Chapter 40

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 based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 40

(T/N: This chapter was so sad omg. I translated this with tears in my eyes so I hope you enjoy)

“That’s great, that’s great!” The older woman rubbed her hands together. She pushed Lin Yan onto the chair, rambling off a long list of things, and Lin Yan finally understood what he needed to do.

In Room 607 of the Cardiovascular Ward, a blind elderly widower named Liang had been hospitalized with heart failure and had been in a coma for more than two weeks. The old man was in a very bad financial situation and was barely able to maintain his treatment with money from different charities. Previously, his partner came to the hospital every day to take care of him, but the several days of heavy rain put a serious strain on his partner’s already poor health, and they died of a heart attack on the way to the hospital five days ago. Since then, the patient was cared for by a community volunteer organization on a rotating basis.

“Young man, when you arrived, the uncle just woke up and was in need of someone. I was in a hurry, so I took you for a student who came to take care of the patient.” The older woman said. “The patient in this room had a good relationship with his wife. If you know the news of his partner’s passing, I’m afraid there’s no avoiding it. Just pretend to be his partner. Give the man whatever he wants. Don’t reveal anything.”

Lin Yan forced a smile: “How can I pretend? Blind people can hear voices even if they can’t see. Won’t it be hard to not say anything at all?”

“Hey! His partner is mute and can’t speak at all. When they were still alive, they would listen to Mr. Liang ramble on by himself. One had what the other didn’t: One of them couldn’t see and the other couldn’t speak. Their relationship was very good. All the nurses looked envious.” The older woman lowered her voice and leaned closer to Lin Yan. “The old man is still in good spirits. Just now, he asked to have some oranges. The doctor is anxious because most of those bedridden with long-term illnesses seem to have a sudden and unexplained improvement. It’s only for a short while before his energy burns out and then that’s that.”

Lin Yan played with the small bag of oranges that the older woman had given him. He nodded and agreed. He stood at the door of the room, glancing in through the glass. He asked in a whisper: “He doesn’t have any children? He looks older than my grandfather.”

The older woman suddenly smiled ambiguously and made a silent gesture: “I told you to be quiet. Mr. Liang’s partner was a man. We’d call him a clay rabbit* in our local dialect!”

*(T/N: 兔儿爷 is a clay rabbit used for the mid-autumn festival. It’s also slang for a gay man)

Lin Yan reflexively jerked his head up and hurriedly turned his face to hide his expression.

“Tsk tsk, I heard that the two of them never got married their entire lives. They were often looked down upon when they were young. It’s not easy. Once his partner left, he was left all alone.”

“Wait to go in. Walk and pick up things slowly. The old man can’t see, but his ears are sharp. Don’t let him hear the movements of a young man.” The older woman said with a look that indicated to him to get ready. She uneasily instructed: “Someone sick and groggy is less likely to recognize others. We can pretend for a day. The old man doesn’t have much time left.”

Lin Yan originally just wanted to leave after helping, but at this point, he was touched by the whole incident. He nodded and said seriously, “Don’t worry, leave it to me.”

There was a special “old person’s smell” in the room. The smell of medicine, cotton cloth, faint dampness and old wooden furniture reminded Lin Yan of his grandfather’s old house in the countryside. The room had been cleaned and tidied. On the bedside table was a white enamel jar with the words “Long Live Chairman Mao” next to an old green plastic thermos. An old black soft leather book was covered by a worn-out cattail-leaf fan. People have a bad memory when they get older and often rely on writing things down to remember them.

Other than that, there was nothing else on the table. He was old and frugal, and it was obvious that this patient’s financial situation was very middle class.

An old man in his 70s was lying on a hospital bed. An oxygen tube was inserted into his left nostril. His wrinkled face was serene. His hands were folded on top of the covers. When he heard someone enter, he called softly, “Hong Sheng is here.”

