A Short Story Collection with Non-Human Protagonists - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: The Vanishing Women

 

The skull was imprisoned in a cage of sound.

 

A colossal iron beast hurtled toward the windshield at high speed.

 

“Hold on to the handle!” her father roared.

 

“Ah Qing!”

 

Her mother lunged to embrace her, but at the instant before they touched, the entire world suddenly lost gravity.

 

She heard the piercing screech of brakes.

 

The muffled thud of an airbag deploying.

 

Blood dripping onto the dashboard. Drip. Drip.

 

Then, a long, tinnitus-like silence.

 

Tang Yanqing woke up in the scent of disinfectant, momentarily dazed. Not too long ago, she had experienced a scene exactly like this one. Pain, lethargy, awakening. It was like déjà vu.

 

Suddenly, a girl’s boisterous voice rang in her ears, pulling Tang Yanqing back to the present: “Senior, you’re finally awake!”

 

Lu Xiaokui leaned toward her, looking anxious as an ant on a hot pan.

 

“Are you hungry? Do you want water? Do you want an apple? I’ll peel one for you!”

 

Tang Yanqing’s head was already groroggy; Lu Xiaokui’s clamor made it feel like it was splitting open.

 

“Can you go out first… let me be quiet for a bit.”

 

She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious. Her throat was drier than a desert, and she could only manage a raspy whisper.

 

“Okay, okay, I’ll go right now!”

 

Lu Xiaokui agreed quickly but continued to chatter instructions for ages.

 

“The water is on the table, make sure to drink it. There are cookies and cakes I bought in the drawer. I’m staying at the hotel across from the hospital; call me anytime if anything happens…”

 

If it weren’t for the indwelling needle in the back of her hand, Tang Yanqing would have really liked to plug her ears.

 

“Get out,” she repeated.

 

“Then you must remember to drink the water!”

 

Finally having driven Lu Xiaokui away, a nurse came in to change Tang Yanqing’s dressing.

 

“Oh, you’re finally awake. I’ll call the doctor immediately.” The nurse picked up the cup on her table. “The water is a bit dirty; I’ll get you a fresh one.”

 

Tang Yanqing nodded, but the movement pulled at the wound on her shoulder, making her grimace. “Hiss… thank you.”

 

The doctor explained her injuries. The good news was that the old man who attacked her was completely unskilled with a knife. Only one thrust had entered her shoulder, missing vital organs. The rest were various shallow cuts; currently, it seemed there would be no major issues.

 

The police arrived in the afternoon to get the details of the incident.

 

Having slept for several days, the memory of the attack had become blurred. Tang Yanqing vaguely remembered Xu Rulin stabbing her many times, but that didn’t match the actual wounds. The police suggested it might be memory confabulation caused by the emergency.

 

Aside from shooing Lu Xiaokui away several times a day, Tang Yanqing spent most of her time dozing off with the help of painkillers.

 

She had no family left, so naturally, no one else came to visit her. Li Mingyi didn’t even send a word of concern, only a message telling her that the thesis on the Fox Immortal didn’t need to be written anymore. In a way, having such a supervisor was a blessing; the grievances she suffered could at least offset a small portion of her life’s bad karma.

 

And that person… she tried not to think of that person.

 

On the night of the fourth day after waking, while the nurse was helping her change her pillow, Tang Yanqing discovered something pressed underneath it.

 

A small, vibrant red cloth pouch, embroidered with interlocking lotus patterns.

 

Tang Yanqing opened the pouch. Inside was a small piece of bright yellow paper folded tightly. She unfolded it layer by layer. It was a talisman paper, drawn with an inverted bell-shaped sigil, with her and Lu Xiaokui’s names and birthdates written inside.

 

Tang Yanqing had taken an elective in Taoist studies during her undergraduate years and recognized it at a glance: this was a Harmony Talisman (Hehe Fu).

 

The next morning, Lu Xiaokui showed up as usual to play her part, fussing over Tang Yanqing with meticulous care—buying her buns and hot porridge, asking if the wound still hurt, offering to wash plums.

 

“Stop busy-bodying. First, tell me: what is this?”

