Five minutes.
For the first three minutes, Zong Hang spent making the bed. He’d never made one before, moving from one end to the other, using his single working hand to tug wherever it wasn’t flat.
For the last two minutes, he sat on the bed, looking serious and formal.
He was thinking.
Yi Sa maintained a dark expression, watching the timer count down, though she felt like laughing inside.
She looked at Zong Hang, finding him rather novel.
She’d grown up in a complex environment, used to telling people what they wanted to hear and speaking differently to different audiences. Even when she disliked someone, she’d smile while plotting against them behind their backs. After living in Cambodia, she was mostly surrounded by cunning people who could find angles in any situation—even seemingly honest people like Chen Tu carried secrets.
So Zong Hang was like someone who’d wandered onto the wrong movie set, falling for her threats and schemes, never deflecting or being evasive. That troubled expression as he thought made her feel she couldn’t bring herself to be too harsh with him.
Time was up, Yi Sa coughed.
Zong Hang’s first words were shocking: “I know after I tell you this, you might kill me…”
Yi Sa couldn’t help herself: “What’s so special about you that I’d want to kill you? I’ve never killed anyone.”
In modern society, don’t treat killing like pulling up a carrot: without some massive blood feud, she wouldn’t resort to violence. Besides, even for unforgivable grudges, couldn’t you just call the police? Who wants blood on their hands?
Even with Chen Tu’s matter, though she was furious, her thoughts about dealing with Ding Xi only went as far as “borrowing a knife.”
Zong Hang felt somewhat reassured: going from killing one person to killing two might just be another swing of the blade, but going from never killing to killing—that was an enormous gulf.
Still, he continued as planned: “But this life of mine was saved by you in the first place, so taking it back isn’t unreasonable. Just… if you do decide to take it back, could you give me some time to handle my family matters…”
He stole a glance at Yi Sa, saying quietly: “Even in ancient times, they gave condemned prisoners a last meal.”
Quite the historical reference. Yi Sa didn’t waste words: “Fine.”
“Also, there’s someone else involved, someone who also saved my life. I can’t betray them. Can I refer to them as ‘Little A’ and skip over key information about them?”
It was reasonable not to readily give up someone who’d helped him—and showed some integrity. But not picking at it left her unsatisfied.
“No.”
Zong Hang tensed up…
Yi Sa looked down at her phone, and opened the notes app to record key points: “Use Old K.”
True, Little A sounded too lively and cute; Old K better suited Yi Xiao’s temperament.
Zong Hang continued from where he’d left off: how he arrived at an isolated houseboat, where he encountered K. Ding Xi first taught him a gesture…
Yi Sa interrupted: “Show me.”
Zong Hang demonstrated it properly, worried she wouldn’t understand: “It’s local slang meaning ‘let’s be friends, we can talk things out.'”
Yi Sa: “…No, it means ‘come at me if you dare.'”
Zong Hang was stunned: “It’s a provocation?”
What else? Yi Sa ignored him, her fingers flying over the notes: Water ghost signal, Ding knew K’s identity, K belongs to one of the three families…
She paused here.
Someone operating in a hanging water lake on the Mekong River who could read water ghost signals was likely from the Yi family.
So she added: Possibly surnamed Yi.
Zong Hang waited for her to finish typing before continuing: K suddenly emerged from underwater, a woman with disheveled hair and a strange putrid smell…
Yi Sa interrupted again, her tone different: “This woman, did she have many scars on her arms?”
Zong Hang was surprised: “You know her too?”
Yi Sa said: “Stop for a moment, let me think.”
Her fingertip hovered over the “edit” symbol as her mind quickly connected dots, a dark thread gradually becoming clear.
She’d been wrong from the start: she thought Ding Xi was sent by Ding Changsheng to “observe” her, letting preconceptions trap her thinking.
But that wasn’t it. Ding Xi came to Cambodia for another purpose entirely, and Ding Changsheng’s repeated calls to her showed he knew about it.
In Fu Village, this woman suddenly appeared, targeting only Ding Xi, and he was willing to kill and set fires to draw her out…
Though he clearly understood everything, he played innocent and ignorant in front of her. The three families maintained surface friendships—if the Ding family had trouble serious enough to pursue someone overseas, why wouldn’t she help?
Why were they afraid of her knowing?
Yi Sa slowly typed—
Who is K?
After a long while, she looked up at Zong Hang: “Continue.”
This continuation was difficult to express, but Zong Hang decided to push through, forcing himself to finish in one breath: “Ding Xi shot at us, many times, and we… both died.”
After he finished, the room grew quiet.
A breeze blew in, gentle, barely lifting the curtain corner before it drooped back down.
Yi Sa said: “Next, are you going to tell me you’re a ghost?”
She couldn’t blame him—proving you’re dead isn’t hard, but proving you “were” dead is. Zong Hang thought it better to continue, the details were coming, and with rich details, everything would seem less absurd.
“I woke up again a month later, lying in a hotel bathtub full of water. I didn’t choke or drown. Later, K told me this is called ‘sitting water.'”
Yi Sa’s expression changed slightly: “You can sit in water?”
A thought occurred to Zong Hang: actions speak louder than words, so why not prove it to her?
“You can time me now, ten minutes, twenty minutes, whatever you want.”
He hurriedly went to the bathroom, plugged the sink drain, then started filling it. When Yi Sa finally came over, half-believing, the basin was about two-thirds full.
Zong Hang turned off the faucet, made no preparation like taking a deep breath, and directly submerged his head.
Yi Sa watched the time.
Holding breath varies by person—ordinary people manage a minute or two, even with training maybe five or six minutes.
At ten minutes, she called a stop, tapping his shoulder: “Come up.”
This performance already surpassed many children of the three families. She was certain he could sit in water.
