Chapter 2: “Let’s Get Divorced in a Few Years”

Shi Yanchi was a man who, overwhelmed by fear and disbelief, had been reckless enough to slap a monster. The blow had landed hard.

Tu Lin immediately opened his mouth and hissed at him, baring his fangs as if ready to swallow him whole.

Shi Yanchi’s blood turned cold. The snake tail wrapped around him so tightly he couldn’t escape. All he could do now was squeeze his eyes shut and wait for the furious monster to take his revenge.

But he didn’t attack.

Tu Lin coiled his tail around Shi Yanchi and dragged him to the middle of the bed.

Or, more accurately, flung him there. The slap had clearly made him angry, at least a little.

Shi Yanchi’s glasses flew to the floor, leaving him unable to see clearly. But he could feel himself being dragged back into his arms.

The thick, long tail slid between his legs and wound tightly around the lower half of his body, holding him in place. When he had him settled, Tu Lin seemed ready to go to sleep. He rested his human chin on Shi Yanchi’s chest, his head rocking gently from side to side, looking vaguely pleased with himself.

The force of his coils felt like revenge for the other day, when he had been no thicker than two fingers and Shi Yanchi had refused to let him sleep in his bed.

Looking at him like that, Shi Yanchi forgot to be afraid. His thoughts began to drift.

Sometimes, simply huddling together could make even the strangest scene seem beautiful. Tu Lin’s body was cold, but Shi Yanchi still found a little comfort and security in his embrace.

For a moment, he even felt as if the monster posed no threat to him at all.

He knew that was only an illusion. So he stayed still and said nothing more. Naturally, he couldn’t fall asleep, either.

The eerie tableau lasted for a long time. Not until the sky began to pale did Tu Lin finally fall asleep against his shoulder.

Shi Yanchi tried shifting a few times without waking him. Then, carefully and quietly, he slipped out from under his arm and tail. He picked up his glasses and ran from the room without looking back.

As he went, he made a call.

“A-Hui…”

—

“A-Hui, do you believe in ghosts and gods?”

Shi Yanchi opened the back door and got in. The car was parked at the entrance, the ornate iron gates tightly shut, sealing away everything that had happened inside the villa that night.

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t,” A-Hui answered.

“Do you believe the dead can come back to life?”

“Well…” A-Hui met Shi Yanchi’s eyes in the rearview mirror, then quickly looked away. “People say life and death are fate, and riches are up to heaven. Maybe there are things even ghosts and gods can’t change.”

Shi Yanchi gave a quiet laugh, though there was no joy in it.

Exhausted, he leaned back in his seat and took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “Take me to Aunt Zhen.”

Aunt Zhen was a well-known spirit medium in Harbor Bay. When the Tu elders were alive, they often invited her to perform rituals. She had even read the couple’s fortunes before Shi Yanchi and Tu Lin got married.

Shi Yanchi didn’t believe in any of that.

—Or he hadn’t.

—

A little over an hour later, the car stopped in Stacked City, in Harbor Bay’s old district.

It was called a city, though it wasn’t really one. Half a century ago, it had been an ordinary residential neighborhood. Then laborers and illegal immigrants began settling there in droves. The houses grew taller, the alleys narrower, and the roads more tangled. Thousands of people had crowded into that tiny patch of land, so it came to be called Stacked City.

It had everything: the living, the old, the sick, and the dead.

Shi Yanchi changed into the suit he kept in the car. It was more presentable than his pajamas, but still out of place in Stacked City.

It was only a little after five in the morning, but the district was already alive with noise. He walked around the filthy market and entered a square, well-like building that rose thirty or forty stories into the sky.

There was no elevator. He climbed to the fourteenth floor and knocked hard on the door at the far southeast corner. Four times.

“Who is it?”

“Aunt Zhen. It’s me.”

A few minutes later, the metal door opened, and a short, stooped old woman peered out.

She wore an ordinary summer blouse, navy with a small floral print. Her black hair was neatly combed, held in place at the temples by two black clips.

“Why are you here at this hour? What happened?” she asked, stepping aside to let him in.

Once Shi Yanchi was inside, she pulled the light cord beside the door. With a click, a dim tungsten bulb lit the room. Insects swarmed toward it, casting a restless shadow on the wall.

The room was cramped. Half the small living room had been set aside as an altar. A red cloth covered the face of the statue, and two electric candles glowed beside it, never switched off. In the center, a dark-red oil lamp burned slowly, bathing half the room in a bloody light.

“Aunt Zhen,” Shi Yanchi said, but didn’t continue.

