Chapter 30: Lotus

Tan Xueci stood dazed. He always felt that perfectly normal words became strange when they came out of He Xunye’s mouth, but he couldn’t quite figure out how they were strange. So, he simply agreed obediently, “I… I’ll let you.”

He Xunye: “…”

Fool.

It was a good thing Tan Xueci had encountered him. If it had been some indecent, lecherous ghost, Tan Xueci would probably follow him off foolishly, get tricked into doing who-knows-what, and likely thank the person afterward without even realizing what was happening.

“Baby,” He Xunye pulled him into his arms, bowing his head to brush against the tip of his nose. His voice was like a low murmur. “Give me a kiss.”

Tan Xueci froze. With flushed ears, he looked around helplessly. Seeing no one was there, he hooked his arms around He Xunye’s neck, stood on his tiptoes, and planted a kiss on the man’s cold cheek.

His eyes were brimming with a watery light. After the kiss, he shyly pursed his lips, his gaze drifting uncontrollably toward He Xunye’s lips. He Xunye had very thin lips, which gave him a detached and cold appearance, but for some reason, they looked remarkably suitable for kissing.

He Xunye also glanced at the boy’s soft, rosy lips. Their gazes met for a moment. He Xunye let out a very low laugh, and neither of them mentioned the matter of kissing again.

As He Xunye led him toward the car by the hand, Tan Xueci’s heart continued to thump wildly. He felt as though some invisible barrier between him and He Xunye was on the verge of collapsing.

They couldn’t maintain this current state of calm forever.

Once they were in the car, He Xunye picked up the little lamb sitting on the driver’s seat and asked, “Is this it?”

Tan Xueci’s eyes widened. He took it and checked it over, asking in confusion, “Hubby, when did you get this? Did you go and ask A-Yan for it just now?”

But he hadn’t seen He Xunye go to find Tan Yanning.

He Xunye didn’t answer. His dark eyes shifted toward him, a hint of ghostly, chilling crimson hidden in the depths. With a smile playing on his lips, he asked instead, “Can Baby give this to Hubby?”

“…” Tan Xueci pinched the lamb’s long ears. His eyelashes trembled as he looked down at the character “Cui” (慈) on the lamb’s belly. He hesitated and didn’t make a sound.

“Is that a no?” He Xunye turned his head. Those dark eyes of the evil spirit often carried a smile, yet they made one’s entire body turn cold. He spoke as if it were a casual question. “Did Xiao Xue put something bad inside the lamb? Are you afraid Hubby will see it, so you won’t give it to me?”

Tan Xueci: “…”

Dead ghost, what are you talking about?

“How could that be?” Tan Xueci’s voice was soft. He obediently placed the lamb beside He Xunye, his beautiful face showing not a hint of guilt. “If Hubby wants it, then it’s yours.”

He felt that He Xunye was actually the “bad thing” here.

Just as they were about to arrive at the hotel, Tan Xueci received a call from Mrs. Tan. She started off saying something angrily, but the static was so loud and the line so distorted that he couldn’t make out her words at all.

“Mother?” Tan Xueci asked, puzzled.

“You…” Mrs. Tan’s voice was twisted into jagged waves. “You… good… A-Yan… crash… crash… I let you… goodnight!”

Mrs. Tan tried to say something else at the end, but it sounded as if her throat was being squeezed and deformed. Only a muffled “goodnight” managed to escape.

Then, the call disconnected.

Tan Xueci was completely bewildered. It was so rare; his mother hadn’t called to scold him, but simply to say goodnight.

“Xiao Xue?” He Xunye parked the car and walked around to pull the door open for him. The man’s pale, handsome face became blurred in the night, carrying a sinister, ghostly chill, yet his tone remained gentle. “What did Mother say to you?”

He called her “Mother” so naturally.

Tan Xueci suddenly realized that ever since he had called He Xunye “Hubby” on their wedding night, the man had placed himself in the role of his husband without a second thought.

No, no.

Why did he always think of his husband as a ghost? It was because he had called him “Hubby” in his dreams, so the He Xunye appearing in his dreams would naturally respond.

Regardless, Tan Xueci felt tonight was quite good.

His elder brother’s wedding feast had been delicious, and he had even gotten back the five-hundred-yuan lamb… even if his husband had taken it away. But they were a couple; it was their “joint property.”

Tan Xueci’s pale face was flushed with pink as he returned to his room happily. After taking his medicine at night, his husband disappeared, so he lay on the bed planning to play on his phone for a while before sleeping.

However, as soon as he flopped onto the bed, he found a box next to his pillow. Inside was a new white phone with a small silver-plated snowman carved on the back.

There was a note in the box, the handwriting bold and sharp, the pen strokes almost slicing through the paper.

[A birthday gift for Baby.]

Tan Xueci dazed. He hadn’t told He Xunye about his birthday; he thought the man didn’t know.

