Prologue

When the sun rose, the smell of meat and wine from the bonfire gathering dissipated along with the rising warmth.

Racing camels all the time grows tiresome, too. Ao Chi — utterly without any lofty ideals, hopelessly vulgar — was in the tent playing games against the Black Robes, while I wandered off alone to a place neither too close nor too far from the tent, hoping to stumble upon something interesting.

But I came away with practically nothing — the same scenery, more or less, and the occasional white bones belonging to various animals, most of them half-buried in the sand, abandoned by time, achingly lonely.

Tonight, the tent was lit by candlelight — some lunatic had declared that candles were better for atmosphere. So when Black Robe Number Five, a man of exceptionally imposing stature, sat bolt upright among us holding an animal skull, I felt the temperature in the tent drop, and a cold draft swept across my body.

“Are you frightened? Feeling cold?” Black Robe Number Five’s voice was exceptionally coarse and low.

“On a night like this, it’s hard not to feel hollow, lonely, and cold!” I shot him a sideways glance, then turned my head and snapped at Black Robe Number One beside me, “In this kind of chilly weather, why on earth are you still fanning yourself?!”

Black Robe Number One set down his fan and chuckled: “I just wanted to add a little atmosphere.”

“Get on with it!”

Black Robe Number Five gazed at the white bone in his hand and slowly began to open up…

1

“Darling, it’s getting late — time to sleep!”

“No, no, give me a kiss first!”

“Alright — kiss!”

Fang Yue stifled a yawn and sent a pair of bright red lips through the MSN chat window. The cold monitor concealed his impatience; the virtual network carried a counterfeit tenderness.

The avatar named “Green Garment” finally sank into grey, satisfied.

She was finally offline. What a troublesome woman. Fang Yue took a long drag on his cigarette, and dull ash fell across the grease-stained black keyboard in a mess.

That keyboard had once been clean as new. During every stretch of time that Luo Ying had spent by his side, she would always grumble and fuss while grabbing a cloth, carefully wiping down the keyboard he had dirtied — and the entire room along with it.

Luo Ying… Fang Yue’s gaze drifted lazily down the long MSN contact list and came to rest on that avatar, still lit up.

Many people liked to use aliases on MSN — to hide themselves, to hide their feelings — but he knew that Luo Ying had never had that habit. From the very first time he had come to know her on MSN until now, her name there had always been “Luo Ying,” unchanging through the years. She was not a flashy woman; she had no taste for draping herself in garish clothes to project an air of seductive allure. Simplicity and sincerity were her guiding principles — including the name she used on MSN.

It was almost three in the morning. Fang Yue checked the time. Why on earth wasn’t this woman asleep yet? Looking at the rest of his “dear female companions” on the contact list, most had gone offline one by one, upholding the creed that “not enough sleep ruins your looks.” Only she remained — her avatar glowing green amid a sea of grey, like a living, tender sprout.

If Luo Ying were one of those companions still in the ambiguous stage of courtship, he would have been quite interested in checking on her — would have said something tender like, “Why are you still up so late? Staying up too late is bad for your health!” But the other party was Luo Ying — his girlfriend of two years, living in a city far away. After the initial passion had gradually burned out, and the sense of novelty had been flicked away like cigarette ash, he no longer had the heart to pay attention to such small details. She could sleep whenever she liked; it was, after all, her own body.

Stubbing out the cigarette, Fang Yue’s gaze still lingered on Luo Ying’s avatar. For a fleeting, inexplicable moment, he abandoned the idea of shutting down the computer and, on a sudden whim quite unlike himself, sent Luo Ying a message: “Still not asleep?”

Fang Yue’s memory was poor — he had only a vague sense that it had been a very long time since he had last taken the initiative to say a single word to Luo Ying. By now, her existence was like a vase set in a fixed position: even if he never looked at it or tended to it, it would still be there in its place. And so he had gradually grown comfortable ignoring her.

Very quickly, Luo Ying replied with a smiling emoji of a protruding tongue.

That same smiling face again.

It had been that way since a certain evening a month ago — when Fang Yue, in a foul mood, had faced Luo Ying as she anxiously asked if she had done something wrong to upset him, and he had coldly typed: “Everything is my problem. You are fine. You have done nothing wrong. But please don’t speak to me. Wait for me to come to you, all right?”

After those words, Luo Ying had gone silent for a long while. About an hour later, she sent him a message — no words, just this same tongue-out, smiling face — and then went offline. In all the time he had known her, Fang Yue remembered, that was the first time she had gone offline before him. Her avatar suddenly turning grey had, oddly enough, left him with a faint sense of unease.

After that, the little storm had not brought any decisive change to their relationship. The next day, Luo Ying’s avatar lit up on schedule — and as always, it remained lit until the moment he signed off. She had, in fact, honored Fang Yue’s “request” and never again taken the initiative to speak to him. She simply let her avatar glow on, then go dark, then glow on again — and so it repeated.

The world really did seem to have grown quiet. Fang Yue breathed a sigh of relief. As his bad mood subsided, he went on flirting with his other female companions as if nothing had happened. On the odd occasion that Luo Ying crossed his mind, he would send her a perfunctory greeting; she would reply with only a smiling face and not a word more.

Today, she was the same as ever.

Fang Yue closed the chat window with listless indifference, went offline, and shut down the computer. He did not mind that she only responded with emoji. In truth, at this point, whatever she said amounted to nothing more than an insignificant symbol to him. When had it begun — this loss of even the desire to speak with her? Fang Yue could not say.

