It was pure muscle memory — whenever she came home, her mother had her sleep in the master bedroom.

So when she saw her mother on the bed, covered with a white cloth, Liu Zhiyi went blank for a moment.

Whether it was that she was too tired, or that too much had happened in this stretch of time —

in that moment Liu Zhiyi forgot she had to be up early tomorrow for the hospital, forgot she still had to arrange things for her mother's burial, forgot the work she hadn't finished and her boss's messages on WeChat asking, half-idly, when she'd be back…

forgot her mother was dead.

She rushed to the bed and seized the hand under the quilt.

"Mama, I'm so tired."

"Grandma's pushing me, my boss is pushing me, they're all pushing me… I can't cry, I'm in the dungeon, I mustn't get upset, I have to control my emotions, I mustn't miss you too much…"

She held her mother's hand.

"It hurts so much, Mama…"

She didn't dare tell the neighbors, didn't dare tell her friends, didn't dare tell her grandmother…

She didn't understand why life could turn like this overnight — her grandmother's fall, her mother's leaving…

The day before, they'd still been on a video call, her mother smiling, asking when she'd be home to eat, telling her not to stay up late and to cut down on takeout…

Why? Why?

Liu Zhiyi: "Mama… Mama…"

She really, truly couldn't hold on any longer.

Liu Zhiyi felt the hand in hers seem to move.

She saw the bedroom light flickering, saw the white cloth over her mother rise.

She heard a cat cry.

Cat: "Just as I thought…"

She saw the sports watch on her wrist melt and re-form into the kids' smartwatch.

Cat: "The dungeon has a mechanism — you must have noticed. If your emotions swing too hard — in your case, if your heart rate goes over a certain number — it triggers an instant-catch."

Liu Zhiyi was still dazed, but she dimly recalled that when she'd first entered the dungeon, the safe room had been wrecked exactly this way.

Cat: "Some dungeons are cunning; they let the player out on purpose."

She watched the white cloth rise higher and higher, a human shape faintly under it.

Cat: "Because they know the things the dungeon conjures can't stir the player's feelings anymore. Some players with firm wills can always tell the dungeon from reality, and so keep their emotions in check…"

The kids' watch flashed red, current striking her wrist without pause, her heart rate climbing and climbing.

Cat: "But reality is different. A person can't control their feelings perfectly in reality forever; everyone has moments when they let go…"

The heart rate on the watch stopped at one number — 205.

The white cloth slid off "mama's" body.

Liu Zhiyi sat down, tears rolling from her eyes.

Cat: "At a moment like this, it can catch the player, ignoring every rule."

The white cloth dropped over her.

In that instant, Liu Zhiyi lost the will to fight.

She sat there dumbly, wrapped in the white cloth.

"Mama": "Zhizhi…"

Liu Zhiyi lay in the cloth without moving; all at once she didn't want to struggle.

She was tired, so terribly tired.

Real life was no better than the dungeon; Liu Zhiyi honestly half-wished she could just end it all here.

But after a while, no butcher's knife came down. Instead she was dragged to the living room and tied to a chair.

The dining table was set in front of her.

Caramel-colored sweet-and-sour ribs steamed on their plate; stir-fried leaf lettuce lay evenly spread on another, minced meat soaking in the sauce — perfect for mixing into rice later.

And there was soup.

Winter-melon and rib soup, the broth clear, chunks of the corn she liked floating in it.

"Mama" scooped a bowl of rice and pushed it in front of her.

No flying cleaver, no face lunging out of the dark.

Only a table of hot, fragrant food.

But that made Liu Zhiyi angrier than any cruelty could have.

All the days of pent-up misery burst out at once.

Liu Zhiyi: "What is it you actually want?!!"

She shouted, tears spraying out, and by the end she didn't know whether she was shouting at "mama" or at herself.

Liu Zhiyi: "My obsession… what is it, Mama? What do I actually want?"

"Mama" sat across the table.

The places of the person and the ghost had swapped — she was the hysterical one now, and "mama" watched her calmly.

