Chapter 43: Midnight Mirror (Part 6)

The only thing that could make him so reckless of life and death, so blind to right and wrong, was probably only that girlfriend of his separated by the divide between life and death.

Chen Jiu scoffed, raised an eyebrow and said: “Jiang Sheng, use your brain and think. Is there really such a thing as a free lunch falling from the sky? You don’t actually believe nonsense like ‘help me and afterward I’ll resurrect your dead girlfriend,’ do you? You graduated from X University at the very least. How can you fall for pyramid scheme level talk like this? Aren’t you afraid it has ulterior motives, that not only will it fail to resurrect your girlfriend, but it’ll drag you down to hell along with it?”

“…” Jiang Sheng couldn’t believe his ears. He was so shocked his hair was practically standing on end. His volume also lost control, nearly cracking: “How do you know?!”

“I guessed.” Chen Jiu’s expression was also surprised: “Wait… friend, you actually believe it?”

Jiang Sheng seemed to fly into a rage out of humiliation. He forcefully pried her hand away and shouted loudly: “Enough! Lunatic, completely nonsensical.”

He suddenly exerted force. Chen Jiu failed to grab him in time and loosened her grip.

In the moment Chen Jiu was stunned, he turned around to duck into the doorway. She quickly grabbed his shoulder and said with a serious expression: “Reversing the natural order is absolutely impossible. I don’t know what that thing actually is or how it bewitched you, but the dead cannot come back to life. Even if your girlfriend were to return, it would absolutely not be the original her! Do you know what kind of things crawl back from the underworld?! If you want to seek death, this isn’t the way to do it!”

Jiang Sheng was pinned by her and couldn’t move. He stiffened his neck, feeling incomparably furious in his heart, and cursed loudly: “Where the hell did you pop out from? Who are you? Why should I believe you?”

Chen Jiu was startled. That was actually quite right. He had just bumped into her and wanted to fight to the death immediately. Where was there time for self introductions?

She thought for a moment and said: “You don’t need to care who I am, but at the very least I’m the same kind of being as you. I have five senses, a heartbeat, I breathe. Would a fellow countryman deceive you? You can’t possibly treat me as an enemy just because I shattered your unrealistic fantasies, can you? Am I not more trustworthy than that thing that might not even be human or ghost?”

Jiang Sheng: “…”

What does “because you and I are both human so you have to believe me” even mean? Where the hell did this crazy girl pop out from? Can she even hold a conversation?

“Sorry, your ability to organize language is comparable to a mature banana. It completely fails to convince me.” Jiang Sheng said coldly: “Please let go.”

“Then I’m also sorry, but I can’t let you go back to harm my friends. I really have to see this matter through to the end.” Chen Jiu also had no patience left. She directly increased her force, pressing Jiang Sheng down and forcing him to lower his head slightly.

After suffering a round of verbal humiliation and nearly being attacked with a baseball bat, she was never someone with a good temper to begin with. A single sorry couldn’t dismiss it.

“To save your one girlfriend, you want to harm so many people along with her. Even if this evil path could truly resurrect your girlfriend, I absolutely cannot agree.” Chen Jiu kicked the back of his knee and mocked: “You really think you can beat me? That thing probably can’t even leave your broken room, right? Otherwise why does it always have you running around outside? How about this: I’ll tie you up first, then burn all those filthy things clean with a fire. What do you think?”

Jiang Sheng crumpled to his knees in a heap, panic stricken: “No! No! Let’s talk properly! Okay? A proper, serious talk!”

Under absolute military force suppression, even if there was nothing to talk about, he had to force out some words. Through threats and bribes, Jiang Sheng was finally willing to talk properly.

Chen Jiu dragged Jiang Sheng like a dead dog to an open area somewhat farther away. This area was pitch black with several streetlights broken, flickering on and off at this moment. It had a very strange horror film atmosphere.

Fortunately, one of them had a dead heart and the other had blazing anger. Neither of them was picky about the location.

“I don’t know what it is either.” Jiang Sheng lit a cigarette. He had just wanted to continue speaking when Chen Jiu snatched it away, ground it under her foot twice, and extinguished it.

“…” Jiang Sheng said angrily: “Don’t push me too far!”

Chen Jiu said mercilessly: “It stinks. No smoking allowed.”

Jiang Sheng couldn’t win in a fight and couldn’t run away. He could only endure it. He ran his hand through his hair and said: “It can enter my dreams and also burrow into mirrors. To be precise, it’s not just mirrors. Any object that can create a mirror reflection, it can temporarily hide inside.”

That was a few months ago. He was muddled all day long, disheveled, wandering around in circles and finally returning to Qiu City. His girlfriend’s ashes were in this city. He could never let go.

The dilapidated rental room was covered with photos of his girlfriend from when she was alive. Colorful, not as cold as the black and white memorial photos at a funeral. He always wanted to forget that scene, but no matter what he couldn’t strip it from his mind.

He lay with his back to the window. Sometimes sunlight could shine in, but it could only reach half the bed. He happened to curl up in the other half in the shadows, drowsy and unable to wake up no matter what.

It was under these circumstances of lost mental clarity that it appeared.

“However much you miss her, that’s how much effort you can make to see her. Help me, and I can let you continue living together.” That voice was extremely hoarse, yet full of bewitching meaning. It was impossible to distinguish whether it was male or female. It wound around his ear, impossible to shake off.