Perhaps, he thought, all people carry within them the base tendency to grow tired of the old and chase the new.

Fang Yue yawned and lay down in bed. In the hazy drift of sleep, faces of various women wove through his dreams — some smiling at him, some striking alluring poses — just as he had fantasized about them during his waking hours.

But behind all those shifting shadows and faces, there was a pair of eyes — that familiar gaze, clear and free of any impurity — cutting through the fog and falling, without intent or guile, into the depths of Fang Yue’s unfocused eyes.

2

Slam!

A black folder was hurled down in front of Fang Yue, and the deputy editor-in-chief’s expression was darker than the folder itself.

“What is this supposed to be?” The short man — whose hairline was dyed a garish purple and who was dressed head to toe in designer labels — looked down at Fang Yue seated behind the desk, one hand poised in an affected gesture, and said with deliberate condescension: “I told you this issue’s concept was to highlight the independence of modern women and their contributions to society. How did you end up going to some school and bringing back an entire series on little college girls?! Do you even want to keep working here?!”

Fang Yue was taken aback. “Wasn’t it the campus theme that—”

“Campus, my foot!” The deputy editor-in-chief cut him off furiously. “The campus segment has been pushed to next issue. Did I not send an email notifying everyone to change their theme?!”

“An email?” Fang Yue was bewildered.

The deputy editor’s gaze shifted to Ye Yan, who sat at the neighboring desk. “That day when I sent you the email and asked you to pass on the message about the theme change — you didn’t tell him?”

Ye Yan blinked her large eyes, perfectly lined with delicate eyeliner, and pointed toward Fang Yue’s side with an air of total innocence. “I left him a sticky note on his keyboard! Right there under it! If he didn’t notice, how is that my fault? I’ve been run off my feet these past few days with the GRANDY exclusive — my head is spinning.”

Only then did Fang Yue glance toward his keyboard. Just slightly to the left, the edge of a piece of paper peeked out — invisible unless you were specifically looking for it. He lifted the keyboard, and sure enough, a small pink sticky note was tucked underneath.

“You…” The deputy editor frowned at Ye Yan, though somehow he could not bring himself to be truly harsh with her — he just harrumphed a couple of times. “Mind this in future, all right?”

Ye Yan promptly nodded, replying coyly: “Next time I won’t bother with a sticky note.”

“Mm.” The deputy editor looked away, did not spare Fang Yue so much as another glance, and certainly showed no inclination to apologize. He walked straight back to his own office as if nothing had happened. Ye Yan resumed typing at her keyboard, equally unbothered.

Fang Yue sat quietly at his desk, sorting through his manuscripts.

As a new editor at the magazine CHARMING, Fang Yue was no stranger to situations like this. It had all started because a piece he had written — on reading personality through clothing choices — had drawn a word of praise from the company’s head. That praise had ignited Fang Yue’s boundless enthusiasm for his work — and simultaneously drawn the watchful, complicated gazes of his colleagues.

Whether the head had meant it casually or deliberately, none of them had ever heard him compliment anyone’s work to their face before.

From that point on, Fang Yue’s work grew increasingly difficult. Completed interviews were deemed “off-theme.” Well-known writers he had painstakingly arranged to meet kept somehow being “accidentally” intercepted and poached by other colleagues.

Fang Yue was young, but he was not naive. He understood perfectly well why he was being squeezed out. Even as he felt contempt and anger at others’ pettiness, he privately worried for himself: as a newcomer, if things continued this way, the most immediate consequence would be his landlord throwing him out. With only a meager base salary and no substantial editing fees to supplement it, it was impossible to live a normal life in this city.

It was on one such dispiriting morning that Fang Yue came to know Luo Ying.

A chat window popped up on MSN from his university classmate, Hai Ou, who typed out a rapid string of characters: “Let me introduce you to a writer — she doesn’t write much for fashion magazines, but her prose is good.”

“Sure,” Fang Yue replied, making an effort.

So Hai Ou pulled Luo Ying into a three-way conversation.

The moment Fang Yue saw the name “Luo Ying,” he immediately knew who she was. He had seen her name in literary magazines more than once — by any measure, Luo Ying was someone with a modest reputation in those circles. Knowing her — he felt both glad and a little excited.

After Hai Ou introduced them to each other, she stepped out of the conversation, leaving the two of them to begin the most ordinary sort of exchange.

At first, Fang Yue was careful with Luo Ying — afraid that anything he said might displease her. In his experience, writers with any degree of reputation tended to carry themselves with a certain arrogance.

But after that first day, Fang Yue was pleasantly surprised to discover that Luo Ying was not difficult at all — quite the contrary, she was refreshingly approachable, even charmingly so, her speech humorous and direct in a way he had never encountered before. After he saw Luo Ying’s photo, he was even more surprised to find that this girl’s appearance matched her way of speaking perfectly: large, rounded eyes that seemed to hold two pools of clear water, without a trace of anything muddying them.

The late August sunlight came filtering through the window and fell softly on Luo Ying’s photo on the screen. Fang Yue gazed at that small image, and before his eyes, like a film playing in reverse, flashed every word she had ever typed, every playful emoji she had ever sent — and he found himself momentarily lost…

That night, lying in bed, with the stifling heat rolling in endlessly through the window, Fang Yue felt none of the discomfort. That strange feeling in his heart had not faded — if anything, it had grown thicker, thick enough to make him utterly oblivious to the unpleasantness of the weather.

