What You Fear Comes True

Xie Xie spent the day like a puppet on strings.

The chairs in Class Five's classroom seemed to have grown thorns. The moment his butt touched one, he could not sit still. Up front, Wu Changkong was explaining the freshman rules, his voice cold enough to make people shiver. Beside him, Tang Wulin sat ramrod straight, and even his occasional glances carried sympathetic "good luck" wishes. On the other side, Yun Ying spun a pen. She had not brought her spear, but her keep-out aura was sharper than any gun barrel. Gu Yue simply caught up on sleep, her chin resting on the open Fundamentals of Soul Guidance Devices, her breathing steady, as though what had happened in the hallway yesterday morning was nothing but Xie Xie's hallucination.

Only Xie Xie knew it was not.

During the break, he stared blankly at the stall door in the restroom for five full minutes, wondering whether he should cut off his uniform sleeve and swallow it. In the end, he did not dare. Shadow's sweetly added line—"I'll split your mouth open to the back of your ears"—kept replaying in his head, more irritating than Director Long's loudspeaker.

Tang Wulin had brought him buns for lunch. He choked after two bites. The piece of "candy" Yun Ying had given him was still in his pocket, its wrapper crumpled into a ball in his grip. Gu Yue passed by carrying her tray and said only, "Once she sets her sights on someone, they can't run. But we're all together. Before she touches you, she'll have to consider whether she wants to touch us too."

Xie Xie thought, was that supposed to comfort him?

During afternoon practical training, he ran through positions on the training field, his palms so sweaty that they slipped. In the reflected glare of the teaching building's glass curtain wall, he kept thinking he caught sight of a strand of white hair, a hint of magenta highlights. But whenever he looked closely, there were only clouds drifting past.

When they were dismissed in the evening, he did not go to the cafeteria with Tang Wulin and the others. Instead, he took a long detour back to the dormitory. His room was on the third floor, the westernmost one. He locked the door, wedged a chair against it, then placed his washbasin upside down over the doorknob—a crude trick an old classmate had taught him. It might not work against thieves, and it was even less likely to work against a yandere, but it was better than nothing.

As darkness fell, he sat on the edge of his bed without turning on the light. The glow from his phone screen illuminated his deathly pale face. Tang Wulin had sent him a message on WeChat: "A Class Five group was made. Yun Ying changed the name to 'Class Five Survivor Mutual-Aid Society.' Gu Yue approved." Xie Xie wanted to send an emoji, but his finger hovered over the keyboard. He typed "Help" and deleted it, replacing it with "Mm."

His stomach growled. Only then did he remember that he had not eaten before dinner, and his throat was dry as sandpaper. He needed an excuse to steel himself, and drinking water was the most legitimate one.

He walked to the desk in the dark and found his thermos. His hand trembled a little as he unscrewed the lid. The water had been boiled from the tap and was lukewarm. He filled a cup, and its porcelain bottom tapped against the tabletop with a click that sounded like a gunshot in the dead-silent dorm room.

Holding the cup, he let the steam wash over his face. Before taking a drink, he sighed.

Then the window made a sound.

It was not the wind. It was a click—the aluminum window latch had been pried open from outside by something long and hard. The track scraped stubbornly, but it could not stop its visitor. The window swung inward thirty degrees, and the night wind rushed in, making the hairs on Xie Xie's neck stand on end.

She was crouching on the windowsill.

There was no air-conditioning unit outside the third-floor window, no awning to step on—only a sheer wall and the distant halo of streetlights. Shadow crouched there just like that, the toe of her thick-soled shoe resting against the peeling wall. Her long white hair hung into the room, its magenta-dyed ends swaying at the edge of the light like blood flowing through darkness. The night wind pressed wrinkles into the shoulders of her asymmetrical white suit. The misaligned stitching on her right shoulder exposed the collar of a black shirt, while her bow tie remained unnervingly neat. Several translucent, hollow magenta diamond blades hovered beside her knees, turning lazily like fireflies she had raised.

She held something new in her hand—not one of the insubstantial blades from last night, but a real dagger. It was narrow, with black tape wrapped around the handle and an ugly matte sheen on the edge, as if it had licked blood and been wiped dry. The point hung downward from her hand as she held it as casually as a scallion.

Xie Xie dropped his cup.

The porcelain cup smashed against the top of his foot, splashing warm water over his trouser cuffs. He did not feel the heat. All he heard was the clacking of his own chattering teeth.

"Big brother, I came to play with you."

Shadow tilted her head and smiled. Her red eyes looked paler in the night than they had in the morning, like diluted blood. Her voice was clear, with the crispness of opening an ice-cold soda, but its trailing note carried a sticky sweetness, like soda spilled onto sun-scorched asphalt.

Xie Xie's mind went blank. Yun Ying's morning words—"When a yandere goes crazy, not even immortals can save him"—came crushing down like thunder, while Tang Wulin's "She knows the three of us are in the same class" repeated in his ears. His legs went weak, and he only kept himself from collapsing by gripping the edge of the desk. Chase her out? With what? He could summon his twin daggers, but Shadow's knife and the Magenta Blades suspended around her were clearly the kind of things that could snap his daggers like toothpicks.

"O-okay. Sit down." He heard himself speak, his voice cracked like a chick caught in a door.

Shadow's eyes curved slightly. Xie Xie had seen that expression at the soy milk stand this morning, when every hair on his back had stood up. Now, every hair on his body was standing up. Still carrying the knife, she flipped lightly into the room. Her thick-soled shoes landed without a sound, and the magenta lining of her white skirt brushed over Xie Xie's wet trouser cuffs. She did not sit on the bed. Instead, she pulled out the plastic chair by the window and sat down, resting the knife handle on her knee. The Magenta Blades gathered behind her, making her look like a female classmate visiting—if female classmates crouched on third-floor windowsills with knives.