The old man did not turn his head when he spoke, looking straight ahead. Lin Yan observed it as he walked around the end of the bed. He had no signs of cataracts. Except for his lack of spirit, the old man’s eyes looked the same as those of anyone else except for the fact that he had optic nerve problems and had been blind for a long time.

The sky outside the window was covered with cotton wool-like rain clouds. The whole room was grey and drizzly, the rain falling non-stop

Lin Yan didn’t dare speak. He slowly pulled out a chair and sat down beside the hospital bed. He put the bag of oranges on the bedside table and picked up a large one.

“It sounds like it’s going to rain for a while. Bring a raincoat when you come. Don’t get wet.”

Lin Yan nodded silently. His eyes circled around the room, resting on the back of the old man’s bark-like hand. He waited.

The old man didn’t expect to receive any response and went on talking to himself: “The bedsheets at home need to be dried. The heavy summer rain will get them mouldy in the house.”

“Has the cat been fed? We’ve been stuck in the hospital every day. I don’t know if it’s hungry or has gotten thin.”

“I seem to have slept for a long time, and I dreamed that you came to see me. Just like when you were young, you stood by my bed in that suit for a long time, not making a sound. So many nurses looked at you yet you didn’t leave. The older you get, the less embarrassed you get.”

There was a shy look on the old man’s face. The wrinkled face seemed younger, the waxy yellow colour of his sickness had faded. It was probably the soul of his dead partner who came to say goodbye. Lin Yan felt like his heart was in a vice grip and his vision was growing misty. He turned his head and looked out the window.

After pouring some water for the old man, Lin Yan began to peel the orange, carefully plucking off the white veins of the orange slice. He collected the orange peel and placed them on the windowsill to dry and block out the room’s smell. Lin Yan carefully brought an orange slice to the old man’s mouth. The old man froze for a moment before he opened his mouth and took it. Because of his bad teeth, he slid the piece into his cheek and slowly chewed it.

“It’s very sweet. You can still buy oranges this season.”

He peeled the slices and handed them over one after another. The old man couldn’t chew the thin skin around the orange slices, so Lin Yan carefully peeled it off. The old man was very obedient and ate slowly. Lin Yan felt that this morning was extraordinarily quiet and warm. He couldn’t help but imagine an image of himself, decades from now, lying on a hospital bed, his own old lover hobbling in. He bought him a bag of oranges and sat next to the bed, peeling the oranges for him to eat. The years may have worsened his vision but not their companionship… Silent time shared together, silently looking out for each other…

Love should be like this. Two young and wild teenagers meet in the wilderness under the sun, one saying to the other: “Let’s face this world together.” So they walk together, hand in hand, through the long journey of life, seeing endless flowers blossoming and sceneries, laughing and complaining about each other all the way, but always supporting each other and never giving up… Until the faces of the beautiful young men were filled with wrinkles, their tall and straight figures bent over by the years, their elderly shadows dragged out by the setting sun. They can no longer walk, so they dress themselves in some clean clothes and lie in bed hand in hand. They say let’s die, and then they die together, like a pair of geese returning from the south, following each other the whole way from the beginning to the end.

He didn’t realize that his eyes were red again.

The ward was extraordinarily quiet. Only the regular sound of rain and the fresh scent of oranges remained. After eating a whole orange, Lin Yan took out the bag to grab another one. Hearing the rustling of the plastic bag, the old man suddenly spoke up and quietly said: “He’s gone.”

Lin Yan raised his head. He covered his mouth and didn’t speak.

“Stop pretending. I’ve been with Hong Sheng all my life. You can hide it from others but not from me.”

“Who are you?”

Lin Yan dejectedly put the orange back into the bag. He thought that he had done a flawless performance, and he hadn’t spoken a word this whole time. How did he know?

“My name is Lin Yan.” He whispered. “Your partner can’t come for the next little bit so I’ll be here to help you and come back in a few days.”