"Mama": "Zhizhi, eat."

Liu Zhiyi had no will left to struggle.

She felt like a deflated ball that wouldn't fill out again no matter what.

She lifted her arm.

"Mama" had tied up her whole body, leaving only the arms free — to let her eat, most likely.

Liu Zhiyi picked up the bowl and shoveled in a big mouthful of rice.

There was nothing strange about the taste; the rice was soft and warm, and the moment it went in it warmed her whole body.

"Mama": "Don't just eat rice — have some of the dishes."

Liu Zhiyi spooned a big scoop of eggplant over her rice.

Eggplant over rice really was good; it woke her appetite, and she spooned several more scoops of eggplant onto the rice and ate.

"Mama": "Try the soup."

The soup was good too, made with fresh winter melon and corn, sweet on the aftertaste.

"Mama": "Greens — you must hardly eat any greens out there."

Liu Zhiyi took several chopstickfuls of the greens; there was green chili in with them, and plain stir-fried they'd have had little flavor, but with the chili she could always manage a few more bites.

"Mama": "The ribs — have the ribs, they're your favorite."

Liu Zhiyi stopped, chopsticks in hand.

She looked at "mama." Ever since she'd been pulled back into the dungeon, "mama" had been impossibly gentle, and it left her a little off-balance.

But every time she came home from out of town —

for the first few days, her mother would be very gentle with her, making whatever she wanted to eat.

"Mama": "What is it? The food not to your taste?"

Liu Zhiyi shook her head.

In a daze, she felt as if she'd gone back to a scene of just having come home.

Her mother not dead, sitting and eating with her at the table.

"I ask you things and you never answer."

"Mama" laid a piece of sweet-and-sour rib in her bowl.

"You run into trouble out there and never tell me, and only when you can't take it anymore do you come cry at my bedside."

Liu Zhiyi froze. "…Mama."

"Mama": "When you're coming home — you know what's in your head, don't you?"

Liu Zhiyi lowered her head and looked at the rib in her bowl.

—Plop.

A big drop of water fell into the bowl.

On the high-speed train home, what did she use to think about?

Liu Zhiyi: "…I want to go home. I want to eat Mama's cooking."

"Mama" smiled.

"That's right."

"Mama" stood up. "Living on your own from now on, remember to turn off the water and power when you go out, and check the gas is off too."

—Crack.

A fissure split open across the wall, like a crack bursting through a smooth mirror.

"Mama": "And cut down on takeout."

—Crack, crack.

The fissures spread onto "mama's" body.

Liu Zhiyi: "Mama… Mama…"

She reached out, straining to catch hold of "mama," but "mama" had become a phantom, drifting slowly past her side, leaving only a hanger behind.

"Mama": "And don't leave your things lying around — there'll be no one to tidy up after you now; what will you do when you lose something?"

Liu Zhiyi: "…Mama!"

The watch screen began to glow.

The tools tab updated.

[Hanger: When you meet again, the child who's made trouble gets a good scolding — but only mama holds back for her child's sake; safety matters most, after all.]

"Mama": "And try not to go leaping around upstairs — it's too dangerous."

"Mama": "What are you hesitating for? Hurry and eat the ribs — they're no good cold."

Liu Zhiyi, in tears, bit into a rib.

The sweet-sour taste flooded her whole mouth — only this time "mama" had put in a lot of sugar, and it was sweet, very sweet.

The fissures covered the whole flat; through the gaps she saw the window, a shaft of golden light shining straight in.

Then she saw things peeling away from the room, transparent shard after shard breaking further and scattering on the wind.

More and more light poured in.

Day had broken.

Liu Zhiyi stared blankly at the dining table; its surface was empty now.

Only a phone lay on it, the screen still on a days-old text.

Mom: Zhizhi, coming home Saturday? What do you feel like eating? Sweet-and-sour ribs?

The task bar on the watch updated.

[Sweet Home task complete.]

[Sometimes an obsession isn't so complicated — maybe just a word left unsaid, a meal never eaten.]

