Chapter 39

Liu Zhiyi propped up her head. "Why am I tying myself in knots again — I really am hopeless."

She threw off the tangle of thoughts, pressed the phone to her forehead, shut her eyes, and dialed.

—Beep.

The instant the busy tone sounded, another noise rang out in the corridor.

—Ring, ring, ring.

It was the phone's ringtone.

Liu Zhiyi stopped, crawled out from under the bed, and followed the ringing.

It was on this floor.

But with each step she took closer, the ringing moved a good stretch farther off.

Liu Zhiyi stopped and sighed.

"Grandma, stop hiding — do you really mean to worry me to death?"

As her voice fell, the call connected.

Liu Zhiyi's heart leapt, but her mouth opened and no words came.

And so, for a second, she and the other end held the silence together.

It was the cat pawing at her that made Liu Zhiyi hurry to speak.

"I'm sorry, Grandma. I shouldn't have spoken to you that way before."

"…You weren't wrong, either."

Liu Zhiyi startled at the childlike voice on the other end.

Grandma: "If only I'd woken up."

Liu Zhiyi thought of the saying — the old grow young, the older the younger.

She coaxed her gently. "You were sick. It's normal not to wake."

Grandma: "I was sick — I wasn't dead!"

At that, Liu Zhiyi's temper flared up at once; somehow, facing family, the anger just gets away from you sometimes.

Liu Zhiyi: "What is it you want me to say?"

Grandma: "I know you blame me."

"Yes." Liu Zhiyi said. "I do blame you!"

Grandma: "See, now you've said what's really in your heart — you just want to throw me away…"

"Then why can't you see how good I am to you?" Liu Zhiyi shouted. "I wipe you clean, I buy your meals, I stay with you…"

Tears streamed down Liu Zhiyi's face. "Grandma, it's me looking after you."

The other end went quiet.

Liu Zhiyi: "Yes, sometimes I get fed up, and I quarrel with you, and sometimes I even think, how can this little old lady be so hard to look after… but I've never once thought of throwing you away."

Some things are hard to say at the best of times, but once you start, there's no stopping.

Liu Zhiyi: "I blame you over Mama, and to this day I can't get past it… but I don't want you to leave me either. I want to eat the fish you make, I want to go home with you, I want to hold you and cry…"

"What do I do if you go — what do I do?"

"Grandma… Grandma, you're all I have left."

—Waaah.

A cry burst out in the corridor.

A small shape ran out of a ward.

Liu Zhiyi watched the little shape grow bigger and bigger, running slower and slower, aging bit by bit from a small child with a head full of blood.

At last it became an old woman on unsteady legs, staggering toward her.

Then it opened its arms and gathered her in.

"Zhizhi, Grandma's here."

Liu Zhiyi knew this was no time to hold each other and weep.

But the moment she saw her grandmother, the tears wouldn't stop.

In the end it was her grandmother who cried herself out, fell asleep against her shoulder, before Liu Zhiyi caught her breath.

She stroked her grandmother's face, checking her forehead and the back of her head bit by bit.

The blood had dried on her face, but the cracks that had spilled it were all gone.

Liu Zhiyi cradled her grandmother's head, her own face pressed to her forehead.

"Thank god, thank god… she's changed back."

"A few words and she changed back." The cat lay on Liu Zhiyi's shoulder, clicking its tongue in wonder. "The magic of family."

Liu Zhiyi wiped the blood from her grandmother's face with her sleeve. "Mutating remakes the body, doesn't it?"

When her grandmother had mutated, she'd run down several floors and Liu Zhiyi couldn't catch her; now that she'd changed back, she'd cried a while and grown drowsy and slumped into her arms.

Teacher Yang was the same — she couldn't beat her even with a knife.

So how was she to kill Teacher Yang?

Cat: "Right — which is why some people don't want to leave once they're in a dungeon. Real life is all sickness and pain; where's it as comfortable as a dungeon, where you can vent every bad feeling besides?"