"Big brother, your room is so tiny." Shadow looked around. Her gaze swept over the chair against the door and the washbasin over the handle, but her smile did not fade. "But it smells like you. Mint mixed with panic. It smells better than the dusty stench in that alley last night."

Xie Xie swallowed saliva that did not exist, his back pressed against the corner of the desk as he tried to nail himself in place. "Did you drink the soy milk...?"

"I did. There was still half a cup left in the one you bought. I took it home and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow morning, I'll add some water and drink it again. Consider it a refill you treated me to." Shadow tilted her head, her hair falling over the blade without being cut. "Big brother, I'm bored. Can you chat with me?"

There was no way Xie Xie could refuse. He pulled at the corners of his mouth, an expression that was probably uglier than crying. "Chat... chat about what?"

"About you." Shadow tapped the knife handle with her fingertips, making soft dinging sounds. "Was big brother good in Class Five today? Did you say anything mean? Did you secretly smile at any girls? Yun Ying counts as a girl, and Gu Yue counts too. Tang Wulin doesn't count, but he sits at the same desk as you, so that counts as close contact—"

"No, no, no!" Xie Xie nearly jumped up, then forcibly squatted back down. "I sit in the middle of the last row. Tang Wulin sits in the second row by the wall, Yun Ying is in the first row, and Gu Yue sleeps! I got scolded and didn't dare talk back! I didn't dare look at girls at all—I only looked at the blackboard!"

Shadow burst out laughing. Her red eyes curved into crescents, damp like an amused cat's. "Liar. You talked to Gu Yue this morning. Your voice was loud enough that I heard it from the other side of the glass door. But..." Her smile faded as her fingertip brushed over the blade's edge. "Since you were afraid of me, it doesn't count as flirting."

Xie Xie let out half a sigh of relief, then tensed again—she even knew about what he had said to Gu Yue in the hallway this morning?

"Let's talk about something else." Shadow spun the knife handle once and set it on the desk, the tip two inches from the back of Xie Xie's hand. "For example... Yun Ying."

Xie Xie's eyelid twitched. "Yun Ying? She... she changed the group name to 'Class Five Survivor Mutual-Aid Society' today..."

"Not that." Shadow's voice lowered, and the smile in her red eyes faded like the sugary residue left after soda bubbles disappeared. "I mean before."

Xie Xie froze.

Shadow lowered her head and removed her fingerless glove with her right hand. Her fingertip rubbed a nick in the blade—a tiny nick, as though someone had taken a bite out of it. "Last year. She was chasing a thief, and I happened to be there to collect that person's head. We were competing for the same job. Then we fought... it was a draw. But in the end, one of her shots went wide and grazed beneath my ribs. I came back and spent nine days recovering."

She raised her eyes. Her red eyes had grown moist, a thin sheen covering her pupils as though someone had dripped half a drop of saline into them. She was not crying. It was the kind of dampness that said, "I got hurt. Can't you comfort me?" It stuck to Xie Xie's nerves.

"Big brother, I suffered a little loss." Shadow spoke softly, her ending note turning gentle, like a distorted version of her morning "You're so nice." "Yun Ying hits very hard. But you're different. You bought me soy milk, and you even lost a shoe running away... You're good."

Xie Xie's vision went dark.

He leaned against the desk corner, his fingernails digging into the wood grain. A string of firecrackers exploded in his head: Shadow had fought Yun Ying to a draw, Shadow said she had suffered, Shadow was sitting in his dorm room, Shadow had set her sights on him, Shadow said he was good, Shadow was looking at him with wet red eyes—

Then came the most terrifying thread, sliding from "Yun Ying hits very hard" to "I still don't have a girlfriend."

He had entered East Sea Academy, trained his Twin Martial Souls until he was looking pretty impressive, and though he had a sharp tongue, when it came to dating a girl... Yun Ying was his buddy and his gunwoman, Tang Wulin was his brother, Gu Yue was practically a sister-in-law, and he had not even memorized all the other girls' names in class. He used to brag to his roommates, "Xie Xie will at least marry a control-system girl someday." Now that boast had been sliced into scraps by Shadow's Magenta Blades.

What if, someday, he really did get a girlfriend—even if he merely gave a notebook to a girl from the neighboring class and she misunderstood—would Shadow's damp red eyes instantly dry up? Would her blade pierce through that girl's body while she smiled and said, "Big brother, she flirted with you. I helped you take care of her"?

Or worse, she might not deal with anyone else first. She might deal with him. Split his mouth open to the back of his ears, then stitch on a layer of white suit fabric with magenta trim so he could crouch on windowsills with Shadow?

The little warm water in Xie Xie's stomach surged upward, sour and bitter. He remembered the candy Yun Ying had stuffed into his hand. It had tasted sweet and bitter in his mouth, and even more bitter when he bit it apart. Something like Shadow was not a problem that could be solved by calling her a "girlfriend." Being set in her sights meant owing a debt that would cost him a layer of skin. He had not even figured out whom he liked yet, but he had already received a yandere's visitation permit.

"Big brother?" Shadow reached out. Her cool fingertip pressed against his temple, right on the spot he had banged against the wall that morning. It was red, and her touch made it cold again. "Your face is whiter than a soy milk cup. Does talking about Yun Ying make you unhappy? Then we won't talk about her. Let's talk about who you want to marry someday."

Xie Xie's throat made a rattling sound.

He saw himself reflected in Shadow's red eyes: messy hair, wet trouser cuffs, marked like a pet being kept in a cage. He saw the curve of Shadow's lips as she waited for his answer. He saw the streetlight outside sliced into strands by her long white hair, like prison bars.

He did not dare think.

Xie Xie closed his eyes.