Chapter 2

When the person fell with a loud thud, Tu Qin was so startled that she dropped the cigarette in her hand.

Just a moment ago, she had been immersed in a pleasing scene, as if filtered through a cinematic lens, but then the protagonist of that scene suddenly collapsed face-first onto the earth.

“Ah!” she uttered a brief, sharp cry.

Simultaneously, the grocery store owner, who had been idly watching outside out of boredom, let out a sound, as did several owners of funeral supply shops nearby who had heard the commotion and immediately rushed to the storefront to see what was happening.

Liu Lingxu had mentioned there was no top-tier hospital here—so was there even an ambulance?

This was the first thought flashing through Tu Qin’s mind.

“Do you know this person?” The grocery store owner, likely assuming both Tu Qin and the man had come from Liu Lingxu’s funeral hall, asked, “Did he faint or something?”

“You can call an ambu...” Tu Qin took out her phone and was about to dial emergency services when she heard the screeching of brakes behind her, followed by a flurry of someone shouting “Brother! Brother!”

A man in his twenties rushed out of the car, grabbing the man on the ground and calling out to him.

Tu Qin wasn’t sure if shaking an unconscious person like that was appropriate, but since they seemed to know each other, she paused her movements.

The man who got out of the car was of average build, height, and appearance, but he was decked out in jangling accessories. His hair was tied into dreadlocks, woven with colorful green strands. As he shook the man lying on the ground, he kept repeating “Brother! Brother!” in a tearful, snotty voice.

“Should we call an ambu...” Tu Qin thought the man didn’t seem experienced in emergencies. Taking a few steps closer, she again tried to dial 120.

The dreadlocked man lifted his head; his tear-red, glistening eyes fixed on her with a pitiful expression.

Tu Qin fell silent.

She took a step back, shaking her phone to show him the emergency dial screen.

She admitted she was somewhat swayed by his appearance—after all, such a good-looking man had fainted right in front of her, and she felt compelled to do something.

At least call 120.

The dreadlocked man looked at her blankly, then shook his head.

“No... no need,” he said, “he just didn’t sleep well and has a fever...”

“He fainted once this morning too, but woke up after a little shaking.” To demonstrate, he grabbed the man’s shoulder and shook him again.

Tu Qin was speechless.

“The road from the hospital is under construction, so the ambulance would take a while,” the grocery store owner said, folding his arms and craning his neck to look, “Can you move him? Shift him to the shade nearby—it’s too hot out here at midday.”

“No... no need,” the dreadlocked man stubbornly refused again, continuing to shake the man on the ground.

The poor guy’s brain must have been rattled to mush.

Accompanied by the sudden sound of mournful suona horns from Liu Lingxu’s funeral hall behind them, the scene felt surreal.

Tu Qin took another step back and decided to return to the grocery store’s doorstep to zone out. Before leaving, she glanced at the man’s face—fortunately, he had landed on soft yellow clay, with only some dirt on his face and no obvious wounds.

“Here...” Seeing the man’s appearance, Tu Qin pulled out a half-pack of damp wipes from her pocket and handed them to the dreadlocked man. “You can wipe him.”

“Thank you, thank you,” he took the wipes, pulled two out, and began wiping his tears.

Tu Qin was silent.

She sat back down on the grocery store’s doorstep, lit a cigarette, took a puff, and looked up at the sky.

Perhaps it was a miracle.

The man who fell had actually been awakened by the shaking.

***

Close enough to overhear their conversation, Tu Qin caught the dreadlocked man’s tearful rant, full of broken phrases and poor word choices:

“You shouldn’t have come today. No one praised you for coming. Ungrateful wretch, act like one. If you had the guts, you’d faint right inside the funeral hall—bang!—falling before the portrait. That’d be so moving...”

Tu Qin was thoroughly entertained and forgot to bring the smoke to her lips.

“Really, brother, no one told you about this, so why pretend you don’t know? Why drag the Liu family into it? Their people are all mad, every single one of them...”

Suddenly, the voice stopped.

Tu Qin glanced over and saw the man lying on the ground had pulled a white patch from somewhere and stuck it over the dreadlocked man’s mouth.

The dreadlocked man’s eyes widened, but he dared not remove the patch and closed his mouth.

“Your brain’s all rattled,” the man on the ground croaked, dusting himself off as he stood.

The exasperation in his tone was so clear that Tu Qin couldn’t help but smile. Their eyes met just then; the man paused mid-dust-off and gave her a polite nod.

Tu Qin awkwardly nodded back.

Because he had been shaken so hard, his meticulously buttoned black shirt was now partly undone and wrinkled, the collar wide open to reveal a bit of his collarbone.

There was a short black thread hanging from the top, like a tattooed thread on the skin, mostly hidden beneath his shirt.

The man said no more, circled around the car, opened the front passenger door, and got in.

The dreadlocked man, mouth still patched, followed him into the car.