He had fallen in love with her, hadn’t he?

Fang Yue thought, uncertainly.

She was someone he had never even met in person — how had she come to occupy his thoughts so relentlessly?

But then another voice sounded in his mind, cold and flat:

You are not in love. You are simply too lonely.

Fang Yue was startled by his own inner voice.

He sat up, shook his head vigorously, and stared out at the sleeping city beyond the window.

He told himself: no — he must have fallen for that girl. Love at first sight was not unheard of.

And yet — he truly was lonely.

In this city, Fang Yue had no family, no real friends. The covert rivalry among colleagues left him exhausted and helpless. In his weariest moments, he always longed desperately for heaven to send him a gentle comfort — a lifeline — someone to stay by his side and accompany him through these pale, uncertain days.

When he thought it through clearly, whether it was true love or merely a lifeline he was after, he needed this kind of person to appear. Badly.

And so, from the morning of that day in August onward, he waited by MSN every day to see whether Luo Ying’s avatar was lit. Every time he saw it glowing green, his heart came alive with that same color. The moment it went grey, his heart sank with it.

He wanted to talk to her every day. He read her blog, learned her preferences, carefully chose what he thought were the most fitting topics, and approached Luo Ying in the most natural way he could manage — sharing everything that had happened to him, everything weighing on his mind now, the wandering and displacement of years past. Every detail, he told her.

Luo Ying always listened attentively, then — as if it were her own problem — would carefully analyze it with him and give him encouragement.

Gradually, Fang Yue noticed that Luo Ying — who had previously never been online in the evenings — was staying on later and later. Whenever he was feeling troubled and needed someone to talk to, her avatar was always lit. That touch of green put his mind at ease.

By November, when the ginkgo leaves outside gleamed golden as treasure, Luo Ying became Fang Yue’s girlfriend.

There had been no flowers, no gifts, not even a heartfelt gaze — only a chat window on the screen:

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

“All right.”

“No taking it back once you’ve agreed.”

“I won’t take it back.”

That day, Fang Yue felt as if he had never seen the sky look so beautiful a shade of blue. The hollow emptiness that had settled inside him for so many years was, in that moment, filled. His body felt like a drifting little boat that had finally found its way to a solid shore.

3

Luo Ying gripped the spatula and, not very skillfully but with great care, stir-fried the rather unappealing-looking dish in the wok.

Fang Yue opened the front door, and the first thing he saw was that figure busy in the kitchen — a warmth he had long been without stirred quietly at the bottom of his heart.

This was the third day of their visit. Luo Ying’s home was in a city a thousand miles away.

Just as Fang Yue had imagined, Luo Ying in person was as straightforward as her way of speaking — even with a childlike innocence about her. One moment she might lean against him and play the brat; the next she was upset with him for not promptly killing a cockroach she was terrified of.

He reached from behind and wrapped his arms around Luo Ying’s waist, burying his face in the crook of her neck — which made her break into a fit of happy laughter.

This girl laughed so readily, so carelessly and wholeheartedly. Fang Yue felt a trace of helplessness. If he were honest with the deepest part of himself, the perfect woman he had always longed for was the kind who was quietly beautiful yet not without allure — whose smile was like a gentle breeze, a true lady. Luo Ying seemed to fall considerably short of that standard.

Fang Yue sat at the computer, his gaze drifting — intentionally or not — over Luo Ying, who was wearing a shapeless oversized pajama top with the sleeves rolled up, wiping down the table while scolding him about smoking too much. A thought crossed his mind: if only her features were a little more defined; if only her figure were a little better; if only she would wear a more feminine skirt instead of always putting on that dreadful pajama top — how much nicer that would be…

Luo Ying had only a week’s leave. She would have to return to her city a thousand miles away.

Before she had agreed to come and meet him, she had asked: We are so far apart — this troubles me greatly.

Fang Yue had only said: Don’t worry. I’ll sort it out eventually. Just come. We can’t be a couple who have never even held each other’s hand.

At the time, all he had wanted was to see her as soon as possible. Every other question was not yet a question — it didn’t need to be considered just yet.

After a long pause, Luo Ying had sent him a nodding emoji.

Now, that desperate wish had been fulfilled. And yet, on the eve of Luo Ying’s departure, watching this girl who had been busy and attentive from morning to night, Fang Yue found that whatever regard and longing he had first felt for her had been fading, little by little.

Luo Ying noticed nothing of his subtle shift in feelings. On the morning she was to leave, she lifted the jade Buddha pendant from around her own neck and fastened it around Fang Yue’s. She explained that this jade Buddha had been consecrated by an eminent monk — it was a family heirloom that had accompanied her for many years. Since she could not be by his side, having this jade Buddha on his person would put her mind at ease.

A long while before, Fang Yue had mentioned in passing that when he lived alone, he sometimes saw things he should not have seen.

At the time, Luo Ying had reassured him breezily, saying it was probably just work stress combined with poor nutrition causing hallucinations.

He had assumed she had long since forgotten that conversation — and even if she had remembered, he thought she would not have taken it to heart.

Looking at the jade Buddha hanging around his neck — translucent and vivid green — Fang Yue’s heart suddenly filled with an inexplicable conflict.