Aunt Zhen paused, dragged over a chair, and sat down. Then she slowly raised her head to meet his gaze.

It wasn’t really eye contact. Her eyes were completely clouded over. Only a closer look revealed the pupils hidden beneath the milky film.

“What happened?” she asked again.

This time, Shi Yanchi didn’t hesitate. He told her everything that had happened since Tu Lin’s burial, from finding the snake beneath the pomegranate tree in the yard to seeing him turn into a creature with his dead husband’s face.

“But he isn’t like Tu Lin,” he finished.

They really weren’t alike. Their personalities were different, and so was the way they treated him. They only had the same face.

Aunt Zhen took out a few old copper coins, worn smooth with age. She shook them in her hand and tossed them onto the table. Following their positions, she began murmuring words Shi Yanchi couldn’t understand.

A few minutes later, she gave him a firm answer. “He may not seem like him, but that creature really does have Tu Lin’s soul. He’s just unstable right now, so he has no memories from when he was human.”

She fell silent for a few seconds, then asked in a rough, hoarse voice, “But what do you want? Do you want him to be like Tu Lin, or not?”

Shi Yanchi couldn’t answer immediately.

When Tu Lin was born, the Tu Family had asked someone to read his fortune. They were told he was destined for wealth, but a short life and a lonely fate. He wouldn’t live to thirty, and he would die alone. The Tu Family had spent years searching for a way to change his fate and doted on him endlessly.

Two years ago, Old Master Tu and Old Madam Tu had died one after the other. Tu Lin inherited all their shares and property. Shi Yanchi had received only the deeds to a few properties.

Now Tu Lin was dead. If nothing unexpected happened, Shi Yanchi, as Tu Lin’s legal spouse, should eventually be able to take over what the Tu Family had left behind.

But something had gone wrong. First, Tu Lin had died years earlier than anyone expected, and without warning. Then, just a few days after his death, his lawyer announced that Tu Lin had made a will, which would take effect six months after his death.

Almost no one knew where the document was or what it said.

Plenty of people had speculated about it. Shi Yanchi had, too. There were many things he wanted to know, but one thing seemed certain: he wouldn’t be the beneficiary.

To Shi Yanchi, that made the will a ticking time bomb.

Whether he could inherit everything the Tu Family had left behind, and whether he could hold on to what he already had, depended on whether he found the will before anyone else did.

In the end, he gave Aunt Zhen his answer. “I want him to be Tu Lin—but not the Tu Lin who couldn’t stand me.”

Shi Yanchi knew how greedy and absurd that sounded.

But Aunt Zhen said, “What you want may not be impossible.”

He glanced at her. Aunt Zhen met his gaze with her milky eyes. “A person has three souls: the heavenly soul, the earthly soul, and the human soul. And seven spirits: the first is the heavenly rush, the second is the spiritual wisdom, the third is the qi, the fourth is the strength, the fifth is the center, the sixth is the essence, and the seventh is the hero. There’s also the past, the present, and the future. Take hold of these things, and you can pick and choose as you please, weaving the person you want.”

She’d put it delicately, but Shi Yanchi understood.

—Remove the painful memories Tu Lin’s soul held of him, and keep everything else. If they could change the way he saw him before Tu Lin’s soul became fully stable, then there would be nothing between them but gratitude, no resentment. And Shi Yanchi could have everything he wanted.

“I understand. We’ll do it your way,” Shi Yanchi said. Then he stood. “I’ll pay you the same way as before.”

When he got downstairs, he realized the sky had already grown light.

He knew it was time to go home.

—

During the half hour or so it took to drive from Stacked City back to Repulse Bay, Shi Yanchi couldn’t stop thinking.

He remembered the first time he’d gone to the Tu Family’s Hilltop Estate. It had been some day in the summer of 2013, and the weather had been just as overcast and rainy.

Mr. and Mrs. Tu had died less than half a month earlier. The white mourning notices still hung on the front gate. The main room smelled heavily of incense and paper ash. Beneath the eaves, the air was as gloomy as the sky outside.

Old Madam Tu and Old Master Tu sat in the seats of honor, speaking to a servant. When they saw him, they turned and smiled warmly.

Old Master Tu asked if he had a name. Shi Yanchi said he did, and then Old Master Tu asked what it was.

He explained that he had been slow to learn to speak, so the director of the welfare home had named him Yanchi, “late to speak.” Shi was the surname of a relative he’d never met. It had been tucked into his swaddling clothes when he was found.

