The apartment was two bedrooms and two living rooms, the large and small halls connected, opening onto a balcony. Of the two other rooms, one served as the bedroom and the other stood empty — whether it was meant to be a storage room or something else, there was no telling.
He Zhuchun pushed open the empty room’s door and left it ajar, then checked the master bedroom and said to Lu You, “Only one room is fit for sleeping in.”
Lu You, oblivious to the subtext: “You can sleep with me. It’s not our first time sharing a bed.”
That was how he put it — but He Zhuchun kept feeling that something was off.
Weird.
But he couldn’t say where the weirdness lay.
He forced down the feeling and still had the presence of mind to joke: “True. Newlywed husbands have no business sleeping in separate rooms.”
Lu You ignored him and went into the master bedroom.
He Zhuchun was left standing alone at the empty room’s door.
A person really shouldn’t be allowed to stand in an awkward situation — left in one, you inevitably replay your own stupidity on an endless loop, sinking deeper and deeper. Take the word “newlywed”: he had no idea which wire in his brain had shorted to make his mouth produce it, and now it was too late to take back. Worse, the other party hadn’t even deigned to react.
Even someone with a hide as thick as He Zhuchun’s had moments of embarrassment. Embarrassed enough to want to raise a hand and slap himself.
The embarrassment had barely gotten started when Lu You called him from the master bedroom.
He Zhuchun rubbed his face, adjusted his expression, and walked over: “What is it?”
The moment he entered the master bedroom, He Zhuchun’s first instinct was that something about this room was deeply wrong.
It was the same style of decor as the living room — but if the living room was merely old-fashioned retro, this room was unmistakably much colder.
Yes — cold. The moment he stepped in, a clammy chill seemed to seep through him, and his chest tightened with a dread he couldn’t suppress.
He Zhuchun looked around the room, knowing full well something had to be off, yet temporarily unable to find where.
Lu You saw his confusion and explained, “This room’s ceiling is lower than the others.”
So that was it. That was it.
He Zhuchun looked up at the ceiling, then stepped out the door to compare — this bedroom stood a good half meter lower than the living room.
A change you wouldn’t catch at a glance, yet one that unsettled you with ease.
“And the proportions of this room are wrong, too.”
Lu You spread his arms to measure the width, then the length, eyes sharp. “This room’s length-to-width ratio is roughly 2.5 to 1.”
He Zhuchun asked, “Is there something special about that ratio?”
Lu You lowered his lids, slowing his voice: “Two point five to one is the standard length-to-width ratio of a coffin.”
The moment the words reached his ears, He Zhuchun felt a chill race up his spine, gooseflesh climbing from his waist along his vertebrae all the way to the right side of his face. Now, studying the bedroom afresh, he found that the room’s shape and furnishings were indeed extraordinarily unsettling.
— Through the bedroom door, the first thing to meet the eye was a fairly spacious double bed at the far end of the room. Lie back on it, look up, and what you saw was a window fitted with welded iron mesh. There were no curtains — perhaps because the window faced north, curtains hardly mattered; in broad daylight you couldn’t catch even a sliver of sunlight.
The room’s dimensions weren’t actually small. The strange part was that apart from the bed, there was no other furniture at all. The stretch from the bed to the door was bare — not even a bedside table — and as for a wardrobe, needless to say. Whether the renovation had been finished too hastily or no other furniture had ever been intended, the room as a whole gave off a feeling at once spacious and low, narrow.
He Zhuchun had just arrived, still in the adjustment period to unfamiliar surroundings — the very time when oddities are hardest to notice.
Yet Lu You had found the bedroom’s entry point with ease.
He Zhuchun marveled, once again, at the man’s powers of observation.
Lu You said quietly, “I have a rough guess about what this house was used for.”
He Zhuchun had heard of the uses to which similar buildings were put, and a wave of cold disgust washed through him. Yet a slow sweep of the room still left him feeling something was missing.
What was missing?
Lu You dropped the subject and asked instead, “What do you make of Zhao Xiaochen?”
He’d expected some assessment along the lines of pushover or nice guy — but He Zhuchun smiled and answered, “Slick-tongued. Not a serious word out of his mouth.”
Lu You was a little surprised: “How could you tell?”
“Great Immortal Lu, do you take me for an idiot?” He Zhuchun said, laughing.
That boy talks and works in the style of an old-school office workhorse. Looks respectable enough — but whenever there’s thankless or offense-making work to be done, he shoves it onto the boss and his colleagues. Think back on everything he said from meeting us to seeing us off: the moment before he’d offended us, the moment after he’d dumped it all on his boss. Then, most likely worried we’d go tattling to her, he immediately started patching things up for her — and his method was to step on his boss’s friend to flatter her upward. Either way, he came out of it spotless.
He laughed, and summed up: “I hate people like that most. He wears an honest man’s face, but there isn’t an honest bone anywhere on him.”
Lu You couldn’t help laughing: “Since when do you know how old-school office workhorses talk?”
He Zhuchun went “tch”: “I just haven’t finished my degree — it’s not like I’ve never been out in the world. I understand all this old-fogey stuff perfectly.”
Lu You offered encouragement and praise in equal measure: “Very good. Very good indeed.”
They searched around for other breakthroughs until the sun sank westward. Lu You rested a while on the hard wooden sofa, found that the longer he rested the more his back ached, and proposed, “Want to go out and get something to eat?”
He Zhuchun nodded readily: “Sure.”