He recognized the words on the paper. He Xunye sometimes pulled him onto his lap to teach him how to write. He had learned more characters recently than in the previous six months combined. There were no obstacles to using the new phone; he recognized all the basic characters in the app names.

Tucked under the covers, Tan Xueci moved his data from his old phone.

He used to have a snowman as his profile picture, with the status “This user is spending the winter.”

Now, he changed it to a pair of little snowmen, heads together and arms linked.

To his surprise, Lu Qi immediately started scolding him over WeChat. “Are you talking about your ‘husband’?

“You’re only twenty-one—oh wait, twenty-two now that your birthday’s over. This is the prime time for your career! Why are you in a relationship? If your WeChat leaks and people see this, they’ll definitely curse you. Isn’t being called ‘illiterate’ enough? In the future, you’ll be an ‘illiterate trophy wife’!

“Besides, other trophy wives at least have living husbands. Yours is a dead ghost! You’re not allowed to date him!”

Tan Xueci: “…”

Tan Xueci didn’t dare say it, but he felt being a “trophy wife” wasn’t so bad. It was wonderful being held in his husband’s arms and called “Baby.”

However, he had read online that “trophy wives” needed to give their husbands the cold shoulder while washing their underwear.

He didn’t know how to give the cold shoulder, and he didn’t want to wash underwear.

It would be great if he could be a trophy wife while having his husband wash his underwear instead—though it would be best if his husband didn’t give him the cold shoulder either.

The manager’s voice was harsh as he called him: “Trophy wife!”

“Illiterate!”

“Wuu…”

Tan Xueci tearfully changed his profile picture back.

The manager was still hurling insults. Bullying Tan Xueci was truly addictive; one poke and he’d fall to the ground bleating like a sheep, unable to get up. He was weak and helpless, unable to talk back. At most, if he was scolded to the point of tears, he would say tremulously: “Can you please not scold me?”

But before he could finish his tirade, a sharp pain suddenly shot through his throat. It wasn’t as if he was being strangled; it felt as though his neck was being stretched out, nearly breaking.

Lu Qi had just washed his hair and was calling Tan Xueci from the bathroom. He looked up and saw in the mirror that his neck was growing longer and longer. His eyes were red and protruding. A pair of black ghostly hands were clamped around his throat, the hard, cold fingers slowly tightening.

“My apologies,” a sinister, chilling voice said, “I forgot to tell you—please don’t scold Xiao Xue, okay?”

Lu Qi felt like he was dying. In his state of suffocation, he didn’t even have the strength to pull at the hands. Suddenly, Tan Xueci’s timid voice came through the phone, sounding choked with tears.

Tan Xueci gave a small sob and said nasally, “B-Brother Lu, I changed it back. But can you please not scold my husband? My husband is very good.”

His vocabulary was limited, and no matter how much he flushed, he couldn’t find any flowery words. Finally, he gave a muffled sniff and whispered sadly, “Brother Lu, I miss my husband.”

Tan Xueci’s small head didn’t contain much knowledge. He hadn’t met many people or understood many things, but his heart gave a sudden, inexplicable throb. He suddenly understood what it meant that the dead cannot return to life.

Even if his husband stayed by his side every day like a persistent ghost, the man He Xunye was still dead.

He wanted to tell others how good his husband was to him, but no one else could see or know.

Only he could always see and hear He Xunye. He wondered if ghosts felt lonely.

They probably did, right?

Tan Xueci’s eyelashes were wet and sticky as he bit his lip in thought.

He had encountered a ghost once before that didn’t scare him like the others. Instead, it wandered by the roadside at night. Tan Xueci had summoned the courage to ask what it was doing, and it said it was looking for the way home.

Tan Xueci followed its gaze toward a small shop. It seemed its wife and children were inside, but after becoming a ghost, its memories of its life were fragmented. It couldn’t remember them, only that they felt familiar, so it lingered there.

Tan Xueci’s eyes suddenly grew hot, and tears began to fall uncontrollably. He wondered if, when he took his medicine and couldn’t see He Xunye, He Xunye was also watching him from somewhere. If He Xunye spoke to him, he wouldn’t be able to hear.

Maybe He Xunye would also smile and say to other ghosts, “My Xiao Xue is inside, but I can’t find the way to get to him.”

He had seen monks perform rites for deceased souls; ghosts remaining in the human world not only harmed others but also themselves.

Tan Xueci had somehow made himself sad with these thoughts. He wiped his tears, got up, and went to the wardrobe to find one of He Xunye’s jackets.

When he first arrived at the He residence, he hadn’t brought his own clothes. The butler had found some of He Xunye’s clothes for him to wear. He still had He Xunye’s shirts and suit jackets in his closet.

He hugged the jacket and lay on his side on the bed, curling his body up and burying his face in the fabric.