A long time passed, or maybe only a few minutes.

Liu Zhiyi drew a sharp breath.

As if startled by the sound of her own breathing, she sprang up from the chair and paced back and forth across the living room a few times.

She'd fallen into that lost, locked-up state again; beyond pacing the living room, she genuinely didn't know what to do.

It was only when she saw the half-open bedroom door that she came to as if from a dream and ran into the master bedroom.

Her mother still lay on the bed; without a thought she flung herself onto it and gathered her mother into her arms.

But once she had, her mother's body slid downward; she tugged at her mother's hand several times, and the moment she laid it on her shoulder it slipped limply off to one side.

Liu Zhiyi clutched at it uselessly a few times, then couldn't hold back any longer and wailed aloud.

She didn't know how long she cried — she may even have cried herself into a faint partway through.

—Ring-a-ling.

Liu Zhiyi was startled awake by her phone alarm.

She opened her eyes blearily; she'd cried so hard they'd swollen to slits, and it took some effort to get them open at all.

But the moment she saw the time on the phone screen, Liu Zhiyi was instantly awake.

At eight she had to go to the hospital to see her grandmother.

She laid her mother back down on the bed, ran into the bathroom for a bucket of water, and wiped away all the tear-tracks and bloodstains on her mother's body.

As she wiped, Liu Zhiyi noticed something was off.

The "holes" on her mother's face were gone.

The sunken temples had filled out; the eye sockets had risen again.

The process of decay on the body had run backward, as if it had returned to the moment her mother had just died.

She looked, for all the world, as if she were asleep.

Liu Zhiyi touched her mother's face.

"The dungeon affects reality."

Liu Zhiyi lowered her head and saw a cat's head rolling at the edge of the bed.

"I'm sorry — the dungeon only let you out that time, not me."

Liu Zhiyi: "It's fine. In the dungeon you could barely look after yourself."

Besides, right now her mind was all on her mother; she'd forgotten about the cat entirely.

"Does the dungeon affect how fast a body decays?"

Cat: "No — it's that you didn't want your mother's body to decay."

Liu Zhiyi froze. "If my obsession can form a dungeon, and the dungeon can affect reality, then could my mother…"

The cat cut her off without mercy: "A dungeon can't raise the dead. Its influence is limited."

Liu Zhiyi lowered her head.

Cat: "Sorry — I didn't warn you beforehand that dungeons let players out."

Liu Zhiyi wiped the specks of blood off her mother's face — her own, from her arm.

"Are there many cases involving the dungeons?"

Cat: "…Many."

"Then what's there to apologize for?" Liu Zhiyi answered calmly. She felt her frame of mind had changed — she'd suddenly come to see a great many things more lightly. "You can't possibly tell me every case; there isn't the time."

Cat: "The truth is, a dungeon letting someone out isn't common — but when it happens, it's basically a death trap."

Liu Zhiyi stopped what she was doing.

"Novice dungeons are different from the ones that come later." The cat's head rolled from the bed's edge to her hand. "In a novice dungeon, basically as long as you think a few things through and don't have too strong a desire to stay, the boss won't really do anything to you."

Liu Zhiyi: "Is that because novice dungeons are mostly single-player, born of the player's own obsession?"

Cat: "Mm."

Liu Zhiyi thought of the long speech "mama" had made before the dungeon closed, and slowly she came to understand what the cat had said — that in a single-player dungeon, the boss's kill-intent doesn't come from the player's own obsession, but from some ghostly thing meddling.

Liu Zhiyi: "I could feel it… 'mama' loves me."

Cat: "My guess is that your later obsession outweighed the malice of that ghostly thing behind the dungeon — so even after the instant-catch triggered, she didn't kill you."

"But you still need to watch out." The cat rambled on. "It's only novice dungeons where the mechanism catches you; in someone else's dungeon, that instant-catch turns into an instant-kill."

Cat: "A single-player boss comes from your own obsession and might sometimes hold back — but in a multiplayer dungeon, or in a dungeon born of someone else's obsession, those bosses won't hold back for a stranger."

