Chapter 38

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is the product of my limited knowledge of Chinese characters as I attempt to learn the language. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 38

The space in the single ward was a bit crowded because a few more people had joined them. A-Yan, Yin Zhou, Weiwei’s father, the attending physician and Lin Yan gathered around the bed. Despite the doctor’s objection, A-Yan drew a meditation sigil on Weiwei’s forehead. Whether it was due to the effect of the tranquillizer or because of A-Yan’s talisman, Weiwei stopped crying and just cowered under the covers with her eyes wide open and dull. A-Yan put his fingers on her pulse and listened for a while. He rolled his eyes and turned back with a relaxed expression.

“It’s not a big deal. I don’t know what was frightening me. I’m sure, I-I’ll be able to heal her by using the local technique.” Seeing that everyone was looking at him in confusion, the little Daoist explained: “J-Just bring her clothes to the place she was frightened and call for her soul to return.”

The group began to discuss where Weiwei had been since she left the birthday party. Lin Yanjing couldn’t stay silent. That night, Xiao Yu’s angry expression overlapped with the missing piece of jade. He had almost killed the little Daoist priest by mistake. Lin Yan bit his lower lip and forced out: “You come with me.”

A man and a ghost quietly walked through the silent corridor and closed the door. In front of the bathroom sink, an older man in a striped hospital gown was smiling in the mirror with his teeth bared. He forgot to fasten his belt and his two white noodle-like appendages were hanging down. Lin Yan waited patiently for him to leave. When the old man turned around, the corner of his mouth twitched morbidly. He suddenly pointed behind Lin Yan and exclaimed, “Ah, there’s a ghost, there’s a ghost.”

After saying that, he ran out with his hands in the air.

It is said that the mentally ill can see illusions of the other world, Lin Yan thought silently. Sometimes it was even difficult for him to distinguish whether such a person was a wise man or a lunatic. Or perhaps there was no difference between the two. People should be divided into two categories: mediocre and exceptional. He wanted to be the former, but fate would not spare him.

“Xiao Yu.” Lin Yan said with difficulty.

“You want to interrogate the culprit?” Xiao Yu didn’t wait for Lin Yan to ask the second half of his sentence. He folded his arms across his chest, leaning against the marble table and coldly said, “Ask.”

“I haven’t said anything yet. Can you stop rudely looking at me like that?” Lin Yan felt that his self-esteem was provoked by this ghost’s arrogance. He patiently said, “A person is lying in the hospital, I have no time to joke with you. If you did it, please tell me where and I won’t ask anything more. If you won’t, please explain yourself.”

Xiao Yu twisted his face away so as not to look at him and said indifferently: “Do you believe what I said?”

Again with this tone. Lin Yan secretly clenched his fists. He took a deep breath and tried to keep his temper calm, and said softly, “I know you’re not happy I’m asking you this, but think about it from my perspective. I drank too much that day and it provoked her. You almost strangled her at my front door and I had to deal with your wrath all night. Then she came here, frightened out of her mind, and she was clutching your waist ornament in her hand. Who has the ability to take something from a ghost… Xiao Yu, I can’t help but think too much into it.”

Lin Yan said earnestly, “I just need your word and I’ll believe you.”

He felt that he had kept his attitude in check, but Xiao Yu only gave him a cold side glance: “And I have only one thing to say. You doubt me. I have nothing to say.”

Lin Yan was trembling with anger at his reaction. His fists loosened and clenched. He did not know why he couldn’t keep a cool head to negotiate with this ghost. He loathed Xiao Yu’s harshness and the determination that wouldn’t let him back down. He wouldn’t back down either. The two were at a stalemate, each waiting for the other to take a step back. The contradiction had changed from whether the ghost hurt Weiwei to a confrontation over pride. But, at this point, Lin Yan didn’t even realize why he was angry…

“Can you stop acting like a bitch!” Lin Yan took an unbearable step forward. “Let’s talk about it. I don’t want to play with you about how you love me and don’t trust me and all that shitty TV show stuff. Now that someone is involved in our affair and lying in the hospital, I want to get rid of the problem, simple as that.”

“Just tell me, yes or no?”

Xiao Yu propped his hands on the marble sink behind him. He was also holding back, restraining himself until the knuckles of his fingers turned white. After a long while, he said in a deep voice, “Lin Yan, I promised you.”