 

Tang Yanqing threw the Harmony Talisman in front of Lu Xiaokui.

 

Lu Xiaokui froze, then began to explain frantically: “This… this is a safety talisman I prayed for, to bless you so you’d get better faster…”

 

“To pray for my safety, do you need to write your own birthdate and time on it too?” Tang Yanqing asked.

 

Lu Xiaokui was so anxious the muscles in her face were twitching, yet she stubbornly refused to admit it.

 

“No, Senior, it’s not what you think…”

 

“I don’t like you.”

 

Tang Yanqing didn’t want to waste time haggling; she spoke to her directly. The words were like a nail, pinning Lu Xiaokui to the spot.

 

The girl’s eyes began to well up. “Tell me what I did wrong, okay? I can change…”

 

“No need, you don’t need to change anything.” Tang Yanqing stated the truth as bluntly as possible. “There will definitely be someone in this world who likes you, it’s just that that person isn’t me.”

 

Lu Xiaokui’s voice rose, becoming somewhat hysterical as tears splashed down: “But that sachet Auntie Liu gave you, wasn’t that also casting a spell on you! Why did she succeed and I can’t!”

 

Tang Yanqing felt her brain throbbing with pain. “What do you even know? You’ve grown this big and you still don’t understand? In this world, how can there be so many ‘whys’!”

 

Why was she stabbed out of the blue by someone she barely knew?

 

Why was her whole family dead, leaving her to survive alone in this world?

 

Why was the person she loved the very person she couldn’t love?

 

If one truly wanted to ask “why,” she had far more questions than anyone.

 

Lu Xiaokui had never seen Tang Yanqing truly angry. She stood dazed for a few seconds, then tearfully tried to grab her hand.

 

“Senior, I beg you, give me a chance… I clearly did everything… that person said that as long as I listened to her, you would definitely fall in love with me…”

 

Tang Yanqing caught the oddity in her words.

 

“That person? What did you do?”

 

Lu Xiaokui covered her mouth. “No, I can’t say, she’ll kill me…”

 

Tang Yanqing grabbed her arm. “Make yourself clear. Who will kill you?”

 

“No, no…”

 

The girl grew even more panicked, wrenched her hand away from Tang Yanqing, and bolted.

 

Tang Yanqing tried to get out of bed to chase her, but immediately pulled her wound and gasped in pain. In that blink of an eye, Lu Xiaokui had vanished without a trace.

 

From that day on, Lu Xiaokui never appeared again, and her phone number became a dead line.

 

She must be hiding some secret. Tang Yanqing told the police about this episode, but the old man in the detention center had already confessed, and the police found no new suspicious points.

 

Looking on the bright side, Tang Yanqing finally had peace and quiet.

 

Going home alone and nursing her injuries alone were simple tasks. She had studied medicine to some extent, so she could naturally take care of herself. She used a salve made from her grandfather’s old recipe, applying it three times a day; the wounds healed quickly. The shallowest cuts healed completely within a few weeks, leaving no trace.

 

But the summer vacation was long.

 

She read books, watched movies, played games, and researched ways to graduate early, trying to fill her brain with every idle task she could think of. Filling her brain meant she could stop thinking of that person.

 

Stop thinking of those suppressed yet wild kisses; stop thinking of how the woman tenderly chanted her name, how she gasped under her lips, how her sweat was clear and cool, how it flowed past the woman’s moving collarbones.

 

How they snuggled, how they shared warmth.

 

Tang Yanqing didn’t understand why Liu Jin hadn’t come to find her for so long. The date in the chat window stopped on the day she was injured and had never been updated.

 

It was for the best. This mistaken relationship should end this way, without a sound. Don’t overthink it, don’t reminisce, don’t miss it.

 

If she couldn’t sleep, she took sleeping pills. When she woke up, it was a new day. Time would heal all pain, just as it smoothed the scars on her back.

 

However, on an ordinary afternoon, when Tang Yanqing got back on her motorcycle after a long hiatus to take a random ride, she found herself turning into Sophora Alley as if possessed.

 

I won’t stop, Tang Yanqing decided. I’ll just pass by like the wind and never stay for anyone.