The cat looked at her grandmother. "Your grandma gave up a comfortable body — in a way, that means she loves you quite a lot too."

Liu Zhiyi held her grandmother, laid her on a bed, took off the coat and draped it over her.

"Of course my grandma loves me. Keep an eye on her — I'll go find a wheelchair."

On the way, Liu Zhiyi watched a while and found Big Sister Ma stayed only in the stairwell.

She went back and asked the cat.

The cat told her, "Ghosts have their territories too."

So passing the stairwell, Liu Zhiyi glanced at the phone in her hand.

The phone could pull people from outside the dungeon in, but it was too uncontrollable, and from the description the malice all but spilled off it.

Besides, she'd used both her chances; the phone wasn't much use to her now.

Liu Zhiyi stood at the fire door and looked in through the gap.

Big Sister Ma was curled up at a turn in the stairs, head down, crying.

The sobs were mixed with garbled air-sounds.

"My daughter… my baby…"

Liu Zhiyi paused, ill at ease.

Then she heard Big Sister Ma say —

"I hate it… I really hate it… why me?"

Liu Zhiyi turned away; she'd found a wheelchair, and really she shouldn't be minding any of this.

But there was just… an unease she couldn't put into words.

So she pushed the wheelchair to her grandmother's side, and first checked her over.

Cat: "Breathing's steady, sleeping soundly — stop touching her, you'll wake her."

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment, lifted her grandmother into the wheelchair, pushed her into a ward off to the side, then moved her under the bed.

Cat: "What are you doing?"

Liu Zhiyi: "Hiding her."

Once she was well hidden, Liu Zhiyi fixed her eyes on the cat and asked.

"Can Big Sister Ma leave her territory?"

Cat: "Normally, no — that's exactly how I shook her off before. What are you planning?"

"I've just got something stuck in my chest." Liu Zhiyi closed her eyes. "Why should Big Sister Ma care for the old man and still end up dead in the dungeon, while Ma Qirong's son does nothing and comes out of it clean?"

"I understand." The cat lifted a paw and waved it toward the door. "Then go do what you want to do. The dungeon's bitter enough — you've got to do something for yourself now and then."

Liu Zhiyi smiled. "I thought you'd stop me."

The cat flicked its ears and laid its head on its paws.

"Who told me to be the kind of parent who only ever spoils the child."

Liu Zhiyi hugged the cat and kissed it several times, then turned and ran for the stairs.

By the time she'd turned on the watch's flashlight and pushed the fire door open a crack, Big Sister Ma was still crying in the same posture.

Liu Zhiyi: "Sister."

The words were barely out when she saw a blurred black shape flash through the dark.

By the time she blinked, Big Sister Ma's ghost-white face was already pressed to the gap in the door.

Liu Zhiyi clapped one hand over her chest and turned the flashlight onto Big Sister Ma's face with the other.

Under the light, color came back into Big Sister Ma's face, and her expression softened a little.

"Why did you take my old man's phone?"

Liu Zhiyi: "Sorry, I wanted to call my grandma, but in the state you were in…"

"I see — did it frighten you?"

The Big Sister Ma in the light was all reason and understanding.

"I can't control it."

Liu Zhiyi saw the veins standing out on her torso beyond the reach of the light, and quietly drew back the hand resting on the fire door.

"I'll give you the phone back."

Big Sister Ma said nothing; she seemed to fall into a kind of daze.

"All right… no, no, no, you can't give it to me, I can't control where the calls go."

She stared with dazed eyes, a few tears rolling out of them.

"It'll make a call… it'll call my daughter."

Liu Zhiyi: "I know."

She'd noticed that with the phone you couldn't tell whom the call was going to, because the numbers were all asterisks.

But Big Sister Ma's case was a little special, because Ma Qirong had earlier called both his granddaughter and his son.

Liu Zhiyi opened the call log, tapped the entry labeled Son, and pushed the phone through the gap in the door.

"Try it."

At the sight of the phone Big Sister Ma seemed startled, and hurriedly backed away, but once she'd made out the screen, she stopped.