The black sedan roared, spun around on the yellow clay, and quickly drove off.

Tu Qin took a drag from her cigarette facing the car’s taillights.

The man was handsome, polite, with refined manners and temperament.

And his dramatic collapse face-down right at the start perfectly suited the protagonist of a romance novel.

What a pity.

Tu Qin sighed; it was a shame she didn’t write romance, only cultivation or fighting stories, so she had no use for such a character.

***

Before leaving, Tu Qin went back into the funeral hall and burned a thick stack of gold ingots made of gold foil for Liu Lingxu. She had picked the most expensive stack from the neighboring funeral supply store.

For some reason, the atmosphere inside was no longer as tense as before. People sat in small groups chatting quietly; the older women’s eyes were red. When Tu Qin entered, Liu Lingxu’s mother pulled her aside and asked awkwardly, “Was the man who went out earlier the one who fainted?”

Liu Lingxu had listed her name on the funeral guest list, with a note labeling her as the student representative.

This note always made her want to put on a red scarf; combined with her tendency to shrink away from elders, she behaved as a model student in front of Liu Lingxu’s mother.

But she truly wanted no part in their family matters.

So she only responded vaguely with a hum.

Fortunately, Liu Lingxu’s mother didn’t really expect an answer; the question seemed more like an opening line, a way to start confiding in a stranger.

Once the gate was opened, Tu Qin just listened.

“I heard he woke up quickly, right?” Liu Lingxu’s mother curled her lips, disappointed. “Heaven really has no mercy. A person like that, only if he smashed his head in the funeral hall would he get what he deserves.”

Tu Qin thought the dreadlocked man had said something similar.

“Heaven truly has no mercy,” Liu Lingxu’s mother wiped her eyes. “I heard a man named Xie is doing very well now, winning awards at home and abroad, holding exhibitions. Ungrateful wretch. The old man should never have raised him; even a dog knows how to be grateful better.”

Tu Qin stared at the flickering flame in the iron basin.

These words made her uncomfortable—shallow and bitterly venomous.

“Poor my son...” Liu Lingxu’s mother suddenly burst into tears, slapping her thigh.

Tu Qin was caught off guard watching her.

Relatives came over to support her as she struggled to the place where the body lay, repeatedly pounding on the wooden boards beside her.

“If you really have a spirit in heaven, you should let the Xie guy smash his head right here...”

“Your brother was harmed by him—no trace alive, no body dead...”

The drawn-out tones, mingled with the mournful suona, created a suffocating atmosphere.

Some nearby tried to comfort her; others quietly agreed.

The iron basin was hot; the gold foil slowly turned to ash and drifted upward.

Gold wouldn’t burn to ash at this temperature, so the gold foil the funeral shop boasted about was likely fake, yet they charged her twenty yuan per sheet.

But since it was already burned, it was good enough for Liu Lingxu’s sake.

Tu Qin quietly burned the last piece of gold foil, stood up, took one last glance at Liu Lingxu’s portrait, and left the dilapidated funeral home.

Waiting for her ride at the door, she spotted the black sedan parked in a corner at the street intersection, bearing a local license plate and a rental company decal.

No one was inside; the dreadlocked man sat by the roadside with a phone pressed to his ear, his voice booming enough to carry far with emphasis on several syllables.

Leaning against a tree on the other side of the car was the tall man, presumably named Xie, holding a bottle of water, expressionless as he watched the dreadlocked man on the call.

For some reason, it felt like a scene full of stories.

Tu Qin took out her phone and snapped a photo.

The moment she pressed the shutter, the dreadlocked man muttered something, and the tall man accurately threw the water bottle at him—the shutter captured the moment he raised his hand.

Tu Qin blurred both their faces in the photo, saved it to her material collection, and put her phone away.

If ghosts really existed, Liu Lingxu would have visited her at midnight.

She had gathered no material from attending the funeral, but instead had taken a photo of what seemed to be their family’s enemy, carefully storing it in her material library.

Yet it perfectly suited her aesthetic.

Just looking at the photo, she could imagine tens of thousands of words’ worth of love, hate, and vengeance.

Tu Qin got into her ride and couldn’t help but zoom in and out of the photo for a long time. Then she took a picture of the shabby funeral home, adding Liu Lingxu’s portrait to the group marked by a period, which already contained two people: her senior year homeroom teacher and a small account she created under her mother’s name.

These were people she had attended funerals for, accounts that would never light up again.

The ride’s driver grumbled from the moment she got in that this trip wasn’t profitable; the county rarely had passengers, so he’d have to return empty, paying for fuel both ways but only charging one way.

Tu Qin silently pointed her phone’s camera at him and said, “Driver, I’m live streaming.”

The driver was stunned, then immediately shut up.

Tu Qin smiled, held up her phone for a while, then locked the screen, put on her headphones, and closed her eyes.