Liu Zhiyi rolled off the bed.

Cat: "What are you doing? Hear me out first."

She dragged a cardboard box out from under the bed and dug through it, head down.

"Looking for a plush toy."

Liu Zhiyi tore the tape off several boxes and pulled the toys out of them.

She didn't actually know whether there'd be a plush prop; all she could do was keep the wish going in her head.

The cat gave a small meow. "Take your time looking, then — shall I go on?"

Liu Zhiyi wiped her eyes and piled the toys she'd taken out to one side.

Cat: "If you meet a newcomer in a later dungeon and want to lend a hand, whatever you do, don't be like me and reel off a whole speech before you're even out of the dungeon."

Liu Zhiyi turned up the plush toys her mother had made.

Cat: "It's really dangerous — knowing too much can sometimes shape a person's thoughts."

Nothing, nothing.

Liu Zhiyi kneaded the toy in her hands, turning it over and over.

Cat: "I wouldn't tell anyone but a player about the game either. A dungeon comes from obsession, in the end, and it's tied to a person's thoughts; if an ordinary person learns too much about the game, they might turn into a player too."

Liu Zhiyi turned the box upside down and gathered all the plush toys together in one go.

But no. Still no.

Was she, in the end, doomed to want and want and never have?

The cat let out a slow sigh. "It doesn't matter whether you find it…"

"It matters to me." Liu Zhiyi hugged the plush toys. "I don't want… anyone to leave me again."

The cat rolled down off the bed, scattering scraps of cotton across the floor, and by the time it rolled to her side its once-plump head had gone flat.

"You'll have to get used to it. Play this game and you have to learn to face partings."

"I won't listen."

Liu Zhiyi covered her ears; she wanted to cry again.

But she'd cried too much — her eyes were dry now, with no tears left to come.

She clutched the plush toys tight, but the cat's head pushed its way into her arms, pressing its wet nose against her cheek, tender and firm, making her open her eyes.

Cat: "You have to learn. You need to grow a harder heart, or the road ahead will be very hard to walk."

Cat: "It's all right, open your eyes… huh?"

The plush toy in Liu Zhiyi's arms moved.

She opened her eyes; a little bear knitted out of yarn was standing up in her arms.

[Bear Guoguo: The little girl threw a tantrum and would have no toy but that teddy bear — but it had long been out of stock, so mama could only knit one to give her, hoping little Zhizhi would cheer up once she had the bear.]

Liu Zhiyi stared dumbly at the update in the watch's tools tab.

The yarn of the knitted bear lifted into the air, as if someone were unpicking the thread-ends, and the rising yarn joined itself to the cat's head.

The tools tab kept updating.

[A toy bear poured full of mama's love; whoever holds this bear will love you the way mama does.]

Cat: "So there really is a plush prop…"

It kicked its newly joined yarn hind legs. A felt-and-cotton cat head atop a yarn body made for an odd sort of creature, but at least the cat's head had filled out again.

The cat laid a yarn paw on the back of her hand. "Thanks. Can you tell me how you came up with a toy prop?"

Liu Zhiyi glanced at the prop's description; hard as it was to say aloud, she told the whole story from beginning to end.

The cat marveled: "Your feelings for your mother really do run deep — the props are basically all tied to her. I suppose I've borrowed some of your mother's light… From now on I'll love you the way she did."

Liu Zhiyi covered her face.

It sprang, meowing, onto her shoulder.

"But turning the extension of your obsession for your mother onto me still seems a bit of a waste to me. You may not grasp it now, but a depth of feeling like this comes rarely and can't be forced; you may never get another chance to remake a prop like this."

Liu Zhiyi closed her hand and grabbed its mouth shut.

"Quiet down. I know what I'm doing."

She had more or less worked out how props came to be.

It was obsession again: when you want something strongly enough, a prop can be born.

She lifted the cat down off her shoulder and gathered it into her arms.