“If your promise meant anything, why is A-Yan hospitalized?” Lin Yan interrupted him.

“He wanted to hurt you…”

“And was this because Weiwei went too far? You’re just a jealous person!”

“So you think it was me?” Xiao Yu suddenly raised his eyes. His gaze pierced him like a knife. “Lin Yan, even if I’m dead, I still have a heart.”

“I want to give you everything you want, but all I have left is my heart. You don’t understand. You must not know what it’s like to wait endlessly, to reach out and not see…” Xiao Yu pursed his lips, his eyes filled with a strange resentment, “I can’t get you to believe me.”

After he finished speaking, he pushed Lin Yan away with a flick of his sleeves. The whole room was silent. Without hope of persistence, the person behind him suddenly caught up, tugging at his sleeve, rasping: “So it’s my fault? You’re some amazing ghost? Do you think it’s fucking easy for me? I can’t take good classes and have a good life because I’m running around for you every day. People around me get into accidents one after another, and my health is getting worse and worse. I don’t know how long I can last. I’m so tired. Xiao Yu please, don’t be angry with me…”

Lin Yan leaned against the door and slid to the floor. His throat was hoarse. The ghost stared at him, and finally squatted down with him, hugging his shoulders and gently rubbing his back. Lin Yan’s eyes turned red. He fumbled into his pocket, and said hoarsely, “I’m going to smoke a cigarette, you stay out of it.”

Cold lips kissed his, softly without a trace of aggression and eroticism. Lin Yan froze for a moment and then wrapped his arms around Xiao Yu’s neck in response. The two sat on the bathroom floor tiles and kissed each other, lips and teeth entangled. The kiss was long and soft, an amorous gesture, as if such a kiss would be able to help them escape the gossip of the world and the warmth of human feelings, as if there was no parting and no sadness. Lin Yan grabbed Xiao Yu’s clothes and sucked on his tongue. He didn’t know why he was hugging him but he felt desperate, like two rabbits cornered by a hunter.

His hair was like silk, flowing through his fingers. His heart was full of thoughts that he couldn’t say.

That is to say, when a seed of evil is planted, the fruit of evil is born, growing and multiplying without end.

“You want me.” Lin Yan rubbed Xiao Yu’s lips. “I want you.”

“Don’t be hasty.” Xiao Yu pushed him away: “Do you want to end up in the hospital again?”

Looking at each other, they couldn’t help but laugh. The laughter was sad, and even their hearts hurt slightly.

The two of them were leaning side by side behind the bathroom door. Lin Yan grabbed Xiao Yu’s hand. His eyes focused on a point on the ceiling. He said softly, “Xiao Yu, I’ve always wanted someone to spend the most ordinary and uneventful days with me. To lie on the couch with me watching TV, come home for dinner every day, save up for a car and a house, go to the movies to see a stupid American movie when we’re free, go to see my parents with me on the weekends, get drunk together at class reunions where families are allowed, sing loudly while walking down the street, and have sex in every corner of the house with the door closed.”

“I know you can not understand, but this is the life I want. It’s everything I want. If I can find that person, I don’t mind coming out of the closet…” Lin Yan forced down the sourness in his throat. “But he can’t… can’t…”

“He can’t be a dead person.” Xiao Yu continued quietly.

“You like me, you like me more than anyone else, but I can’t afford your affection. The price to pay is too high…” Lin Yan covered his face with his hands. he didn’t want Xiao Yu to see his wretched appearance. “I won’t ask you about Weiwei. You can leave.”

“For the sake of getting along for so many days, let me go. Let go of my friends.” Lin Yan said with difficulty.

The person beside him was silent for a long time as if he had been thinking. He also seemed to be convincing himself to make this major decision. Will he agree? Will he agree to it? Lin Yan waited with grit teeth. He admits that he was selfish, but now they have long since become each other’s weaknesses in the eyes of the enemy in the shadows. Further encounters would only lead to worse consequences in the woven conspiracy. Becoming strangers was the best way.

Xiao Yu opened his hand and brushed the corners of his eyes and cheeks with his cold fingertips. For the first time, he nodded seriously. Lin Yan thought he would be sad, but the ghost was calm as if he had already prepared for this. After a while, he softly called out: “Lin Yan.” His voice fell off, a soft and gentle reminder

“I’ll walk you downstairs.” Lin Yan said in a panic.