Unfortunately, the first thing to meet Lu You’s eyes upon stepping out was a notice in the elevator: ELEVATOR UNDER MAINTENANCE. PLEASE USE THE STAIRS.
A devastating calamity.
Darkness swam before Lu You’s eyes. He’d risen early today and had no energy to spare; he felt desperately sleepy, and now he had to climb up and down under his own power.
Eye strain had already set in out of habit.
He Zhuchun, meanwhile, was unaffected — his constitution was better, and the floor wasn’t high besides; stairs versus elevator made no difference to him.
He said cheerfully, “Let’s go. Big Brother’s treating you to barbecue.”
The “let’s just order delivery” on Lu You’s tongue was swallowed whole, and as if waking from a trance he forced out a single word: “Fine.”
In this somewhat southern city, whether it was the locals’ peculiar palate or simply a bad choice of restaurant, Lu You ate poorly — the meat didn’t taste of meat and the vegetables didn’t taste of vegetables.
He Zhuchun adapted admirably. He ate like a man without taste buds: anything he could chew, he could swallow; not picky; fill the stomach and call it a meal, without distinguishing one flavor from another.
He told Lu You, “It might just be regional difference in taste. You need to learn to accept new things — you can’t stay boxed up in your hometown forever.”
Lu You said, “Don’t talk to me.”
He Zhuchun went “eh?”: “Where did this temper come from out of nowhere? I didn’t grill those skewers or stir-fry those vegetables. Bad food isn’t my fault — now you’re just being unreasonable.”
Lu You hadn’t slept well or eaten well; he’d dragged stinging eyes all this way to a barbecue joint only to eat flavorless food, body and mind equally out of sorts — and the thought of the stairs waiting for him afterward made it worse.
The eye strain needled at him, the pain boring into his bones as if through the sockets themselves, and He Zhuchun was still chattering at his side.
By now they’d reached the foot of the building. He Zhuchun stamped to a halt, turned, and asked, “Can you be quiet for a while.”
He Zhuchun said, “Yes.”
Lu You said, “Quiet until we’re back in the apartment — can you manage that?”
He Zhuchun shut his mouth and flashed an “OK.”
Lu You closed his eyes, turned, steeled himself with a moment of mental preparation — and at last, summoning his courage, entered the building and started toward the stairwell.
He Zhuchun followed behind, watching his back, and for no reason he could name thought of his college days — of watching a roommate walk behind his girlfriend after a quarrel, the girl in front, the roommate trailing her the whole way, coaxing every step of it.
Back at the dorm, the man had grinned foolishly and complained to them about it, saying it was just a girl’s little temper — bratty, and cute.
He Zhuchun, a twenty-year veteran virgin, had never learned that this rhetorical maneuver was called dressing an insult up as praise. All he could remember was the fool’s grin on the man’s face and the happiness overflowing from it.
So this is what being bratty looks like, Student He mused. Kind of fun, actually.
The two of them climbed the stairs, Lu You’s eyes stinging worse with every flight. He lost count of the floors; by the time he was trudging along the corridor wall for a rest, a burst of commotion was drifting out through the stairwell’s dividing door.
He Zhuchun, seizing his chance while Lu You rested, pushed the door open and openly went to watch the show.
In the corridor, a big man wore full fury on his face — enraged past all bearing, red from neck to crown — flexing his biceps as he dragged another man up and slammed him against the wall.
His voice was enormous, his tone vile: “I’m asking you one question: can you keep it DOWN? Banging every single night — how is anyone supposed to live? Do you have any idea my mother has high blood pressure? How many days since we moved here has she slept a full night? If anything happens to her — if anything does — can you pay for that?”
The other man wasn’t short either, built unusually solid, yet now pinned to the wall he barely resisted, placating his neighbor weakly: “The noise really isn’t me. Please don’t be angry — let’s talk this over calmly.”
“You think I’ve got patience for pleasantries?” The big man was fuming past his limit, impatience thick in his voice. “You’re the one who said you live upstairs from us, aren’t you? Of the two units up there exactly ONE is occupied — you think I don’t know that? If it isn’t you, what, the noise is coming from a ghost?”
The man pressed to the wall was close to tears: “It really isn’t me, Big Brother. I heard it too — I’m looking for the source myself…”
“Spare me the excuses.”
The big man let go of his collar, jabbing a finger against his forehead. “Last chance. Tonight, if my mother calls me again about noise, tomorrow I’ll come over and flay you alive. Understood?”
The man had presumably been scared witless; he trembled and nodded.
The big man spat furiously to the side, unlocked the neighboring door with his keys, and went inside.
The man stood in place a while longer before finally recovering himself. Calmly, he straightened his clothes and limped down the corridor; looking up, he was startled for a beat at the sight of He Zhuchun, managed an embarrassed smile, nodded, and went upstairs without a word.
Lu You had just finished resting. His eye rims were oddly red — he’d worked himself to tears again — the teardrops hanging at the edge of his eyes, neither falling nor staying, looking rather pitiful.
He Zhuchun gave the man’s retreating back a long look, then hurried over to support Lu You: “You okay? If not, I’ll carry you up.”
Lu You waved him off and pressed on upward with the grim determination of the walking wounded.
Whether it was illusion or not, this stretch of stairs felt extraordinarily long. When at last he shuffled to the door, He Zhuchun plucked the keys from him a step ahead and opened it.
Creak—
The door swung inward, and He Zhuchun instinctively glanced inside — and caught himself, utterly unprepared, locking eyes with the thing in the living room.
“…”
“…”
Both parties froze. He Zhuchun raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