"What I want most right now is for someone to keep me company… a cat will do."

The cat rested its head against her arm, its round cheeks squashing flat on one side.

Liu Zhiyi watched its face, expecting it to say something.

Instead it just put out two yarn paws and kneaded at her arm.

Liu Zhiyi laughed in spite of herself and rubbed the cat's head.

They say small animals help settle the feelings, and hers really did feel a good deal better.

She pulled herself together; the next thing was to gather her things and go to the hospital.

Liu Zhiyi changed and washed up quickly, and pressed a bag of ice to her eyes.

Yesterday's phone call had ended on a sour note, and if she showed up with eyes this swollen it might upset her grandmother all over again.

Once everything was in order, the cat slipped into the backpack she was taking out.

She pulled open the security door, paused, then raised a hand and waved it behind her.

"I'm off, Mama."

---

A hospital is an oppressive place.

It wasn't even half past seven, and the inpatient elevator was already packed.

Weariness and numbness crawled over every face in it; apart from the hum of the elevator running, it was very quiet.

But once the doors opened and she'd crossed the elevator lobby, it turned noisy again.

Figures coming and going, hospital beds lined up against the corridor walls, the smell of disinfectant drifting in the air, and from some ward or other, low sobbing and the bickering of families on the phone over who would come to take the next shift.

Liu Zhiyi felt as if she'd sunk into a boiling bog.

Cat: "Wah… a real hotspot for dungeons."

The cat's voice sounded in Liu Zhiyi's head.

Liu Zhiyi gave the cat's head a light pat through the bag.

Then she lowered her head, stopped looking around, and walked briskly toward the ward.

Nearer the ward, the sounds grew more of a jumble.

"Nurse, could you keep it down during the morning rounds? My mother only just got to sleep, and you've gone and woken her — a patient needs rest to begin with…"

Liu Zhiyi turned her head and saw a woman, a patient's family member, talking to a nurse.

Liu Zhiyi met the woman's eyes, and the two of them gave each other a slight nod across the distance, by way of a greeting.

Before, it had been her mother looking after her grandmother; on the phone her mother had mentioned this woman — surname Ma, everyone at the hospital called her Big Sister Ma.

Like her grandmother, whose fall had caused a brain bleed, Big Sister Ma's father had been sent to the younger son's home to be cared for.

Then he'd fallen there — and old people can't take a fall; he'd been knocked out cold on the spot.

No telling what the younger son's family had been thinking: they didn't send him to the hospital, just left him lying in bed.

It was Big Sister Ma's daughter, back to see her grandfather — a nurse — who peeled his eyelid up and saw his pupils hadn't blown; there was still a chance. That was how he'd ended up at the hospital.

When the younger son heard he was to go to the hospital, he cursed Big Sister Ma's daughter for meddling; it was only because Big Sister Ma stood firm that the old man got there at all.

The younger son's family hadn't come to the hospital once, to this day.

Big Sister Ma had poured out the whole tale to every patient and family in the ward; at the time Liu Zhiyi had been wholly taken up with her mother's affairs and with her grandmother, and remembered only dimly that Big Sister Ma's father had shown favoritism, leaving all the property to the younger son.

Liu Zhiyi could barely stretch herself in two as it was, with no spare heart to spend on other families' unhappy stories — but hearing this one, she couldn't help a pang of sorrow all the same.

She glanced at her own family's bed; her grandmother was still sitting up, her head drooping like that.

Liu Zhiyi leaned in for a closer look and found she'd fallen asleep.

Some old people are like that — lying down, they can't sleep soundly.

Liu Zhiyi picked up the pillow and eased it in behind her grandmother's back, nudging her back a little so she leaned against it, then pulled the quilt up over her.

As she neared the head of the bed, she suddenly caught a whiff of fragrance.

Not the scent of a flower basket, nor the sweetness of fruit.

Flower baskets and fruit were the usual things people brought to a patient; Liu Zhiyi drew a breath without thinking and found the fragrance had a top, a middle, and a base — it smelled like perfume.

