"He said that one time that his friend had died. That must have been one of them.
"Maybe the first one, too.
"They all went missing.
"They must all be dead.
"Even Ye Qing died.
"Maybe something killed them. The ghosts he mentioned killed them. This was the kind of work they did, after all.
"His mother was a little worried about Ye Qing, who had become a ghost, and felt very sorry for him. But we were more worried about our own son.
"We tried to ask our son about them indirectly a few times. His friends really had all disappeared.
"Our son brought some things back from that office. We took a secret look at them.
"I felt something I couldn't put into words.
"His mother and I discussed it several times, but couldn't reach a conclusion. Neither of us said it aloud, but we knew the other agreed.
"Ye Qing wasn't lying to us. He had no other choice.
"I don't think he was trying to bring himself back to life, or to revive his friends.
"I don't know what he was trying to do.
"But what he was trying to do must have been right, something that had to be done."
The diary entry ended there.
The last punctuation mark was set apart from the words before it, and written with such force that it had nearly pierced the page.
Dad must have been conflicted when he wrote this.
He'd written that we "agreed," but that only meant we'd chosen not to stop or hinder him. If we'd had a choice, Mom and Dad would never have agreed to let me get involved in these matters.
There was no other way.
His guess had been right. Ye Qing had no other choice, either.
Maybe he'd once