He Xunye had been dead for over a month. Initially, the jacket still held a faint, cold scent of perfume from the wardrobe, but now the scent was fading. The coffin had already been buried, and the traces of the man’s existence were vanishing bit by bit from this world.

It served as a constant reminder that He Xunye was dead. Even the jacket from his life now smelled like the “Little Lamb” scent on Tan Xueci’s body.

Clutching He Xunye’s jacket, Tan Xueci drifted off to sleep with tear-filled eyes. The ghostly hands on Lu Qi’s neck disappeared, and Lu Qi collapsed to the floor, dazed and dizzy.

Tan Xueci had forgotten to hang up the phone. Hearing the thud from the other end, which sounded painful, he frowned in his sleep. Then, a few cold fingers smoothed his brow and cupped his soft cheek, wiping away the tears from the corners of his eyes.

The tears of the living were too hot for ghosts; it wasn’t comfortable to touch them. The spirit didn’t quite understand. Tan Xueci looked like a small, soft bundle—why did he have so many heartbreaks every day?

Tonight’s tears seemed exceptionally scalding, so hot that the tips of the spirit’s fingers turned slightly black. They were more effective than He Wuling’s exorcism charms.

“What are you crying about again?” the ghost’s icy lips pressed against his wife’s cheek as he murmured softly. “Don’t cry anymore, Baby. If you’re good, I’ll give you whatever you want.”

Tan Xueci slept fitfully while hugging the jacket. When he went to the set the next day, he found Lu Qi constantly holding his neck.

“Brother Lu?” Tan Xueci asked in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

Lu Qi pointed to his neck, indicating his throat hurt, then took out his phone to type a message to Tan Xueci.

He said he had a nightmare last night and woke up to find his own hands around his neck. There was a dark red bruise all around it.

It wasn’t just Lu Qi.

The set had been very strange lately. Ever since Zhai Fang died, it seemed many people had encountered ghosts. Several staff members saw students walking hand-in-hand through the corridor at night to the staff toilets, and they even heard the sounds of teachers coughing and chatting.

The hotel was also terrifying. More than one person claimed to have seen several children playing in the corridor at night and heard a woman sobbing.

A makeup artist even said that after finishing work at night, they saw a thin man standing on the hotel roof jumping off.

They thought someone had committed suicide and rushed downstairs to look, but there was nothing. The night was dark, and when they looked up, they found a pale ghost face leaning over the rooftop, smiling at them.

Jin Chen also heard a female ghost calling him by the bed last night, sobbing, “Come to Mommy… come to Mommy…”

Jin Chen was quite scared at first, but eventually, he couldn’t stand the crying anymore. He sat bolt upright and shouted angrily at the ghost, “Sister, look at how old I am?!”

“…”

The female ghost looked at him silently, perhaps realizing she truly didn’t need such a large “son,” and quietly departed.

Even Meng Zhi looked pale, her eyes red from lack of sleep. She said fearfully to Tan Xueci: “Xiao Ci, I feel like a child is pulling my hair—right next to my pillow.”

Previously, some people had looked down on the director’s black dog blood, but now several lead actors were asking for it. However, the director couldn’t be bothered with them; he seemed ill and had visibly gained a lot of weight.

It wasn’t exactly weight; his body had actually become long and thin, but there was a lot of flesh between each joint. From a distance, he looked like a human shape made of lotus roots.

A child’s lotus-root-like arms were cute, but on an adult male, it was eerie and even a bit disgusting.

The assistant directors were whispering privately that the director might have diabetes. They’d heard that diabetes could cause sudden weight changes, but they couldn’t tell if he had actually gained weight or thinned out.

The other actors were at a loss and could only turn to Wen Yaochuan. Wen Yaochuan had become the savior of the crew; many people were asking him for talismans. Wen Yaochuan didn’t charge any money and gave them to everyone for free.

With so many people seeking help, even Wen Yaochuan’s iron-willed body was inevitably tired. Still, he took the initiative to find Tan Xueci and ask: “Xiao Ci, have you made up your mind? Do you need me to help you contact the Taoist master?”

“I…” Tan Xueci still hadn’t made a decision.

“Xiao Ci!” Wen Yaochuan’s tone was uncharacteristically urgent. Stubble had appeared on his face, though he still looked handsome, albeit with a hint of dejection. “What are you still hesitating for? Look at what the set has become these past few days!”

“…” Tan Xueci paused.

The way Wen Yaochuan spoke made it sound as though he was the one who had brought the ghost, and that ghost was causing the trouble on set.

“My apologies,” Wen Yaochuan realized his tone was bad. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked up, his phoenix eyes hiding deep apology and concern. “I didn’t mean to blame you. After all, you don’t know anything. But things really can’t go on like this. I’m afraid that you’ll end up being the one in trouble.”

