Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 14: The Invisible Friend (Part 6)

Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 14: The Invisible Friend (Part 6)

Chen Jiu chased the fog to the window and watched for a moment. The dark mass didn’t look back it streaked eastward across the night sky like a shooting star and vanished in an instant.

She clicked her tongue, torn between giving chase right now and staying to deal with the wreckage behind her. After three seconds, she turned back around. The woman was sitting with an empty expression, cradling her child’s body, patting his back over and over in a slow, gentle rhythm as though her son was not dead at all, only sleeping.

“Are you trying to kill us?! Hauling construction floodlights into your apartment?!” A few neighbors hollered and cursed for a while, but none of them actually came to confront anyone. They were dimly aware that this household had just lost a child, and once they’d vented their frustration, they each went back to bed after all, not everyone had the luxury of a weekend.

The man was still face-down on the floor, unable to get up, staring blankly at his wife and son.

“My condolences,” Chen Jiu said the last of her conscience speaking then asked: “Who told you to worship Kong Xiang? Did this person ever tell you that summoning a demon like this would cost your entire family their lives and fortune? I’ve been wondering why Jiang Hao’s spirit kept lingering at the school. Now I understand Kong Xiang had taken over his home, so even he couldn’t come back.”

At that, something finally shifted in the man’s expression. He looked as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean… you’re saying Jiang Hao is at the school? He’s there? You saw him?”

He forced himself upright, managing to prop his upper body against the wall, coughing violently several times. He pleaded with Chen Jiu: “Master please, we’ll pay whatever it takes can you help us see him, just once? We have money, we still have money…”

At those words, a faint light stirred in the woman’s eyes as well. She looked up at Chen Jiu with a dazed expression and said, not quite coherently: “Still alive my son is still alive son, Haohao we won’t be separated, Mama won’t leave you.”

Chen Jiu could see both of them were running on their last reserves. She offered them something to hold onto. “Jiang Hao’s soul is still wandering this world. I can arrange for you to see him but before that, you need to tell me who taught you this dark ritual.”

The man understood. This wasn’t a suggestion; it was an exchange. He wasted no time, fumbled out his phone with trembling fingers, swiped at the screen several times, and turned it toward Chen Jiu.

Chen Jiu leaned in and took the phone. On the screen was a WeChat contact card. The profile picture was an ostentatiously mysterious bagua diagram but strangely, it wasn’t rendered in the usual black and white. It was black and red, and staring at it for even a moment too long produced an inexplicable, creeping sense of unease.

“A rogue practitioner,” Chen Jiu muttered in disgust. She handed the phone back. “Don’t bring up what happened tonight on your own. If this person comes asking, contact me immediately. As for this idol and everything connected to it smash it and burn it tonight. Don’t hold onto any of it hoping things might still turn out differently. None of it will do you any good.”

The man agreed to everything without hesitation.

She took out her own phone, exchanged WeChat contacts with him, and handed him one of her business cards. Then she walked over to the woman. Chen Jiu pressed a fingertip to the center of her forehead and murmured a few lines of a calming incantation. The woman’s pupils slowly dimmed; the frenzy ebbed from her. Before long, her mind cleared. She looked at Chen Jiu with an expression too complicated to name.

After a long hesitation, she finally murmured: “Thank you.”

“Rest now.” Chen Jiu stood, tucking her things back into her bag one by one. “Once you’ve recovered, call me or come to the shop directly. I’ll go with you to Qiming Elementary School to bring your son home.”

By the time Chen Jiu made it back to the entrance of the complex, the sky to the east had just begun to lighten. Sun Bo was on the phone with the hospital they were telling him Sun Yang was showing signs of waking up, and that his vitals were stabilizing across the board.

He was nearly in tears with relief. When he saw Chen Jiu returning, his face lit up. “Master! My son woke up! Master, I can’t thank you enough!”

“Save the thanks.” Chen Jiu was scrolling through her sect’s group chat replies, her tone businesslike. “If you want this resolved for good, you’ll need to take your son and make a proper apology to Jiang Hao’s family. What goes around comes around retribution doesn’t fail to arrive; it’s only ever a matter of timing.”

“Yes!” Sun Bo said immediately. “You’re absolutely right!”

Second Senior Sister: What was being worshipped? Send a photo.

Third Senior Brother: What’s everyone up to lately? [Attached: one selfie taken while catching a ghost]

Fifth Senior Sister: Sweating.

Seventh Senior Sister: Anyone else feel like the yin energy around the old district has been unusually heavy lately?

Most of the chat was people talking past each other several hundred messages of it. Chen Jiu scrolled through the entire thing without expression. Only a handful were actually relevant.

Chen Jiu: Forgot to take a photo it was a three-headed, six-armed Buddha idol. Looked distinctly sinister. When I arrived, one of its arms seemed close to breaking off. The thing possessing it was Kong Xiang.

Second Senior Sister: That kind of idol is rare. Let me ask around for you.

Second Senior Sister: You went at it head-on with it?

Chen Jiu: It fled. I’ll follow up when I have more leads.

Third Senior Brother: Xiaojiu, please don’t just chase it somewhere else!

