Lu Mingfei stared blankly at his reflection on the screen for a while.
Suddenly, a QQ chat window popped up on his desktop. It was Old Tang, whom he had played StarCraft with two days ago.
"Where the hell have you been? You haven't been online for two days. I'm itching for a game!"
"Don't tell me you're doing homework."
"Chinese people don't lie to other Chinese people!"
The timestamps ran from eight thirty to nine forty that evening. The last message had been sent two minutes ago.
Lu Mingfei launched StarCraft. "Coming, coming."
As usual, Old Tang sent out an early scout, dispatching a worker to explore with crisp, efficient control. Lu Mingfei made some Zerglings too, but instead of scouting, he went straight into massing units. His hands flew as he assigned control groups, switched views, and spread creep, every move flowing seamlessly into the next.
A few minutes later, Lu Mingfei typed GG.
Old Tang messaged him: "Your hands are fast. Faster than mine."
Lu Mingfei: "...I lost."
"Bro, something's off!" Old Tang's messages popped up in rapid succession. "When good players face off, you can tell what the other guy's thinking from how he plays. Yesterday, your mechanics were nothing special, but your tactical sense was great. How come it's completely flipped today?"
"Haven't played in ages. Forgot."
"Bullshit! You remember the mechanics but forget the game sense? Something's on your mind."
"No."
"Yes. Let me guess... girl trouble? Is it that Chen Wenwen girl?"
Lu Mingfei paused. When had he mentioned Chen Wenwen to Old Tang? It seemed like ages ago. To Old Tang, it might have been fairly recent, but Lu Mingfei could no longer even remember her face.
"No," he said. "I don't like her anymore."
"Really? Bro, getting your heart broken isn't scary. Bottling it up is."
"Girls aren't nearly as important as bros. By the way, Old Tang, I might be going to school in America. If we get the chance, maybe we can meet in person."
"YES!" Old Tang was so excited that Lu Mingfei could practically feel him dancing around on the other side of the screen. "Awesome! Come find me, and your big bro will show you a good time! I'll show you how friendly the girls are over here. Once you get here, you won't want to leave. Chen Wenwen? You'll forget all about her!"
"That really won't be necessary, really..." Lu Mingfei hastily declined. He now had some serious baggage when it came to "friendly girls." The last friendly redhead had just died in his arms. All he wanted now was to live in peace.
"What do you mean, unnecessary? Didn't you just say girls aren't as important as bros? You didn't say you couldn't have girls too! A bro introducing you to girls takes brotherhood to a whole new level!"
"...Let's not take it to a new level."
"All right, all right, we'll talk about it when you get here. Come on, one more game. That last one doesn't count. You weren't yourself."
Lu Mingfei didn't refuse and started another match. His game sense gradually returned. They fought an evenly matched game into the late stages, until Lu Mingfei finally lost to a sneak attack on his base.
"Now that's more like it," Old Tang said happily.
Lu Mingfei smiled and exited the game.
Suddenly, his old self seemed pretty ridiculous. Why had he been such a loser back then? Afraid to do this, too insecure to do that, rehearsing a hundred times in his head just to say one thing to a girl.
Chen Wenwen. He repeated the name in his head.
Nothing.
"Something definitely got to him," Old Tang muttered. Had that Chen Wenwen girl run off with someone else?
Old Tang took off his headset and stretched. His neck cracked twice.
Then he opened the fridge, fished out a half-empty carton of milk, and checked the expiration date... Fuck. Three days ago.
He unscrewed the cap and sniffed it, poured half a glass, then downed it in one gulp.
"Not bad."
Old Tang was a bounty hunter.
Bounty hunter was the fancy term. Less flatteringly, he was an odd-job man who did just about anything. Last week, he had helped someone find a dog; this week, a cat. Sometimes he dealt with "haunted houses."
Old Tang actually knew nothing about exorcism or magic. Last month, someone had hired him to drive evil spirits out of an old house in the Bronx. He had gone despite his misgivings and slept on the living room couch. The next day, the owner said the haunting had stopped and transferred him eight hundred dollars.
"Guess I'm naturally gifted," he sometimes told himself for comfort, then went on living from one meal to the next.
The money for today's job had arrived: three hundred dollars. He had spent three hours searching for a missing cat in the neighborhood by the river, only to discover that the cat hadn't been lost at all. She had been hiding in the landlord's attic, having kittens. The client had paid anyway, because "as long as you found her."
Thinking about that neighborhood by the river made Old Tang seethe.
The location pin the client had sent was in the river. In the river! He had driven his secondhand Ford around it twice while the navigation system's sweet female voice kept saying, "You have arrived near your destination." Near it, his ass. Finally, he had gotten out and walked along the river for ten minutes before discovering that the house was on the opposite bank.
As he waded across with his shoes on, he had faintly heard a voice.
It sounded like a child calling to him.
"Big brother..."
Old Tang had glanced back.
There had been nothing on the river.
Sunlight glittered on the water like shattered gold.
A Brooklyn light rail train rumbled past the window, making the empty beer cans on the table tremble slightly.
Old Tang lay down on his bed and stared blankly at the water stain on the ceiling.
"Big brother..."
There it was again.
People in his line of work all had a few issues. One colleague supposedly could see ghosts and only took paranormal jobs. Apparently, he wasn't in great shape mentally, either. Another had to dismantle and reassemble every single bullet before each job, refusing to leave until he was done. OCD. Compared with him, occasionally hearing a voice in his head didn't seem like such a big deal.
Maybe it was something he had picked up on a job.
Last year, or maybe the year before, he had taken a job finding a missing little boy. He had found him in an abandoned apartment building, curled up in a corner on the second floor, wrapped in a dirty blanket. The boy had been starving but still lucid. As Old Tang carried him out on his back, the boy had clung to his collar without letting go, calling "big brother" over and over.
Maybe the experience had left too deep an impression, and his brain replayed it sometimes. There seemed to be some psychological explanation along those lines.
Old Tang didn't want to dwell on it. He closed his eyes and forced himself to think about tomorrow's work, the landlord pestering him for rent, and how he would pay this month's bills.
Then he fell asleep.
In his dream, it was hot, as hot as standing beside a furnace, with churning lava and molten copper glowing red all around him. Across from him stood a boy whose face he couldn't make out, small and thin, like a flickering flame about to be blown out by the wind.
Old Tang wanted to walk over, but his feet seemed welded to the ground. He couldn't take a single step.
He wanted to shout, "Who are you?" But his body seemed not to belong to him, and he couldn't make a sound.
He opened his eyes. The water stain was still on the ceiling, shaped like a curled-up cat.
The air conditioner still hummed. There were no new messages on his phone screen, no figures outside the window.
Old Tang touched his face. It was wet.
"Fuck. This line of work really does mess with your nerves." Old Tang rolled over and covered his ears with his pillow.