From childhood to adulthood, I received an extremely traditional—even excessive—education. Premarital sex was enough to make me weep in shame and contemplate suicide out of guilt. After my parents passed away, I gradually emerged from that world ruled by divine laws into an atheistic one full of thrills and dangers. But sometimes, God’s commandments linger like a shadow, biting me when I least expect it. For example, after Lu Jinshi and I got engaged, he was so happy that he drank a couple extra cups. I sat on the edge of the bed as Lu Jinshi asked if I wanted to take things further with him.
We were in love, but I acted like a prim nun, barely even kissing. It was as if all intimacy between men and women had to wait until after marriage. Lu Jinshi had always respected me, and all his requests were perfectly reasonable, so when he asked, I thought it was just what ordinary engaged couples should do.
It should be that way—it always had been. I’d lived apart from the secular world, naive as a monk, trapped by those constraints. Now that I’d broken free, I “should” do this, so I agreed.
“But you weren’t happy?”
I wasn’t sure if sharing this shameful experience with Gan Ling was a fair exchange for her opening up about her pain. She told me her sorrows, so I weighed it on the scales and decided to share my worries.
“He hugged me.” I chose my words carefully, as if what came next was too hard to express in Chinese. I racked my brain in the Peng County and Neng County dialects but still didn’t know how to say it. Standard Mandarin felt too stiff and formal, like a broadcaster narrating my unspeakable ordeal.
“And then?”
I wanted the conversation to end there, letting Gan Ling figure out the rest—why her hug triggered such a huge reaction in me, like I was drowning.
But I still paid the price honestly on the scales. I’d promised to tell.
“Then, I felt—he—was pressing against me.”
Gan Ling blinked.
Finally, I felt utterly wretched. “I was so scared.”
“So, did you end up doing it?” Gan Ling said it so casually, like it was nothing. As a married woman, she spoke plainly, while I was still haunted by that experience. I opened my mouth but found no words, so I nodded heavily.
“Why didn’t you refuse?”
“I…” Before I could say anything, Gan Ling got it. “Oh. I understand.”
You shouldn’t bare your soul to someone at night. Though I was an open book with no secrets, this conversation pierced straight to my core. I instantly understood Gan Ling’s feelings. Honestly, I wanted to crawl out of bed, flee into the night, and let a weasel drag me into some weird cave where I’d never see the light of day.
“You can refuse,” Gan Ling said, emphasizing “can” heavily.
“Mainly because… we were already engaged by then.”
“But you didn’t end up marrying him anyway, right? You could’ve agreed first, then called it off when it felt wrong. Step aside, and if he’s a normal guy, he’d blame himself—maybe admit it was his fault.” Gan Ling suddenly started schooling me on this.
I didn’t have a boyfriend now, so nowhere to apply it. I shook my head, my guard relaxing bit by bit. Forgetting Gan Ling’s warning, I rolled over to stare at the ceiling—I was used to seeing in the dark by now. Suddenly, I realized there was no ceiling at all, just a thick wooden beam holding it up. The tiles were missing! A sliver of moonlight leaked through, and on the beam hung a round loop of rope. I squinted to look closer when Gan Ling yanked my arm, making me turn to face her. I was still shaken.
“It’s leaking rain too, and you’re not scared of spiders dropping down.” I writhed uncomfortably under the covers.
“Then let me tell you one more thing.” Gan Ling said.
“What?” I thought she’d share something about herself, but Gan Ling calmly raised her hand and said, “That rope on the beam? Someone hanged themselves from it. That’s why no one lives here.”
I followed her finger to examine the loop again, my mind reflexively wanting to sing a hymn. No one said Jesus could ward off evil, but facing something that could turn into a ghost story, I instinctively wanted to whip out a cross.
Gan Ling said, “I told you not to look up.”
“Don’t mention it—I had no idea someone died here.”
Huddled with Gan Ling, staring at that loop felt like chasing a soul. A vision of a corpse dangling there appeared before me. I couldn’t lie still anymore but didn’t dare get up, as if rising even half an inch brought me closer to the dead man’s feet.
Gan Ling, perfectly calm, recounted the dead man’s past. “When I got here, the body hanging there was already mummified, who knows how long it’d been dead. Like a piece of salted meat. I took it down and buried it in the yard.”
“If you’re scared, you can… come here.” Gan Ling lifted one arm, opening her embrace for me.
I’d flinched away earlier, but now she was offering again.
“You can refuse.” She bit down on “can” again.
I wasn’t sure if she was using this to lecture me about Lu Jinshi or just comforting a frightened me. After thinking it over, I shook my head. “I don’t refuse… but in that situation, it was just like with Lu Jinshi—the mood had built up, and I couldn’t refuse…”
Just like the terrifying atmosphere now—I really wanted something to grab onto. So I treated myself like a stuffed toy, draping my arm under Gan Ling’s neck, curling up tight against her. I borrowed some courage from her muscles and her boldness in sleeping in a haunted house.
“But you can still refuse.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can be a little selfish. You don’t have to go with the mood.”
Talking about my thing with Lu Jinshi, she added, “People like me, who are selfish, don’t care about others’ opinions.”