Old Master Tu said that good things came to those who waited, and that there was nothing wrong with being a little late.

Perhaps the words had been a prophecy. Everything Shi Yanchi got in life seemed to come later than it did for everyone else.

—He had lived at the Tu Family’s estate for more than half a year before he finally met Tu Lin.

By then, they were both about to start high school.

Perhaps it was puberty. Tu Lin, in his teens, loved getting into fights. Whenever he scraped himself up or got hurt, he would climb over the wall to get home.

The first time Shi Yanchi saw him vault over the wall, he was startled.

“Who are you? Why are you in my house?” Seeing a stranger, Tu Lin took a few wary steps back.

The Tu Family’s servants sometimes said Shi Yanchi was quiet and gloomy. They weren’t wrong. He gave Tu Lin a quick once-over and answered with just three words: “Shi Yanchi.”

“Yanchi…” Tu Lin repeated, then suddenly realized. “Oh, you’re the student my grandma and grandpa are sponsoring?”

“…Yes.”

“Got it.” Tu Lin’s face brightened into a friendly smile.

He’d inherited his looks from his mother, a famous Harbor Bay actress of the last century. With shoulder-length hair and a dazzling face, he was hard to look away from whenever his expression came alive.

But Shi Yanchi had only recently left the welfare home. He was more wooden than anyone. He stared at Tu Lin for a long time, lost in thought.

Tu Lin seemed not to notice his frank stare. He took off his backpack and rummaged around inside before pulling out a popsicle.

“A-Chi,” he said, as if they were already friends. He came closer and dangled the popsicle in front of Shi Yanchi like bait. “I’ll give you this if you don’t tell Grandma you saw me here today. Deal?”

“Okay.”

Shi Yanchi answered quietly, though he wouldn’t have told anyone anyway.

After he agreed, Tu Lin swaggered off, and the rest of the memory grew hazy.

Shi Yanchi still remembered that the popsicle had almost melted. Cream stuck to the wrapper in ragged streaks, and once he took it out, it ran down the wooden stick and between his fingers.

It still smelled sweet, though.

He ate it slowly, swallowing each bite carefully. It took him more than ten minutes to finish. He remembered the taste for more than ten years.

—

When they were teenagers, their relationship stayed much the same. They weren’t especially close, but they could almost pass for brothers. Tu Lin was cheerful and had lots of friends, and the Tu Family was wealthy enough to make room for an orphan staying with them.

That changed a little over three years ago, when Aunt Zhen announced that their birth charts were an excellent match and they should marry.

That wasn’t quite right. Their fates were compatible, and marrying Shi Yanchi could ward off Tu Lin’s bad luck and help him live longer.

Old Master Tu told them as soon as he found out.

Tu Lin was away on business in Mainland China at the time, so Shi Yanchi hurried back to the Hilltop Estate alone. He was still wearing his work clothes. His tie and the Buddha shrine in the main hall seemed to pin him to his seat, leaving him unable to move.

Old Master Tu gave him a brief summary of Aunt Zhen’s reading and asked, “A-Chi, what do you think?”

What did he think?

The question made Shi Yanchi feel, for a moment, as if he really could say no.

But he knew how to read a room. He was good at weighing the situation. So after a few minutes of silence, he made a hasty decision about the rest of his life.

“Okay,” he said. “But Young Master Tu…”

Old Madam Tu smiled gently. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.”

He didn’t know what the elders had done, but even Tu Lin, who had never liked other people interfering too much in his life, agreed.

Both of them had accepted, so everyone assumed their life after marriage would be loving—or, at the very least, respectful. Shi Yanchi had once thought so, too.

But there was no wedding, no guests. They simply got the paperwork and moved in together, in the villa where they still lived.

On their first night there, their wedding night, nothing happened to make either of them blush. Just as they had when they were like brothers at the Hilltop Estate, they slept in separate bedrooms.

Their relationship truly soured one night, six months into the marriage.

It was almost midnight. Tu Lin appeared in Shi Yanchi’s bedroom, sitting in a chair with a book in his hands.

When Shi Yanchi entered, Tu Lin heard him, closed the book, and slowly walked over. In a gentle voice, though there was no real feeling behind it, he said, “A-Chi, let’s get divorced in a few years.”

Shi Yanchi looked at him and saw none of the person he’d known before.

That made sense.

Shi Yanchi was a lowly person from a lowly place. He couldn’t become someone else just by putting on fine clothes and moving into a fine house. He and Tu Lin had always belonged to different worlds.

They could be brothers. They could never be husbands.