The old man smiled calmly. He “looked” at the ceiling for a while, and slowly said: “Don’t lie to me. I know that he’s never coming back.”

There really seemed to be some kind of sixth sense between lovers who had been together their entire lives. The old man turned his face towards him. He knew that he couldn’t see, but Lin Yan still felt that two sharp eyes were fixed on his face. After a long silence, he finally relented and said: “How did you know?”

“I woke up and he didn’t come. I found you pretending to be him, why else would you do that unless…” The old man said slowly. His face showed a strange calm in the gray light, like a pool of stagnant water. No great emotions and no sadness, as if he was just quietly stating a fact that had nothing to do with him. Lin Yan couldn’t understand it. He always thought that there would be strong emotions like grief, pain, being unable to restrain themself and so on, but the silence in the room was alarming.

“Did he suffer? When he passed?” The old man said calmly.

“No.” Lin Yan said. “I heard from the doctor that it was a sudden heart attack.”

The old man was silent for a while. “I must have missed my time to go. He said that he would die after me, but in the end, he went before me.” After he spoke, he smiled. Two streaks of cloudy tears flowed down his cheeks as he smiled.

Lin Yan was at a loss. He felt that he should say something to comfort him, but all words were in vain in the face of life and death, so he awkwardly grabbed the plastic bag and said, “Do you still want to eat some oranges? I’ll help you peel them.”

The moment was lonely and silent.

The old man didn’t answer. He quietly lay back on the bed in a daze, and said after a while, “You can go. I’ll be fine by myself.”

Some sadness can only be endured and digested alone until it fully sinks in. Lin Yan tiptoed out of the room and gently closed the door. He put his ear against the door and listened for a while. The room was very quiet, as if there was no one staying there.

The next day, Weiwei was successfully discharged from the hospital and was taken home to recuperate. Yin Zhou helped to pack her things, while Lin Yan accompanied her father to go through the discharge formalities. After finishing, he returned to the room. Weiwei had changed out of the hospital gown. She was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and sat on the edge of the bed, swinging her legs back and forth, slippers knocked on the bed rails as she did. Seeing Lin Yan enter, she turned her face away. Her father was a little embarrassed, and reminded her to thank Lin Yan. Weiwei just gave him a cold look and asked if the ring was still there.

Lin Yan was stunned for a moment, thinking of the box that had been crushed by Xiao Yu, and shook his head.

When Weiwei left with her bag on her back, she didn’t look back once, and she didn’t say another word to him. This story was over now.

Lin Yan still came to the hospital every day. He bought some fresh oranges when he passed by the supermarket, and headed directly to the old man’s room in the ward on the sixth floor. The old man named Liang liked him very much, and, after slowly accepting the news of his partner’s death, he began to chat with Lin Yan. Lin Yan felt that the old man’s health was improving. After a ward round, he chased the doctor out to ask about his condition. The doctor took off his mask and asked Are you a family member? Prepare a funeral for the old man.

Lin Yan was a little lost. He walked into the room and tried to smile. He told the old man that the doctor said that he was recovering well and should be discharged soon.

The old man was very quiet that day. Lin Yan tucked in the blanket for him. When he was about to leave, the old man suddenly stopped him. He was facing the window behind Lin Yan with a tired face as if he was carefully listening to the sound of the rain. He said softly: “If you’re not in a hurry, sit down a little longer and I’ll tell you about Hong Sheng.”

Memories were like old photos, stained with a dull brownish-yellow by time. The old man’s name was Liang Qing. He was born blind and was abandoned by his biological parents at the gate of an orphanage. When he was eleven years old, the old orphanage director saw that no one would adopt him and sent him to a school for the deaf in the town to learn Braille. It was called a school for the deaf, but it actually brought together many disabled children; mentally handicapped, blind, autistic, and deformed ‘unable to jump and run like others’ children gathered here to express and communicate in different ways, isolated from the world. Without discrimination or exclusion, they licked each other’s wounds, proving warmth and hugs to each other.