“Hmm…” I thought about it. When she was dead set on hunting down the killer, yeah, she didn’t much care about others’ feelings.
“Plus, you can just forget about that incident you mentioned. The awkwardness, the unpleasantness—it’s all in the past. Unless you still like Lu Jinshi and want to marry him, otherwise, it’s done. No need to let it affect what comes next.”
Gan Ling was guiding me, but I wasn’t at her level yet. Even now, calmly held by her, I might still spring away next time.
It was all that noose’s fault, watching me to make sure I didn’t lie alone in this haunted house, urging me to cling to Gan Ling like driftwood.
Once I calmed down, I confessed to Gan Ling anyway. “Actually… I thought about refusing, but I felt so guilty.”
“Because you were afraid of him?”
“Because he’s always been good to me. We’d been together a long time, and I never expected to be that scared. Deep down, I really wanted to get past it… so I just endured.”
“So it was his problem.” Gan Ling said.
“Don’t say that… I’m the one who’s rigid and can’t refuse.”
Dumping all the blame on myself, Gan Ling got it. After a while, we tacitly shoved Lu Jinshi out of our minds.
Gan Ling said, “Let me say something regardless of the mood.”
“Please enlighten me.” I decided to learn properly.
“I’ve always wanted to hug you.”
Gan Ling laughed after saying it, like it was a joke.
A woman who’d stalked and pressured you, always gloomy without a smile, even starting to avoid you—suddenly says she’s always wanted to hug you?
I bolted upright from under the covers, standing on the kang, and smacked my head right into that noose. My knees buckled, and I knelt in terror before Gan Ling.
Gan Ling lay there calmly, gently lifting the quilt to welcome me back in.
After hesitating, I still hunched over and rolled back inside, like all the ghosts were floating outside the covers—like a kid’s nightmare where hiding under the quilt keeps every specter and monster from lifting it, a safe sealed space.
I pulled the quilt tight, peeking out with half my head. “Why?”
“The reason I agreed to your request… and gave up killing,” Gan Ling mentioned her revenge, her smile fading, still grinding her teeth but her tone softening, like she was explaining to me, “is because of you.”
“Me?”
“I realized that even if I went around you, found the killer somewhere else…” She trailed off, lost in thought about the real secret behind how I connected with Gan Ling. I shook her arm to snap her back. She continued, “Even if I found them and really killed them… it would just bring you trouble.”
Why would Gan Ling care about troubling me? The troubles she’d brought me were endless—like how I was now stuck sleeping in a house where someone had mummified after suicide, with leaks, my e-bike out of power, and needing to get up at six to borrow a charge at the supermarket!
“I gave birth to Ningning, raised her… but at the critical moment, I ran away. When she died, you were with her. She trusted you, knew you… I’ve always looked down on others’ feelings, thinking no one hurts more than me, her mom.
“But in the end… when I lost Ningning, you lost her too.
“I don’t want to drag you into my cynical rage every day. I’m selfish—I always look forward. I tell myself, forget it, life’s like that. I’ll kill the killer, go to jail, or get shot. What would you think then?”
I’d think nothing, just replay Zheng Ningning and her mother’s fates over and over in my mind.
“I guess we’ll just have to let it go. That’s just how fate is. I never even sought justice from Zheng Chenggang for how he abused me… Didn’t he die on the road while doing long-haul trucking? I can’t drag him up and whip his corpse, let alone that murderer. This is my fate, like dancing on a knife’s edge, heart-piercing pain, and I can’t drag you up to dance with me too…”
“He died on the road doing long-haul?”
“Yeah, he died seven years ago… before Ningning.”
I opened my mouth, but ultimately didn’t tell her.
I couldn’t say it.
I couldn’t poison the knife she was dancing on, stir up the past she’d put down, like reboiling a pot of soup that had gone rancid seven years ago. I secretly resolved never to ask again, never to inquire further.
So I turned the topic back to myself: “Then why do you want to hug me?”
“Can’t I?” Gan Ling was still righteous about it, as if I weren’t me, but a promotional doll for a hundred yuan a day, free for anyone to hug.
I took a deep breath, mentally prepared myself, lifted the corner of the blanket, propped up my upper body, and placed myself in her arms like an apologetic gift.
Gan Ling held me, and I didn’t pass out again.
Sometimes I feel there’s a certain sticky atmosphere between Gan Ling and me, completely different from between me and Zhu Erting. On a vast sea of bitterness, a lone skiff; I row, Gan Ling steers, breathing the same air of this spacetime. When Moses raises his staff, the water is cursed (note 1); the blood from seven years ago dyes the boundless sea of bitterness red, and as I nestle beside Gan Ling, the blood drips drop by drop.
The blanket crawls up from our bodies and folds itself neatly in the corner; the electric scooter grows more and more charged as it runs, stopping at the supermarket entrance; bus route 2 pulls away from the station, reversing while herding people out; the murderer walks backward, takes off his leather jacket; the person with the noose hesitates for a long time, climbs down from the beam, and walks out of the room backward.
*
Note 1: Exodus 7:14-25.