Liu Zhiyi turned toward the scent and met the eyes of the woman in the next bed.

The woman was drawing back the curtain around her bed.

Liu Zhiyi went still for a moment.

People staying in a hospital are either worn gaunt by their illness or wrapped in the gloom of their families' worry.

To come, without warning, upon an elderly woman in clean, neat clothes, wearing perfume, two curls of hair at her temples and a square magnolia-shaped clip in her hair —

How lovely, Liu Zhiyi thought.

The woman smiled. "Good morning."

"Good morning." Liu Zhiyi smiled back.

Liu Zhiyi turned and tucked in the corner of her grandmother's quilt.

But the edge of her gaze kept drifting to the woman despite her.

The woman held her back very straight; up out of bed, she first shifted the plastic vase at the head of the bed and fussed with the fresh flowers in it.

Then, bracing on the bed rail, she inched forward step by step, unsteady on her feet.

Liu Zhiyi started; then she saw the care worker go to support her, only to be waved off.

"Thank you, but I'm not so ill I can't move yet."

"Rong… Rong…"

Liu Zhiyi snatched her gaze back at once and turned to catch her grandmother's flailing arm.

Her mother's full name was Liu Rong.

"Where is this?" Her grandmother was still calling out, eyes half open, staring straight ahead. "Rong, how could you dump your own mother in a place like this?"

Liu Zhiyi pinched her grandmother's hand and said nothing.

Grandmother: "Rong, why won't you come see your mother? You're so hard-hearted…"

Liu Zhiyi still said nothing, and the others in the ward went on with their own business, as if long used to scenes like this.

She held her grandmother's hand and waited quietly.

After a long while, she heard her grandmother let out a breath, and the muddled calling stopped.

Grandmother: "Oh, you're here. What are you holding my hand for?"

Liu Zhiyi let go.

Her grandmother opened her eyes, her gaze landing squarely on her, brows slightly drawn.

"Is the car back home all arranged?"

Liu Zhiyi nodded, thought of the delirious state her grandmother had just been in, and swallowed what she'd been about to say.

Grandmother: "I don't have many years left as it is. If you won't let me go to my own daughter's burial, do you mean for me to die with my eyes open?"

Liu Zhiyi sighed. In the dungeon she could at least dodge "mama"; in reality, facing a grandmother past all reasoning, she was truly worn to the bone.

"Don't talk like that, Grandma."

Grandmother: "Discharge me tomorrow. There's no sense in staying on here."

Liu Zhiyi: "Don't rush — I still have to find a caregiver first…"

"What caregiver?" Her grandmother cut her off flat. "Does a caregiver come free? I can still move about now. Once your mother's buried, you go back to work. Having you in front of me all day just vexes me."

Liu Zhiyi shut her mouth; she knew that if this went on, she'd end up quarreling with her grandmother again.

She picked up the thermos from the bedhead. "Let me get you some hot water. Is there anything you'd like this morning?"

Grandmother: "Wontons."

Liu Zhiyi lifted the thermos.

Big Sister Ma picked up her basin. "Wait for me — we'll go together."

Liu Zhiyi saw the towel in her basin still steaming, and on the bed behind her an old man lying flat, eye sockets sunken, mouth open, not stirring at all.

Big Sister Ma's father was in far worse shape than her grandmother; a month in the hospital and still unable to manage on his own, wholly dependent on family for food, drink, and everything else.

Out of the ward, Big Sister Ma struck up a conversation.

"Don't hold it against your grandma. Patients her age are just like this — muddled — especially with an illness tied to the brain."

It was true; over these days of caring for her grandmother, Liu Zhiyi had found she'd sometimes ramble.

Before she'd fallen ill she'd been clear-spoken and thoroughly capable.

"Haah…"

Big Sister Ma shook out the towel in her basin.

"Fall ill, and there's no reason left, no dignity left…"

"Yes…"

Liu Zhiyi walked into the tea room; she rather liked talking with Big Sister Ma.