Don’t stay up too late. Don’t keep eating things with no nutritional value. Eat more fruit. Don’t bother yourself over people who aren’t worth it — as long as your own conscience is clear, that’s enough.

On the way there, Luo Ying repeated these reminders to him over and over, tirelessly.

At the airport, Luo Ying smiled and waved goodbye to him.

Fang Yue stood behind her, expressionless, watching her light and carefree back — and not seeing that her eyes had turned red.

4

Over those two years, the days Fang Yue and Luo Ying had spent together in the same place totaled no more than thirty days.

Every time, it was Luo Ying who came to his city — and without complaint, she tidied up the chaotic mess of a room, then went out and bought red dates and snow pears to simmer into soup for him to drink.

Watching her figure moving around, Fang Yue felt a sudden flicker of irritation — a feeling he swiftly suppressed.

Why did she always wear those unflattering clothes? Why couldn’t she be like the other women he knew and put herself together with a bit more femininity? Why did she only ever repeat the same tiresome reminders to take care of his health — words that mattered so little?

Apart from being able to write, to help him revise manuscripts, and to offer a word of comfort now and then — she didn’t seem to have anything particularly outstanding about her.

Whatever glow Luo Ying had held in his mind had been dimming steadily with the passage of time.

Three months ago, the insufferably arrogant deputy general manager had finally been dismissed by the head after making an irreparable mistake — and Fang Yue, who had always bided his time and worked diligently, was naturally promoted to deputy editor-in-chief after producing a series of outstanding editorial plans.

This decisive leap upward caused every colleague who had ever pushed him aside to put away all their petty schemes and one by one turn toward him with beaming, cordial expressions.

Fang Yue met their transformation with a smile on his face and contempt in his heart — but so long as they understood the current situation and didn’t try to cross him, there was no need to descend to their level.

By this point, Fang Yue had something of a spring-wind swagger about him.

As his position rose, the range of people he encountered grew wider and more varied. As deputy editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine, he was inevitably moving through circles fragrant with perfume and glittering with faces — and the more people he saw, especially women, the more dazzled his eyes became. The women in these circles — how many were not carefully cultivated beauties, enough to set one’s heart swaying?

Returning to his empty apartment at night, Fang Yue loosened his tie, his fingers brushing the jade Buddha at his throat. Luo Ying’s smiling face suddenly flashed before him.

That girl had asked him more than once: could he perhaps come to her city to work? If she didn’t have her elderly grandmother to care for, she would abandon everything to come to his side and put an end to this life lived apart.

When she said those words, Luo Ying was careful and tentative — much as Fang Yue himself had once been careful and tentative with her in the beginning.

As far as Fang Yue was concerned, he was alone — no family obligations to tie him down — and it was much the same to him wherever he lived. He also knew that for him and Luo Ying to actually live together, one of the two of them would inevitably have to give up their current life.

He had once thought about going to her. That was a long time ago, when his own prospects had been bleak and stagnant.

Now his career had taken a turn for the better. To give that up for Luo Ying seemed unlikely. Whenever this question came to mind, he was caught in his own contradictions. He could not bring himself to say the word “break up” to Luo Ying — yet once the initial passion had passed, he equally could not endure this existence: coming home to an empty apartment each night, with a so-called girlfriend living a thousand miles away. With what he had now, finding a woman closer to hand would be no great difficulty. But then he thought of the promise he had once made to Luo Ying, and he wavered again.

Just then, on MSN, a chat window from Luo Ying popped up: “The weather there must be getting hotter — remember to drink plenty of cool things. And that packet of herbal cooling tea I sent you last time — you have to drink it! Every day!”

Then came the smiling face he knew all too well.

He looked at the large parcel of medicines and tonics Luo Ying had sent, piled on the table, and was suddenly struck by a wave of annoyance. What he wanted had nothing to do with these useless things.

“Mm,” he typed back, after a long pause.

In truth, even that single character had felt like an effort. He grew less and less willing to say anything to her.

Another chat window popped open — this one from a woman called Green Garment, a model he had met a few days ago at a fashion launch event.

Seeing her reach out, Fang Yue felt his spirits lift at once. He swiftly closed Luo Ying’s window and gave his full attention to chatting with Green Garment.

Fang Yue was reasonably good-looking and held the title of deputy editor-in-chief at CHARMING — articulate and composed, he found it easy to attract women.

After that, the women on his MSN contact list grew more and more numerous, while Luo Ying was gradually relegated to the deepest corner, all but forgotten.

At times, he felt a small pang of guilt — particularly when he glanced at the makeshift “pen holder” standing on his desk, fashioned from a cut-up plastic water bottle. Luo Ying had made it. While tidying up his utterly chaotic desk, she had grumbled at him not to keep scattering things everywhere, and at the same time had neatly gathered all the pens and loose coins into the bottle.

But the moment he thought of women like Green Garment — women he couldn’t shake free from his thoughts, like an intoxicating addiction — that small pang of guilt dissolved instantly into the pleasure of their flirtation.

Of course, Luo Ying knew none of this. He had no intention of letting her know. As for his attitude toward Luo Ying — he could no longer make sense of it himself. So he simply let things drift. As long as she didn’t ask, he wouldn’t say anything. Let time pass like this. Perhaps one day she would understand on her own. Would leave on her own.

And so, in a state of constant self-contradiction, Fang Yue blocked Luo Ying — no longer taking the initiative to talk to her, no phone calls, no messages. The cold shoulder was his approach, a non-method method.