Xiao Yu smiled lightly. He shook his head, his lips lightly brushing Lin Yan’s forehead. He opened the bathroom door and walked out. The corridor was quiet and long. The ghost’s back was particularly tall and straight, and his loose robes fluttered in the wind, like a flock of white doves flying in.

Lin Yan leaned against the wall and watched him quietly, walking further and further away, like in those superimposed shots in movies, slowly disappearing into the background, out of sight.

“Goodbye.” Lin Yan said silently. He took out the crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit one with shaking hands, and took a deep breath.

For three days in a row, Lin Yan came to the hospital to take care of Weiwei while the little Daoist priest and Yin Zhou went out to all the places she had been to after her birthday. The first night, Lin Yan went with them. It was much like a rural tradition that he had heard about when he was a child. When children are frightened by dirty things, adults bring their clothes and walk along the road where the soul was lost while shouting their names. They believe that when a person is frightened, his or her soul will leave the body, and when they hear their name, they will return to their clothes and follow the person calling out to the soul back home.

He constantly felt guilty about Weiwei, whether Xiao Yu did it or not. He didn’t dare mention to Weiwei’s father about letting a girl go home alone in the middle of the night so he had to make up for it by staying at the hospital every day to pour water and peel apples.

Lin Yan carefully wiped off the residual makeup on Weiwei’s face with a tissue. He couldn’t help waiting with bated breath. If that person was still there, a cold pair of arms would definitely wrap around him from behind… Lin Yan’s arm froze in mid-air. No one was there. There was silence all around them. Weiwei stared at him with dull eyes. The whole room felt like it had been abandoned by the world, lonely and heart-wrenching.

Xiao Yu is gone. The paranoid, violent, gentle ghost who insisted on taking him to another world for eternal companionship is gone. Meanwhile, the ghosts of the girl in red and the old had vanished. Life had returned to normal, except for Weiwei, who was still lying on the bed, and the whereabouts of the temple master were still unknown. Everything was like a story without an ending, hanging there in the air, pale and weak, hanging on a breath, neither alive nor dead.

Lin Yan went home and cleaned up the living room. All the damaged items were packed and thrown into the trash can downstairs. The old books on the table that detailed ancient Daoism were intact. Lin Yan stared at the books that were still neatly stacked in the mess. He suddenly realized that Xiao Yu had been waiting for this day for a long time. He was ready to leave when he was still oblivious and even took care of the aftermath.

Learn this…

If I go away one day…

Haven’t you been looking forward to it…

Lin Yan stood at the table in a daze of memories. He finally used his undeterrable perseverance and indestructible courage, day and night, to persistently drive away a ghost waiting for love.

When tidying up the bedroom, he opened the closet. Each piece of Hanfu clothing was expensive and delicate. Lin Yan hesitated but wasn’t willing to move.

Afraid of them being seen by his family, he took out the burial clothes. The damp and bright red was so cold. He had never looked at it carefully before. For the first time, he spread the clothes on the bed and checked the trims. The word ‘囍’* wrapped in dark floral patterns in the silk satin was shocking. Lin Yan took a photo of the front and back details of the burial robe and forwarded them to his professor. Half an hour later, his phone rang, and the professor replied: Ming dynasty-made inlaid and rolled brocade fringe wedding dress.

*(T/N: 囍 is a character that’s a symbol of good luck, especially for marriage)

It was not only a burial garment, it was a wedding dress of the deceased.

Lin Yan’s whole body trembled heavily. The ghost had come to marry him from the very beginning. Although there was no dowry, no candles, and no marital home, he waited and protected him with all his heart. With an almost perverted desire for exclusivity and a meticulous tenderness to break into his life, a ghost who had been sleeping for a hundred years, a heart that had been barren for too long, had stood in front of him and said he wanted him.

An empty bathroom, kitchen, living room, empty home. Two pillows on the bed, two pairs of slippers on the floor, the light green straight upholstery that had just been replaced and had not had time to wash, everything was screaming one thing at him.

Things have remained the same, but the people have changed

Lin Yan propped himself up and stared at his own reflection in front of the mirror. He turned on the faucet and forgot to turn it off. Cold water rushed against the black-tempered glass. After waiting for a long time, no one appeared. The ghost’s departure was as silent as its arrival. It was like melting spring snow that left no trace in his life.