For one thing Big Sister Ma was cheerful and fond of talking; for another, she was about her mother's age, so there was a warmth to it.

Big Sister Ma sighed. "Once you're ill, no matter how educated you are, you're brought low."

The words came a little out of nowhere; Liu Zhiyi turned her head.

Big Sister Ma soaked the towel in the basin. "I forgot you went home last night — the Teacher Yang in the next bed."

Teacher Yang?

Liu Zhiyi: "The lady with the clip in her hair?"

Big Sister Ma: "Yes, yes. She seems so cultured, doesn't she, always so polite when she speaks — but you didn't see her at night. She's like a different person, cursing, the ugliest words, hard even to listen to."

Liu Zhiyi thought of the vase Teacher Yang kept at her bedhead and could hardly believe it.

Big Sister Ma shook out the washed towel. "She's had a stroke, I think. Such a dignified person by day, and by night she goes muddled and curses everything, like something's possessed her…"

She shook her head as she said it.

"All of them pitiful people."

"I've told my daughter," Big Sister Ma laid the towel over the basin, "if I get old and end up like this — paralyzed and unable to move, or muddled and not knowing anyone — then don't treat me. Otherwise the children suffer and so do I."

For a moment Liu Zhiyi had no words.

Her life had swung suddenly onto a heavy, painful road she'd never once imagined.

After she'd fetched the water and bought breakfast, and her grandmother had fallen asleep again, Liu Zhiyi began to sit and stare.

By rights, with no work on her hands just now and the arrangements for her mother's burial more or less ready, she should have made good use of the rare free time to rest.

But she couldn't sleep; she couldn't take in a novel; she had no heart for short videos.

In that moment Liu Zhiyi seemed to have lost every interest and pastime she had, and could only pace the corridor, on edge, back and forth.

And then, in the blink of an eye, night fell again.

Liu Zhiyi set about a new round of busyness.

She took out the thermos and, plastic basin in hand, joined the long line in the tea room, waiting for hot water.

One flask of hot, one of cold.

Liu Zhiyi: "Come, Grandma, let's wipe you down."

Her grandmother started up again about being discharged.

Liu Zhiyi made vague sounds of agreement and helped her grandmother into the ward's bathroom.

"Grandma, hold the handrail tight."

Liu Zhiyi carried in a wooden chair, and once her grandmother was steady on it, poured water into the basin.

The water in the bathroom wasn't hot enough; her grandmother complained it wasn't nice to soak her feet in.

And while she was wiping her grandmother's feet, her grandmother insisted on lifting one.

"Don't crouch to wipe — stand up."

The moment her grandmother raised a foot, the wooden chair under her began to rock.

"No, no, no — I'm fine crouching… you hold on to the handrail beside you."

The words were barely out when her grandmother's foot slipped in the basin; the chair under her gave a creak, and she toppled to one side.

Liu Zhiyi threw herself at her, grabbing hard at her grandmother's waist — but lost her own balance and went down onto the floor.

—Bang.

The kicked-over basin rolled and slammed to the ground, breaking a big hole in it, hot water splashing everywhere.

Liu Zhiyi hit the floor hard enough to see stars, but feeling the weight bearing down on her, she forced her eyes open.

Her grandmother had come down on top of her, one hand gripping the handrail on the wall — she'd fallen, but hadn't hit the ground.

Liu Zhiyi: "…Grandma, are you all right?"

She held her grandmother's waist, her knees and elbows burning.

Her grandmother pushed with her hands as if to get up off her, but her two legs scrabbled at the floor a few times without finding purchase and slid limply to one side.

"How can I be this useless!"

Her grandmother suddenly roared, her free hand striking hard at her own leg.

"How can I be this useless!!"

Liu Zhiyi: "Grandma, it's all right…"

What followed was a blur; a nurse pulled the bathroom door open and lifted her grandmother off the floor, but she kept on hitting her own leg.

Liu Zhiyi's mind went blank; she ran back and forth alongside the nurse, and it took a long time to settle her grandmother down enough to sleep.