Yet Luo Ying seemed incapable of understanding his “well-intentioned” strategy. She continued on, carefree as ever, popping up on MSN every few days to give him a playful wink, then cheerfully reporting that she had rescued a stray cat two days ago, or gotten a new fringe cut into her hair yesterday.

At first he still replied with “okay” or “mm,” but eventually it grew too much, and one night he finally said to her: “Everything is my problem. You are fine. You have done nothing wrong. But please don’t speak to me. Wait for me to come to you, all right?”

After saying those words, he felt a brief flicker of guilt — which passed in an instant.

Luo Ying had become a burden to him now. If she had once been his lifeline, her buoyancy was no longer enough. It was time to let her go, wasn’t it?

That night, Fang Yue lay down in bed with a complicated heart.

That same night, a torrential rainstorm of a kind this city hadn’t seen in decades broke loose — raindrops hammering against the windows with thunderous force, as though countless great hands were beating upon them.

Because he had been drinking, Fang Yue fell into a deeper sleep than usual, and the terrible weather outside did not disturb him.

Only in a moment of vague half-awareness did he seem to hear a shattering crack near his ear — it rattled through his skull with a deep, reverberating hum. Then a scorching heat billowed out from his chest and spread outward. After that, the world fell into a dead silence. An invisible pressure held his eyes shut — he could not open them; his body could not move. It was as if he had sunk into the deepest possible nightmare…

When morning came and he opened his eyes, he found that the reasonably solid windows had been completely shattered — even the window frames had been warped inward by some tremendous force.

On the floor, besides a sea of broken glass, were several strangely shaped dark marks — they looked like footprints, or perhaps burn marks left by fire.

Fang Yue instinctively reached for the jade Buddha at his throat, and found that the object — which had once been a vivid, translucent green — had been drained of all color, turned a pale, lifeless white.

What had happened? A sliver of unease shot through Fang Yue without warning — an inexplicable sense, as if something had been lost.

Perhaps lightning struck the window in last night’s thunder and rain, he told himself, steadying his nerves with that explanation.

As for the jade Buddha that had changed color — at that moment it felt like the coldest ice pressed against his skin, chilling him through to the marrow.

He quickly removed the jade Buddha and stuffed it into the very back of the desk drawer.

Several days later, the newspapers reported a piece of news: an explosion of unknown cause had occurred inside a residential building in the city’s Jinhua District. A family of three living within had gone missing — traces of blood had been found at the scene, but no bodies had been discovered.

5

He never mentioned that night to anyone. The unease it left behind gradually faded once he had returned to the rhythms of ordinary life.

In the days that followed, things continued to go smoothly for him — and he remained on harmonious terms with all his various female companions.

Tonight, Fang Yue — who had always been a heavy sleeper — was jolted awake from a strange and hazy dream, full of shifting figures. It was the pair of eyes lurking behind all those women’s faces — that familiar gaze, so clean it held not a single impurity — that made his eyes fly open.

Luo Ying… He murmured her name into the surrounding darkness, and something struck his chest like a blunt blow.

A peculiar feeling.

He turned over and got out of bed, switched on the computer, and went back to MSN — where he discovered that Luo Ying’s avatar was still lit, standing out conspicuously against the surrounding grey.

It was already half past three in the morning.

“What are you doing?” he typed, unable to help himself.

A wide-eyed, startled emoji came back.

“Stop sending me emoji — talk to me!”

A smiling face came back. The other party still said nothing.

Fang Yue was furious. He slammed the monitor off and went back to bed to sleep.

Was she venting her displeasure at him through her own little method? Fang Yue thought so. That must be it — she was such a child, still holding a grudge about him having told her not to speak to him.

So be it. Let her throw her little tantrum. Who cares.

With that thought, Fang Yue rolled over and quickly fell back asleep.

A week later, Fang Yue was out of a job.

The company head’s funding had run into trouble — in order to liquidate assets quickly, he had sold the magazine. The new owner was ruthless, and had his own trusted people in place. As a holdover from the previous regime, Fang Yue was told to pack his things and leave at the new owner’s swift decree.

This was something Fang Yue had never anticipated. The sensation of falling from a great height left him no time to even think. His mind seemed filled with a thick fog; numb all over, he made his way home through the evening dark.

He threw his things to one side and sat down at the computer out of habit.

Few of his female companions were online — it was the weekend; they had probably gone off to lively parties. Seeing that Green Garment was on, Fang Yue immediately greeted her, prepared to pour out all the bitterness he had been holding inside — but Green Garment replied coldly: “Sorry, I’m very busy. You don’t have a job now — you’d better start thinking about what comes next. Goodbye.”

Green Garment was the second “surprise” he had encountered that day.

In the internet age, news traveled fast. By evening, word had spread to everyone that he had lost his job at noon.

Fang Yue gave a bitter smile. Without the authority that came with being deputy editor-in-chief, he could no longer arrange exclusive interviews for Green Garment to raise her profile. She may not have remembered the small things he had done for her — but surely there was still some basic friendship between them?

There was none. Green Garment’s avatar quickly went grey — Fang Yue wasn’t sure whether she had gone offline, or had already blocked and deleted him.

That night stretched on interminably.

Fang Yue stared blankly at the monitor, his gaze once again falling on the only avatar still lit — the one named “Luo Ying.”

Only she had never left.

