Chapter 1
Twilight pressed down on the city, the continuous drizzle filling the air with a stifling, oppressive weight.
The villa, shrouded in darkness, resembled a slumbering beast. Not a single light shone from within, every curtain drawn tight, like a box cocooned in layers of darkness.
The kind that holds ashes, buried beneath a tombstone.
A faint mushroom-shaped nightlight glowed in the master bedroom on the third floor, its golden light illuminating only a small semicircle around the bedside.
A figure sat motionless by the bed, broad shoulders slumped under an unspeakable burden. The nightlight revealed only a fraction of his face, the rest lost in shadow. His usually deep-set eyes were now bloodshot and dull with exhaustion.
He still wore the clothes from his frantic rush to the hospital days ago, now wrinkled and faintly smelling of disinfectant.
The nightlight’s glow, like a tiny boat adrift on a tranquil, dark sea, elongated the man’s shadow.
The wallpaper’s pattern disappeared into the darkness, its warm beige seemingly tinged with the moon’s chill. The once paired shadows were now solitary, cutting into the one who remained, again and again.
Even the shadow seemed twisted into a clawing, monstrous shape by this profound, bone-deep grief and despair.
Song Jingmo was so anxious he wanted to do a sit-up right there on the spot.
Half a month ago, Song Jingmo had been in a car accident. He’d blacked out instantly, and when he opened his eyes again, he found himself transformed into the shadow of his beloved, Xie Zhang.
It was utterly absurd.
Song Jingmo held his breath for a moment, manipulating the shadow into a highly abstract, conjoined exclamation point, then deflated, the inky blackness returning to the quiet shape of a man.
—Okay, perhaps, maybe, possibly… he was actually… dead?
Song Jingmo looked at the dejected figure of his lover, wanting to reach out and comfort him, but powerlessly acknowledged the reality that he didn’t have hands.
Oh, wait.
Strictly speaking, he did have hands.
It’s just that these hands were inky black, two-dimensional, and identical to Xie Zhang’s.
He had been driving when the accident happened, colliding head-on with a runaway truck. The chances of survival were indeed slim.
Song Jingmo had consumed his fair share of novels and games, accumulating a rich inventory of outlandish ideas.
This situation felt like a classic case of “the body is gone, but the soul still loves,” crawling back to haunt Xie Zhang, even in death.
Song Jingmo felt rather distressed.
Generally, in these kinds of human-ghost love stories, the ghost would absorb the human’s essence and yang energy, nine times out of ten ending in a tragic separation.
He’d been reflecting on himself these past few days, and he didn’t think he was the type of person who would drag Xie Zhang down with him, even in death.
—At most, he’d squat on his tombstone and blow a gust of wind to pelt Xie Zhang with dead leaves when he came to visit with his next partner.
However, no matter how long Song Jingmo reflected, Xie Zhang remained frozen by the bed like a living fossil.
As everyone knows, ghosts don’t need to eat, and neither do shadows, but humans do.
Song Jingmo could even hear Xie Zhang’s stomach rumbling.
But Xie Zhang remained motionless.
Song Jingmo really wanted to kick Xie Zhang out of bed and into the dining room.
But judging by the state of the villa, deserted for days and on the verge of becoming a haunted house, there probably wasn’t even a breadcrumb left in the dining room.
“Ding-dong—”
The doorbell rang downstairs.
The shadow, lying supine on the bed, jolted upright in excitement.
Song Jingmo: “!!!”
He sat up straight?!
The next second, Xie Zhang, frozen for days, abruptly stood up.
Song Jingmo, having achieved an upright posture for the first time, was instantly yanked back down, flat against the bed.
His body swayed from lack of sustenance. Xie Zhang steadied himself against the bedside lamp and strode towards the stairs with urgency.
The inky black Song Jingmo was dragged downstairs, face down.
Xie Zhang descended the stairs.
The inky black Song Jingmo folded into the shape of the staircase.
Xie Zhang stepped onto the carpet.
The inky black Song Jingmo became fluffy.
Xie Zhang stopped at the entrance hall. His shadow fell perfectly on the large, round vase by the door, forming a perfect “n” shape.
Fortunately, Song Jingmo was now weightless and more flexible than a contortionist.
Dangling from the vase, his vision upside down, Song Jingmo glared at the person who could make the stone-like Xie Zhang move with such haste.
Song Jingmo recognized the person at the door. It was a familiar face.