Zong Hang raised his head, water constantly dripping from his face and hair. Yi Sa threw him a towel, suddenly remembering something: “You said you were shot several times, do you have scars?”
Zong Hang stammered: “The scars aren’t obvious, but if you… look carefully, you can see some light red marks, like rashes…”
He finished drying off and hung up the towel, wanting to leave, but Yi Sa stood motionless, blocking the way, her expression very troubled.
She said: “Let me see.”
Zong Hang hesitated, then grabbed the hem of his T-shirt with one hand, slowly pulling it up, then lowered his head, chin pressing down on the raised hem, arms tight against his sides, terrified of showing too much, wanting to stay decent.
He awkwardly pointed out: “Here, here, and here.”
Three bullet wounds: one in the center of his chest between his breasts, one in his liver, one in his stomach. The remaining color was very faint now, as diluted as pale rose silver.
Yi Sa lowered her head, leaning in to look. Zong Hang felt her breath brush against his upper abdomen, his ears burning terribly, that area of skin involuntarily trembling.
Yi Sa said: “Don’t move.”
She extended her index finger, pressing the pad against the mark over his liver.
Zong Hang couldn’t see, but she could observe how the skin dimpled under pressure, with tiny wrinkles appearing around the edges like radiating lines, a shade darker than the mark itself, disappearing when she withdrew her hand—impossible to notice without careful observation.
Yi Sa pulled back her hand, her fingernail lightly scratching her palm, feeling short of breath for the first time.
She rambled slightly, feeling she had to say something to cover her unease: “These are bullet scars? They don’t look like it at all.”
Zong Hang agreed they didn’t look like typical scars, which usually form as scabs attached to smooth skin—but his three marks had no raised or rough texture, indistinguishable from the surrounding skin, looking more like mild pigmentation at first glance.
He said: “I once read a strange story from abroad, about a policeman who was shot in the heart while catching robbers. He died, and his parents were heartbroken.”
“More than ten years later, a young couple suddenly appeared with a child, saying that since the child could talk, he insisted he was that policeman and kept asking to go home. The couple had no choice but to bring him.”
“When they met, the child discussed details from the policeman’s childhood with the elderly couple, and everything was exactly correct. Moreover, the child had a dark red birthmark on his heart, almost perfectly matching where the policeman had been shot.”
“So people said this child was the reincarnation of the policeman, and the wound from his previous life became a birthmark in this life.”
He looked down at his marks: “I also think these don’t look like bullet scars, more like birthmarks.”
Then carefully looking at Yi Sa: “Can I lower my shirt now?”
Yi Sa finally snapped out of it, stepping aside to let him pass, her tone somewhat unnatural: “Go sit and rest for a bit. I need to wash my face—it’s hot and humid on the ship, and I’m sweating.”
Zong Hang hurried out, looking back as the bathroom door closed, letting out a long sigh of relief.
He felt truly lucky that Yi Sa was willing to listen and be reasonable. Even with such an incredible story, she temporarily accepted it without dismissing it as made-up nonsense.
Yi Sa splashed several handfuls of water on her face, then looked in the mirror.
After a while, she brushed the hair on her left side behind her ear, tilting her head to look at the area below her ear root, where soft wisps of hair grew.
She had similar birthmark-like scars, paler, four of them, smaller than Zong Hang’s, and hidden by hair—no one else had known about them all these years.
After the Three Rivers incident, as the so-called “legend” and “only survivor,” Yi Sa was questioned repeatedly by Ding Changsheng about what actually happened.
She would always respond angrily: “How would I know? I was three and a half, scared half to death! It’s already impressive that I remember something falling on the car roof and that skeleton hand. Then the door was pulled open, that thing thrashed around inside, even turned on the radio—I wet myself and fainted! Everyone knows I’ve been afraid of ghosts since I was little!”
Jiang Xiaoguang had also asked indirectly once.
She acted extremely wronged: “Uncle Jiang, I was three and a half! What do you expect me to remember?”
Jiang Xiaoguang said: “You can’t blame Uncle Ding for being suspicious. Back then, your father and the others’ bodies were all found near the convoy, but you, with your little legs, somehow ended up over ten miles away…”
She said: “I didn’t run, that ‘person’ must have carried me—how could I run that far? I had fainted!”
Jiang Xiaoguang smiled good-naturedly: “Don’t be like an angry chicken. When we found you, you were covered in blood, even your underwear was stained.”
She insisted righteously: “That was from that ‘person,’ definitely his blood that flowed down my neck and stained my underwear!”
She had always firmly believed this.
Until one night in her teens, she suddenly had a dream.
She dreamed of Xining Railway Station in winter 1996, the orange juice preserves at Jianghe Guesthouse, her sister Yi Xiao applying face powder, and that melodious tune of “The Bund” floating in the cold night air…
Then the car door was violently pulled open, the black cotton coat she’d used to hide herself flew off, her scream cut short as that bone claw pierced through her ear and neck…
She woke from this nightmare drenched in cold sweat and got up to use the bathroom.
While washing her hands, suddenly, as if possessed, she brushed aside her hair in front of the mirror.
Of course, she wouldn’t believe that absurd nightmare—being pierced through the ear and neck by bone claws would have killed her, yet here she was, alive and well.
After puzzling over those faint marks for a long while, she concluded: that they were birthmarks, so pale and hidden that neither her father nor sister had ever noticed them.
…
Yi Sa reached out, pressing one of the marks just as she had before.
They appeared again, those radiating line-like tiny wrinkles.
She adjusted her hair again, letting it cover that area once more, hidden from sight, then stared at herself in the mirror and suddenly shuddered.
Was she the same as Zong Hang?
Perhaps Ding Changsheng’s dark glances behind her back had never been groundless paranoia after all.