A feeling long since gone came flooding back like a tide. Fang Yue clicked open the chat window in eager desperation — just as he had two years ago when he first came to know her — and, carefully, told her everything that had happened to him.

After a long while, Luo Ying sent back an emoji — not a wink, and not a smiling face, but a small monkey holding up a banner that read: “Hang in there!”

Just those two words — hang in there — were enough to make Fang Yue’s eyes go red for the first time.

When a person is at their most fragile, just a few words of encouragement from another can carry extraordinary power. With this in his thoughts, Fang Yue suddenly realized that the deepest layer of security within him had always come from Luo Ying — from the avatar that was always lit, from her carefree smiling face, from her steadfast and unwavering presence.

Fang Yue suddenly wanted to hear her voice. He grabbed his phone and dialed her number. He remembered Luo Ying saying she never turned her phone off — she was afraid that if someone important needed to reach her, they wouldn’t be able to.

The call went through — to a mechanical female voice: “We’re sorry. The number you have dialed has been switched off.”

Fang Yue set the phone down in disappointment. A moment later, he typed to Luo Ying: “I’m coming to see you. I’ll buy the plane ticket tomorrow!”

Very quickly, a shaking-head emoji came back.

“Why?” Fang Yue felt a sudden urgency; his fingers flew across the keyboard. “I want to see you! Didn’t we always say we’d be together? I’ll come to you. We’ll start over!”

Luo Ying sent back another shaking-head emoji.

Then her avatar went dark.

Fang Yue slumped back in his chair, head clasped in both hands, making a great effort to calm himself.

Never before, not like tonight, had he felt so utterly alone…

Fang Yue dozed off at the computer desk, sleeping there in a daze through the night.

Suddenly, the familiar alert sound from MSN spread from the speakers into his ears. He snapped his eyes open. In the bottom-right corner of the screen, Luo Ying’s chat window had popped up.

He clicked it open at once. She — who for months had not typed a single word to him, who had only ever sent emoji — had actually written a line:

“Come. I’ll be waiting at home.”

Fang Yue was overjoyed beyond measure — like a drowning man who had once again seized hold of a lifeline.

If time could turn back, Fang Yue would want to take back every word he had ever said to her that he should not have said, and undo everything he had done to her that he should not have done.

Perhaps things were not as bad as he had imagined. At the very least, Luo Ying was still waiting for him. There was still a chance to begin again.

6

Two full years had passed — and this was the first time Fang Yue had come to the city where Luo Ying had grown up. She had invited him more than once, even just for a week — she had wanted him to see what her home looked like. Every time, he had found one pretext or another to refuse.

Yes — to travel a thousand miles and exhaust himself for a woman who was not all that important to him, when he could just as well stay home and sleep. That was, at times, how he thought of it — and even as he knew how contemptible that way of thinking was, he had thought it all the same.

Standing before the old building on the outskirts of the city — its outer walls marked with large, painted characters for “Demolition” — Fang Yue wondered whether he had found the wrong place.

He went up to the sixth floor and pressed the doorbell of number twelve. The small pink pig decoration, hung from the door handle and fitted with its little bell, finally assured him he had not come to the wrong door. That girl had always liked to hang little animal charms from her bags or her phone — especially the pink pig, which was her favorite. She had once insisted on hanging one from his phone as well, and he had refused outright.

Thinking of these small memories, a faint smile found its way onto Fang Yue’s face — a face that had not smiled in days.

The door opened. But the figure standing behind it was not Luo Ying — it was a young woman dressed in all black, with long, wavy hair falling loose around her. Her eyes were large, and similar to Luo Ying’s — but hers held none of Luo Ying’s warmth, only a thin layer of frost, regarding him with cool indifference.

“You must be Fang Yue,” the woman spoke before he could. She stepped aside to let him through with an unhurried elegance. “Come in. Luo Ying has been waiting for you.”

Fang Yue felt puzzled. He had never been to Luo Ying’s home before, but he knew she had always lived alone — her bedridden grandmother had long since been in a rehabilitation center. So who was this woman? A roommate?

He stepped inside. The furniture and floor were layered with dust, and a strange unease crept through him. By all appearances, this was a place that had not been lived in for a long time. Though he clearly saw, positioned on the most prominent spot atop the television cabinet, the small number of photographs he and Luo Ying had taken together — propped up neatly, squarely — he still could not bring himself to be sure: Was this truly Luo Ying’s home?

“She’s in the room,” the woman in black said, gesturing toward the only inner room, whose door stood slightly ajar — another small pink pig charm hanging from the handle.

Fang Yue set down his luggage, walked to the door, and gently pushed it open.

The inner room was considerably darker than the outer room — the curtains had been drawn and deliberately gathered shut without leaving a single gap.

Only a computer monitor that had been left on glowed softly from the writing desk near the window.

The room was not large. Fang Yue could not see Luo Ying anywhere inside.

He was about to ask the woman in black about it, when the room’s light was suddenly switched on by someone.

As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, Fang Yue’s gaze fell upon the desk — and froze in sudden, stricken shock.

Resting on the mouse in front of the monitor was a hand — white as bleached bone. Or more precisely: a skeletal palm with only half of one thumb remaining, the other fingers all broken away and gone. It rested over the mouse with a kind of effort — and without any external assistance, like something living, it moved the mouse slowly, deliberately.

Fang Yue stumbled backward, his legs gave out, and he sank to the floor.