Chen Jiu: It’s not like I did it on purpose!

Fifth Senior Sister: Skill issue.

Chen Jiu: …

Back at the shop, Chen Jiu washed up quickly and was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow. She slept straight through until well into the morning.

When she opened her eyes it was nearly noon. Su Xiaoyu had been in her room playing with Chen Xiaoxuan for the better part of the morning, a small carton of milk in her hands.

“Boss!” The moment she saw Chen Jiu was awake, Su Xiaoyu bounded over to the bedside.

Chen Jiu rubbed her temples. “Oh no I forgot to take you home. Give me a minute, let me brush my teeth and wash my face.”

“You don’t have to! I already called my grandma, and she said I could stay here and play.” Su Xiaoyu blinked up at her, apparently in no rush to leave.

Chen Jiu laughed despite herself and got up to change clothes. “What is there to do here? By the way shouldn’t you be doing homework on the weekend?”

“I finished it all already!” Su Xiaoyu said. “Also… if you’re going to the hospital to visit Sun Yang, I want to come too.”

Chen Jiu drew out a long “oh.” So that was the little girl’s plan all along.

Jiang Hao had been her best friend. He had died in circumstances that made no sense to her. She was young and didn’t fully understand how things had reached this point, but she had an instinctive feeling that Sun Yang and the others had lied somewhere along the way. A child’s intuition is the sharpest thing there is.

Get dressed. Wash up. Fill the cat’s bowl. Order takeout. The two of them finished lunch, and not long after, Sun Bo arrived, pushing a wheelchair.

Sun Yang had no energy to speak of, but at least he could sit up. An IV drip was still attached to his hand. The moment he entered the shop, he could feel his body lighten slightly. His eyes moved between Chen Jiu and Su Xiaoyu.

Sun Bo’s smile carried a trace of someone trying to curry favor. “Sorry to impose again, Master Chen my son kept saying he felt better both times he came here than he does lying in the hospital, so I brought him back once more.”

Chen Jiu made a noncommittal sound. The main cause of Sun Yang’s illness had never been physical damage to any organ — now that Kong Xiang had fled and the curse ritual had been broken, his body would naturally recover on its own. She told Su Xiaoyu to clear up the dishes once she’d finished eating, then went over to check Sun Yang’s pulse, nodded meaning he was more or less on the mend.

“Make sure he gets plenty of sunlight,” Chen Jiu told Sun Bo.

Sun Bo nodded repeatedly.

Su Xiaoyu finished clearing the dishes, trotted over, and stood in front of Sun Yang, studying him.

Since the accident, Sun Yang had wanted nothing to do with any of his former classmates. He’d been harboring a low-level hostility toward Su Xiaoyu as well, and when she approached, he turned his head away.

Su Xiaoyu wasn’t deterred. She circled around to face him again. “Sun Yang,” she said with complete certainty, “why won’t you apologize to Jiang Hao? He’s sad every single day!”

The moment he heard that, Sun Yang’s spine went cold instinctively. There was no yin energy pressing down on him anymore this fear came from guilt buried in the deepest part of him.

“What do you mean, Jiang Hao is sad every day — stop making things up,” Sun Yang said, turning his head to the other side. “He slipped and drowned by accident. What does that have to do with us? What, every time we go somewhere with a group and one person gets hurt, are we all supposed to die with them?”

Su Xiaoyu dug in her heels, her expression stubborn. “Jiang Hao isn’t like that. He’s not sad because you didn’t die with him! He’s sad because you did something else to hurt him! Jiang Hao was so good to everyone — you were all friends with him — don’t you know how good a person he was?”

Sun Yang looked at her, shaking with anger. “He was never my friend!”

Su Xiaoyu raised her voice. “Then why did you always go out and play with him?! You coward. You did something wrong and you won’t admit it! You’re all cowards! Teacher says that when we do something wrong, we have to take responsibility ourselves. All you ever do is run away!”

Sun Bo rushed over to intervene, easing the wheelchair back a little, murmuring to his son: “All right, Yangyang, that’s enough.” He looked at Su Xiaoyu and managed an awkward smile. “Xiaoyu, you can see Yangyang is still sick could you do Uncle a favor and hold off on the argument for now?”

“Okay,” Su Xiaoyu agreed immediately, being entirely reasonable about it and then turned back to Sun Yang and said, in a perfectly calm voice: “Sorry. I know you’re sick and not feeling well. I shouldn’t be arguing with you right now. Once you’re feeling better, we can start the argument again.”

Sun Yang stared at her. “…”

Chen Jiu turned away and pretended she’d heard nothing, laughing so hard on the inside her stomach hurt.

Sun Bo wheeled his son into a patch of sunlight, tucked the thin blanket more snugly around him, told him to sit quietly and rest, then walked up to the counter where Chen Jiu was going over her accounts.

“So, Master Chen.” Sun Bo rubbed his hands together. “When do you think we might be able to visit Jiang Hao’s family together? I’ve already put together some gifts on my end.”

“That depends on when they’re available,” Chen Jiu said, and shrugged.