Liu Zhiyi watched her every move.

The flashlight's beam flickered.

"…Ho."

Liu Zhiyi saw the back of Big Sister Ma's head bulge, and as the beam flickered, shapes drifted in and out of it, faint, like vines hanging down in a jungle.

But those were oxygen tubes hanging from the ceiling.

The whole stairwell was hung with them.

The tubes settled on Big Sister Ma's shoulders and twined around her arms.

But Big Sister Ma still bent down.

"Dad… don't you hate it too?"

The oxygen tubes stopped.

Big Sister Ma picked up the phone.

"You hate it too, don't you?"

—Beep.

The call went out.

Liu Zhiyi lay against the gap in the door, looking in, a little tense.

She was a bit worried the call wouldn't connect.

But soon, after only two beeps, it did.

A man's voice came from the other end, rather impatient.

"Sis, what is it? Is it the old man giving trouble again? I've got no money, my son's about to go abroad, I really can't spare any. And besides… the old man's ancient, just let him go with some dignity — stuck full of tubes day and night is no way to live."

The vine-like oxygen tubes wound around Big Sister Ma loosened.

Liu Zhiyi saw greenish veins spread across her face, the color draining from it completely.

Now, even in the light, she no longer looked like a person.

Big Sister Ma: "You're right, it's no way to live. The old man passed away not long ago; I found his pension card."

She turned her head.

Big Sister Ma's head only turned halfway.

Half of it was the woman's face, half the old man's.

The two faces opened their mouths together.

"Come on over."

The man's voice: "All right, all right! Wait for me, Sis."

Liu Zhiyi kept her eyes fixed on Big Sister Ma.

Handing her the phone had been partly to help her.

But more than that, Liu Zhiyi wanted to know how someone outside, once they got the call, entered the dungeon.

It wasn't very decent, but truthfully her odds against Teacher Yang head-on were slim.

When her call had gone through to Teacher Yang's son, Liu Zhiyi had already formed a plan.

She needed to seize Teacher Yang's soft spot.

So she needed to work out how the phone ran, how the people outside came in.

The man's voice broke into her thoughts.

"Sis, where are you?"

Liu Zhiyi almost laughed.

But soon she heard footsteps.

—Tap, tap, tap.

They sounded like a man's leather shoes on the floor.

Big Sister Ma's head tilted a little further toward Liu Zhiyi; the back of her head had turned fully into the other face.

"At the hospital."

The man's voice: "I'm at the hospital now — which ward?"

Truly doesn't care in the slightest, Liu Zhiyi thought.

Big Sister Ma: "In the stairwell. Push the door open."

As the words fell —

—Tap, tap, tap.

Liu Zhiyi heard footsteps again.

This time they were very close to her, and they sounded like…

Liu Zhiyi whipped around.

—Tap, tap, tap.

The sound echoed through the hospital corridor, coming from behind her.

Liu Zhiyi snatched the fruit knife from her pocket, and before she could fix the direction of the sound —

—Tap, tap, tap.

The footsteps passed straight by her.

—Pat.

A knock came on the fire door.

The man's voice: "It won't open, Sis."

"We're here." Big Sister Ma's voice sounded together with the ho of breathing.

—Creak.

The door was pulled open.

Liu Zhiyi turned her face aside; the watch's beam fell right on the fire door, but the beam bent on it, like light shooting from air into water.

Liu Zhiyi saw a double image of the fire door.

No — two fire doors overlapping.

And out of the innermost one stepped a leg in a leather shoe.

The man's voice: "Sis, I'm here…"

The man's words stuck.

Those "vines" hanging from the ceiling surged over, like a roaring black wave, and wrapped the man up.

—Bang.

The fire door behind Liu Zhiyi slammed shut.

All that was left was a phone spinning on the floor.

And from the phone came a man's screams, breaking in and out.

"Sis! Sis!"

"Dad…"

—Beep.

—Beep.

The call was cut off.

Liu Zhiyi stood where she was a while, then crouched and picked the phone up off the floor.