“That is Luo Ying,” said the woman in black, arms folded across her chest, standing beside Fang Yue, her expression blank.

“You — what did you just say?” Fang Yue’s body shook uncontrollably. That was nothing but a pile of white bones — how could it be Luo Ying? He looked up at the woman standing beside him — her posture composed, her bearing calm. “Who — who exactly are you?”

“My friends call me Shaluo,” the woman answered, settling onto the edge of the bed nearby, regarding him with an expression that was almost a smile but not quite. “Do you believe there are demons in this world? If I told you that I am a tree demon who has lived for a thousand years — that I drift through the human world, writing stories about the people and things I find interesting to earn a little pocket money — and that one day I happened to move in next door to your girlfriend entirely by chance: would you believe me?”

A demon… Fang Yue’s instinct was to tell himself how absurd this all was — but what his eyes had just seen could not be explained by any ordinary logic. His mind was in chaos unlike anything he had ever felt before.

“What is going on?!” After a long silence, Fang Yue finally broke into a frantic shout. “Where is Luo Ying?! Where did she go?!”

The woman set aside the trace of a smile and returned to the detachment she had worn from the start.

“The broken bones before your eyes are the last traces Luo Ying left in this world,” she said coldly. “Luo Ying once told me she had a family heirloom jade Buddha. When she was still an infant, an eminent monk had warned her family: she had a life-or-death calamity written in her fate, and she would have to wear this jade Buddha against her skin without ever removing it — not until she turned twenty-five. Otherwise great disaster would befall her. But after the first time she returned from visiting you, I never again saw that jade Buddha around her neck.” She let out a quiet, mirthless sound. “How curious.”

The jade Buddha… the jade Buddha that had drained of color overnight… Fang Yue’s mouth moved without coherence: “Great disaster… what do you mean?”

“Do you remember the night of that torrential downpour a month ago?” The woman in black spoke slowly. “There is a creature in this world called the Closed Mouth. It has a human face but the body of a beast. It conceals itself underground, shunning the light, and feeds upon human flesh. It emerges to feed once every twenty years. Wherever this creature appears, great floods follow.”

In his terror, Fang Yue struggled to follow her words: “What — what does any of that have to do with Luo Ying?”

“The Closed Mouth is ferocious, but it is ultimately a creature of evil. That monk had a destined connection to Luo Ying. He knew that the life-or-death calamity written into her fate was bound to this creature — and that only the jade Buddha could stand between her and this ordeal.” The woman in black’s expression flickered with what seemed to be a brief sorrow. “It is a terrible pity that she gave her talisman to you. And to my regret, I was not here that night — otherwise, that girl need not have…” Her brow furrowed slightly; she pressed her lips together and forced her grief back inward.

Flesh-eating demons. A jade Buddha drained of color. A life-or-death calamity. The nightmare of that rain-soaked night came into sharper and sharper focus before Fang Yue’s eyes: the inexplicable crack of sound near his ear, the strange heat that had radiated from his chest, the peculiar marks left on his floor — everything, all of it, was pressing in on him to confirm a story at once absurd and undeniably, irrevocably real.

“If Luo Ying had not given you the jade Buddha because of something you mentioned in idle conversation, the one consumed by the Closed Mouth would have been you.” The woman in black looked down at him with cold eyes, his face now drained of color. “Everything that happened that night — you know it was no nightmare. If you looked at the newspaper three days later, you would have seen that a family of three vanished without explanation from a residential complex near your home on that rainy night. Furthermore, if you were to gather the news from around the world on that same day, you would find that the family of three was far from the only unexplained disappearance that night. The Closed Mouth are not numerous — but beneath every patch of earth we stand on, they are there, each having staked out its own territory according to its own custom. When their time comes, they move together. You were fortunate. The jade Buddha exhausted every last measure of its strength to drive away the ferocious Closed Mouth that had come for you — and in doing so, shed all the color it had. As for the place where Luo Ying lived: a Closed Mouth lay in wait here as well, biding its time. But she spent her own life to buy yours back. Her life force drained from her body — leaving nothing but a colorless stretch of white bone.”

“How — how do you know all of this about us… you—” Fang Yue’s chest heaved in great lurching waves. He stared in terror at this woman who bore the serene bearing of an angel yet carried the cold ruthlessness of a demon.

The corner of the woman in black’s mouth curved upward. She smiled faintly: “I told you I am a thousand-year-old tree demon. If I wish to know something, I will always find a way to know it. Ordinary humans hold no secrets from me.”

With that, she rose and walked to the writing desk, gazing with a contemplative air at the skeletal hand resting on the mouse — still moving in its mechanical, aimless way. In a calm voice she said: “By the time I returned, Luo Ying was already gone. Only this incomplete fragment of bone had been left in the room.”

She did not look back at Fang Yue, but continued speaking in her own time: “It was not long before I realized this piece of bone was alive. I watched it use the single remaining finger stub to turn on the computer — and then it simply rested there on the mouse, and caused the MSN avatar to light up again that morning. For this past month, I have remained here, watching to see what this bone intended to do…”

Her words left Fang Yue as motionless as a stone.