 

What she didn’t expect was that the inn was actually closed.

 

In Tang Yanqing’s memory, no matter the season or the weather, this inn had never been closed for a single day. She stopped in front of the tightly shut doors, falling into a moment of deep thought.

 

…Should she call someone?

 

“Girl, don’t bother waiting,” a passing neighbor kindly told her. “This shop hasn’t opened for nearly two months. No one knows where the owner went.”

 

Two months ago… exactly the time she was injured.

 

Tang Yanqing waited outside for a while, confirming there was no movement inside. She then got off the bike, felt for the spare key under the third flower pot by the door, and inserted it into the lock.

 

Screeeak—

 

The door panels slid to the sides, and she saw a bizarre mess inside.

 

Tables and chairs were all overturned, and shards of various porcelain were scattered about, like a ruin after a hurricane.

 

“Granny Gu? Ah Jin?”

 

Tang Yanqing walked in while trying to call for the owners. There was no response. Only the sound of her footsteps echoed in the empty building.

 

Tang Yanqing crossed the corridor and stepped into the courtyard. The scene before her was even stranger—

 

The dirt ground of the courtyard was densely covered with yellow talisman papers, like an exorcism ritual she had once seen in a remote mountain village. The papers were drawn with common sigils for expelling demons and suppressing evil, but the variety and quantity were staggering, as if intended to grind someone into dust.

 

…During the time she was unconscious, something truly terrifying must have happened here.

 

Tang Yanqing knew she shouldn’t worry about Liu Jin, but she couldn’t help but grow nervous. She searched the inn from top to bottom, trying to find clues. But all the drawers had been pried open and emptied; nothing was left.

 

In a corner of the courtyard was a pile of ashes, likely the evidence that had been burned. The ash had been soaked by several rounds of rain. Tang Yanqing poked through it with a stick and found a few fragments of Life Contracts (Ming Qi) that hadn’t burned completely.

 

One of them had legible handwriting. She picked it up and saw a familiar name on the paper.

 

— Liao Mengmeng.

 

Mengmeng… the girl she had heard the neighborhood aunties talk about during her interview, the one who had worshipped the Fox Immortal and then died.

 

All the absurd realities seemed to be connecting into a whole in some way.

 

Tang Yanqing held the fragment of the life contract, trying to regulate her breathing. The most important thing now was to stay calm and figure out what had happened and where Liu Jin had gone. This didn’t mean she had forgiven Liu Jin.

 

Tang Yanqing went home and found the blackboard her grandfather used for calling numbers. She wrote down all the events she felt were related to Liu Jin.

 

A. Liu Jin is the Fox Immortal.

 

B. Liu Jin has been ill for years and came to the clinic for treatment.

 

C. Liu Jin helped many people (Xu Rulin, etc.).

 

D. Liu Jin had signed Life Contracts with many people (Liao Mengmeng, her parents, etc.).

 

E. Liao Mengmeng died.

 

F. Three years ago in the car accident, Tang Yanqing survived, parents died.

 

G. The “Rainy Night Killer” was arrested.

 

H. Tang Yanqing was attacked by Xu Rulin.

 

I. Liu Jin disappeared.

 

The scattered fragments wove into a net, spreading before her eyes. What else was there that she hadn’t noticed…

 

Looking at the white chalk on the blackboard, Tang Yanqing suddenly remembered something. After confirming the news on her phone, she drew the first line on the blackboard, connecting two events.

 

The “Rainy Night Killer” was also surnamed Xu; in all likelihood, he was the son Xu Rulin mentioned who was addicted to gambling and went missing. Xu Rulin saw the news of his son’s arrest and mistakenly believed the Fox Immortal had harmed his son, so he came to attack Tang Yanqing.

 

Why was the target of the attack herself, and not Liu Jin?

 

Tang Yanqing currently lacked enough information to answer this question and could only draw a question mark next to the line.

 

The other mystery was regarding those mysterious Life Contracts. If she could know Liao Mengmeng’s experience, she should be able to deduce what really happened to her parents three years ago…

 

Tang Yanqing picked up her phone again and typed the city of Moqiao and Liao Mengmeng’s name into the search bar.