So you could use the phone as a guide.

A pity she'd missed the chance earlier, when she'd called Teacher Yang's son.

But one thing was confirmed: the door that led from the outside into the dungeon needed a person to open it.

Liu Zhiyi tapped the watch and lit the screen.

Sure enough, a new line had appeared in the prop tab.

[For someone you hate, of course you must open the door yourself, to savor the look of pain and despair on their face — that's what makes it fun.]

[Are you ready to open that door?]

—Whoosh.

At the sound of wind, Liu Zhiyi dropped flat to the floor without a thought.

A still-bleeding tongue swept over her head.

Liu Zhiyi rolled once, and crawled fast toward the nurses' station, ducking behind cover.

Teacher Yang: "…Slut."

So quick to it.

Leaning behind the nurses' station chair, Liu Zhiyi smiled.

This meant Teacher Yang's son was on his way over — otherwise she wouldn't be in such a hurry.

Liu Zhiyi took out the cough syrup.

Though she'd cut off Teacher Yang's tongue not long ago, and its whip-out speed had slowed a good deal, it was still fast.

First she drank the cough syrup, then held the Tang Monk Meat in her mouth, ready to swallow it in one gulp the moment she took a fatal wound.

In no more than five seconds, Teacher Yang had leapt onto the ceiling and was crawling toward the nurses' station.

Liu Zhiyi ran for the corridor — two rows of wards there, with doors.

With the cough syrup's boost, she could see the tongue's path with her own eyes, and dodging it was much less of a strain.

After a few successful dodges, Teacher Yang's cursing climbed several pitches higher.

But soon a tongue grazed the top of her foot.

Cat: "You can't keep running one direction — she'll lead her aim!"

Liu Zhiyi stopped short at once, and the tongue whipping down from overhead stabbed into the floor just ahead of her.

She turned and ran the other way.

She could already feel the energy draining from her body, but Teacher Yang's son still hadn't come.

Could she have guessed wrong?

Liu Zhiyi was doubting her own read.

—Ting.

That sound?

It was the sound of her Key.

Because her Key had to be tied on the cord her mother had braided, her mother had specially found a pretty metal clasp; whenever a big movement swung the Key up, it rubbed against the clasp and made this ting, ting sound.

—Whoosh.

Hearing the wind, Liu Zhiyi twisted aside; her body had a conditioned reflex to that sound now.

The tongue struck the wall and suddenly slid off to one side.

Before, it had always stabbed straight into the wall.

Cat: "Crouch!"

Liu Zhiyi's body carried her a step forward on its own momentum; she fought to force it down into a crouch, but she was a step too slow.

The tongue rebounded off the wall and shot straight at Liu Zhiyi's face.

Liu Zhiyi felt only a burst of blinding pain, and her left eye went dark.

Without a thought she chewed the Tang Monk Meat in her mouth.

"Meow!"

A black shape dropped from above.

Liu Zhiyi turned again and pulled out the knife.

The cat had already pounced onto Teacher Yang's face.

Everything seemed to slow to half speed.

Liu Zhiyi saw herself stretch out her arm, saw the knife in her hand pierce the tongue, driving through between the cat's two front paws.

Blood sprayed.

Liu Zhiyi wiped the blood off her face and bore down with her hand again.

But the knife was as if lodged in something hard, and wouldn't move.

Liu Zhiyi startled — then saw the severed tongue fall to the floor, while the knife in her hand was stuck in Teacher Yang's mouth, clamped tight between her teeth.

Cat: "…Run."

Liu Zhiyi let go.

Then her vision went black; the cat had been flung away.

She ran a few steps forward, and all at once the world spun.

She seemed to be flying, Liu Zhiyi thought.

—Bang.

Pain shot through Liu Zhiyi's back, and then her whole lower body lost all feeling.

She looked down and saw a ward door's handle sticking out through her belly.

What kind of handle do they put on a door, Liu Zhiyi thought, making the best of the bitter joke.

—Pat.

At last a knock came on the door behind her.