“A fragment of white bone using a computer — perhaps to an outsider, it would seem laughable,” she said. She turned her head and met Fang Yue’s vacant, uncomprehending eyes directly. “Long ago, I would sometimes come to Luo Ying’s room late at night for a conversation. I noticed she always stayed up very late — her MSN avatar always lit, and yet no one ever seemed to be speaking with her. I asked her about it. She said she was afraid that if her boyfriend came looking for her to talk, she would not be there. She was most afraid of him having something weighing on his heart with no one to turn to. So she always kept her avatar lit — so that if he needed someone to confide in, he could find her at the very first moment. I also saw this careless girl, having walked home at night and taken a fall that left her covered in scrapes and bruises, still sit in front of her computer for three days straight, helping her boyfriend revise some planning document or other. I also ate her cooking once. It wasn’t very good. She said with some embarrassment that she was still practicing — that once she was truly living with her boyfriend in the future, she wanted to feed him so well he’d be round and content.”

“You… she…” Fang Yue’s lips had gone bloodless. He could no longer form a complete phrase.

“I asked a friend of mine about this. He told me: where the heart’s bond is deep and the love is true, even white bone will live.” The woman in black let out a long, quiet sigh. “Now you understand why, in all this time, the ‘Luo Ying’ who spoke with you could only send emoji. It was not that she chose only to. She could only. It is nothing more than a fragment of bone carrying the remnant of Luo Ying’s life — it has no way to strike keys on a keyboard and type words. It can only use the most mechanical, most rudimentary means — moving the mouse to click on emoji — at least letting you know: she is still here, by your side.” She paused for a moment. “The decision to ask you to come was mine. As the man at the center of all of this, you have the right to know. If I let this living bone go on as it has been, this longing will keep Luo Ying from passing into reincarnation. I have to help her.”

The woman in black stepped toward Fang Yue, raised one finger, and traced an arc through the air.

Countless sheets of paper came spiraling down from above — like the snowfall of the previous winter.

“These are Luo Ying’s diaries. As her belongings, they should be returned to you. As for her grandmother — I will look after her.” The woman in black’s voice was as level as if she were reciting an entirely ordinary passage.

And with that, she turned and walked toward the door. After two steps, she glanced back over her shoulder and said: “I do not, as a rule, wish to involve myself in the affairs of you humans and your feelings. But I find I still want to say this to you: perhaps you felt that what she could give you was too little, too insignificant — even that jade Buddha, which saved your life, you in the end simply stuffed into a drawer without a second thought. Someone like you — how would you ever understand: what she gave you was everything she was capable of giving.”

The woman in black’s voice was beautiful — like the most exquisite wind chimes struck by a gentle breeze. But the sharpness woven through it, impossible to dismiss, was like a thin and razor-fine blade slicing into the depths of Fang Yue’s blood.

A wisp of pale smoke rose. The woman in black’s figure dissolved into the misting air and was gone.

Fang Yue seemed to have been separated from his own body and soul. His lips trembled. With shaking hands, he lifted one after another of the diary pages lying before him —

“Next month is his birthday. I must remember to get a birthday cake. He mentioned it’s been so long since anyone celebrated his birthday — that made me ache.”

“Ow, that hurt so much — that thoughtless fool! Fell and bruised myself all over! But at least I got everything he needed finished before the deadline. I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow… I’m crying.”

“He is a kind person. I’ve always believed that. Stop letting your imagination run away with you. Go to sleep!”

“Darling, I dreamed last night that we got married. Ha — I really wished I didn’t have to wake up so soon. The wedding dress was so beautiful! You said you were busy today, so I didn’t tell you. Ha.”

Fang Yue’s throat felt as if a fish bone had lodged itself there.

At that moment, a sharp gust of wind swept over his head, and the tightly drawn curtains were suddenly torn open.

Brilliant sunlight pierced through the fogged glass and fell squarely upon that stretch of white bone.

Without a sound, without a stir, the white bone dissolved into wisps of fine dust that rose into the air and formed a strange and fleeting image…

A girl, feigning a fierce expression, stood with her hands on her hips — one hand clutching a dust-covered cloth — mouth pressed into a pout, scolding: “You — at the very least, while I wasn’t here, you could have wiped down the table! The dust is thick enough to bury someone in!”

In a boundless vertigo, Fang Yue collapsed to the ground like a dead man, the diary pages in his hands crumpled into a tight, helpless fist…

Epilogue

Black Robe Number Five was not much of a storyteller. From start to finish, his delivery was flat — like someone reading aloud from a long, tedious account book. At times he would even get stuck, leaving us waiting a good while before the next part came.

“Where on earth did you find a story like that?” This time it was Ao Chi who spoke first, eyes already sliding sideways toward me as he asked.

“From an old, out-of-print magazine on a used book stall,” said Black Robe Number Five. “I only thought — this story is a fitting one to tell to a married couple.”

“Hey, you were telling that story for Her Majesty the Queen, not for us,” I said, shooting him a look.

Black Robe Number Five suddenly tossed the skull in his hand over to me, and said: “Whether for you, or for the Queen — it is because in this world, too many people who are together never come to understand that what the person beside them gives is already everything they are capable of giving. And so there are so many bones in this world.”

“I understand,” I said, smiling. “Just as the tree demon in the story understood everything.”

Before the words had even finished leaving my mouth, Ao Chi had pulled me aside. He hadn’t managed to say a word before I cut him off: “I know what you want to ask. Wait seven days, and then I’ll tell you.”

With that, I took the white bone and carried it outside the tent, dug a hole, and buried it there.

It is always best when there is still flesh and blood. By the time life has been reduced to a single fragment of white bone — where is there any road left to turn back on?