Liang Qing was an introverted kid who liked to sit on the only swing at school and contemplate the colours of the sunset. Although he had never really seen colour. To him, the world was nothing more than day after day of darkness, until a man named Zhang Hong Sheng appeared.

Hong Sheng was a new young teacher hired by the school. He was gentle and handsome. He wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and always smiled softly at the children. He was born unable to speak, but he was proficient in sign language and Braille and he had read a lot of books. Seeing that Liang Qing didn’t like talking to people, he looked for opportunities to approach him, trying to bring this child out of solitude.

He showed Liang Qing many stories in Braille. Liang Qing said that Hong Sheng was his eyes and he was Hong Sheng’s voice.

In the third year since Hong Sheng came to the school, they were together. They sneak around, carefully avoiding everyone’s eyes, using their incomplete bodies to indulge in complete love and subtle sweetness, until one day, after class, the principal passed by the classroom and accidentally bumped into the two kissing. Unexpectedly, Hong Sheng was expelled for his misconduct, and Liang Qing chose to drop out of school.

“That year I was sixteen and Hong Sheng was twenty-four. We didn’t have any relatives, so we simply rented a house and lived together. Because of his affair with a student, and a male student at that, there was no school willing to hire Hong Sheng again. We were very poor. The house often leaked and we slept on planks he picked up because we couldn’t afford a bed. One meal often had to be slipt up to make three meals. He said that he had to support me. He worked wherever he could, collecting scrap, picking up garbage, doing the most tiring and hardest work. He earned so little but never let me help. One time I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I secretly went out to find someone to teach me how to massage. He couldn’t find me when he got home. He was so worried that he went from house to house, knocking on every door.”

The old man gently closed his eyes and immersed himself in the memories of the past. “When he found the store, he saw me washing feet with my master and he dragged me out without saying a word. It was New Year’s Eve and it was especially cold. I was afraid that he would get angry. I was shivering from the cold, crying while I walked. No amount of coaxing from Hong Sheng worked. So, with all the money he had on him, he bought me a bag of oranges.”

“Candied oranges are expensive in winter, but he didn’t want to eat any of them.”

“He kept asking me to tell others that I was his younger brother, but no matter how well we concealed it, the neighbours still found out. When we went out, the children threw stones at us. They gathered on the side of the road and called us clay rabbits, Hong Sheng was never confrontational but he would fight to the death for me. People would scold me and he couldn’t speak, but sweat would drip down. When I touched him, my hand would get wet, covered with sweat and blood, and even now there’s a long scar.”

“I don’t know how I got through it now, but at that time, no matter how hard it was, I was really happy. I was happy from the bottom of my heart. After we closed the door, nothing that had happened outside mattered anymore. He made congee and gave me rice to eat. He thought I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it.”

“He would take my hand in bed and write in the palm of my hand, saying he wanted to live like this for the rest of his life.”

“I laughed at him and told him how long his life would be. If things got boring, he’d be gone in a hurry. He had to be serious with me.”

“Afterwards, life got better. We were able to have enough to eat, and no one was chasing and harassing us when we went out. We both lived and lived and, before we knew it, we grew old.” A satisfied smile appeared on the corner of the old man’s mouth, as if his young lover was still standing in front of him and had never left. “A lifetime is actually quite short. It’s not forever, it’ll be over in a hurry.”

“He always said that he would die after me. If he died first, he was afraid that no one would take care of me.” The old man raised his head and whispered into the air. “Hong Sheng, don’t think that I won’t take it personally if you only lie to me once in your life. I’ll deal with you when I get down there, we’re not done yet.”

The old man spoke quietly. Lin Yan listened silently, his hands shaking slightly. He lost his grip on an orange and it rolled to the ground.

Without asking about the cause of the noise, the old man continued: “Do you know how I guessed you weren’t him the day you arrived?”