It was Xu Yi, Xie Zhang’s long-time assistant, looking almost as bad as Xie Zhang, like he was about to collapse from overwork. He held a musical instrument case in his hand.
Xu Yi handed the case to Xie Zhang, his voice hoarse: “Mr. Xie, I got it.”
There was a small star on the handle of the case. Even with his upside-down vision, Song Jingmo recognized it instantly.
It was his violin case, which should have been in the car with him during the accident.
Song Jingmo’s spirits sank.
Xie Zhang’s hand trembled slightly at his side, unable to reach out and take the case immediately.
A flicker of sadness crossed Xu Yi’s face. He lowered his voice: “Given the state of the car after the accident, the violin shouldn’t have been repaired so quickly. But perhaps the case protected it. Only the strings broke; the rest are just minor scratches.”
Hearing this, Song Jingmo couldn’t help but squirm.
Indeed, the common sense he’d picked up from short videos proved useful. The safest place in a car is the back seat, so whenever he drove, he always placed the violin case in the back and secured it with the seatbelt.
Seeing Xie Zhang slowly take the violin case, Xu Yi couldn’t bear to look at his boss’s expression and glanced to the side.
Then he saw his boss’s shadow wriggle into a swaying “S” shape.
Xu Yi: “?”
The efficient but overworked Xu Yi squeezed his eyes shut.
His boss’s shadow lay quietly on the floor of the entrance hall, stretching past the vase and disappearing into the darkness of the villa.
Everything was normal.
Xu Yi breathed a sigh of relief.
He must have been overworking himself; his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Xie Zhang’s fingers traced the violin case for a long time before he finally cradled it protectively in his arms. His voice, raspy from disuse, was dry and hoarse: “You’ve worked hard these past few days.”
“Give me seven more days.”
Xu Yi had accompanied Xie Zhang to the hospital and witnessed the normally composed man’s utter collapse. The memory still shook him.
He couldn’t help but say: “Mr. Xie, it’s alright, we can still…”
“…A week is enough.” Xie Zhang spoke slowly, his voice low. “I’ll return to the company in a week.”
Xu Yi didn’t press further.
He knew that the seven days Xie Zhang offered was truly the maximum time they could delay.
The timing of Song Jingmo’s accident was incredibly delicate. The company’s biggest collaborative project was at a crucial stage, and Xie Zhang, the backbone of the company, had suddenly crumbled. For the past half-month, not only had the secretarial team been busy stabilizing external investors, but the heads of various departments had also been working themselves to the bone.
Xie Zhang turned and walked back into the darkened villa.
Xu Yi reached out to close the door for his boss, when he saw the shadow stretching out behind Xie Zhang, pulling him towards the kitchen like a tug-of-war.
Xu Yi: “?”
As the door slowly closed, Secretary Xu stood silently in front of the villa, his atheistic mind reeling.
He raised a hand and rubbed his tired, bloodshot eyes.
Back in the car, instead of starting the engine immediately, Secretary Xu sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes, lost in thought.
Suddenly, he remembered something. He rummaged through the glove compartment, found a steam eye mask, and carefully put it on.
Feeling the warm steam envelop his eyes, he removed the mask after a while, waved his hand in front of his face, and stared at the shadow of his hand for a good long while.
Everything was normal.
Secretary Xu let out a long sigh of relief, closed his eyes for a moment, and then started the car.
He was definitely just too tired.
…
After Xu Yi left, seeing Xie Zhang heading upstairs with the violin case, seemingly intent on continuing his fasting retreat, Song Jingmo desperately stretched his body, trying to drag Xie Zhang towards the kitchen.
Even a sip of water would be good!
However, the villa was too dark, and Xie Zhang too oblivious. He completely failed to notice the paranormal activity happening right behind him, something worthy of a two-part special on “Unsolved Mysteries,” and continued upstairs, clutching the violin case.
Song Jingmo gritted his teeth, clinging to the floor, the carpet, the sofa… anything he could grab onto, and managed to stretch himself from the living room carpet to the second-floor landing.
Song Jingmo glanced back at himself.
Fantastic. After living for so many years, he only discovered after death that a person could glitch out like this, looking like a low-frame-rate animation.
Hm?
Suddenly, something clicked for Song Jingmo.
His eyes lit up, and he instinctively let go and looked down.
Like a stretched rubber band, his inky black, two-dimensional body snapped back to Xie Zhang’s feet, collapsing into a heap.