Jiang Sheng slowly opened his eyes, staring at the wall. Only after a good while did he realize he had already separated from the dream.

His body stiffly stretched out. His heart suddenly jolted with alarm. He felt his back pressing against something, lying quietly on the other half of the bed.

He turned his head. His girlfriend was lying beside him with her eyes tightly closed, her face pale as paper, her entire body soaked with water vapor, her long hair wet and stuck to the pillow and her neck and shoulders, as if she had just been fished out of the water. It was exactly the same as the scene in his memory.

Jiang Sheng reached out his hand. A painful cry emerged from his throat, but he was startled to realize he was in an absolutely silent environment. He couldn’t hear any sound, including his own breathing and heartbeat.

So he shook his head forcefully, opened his eyes again, and woke up from the second layer of the dream.

He turned his head. The bed was completely empty. There was no girlfriend, nor any strange sound.

Jiang Sheng’s entire body was soaked through with cold sweat. He supported himself to climb up. The time was still stuck at midnight, precisely the good time period when nightmares occurred frequently.

He turned on the light. The old bulb flickered on and off. After a good while, the room finally brightened. He trembled as he got out of bed, intending to dig out something to eat and stuff into his stomach, barely maintaining his vital signs.

But he didn’t know whether it was because that sleep just now had made him catch a chill, or because he hadn’t eaten for so long that his stomach was damaged from hunger. He suddenly felt his stomach churning and cramping. He stumbled rushing to the toilet, but only vomited a little sour water.

He turned on the faucet and washed his face. The cold coolness finally made him feel a bit more alive.

The toilet light was somewhat dimmer than the bedroom. Jiang Sheng raised his head, looking squarely at himself in the mirror. Unshaven beard, dark circles under his eyes, slightly sunken cheeks, hair that hadn’t been taken care of for a long time tangled messily on his shoulders. Utterly decadent. If someone suddenly burst in, they would probably mistake him for having ingested something he shouldn’t have.

In this moment of distraction, he felt something abnormal about himself in the mirror.

What exactly was abnormal, he couldn’t say either. He only blankly moved his face closer, studying himself with an inquisitive gaze.

He didn’t know how much time passed. The light overhead flickered again. A chill suddenly shot up his spine. He finally saw what was different about himself in the mirror.

The himself in the mirror was always a fraction of a second slower. Saying one frame might be too exaggerated, but he temporarily couldn’t find any other words to describe this sense of wrongness.

Including blinking, the trembling of hair strands, the curling of fingers, the frequency of chest rising and falling when breathing. He wasn’t certain whether he himself had developed some abnormal mental problem, but currently in his eyes, the himself in the mirror was like this, somewhat slower than the himself in the real world.

He retreated two steps in terror. Unfortunately the toilet space was too narrow. Two steps were enough to make his back press against the wall.

“Y, you, what kind of thing are you?!” He heard his own voice, extremely dry and hoarse from not drinking water for too long.

But this could also confirm that he wasn’t in a dream at this moment. Such an absurd thing had indeed occurred in the real world.

The person in the mirror looked at him in terror, making an expression exactly identical to his.

Jiang Sheng finally couldn’t endure this feeling of terror. He collapsed with a hoarse scream, picked up the hard soap beside his hand, and with a bang smashed it toward the mirror. Unfortunately it had little effect. The himself in the mirror still maintained the same action, not disappearing.

He ran out of the toilet like a madman. The landlord had long heard the banging noises downstairs and was burning with rage, pounding on the door outside and cursing wildly before leaving.

Jiang Sheng trembled as he hugged his head. What entered his eyes were walls covered with his girlfriend’s photos, smiling brilliantly as they gazed at him. For some reason, that feeling of terror just now slightly faded.

Could it be that just now, you came back?

He showed a somewhat entranced expression, stood up, touched his girlfriend’s face, then slowly pressed his own face against it.

The black mist behind him finally revealed its true form, slowly extending out, transforming into the shape of a person, fitting perfectly over his back.

“Do you want to live together with her?”

“You miss her very much.”

“You want her to come back, don’t you?”

“I can help you. You do some things for me, okay?”

Jiang Sheng also didn’t know how he got through those few days. Unconscious and unfeeling, but he vaguely remembered always conversing with some thing, drifting and floating. After the exchange, he himself would forget what he had said and what he had done.

By the time he successfully regained control of his own body, seven days had already passed.

“Seven days.” When Chen Jiu heard this, she frowned: “Do you know how many things you could do in seven days?”

“I can’t care about that much.” Jiang Sheng said stubbornly: “I only want her to come back. I am doing this willingly. Can you please let me go? I only want my lover to come back.”

Chen Jiu was silent for a long time before saying: “Even if it’s deceiving you?”

Jiang Sheng lowered his head, his voice trembling: “No, it won’t…”

Even if it was one in ten thousand, he wanted to grasp it, grasp it tightly.

 

Translation Notes:

“Mature banana” (成年香蕉): A bizarre insult comparing someone’s communication skills to a banana. In Chinese internet slang, calling someone a “banana” can imply they’re yellow on the outside but white on the inside (a slur for assimilated Asians), but here it seems to simply mean “simple minded” or “lacking substance.” The “mature” adds an extra layer of absurdity.