Nurse: "Go and change your clothes."

Only when reminded did Liu Zhiyi notice she was soaked through.

"Thank you, thank you."

She hadn't brought a change of clothes; it was Big Sister Ma who lent her some.

Liu Zhiyi took the clothes into the bathroom, swept the shards of the broken basin into the bin, and only once it was all cleaned up did she start to undress in front of the mirror.

Her head was still foggy — until she saw herself in the glass.

Her hair hung wet and stuck to her face, and on top of her head was a great tangled mass of it, bits of red plastic basin caught in the snarls.

Her chin had bruised too, probably knocked when she caught her grandmother.

Liu Zhiyi touched her chin, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

She had to cover her mouth, or the sound of her crying would leak out.

Liu Zhiyi closed her eyes, looked at the mirror no longer, and with her hand over her mouth rushed under the showerhead, until her breathing was steady and the tears had stopped; only then did she turn off the water and dry herself quickly.

Changed, Liu Zhiyi left the bathroom and hurried back to her grandmother's bed.

"She slept well. No fuss."

Liu Zhiyi turned toward the voice.

Teacher Yang was sitting up on her bed, a little table set in front of her, a small vase standing at its corner.

A pale-yellow copybook lay flat on the table.

Teacher Yang lifted her pen, then set it aside.

"Wipe your face."

A pack of tissues was held out to her.

Liu Zhiyi paused; she'd been so taken up with washing her hair and body that she'd forgotten her face.

"…Thank you."

She tore open the packet.

The scent of jasmine drifted out of it — and more than that, the tissues were printed with little green flowers.

Teacher Yang: "I like to grow flowers. They live even when you cut back their leaves and stems, so I've come to feel there's no hardship in this world you can't get through."

Liu Zhiyi: "Thank you."

---

The ward wasn't big, and with a care worker and Big Sister Ma putting up folding beds to sleep on, plus Liu Zhiyi, there was hardly a place to put a foot down.

So Liu Zhiyi went out and set up a small folding bed against the wall outside the ward.

The hospital wasn't quiet at night; even in the corridor Liu Zhiyi could hear, now and then, someone crying in a muffled voice, and the light at the nurses' station stayed on the whole time.

It was a hard place to fall asleep in.

Liu Zhiyi turned over on the bed for a long while before she drifted, half-dazed, toward sleep.

"Meow."

She was startled awake by a cat's cry.

Liu Zhiyi gave the cat's head in the bag a hard rub — but she quickly sensed something was wrong.

The light at the nurses' station had gone out.

The corridor was very quiet.

Liu Zhiyi scrambled up off the folding bed and rushed into the ward.

Big Sister Ma and her father were still there; her grandmother was still there too…

Only.

She saw that Teacher Yang's bed was empty, and the care worker was gone as well.

Liu Zhiyi pulled open the bathroom door and searched the ward on tiptoe, but found no one.

She did notice that the vase at the head of Teacher Yang's bed was gone.

Liu Zhiyi remembered that Teacher Yang always changed the vase water with cooled boiled water.

She thought a moment and decided to go and check the tea room first.

Earlier the nurses' station had been lit and voices had drifted now and then down the corridor; Liu Zhiyi had only found it noisy. Now, dark and silent, the pitch-black corridor looked a good deal more frightening.

At least the green sign over the emergency exit was still lit, so she wasn't left entirely in the dark.

But as she went deeper, Liu Zhiyi saw that the beds along the corridor were empty too.

To not realize by now that something was wrong — that would be plain foolish.

Liu Zhiyi stopped.

Just then, she suddenly caught the smell of perfume.

It was Teacher Yang's.

Liu Zhiyi: "Teacher Yang?"

A black shape rose up from the floor.

Liu Zhiyi startled, but relaxed when she saw the magnolia clip on the figure's head.

"What's the matter?"

The figure shuddered, its shoulders twisting backward.

Liu Zhiyi heard some sounds, like someone speaking — but so faint they came out as breathy air held in the mouth, one after another.