But that didn’t matter.
Song Jingmo stared at the hand that had just touched the furniture. Tentatively, he reached out and nudged Xie Zhang’s calf.
The dark shadow passed through the warm flesh without the slightest sensation of touching a physical object.
Undeterred, Song Jingmo reached for the banister.
In the pitch black, a darker blob of shadow extended a small tendril, wrapping around the banister.
Song Jingmo held his breath, tied a knot in the tendril around the banister, and tugged.
It held!
He could actually touch things!
Since waking up, Song Jingmo hadn’t been able to interact with anything. He didn’t even have much control over his movement, only able to cling to Xie Zhang’s shadow, spending his days watching Xie Zhang space out. This was the first time he’d noticed a change in his abilities.
But Song Jingmo’s joy was quickly replaced by worry.
Whether he was a shadow or a ghost, there were only he and Xie Zhang in this villa. If his powers were growing, wouldn’t that mean he was absorbing Xie Zhang’s essence, his yang energy, even his life force?
No.
This absolutely couldn’t continue.
He had to find a way to alert Xie Zhang. If all else failed, he could even call a Taoist priest!
Since he existed as a ghost, surely there must be some genuinely skilled Taoist priests out there?
Then…exorcism, or something else, anything would be better than letting Xie Zhang continue to sustain him, a little ghost.
As Song Jingmo pondered, hanging from the banister, Xie Zhang almost reached the master bedroom door. The previously crumpled shadow was once again stretched into a glitching, jagged line.
Song Jingmo quickly untied himself and snapped back to Xie Zhang’s side.
Shadows have no weight, no temperature. Xie Zhang, completely preoccupied with his lover’s violin, didn’t notice the frantic activity of his shadow.
Entering the master bedroom, Xie Zhang gently placed the violin case on the table and sat down, staring into space.
The room was dark; the small mushroom lamp by the bed couldn’t reach this far.
The inky shadow crept up the table leg, contemplating how to stage a “not-quite-dead lover” performance for Xie Zhang.
Before Song Jingmo could come up with a plan, Xie Zhang stood up again.
The shadow, just having climbed onto the table, slid off without warning, landing in a heap by the table leg.
Song Jingmo threw a useless shadow punch at the table leg and simply lay there in defeat, letting Xie Zhang drag him into the bathroom.
Xie Zhang began to wash up, each movement deliberate and careful.
Song Jingmo, initially bristling with frustration, watched him, his heart softening into a puddle.
The motion-sensor light in the bathroom illuminated Xie Zhang’s messy hair and exhausted face, as well as the shadow draped over the toilet lid, defying the laws of light refraction.
Xie Zhang vaguely sensed something was amiss.
But his brain, temporarily incapable of thought, couldn’t process it, and Xie Zhang lacked the energy to dwell on it. He simply stared at the matching couple’s toothbrush holders.
Song Jingmo, hanging from the toilet lid, also looked at the ceramic holders.
They had made them together. Honestly, they were quite ugly, as neither of them had any artistic talent.
But…
They had used them for seven years.
Xie Zhang’s fingers traced the outline of Song Jingmo’s cat-shaped ceramic holder. He stared at it, lost in thought, a faint smile touching his lips, his eyes filled with longing.
Then he gently placed the calico cat holder back on the rack, picked up the German Shepherd one, and began to brush his teeth.
Song Jingmo’s shadow tendril poked at the calico cat holder repeatedly, unable to bring himself to knock it over.
It was a memento of their first date, far more meaningful than any ring. No, he couldn’t break it.
He had to find something else.
Song Jingmo spread himself across the bathroom, searching for something else, something breakable.
This?
No, no, he bought that in Ireland, carried it all the way back, it was expensive! Something else!
Rose essential oil?
No, no, Xie Zhang had given that to him. They both liked the scent. Something else!
…
After careful consideration, Song Jingmo’s shadow tendril finally settled on something he could bear to break. He steeled himself, closed his eyes, and swiped downwards.
“Crack!”
The sudden, sharp sound echoed through the silent bathroom.
Xie Zhang, mid-shave, paused and glanced over.
Seeing that it was the scented candle the housekeeper had bought, the one that had been left unused because Song Jingmo disliked the smell, Xie Zhang turned back to the mirror and continued shaving.
Song Jingmo: “?”
Xie Zhang, you spendthrift!
That damn candle cost over a thousand yuan!
You didn’t even bat an eye!!!