Tan Xueci was very hesitant. He felt Wen Yaochuan seemed especially anxious, even more eager than him to catch the ghost.

It was as if he knew exactly what kind of ghost was following him.

Furthermore, Wen Yaochuan’s words were a bit suggestive—what did he mean, he was afraid “he” would be the one in trouble? He remembered Wen Yaochuan and Meng Zhi had been very close recently; he had thought they were dating.

Tan Xueci was vague and didn’t agree to Wen Yaochuan’s request for the time being. In fact, despite all the things happening on set lately, he hadn’t encountered anything once. Instead, he had become the safest person there.

Tan Xueci was bewildered. Was he cured?

But he could still see He Xunye.

When he saw He Xunye that evening, he couldn’t help but lean in and ask: “Hubby, am I still sick?”

“Hmm?” He Xunye glanced at him and said gently, “Does Baby want to see them? I thought we were on a date; too many people wouldn’t be good. But if you like…”

Tan Xueci shook his head hurriedly. He didn’t want to see them at all.

He Xunye smiled and reached out to pinch his soft cheek. Then he asked, “Is there anything else Baby wants?”

He Xunye had given him many things over the past few days, saying he was making up for his birthday. Besides the phone, there were clothes and cake.

Because he liked playing “Whack-a-Mole,” He Xunye had even bought him the latest game console.

Tan Xueci was dazed by the “sugar-coated bullets,” turning into a little dough ball covered in frosting.

At night, he curled up in He Xunye’s arms to play games, wearing the new silk bathrobe He Xunye had bought him. It was smooth and cool, wrapping around the boy’s snow-white body like ripples of water.

He was restless, shifting around as he played. The bathrobe’s tie would come loose on its own after a while, revealing his thighs and pink-tinged knees. He Xunye’s large, cold hands were resting on his legs, but Tan Xueci was too busy with the game to notice.

After finishing the game, he flopped into He Xunye’s arms and started browsing his Friend Circle. Since Tan Shangli was getting married, they were busy that day, so the Tan family had celebrated Tan Yanning’s birthday a day early.

Tan Yanning had posted many photos of gift boxes, cakes, and a large bouquet of pink and red flowers that Tan Xueci didn’t recognize.

Biting his finger, he leaned against He Xunye, his eyes blinking as he watched, envy flowing from every strand of his hair.

“Does Baby want flowers?” He Xunye looked down at him and coaxed, “You’ll have to wait a little longer for the flowers. Hubby has prepared them for you, but they haven’t grown fully yet. Besides, they’re even more beautiful when they bloom at night.”

Tan Xueci didn’t know what kind of flowers bloomed at night.

Then one night, around 8:00 PM, the crew was filming on the playground. The actors were resting, and the director was eating. Tan Xueci suddenly heard someone call him, “Xiao Xue.”

“…” Tan Xueci turned his head in confusion. “Hubby?”

He only heard the voice; he didn’t see where He Xunye was.

“Xiao Xue, come a little closer.”

He Xunye’s voice spoke to him in the night.

Tan Xueci wasn’t filming, so he walked toward the sound. After a few steps, he felt a pair of large hands wrap around his waist and the back of his head, pulling him into an embrace.

Tan Xueci couldn’t see the man’s figure, but he felt as though he was being held. He opened his mouth to speak when he suddenly heard a cry of alarm from behind.

Tonight the moonlight was bright and the night sky was deep—it was good weather. The director sat behind the monitor eating.

His head had been groggy these past few days. When the actors told him the set was haunted, he didn’t seem to understand. Tonight, as he held a bowl of lotus seed and silver ear congee, he suddenly saw stems growing out of the holes in the white lotus seeds in his congee. They snaked out, growing longer and longer, before sprouting leaves and blooming into lotus flowers.

Zhu Biansheng dazed for a moment. He hurriedly rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things. But before he could see clearly, his own head began to swell as if something were sprouting from within.

It felt as though something was slowly prying open the top of his skull. It was uncomfortable. He stood up unsteadily.

BOOM—

The assistant director saw the director suddenly stop moving while eating, his eyes blank. He went over in confusion to pat his shoulder, but the director’s entire head suddenly exploded in the night. Countless white maggots and hot, red blood sprayed out from his neck.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

The assistant director screamed. Those nearby were startled, but those further away couldn’t see what was happening because the shape of the blood spray was quite beautiful.

Like massive patches of dark fire-red lotus flowers blooming in the night, it was so shocking that it left people speechless.

Tan Xueci was standing quite far away. He dazed for a moment, not reacting to what had happened. He only saw the blood-red lotus flowers blooming in the distance.

Then, someone rested their chin on the top of his head and held him, just like lovers watching fireworks. The person’s tone was moist, cool, and intimate as they whispered in his ear: “Little Lamb, look. They’ve bloomed.”