What Chai Si Hated Most

Time-he needed time.

In just twenty or thirty seconds, one unexpected turn had followed another, each catching him off guard, each difficult to understand.

But Chai Si knew that, given a little time, he could draw lines between those individual "points of light" and form them into a clear, comprehensible picture.

Everything in the world might be chaotic and complicated, but Chai Si believed it could always be understood this way: first seize enough key pieces of information from the chaos and noise, then work outward from those points, connecting lines and drawing shapes until the entire framework of a thing emerged above the surface.

Unfortunately, time was precisely what he lacked most at that moment.

When Chai Si turned his head and his gaze fell on that pitch-black pane of glass bulging high into the bus, he knew he had made an unavoidable mistake-he could not possibly have refrained from looking at the window; anyone would have looked. But the moment he looked, his attention was divided.

In that instant of distraction, the wire he had just knocked away behind him was bouncing up in a shower of sparks, whipping through the air toward the back of his head.

Even the air twisted and tightened with the current; he seemed to smell the electrical sparks, to feel a flickering, scorching patch of blue against the skin of his nape.

...No one, however skilled, could move faster than electricity.

Chai Si closed his eyes.

That instant of waiting for the electric shock seemed interminable. Memories of enduring electric shocks years ago in search of a Pathway surfaced again, as though heralding the piercing, wrenching pain about to come.

Yet a single breath later, Chai Si opened his eyes again.

The crackle of the electric shock, the muffled grunt of pain, the thud of a body hitting the floor... he had heard them all. But he had felt none of the current itself.

Someone had been electrocuted. It was not him.

Chai Si twisted his head around. Sure enough, the driver lay on the floor behind him, his face an ugly, ashen white, his curled body convulsing in waves, as though someone had seized a tendon inside him and pulled it taut. He could neither straighten up nor escape-the wire had lost its earlier excitement and hung limply onto the floor nearby, motionless, as though it had done something wrong.

Chai Si looked at the window swelling more and more like a balloon, then at the driver a step behind him. For an instant, he almost laughed.

"I forgot to tell you," he said, picking up the T-bar from the floor and hefting it in his hand. "I have very good luck, because I drain the luck from the people around me."

The driver could not speak at all. Even his consciousness seemed clouded.

"You followed my gaze and turned to look at this window too, didn't you? I got distracted then and let go of you." Chai Si was not trying to get an answer from the driver; he needed to sort out everything before him for himself. Staring at the window, he said, "You saw what was happening to the window, got scared, and took a step back, only to take the electric shock for me. Am I right?"

A string of low sounds rumbled in the driver's throat.

From the look of things, the "Rumor" Phantasm could not control its host's physical movements. Otherwise, the driver would not have stepped back onto the wire out of fear.

"I should thank you. Because you took that shock for me, I have a little time now."

Carrying the T-bar, Chai Si walked step by step toward the curved window ahead, which looked nine months pregnant. Two steps away, he swung the T-bar high and brought his full strength down, driving it into the pitch-black window-but there was no sound of shattering glass. Instead, the pane gave inward like a rubber sheet, leaving all his strength striking nothing.

Behind the window should be a resident capable of entering the human world, so it was only reasonable that the T-bar had no effect on it.

"What I'm about to say isn't for you. It's for the thing in your mouth... 'Rumor,' right? May I call you that?"

The driver lay on the floor, barely conscious. The voice beneath his cheek had fallen silent too, seemingly in acquiescence.

"For a Phantasm, having a degree of intelligence and knowing how to protect yourself is truly precious. But you have no self-awareness, and your intelligence isn't high enough. Otherwise, you wouldn't be a Phantasm. You'd be a resident."

The shape of a human hand emerged on the window, which bulged as though someone were blowing it up. The hand pressed against the back of the glass, raising the shape of five spread fingers on its surface as it slowly felt around.

Wherever the hand felt, Chai Si's gaze followed.

"If you were intelligent enough, you would have realized just now that I wasn't threatening the driver and attacking him to hurt him. I was doing it to get hold of you. But that chain of cause and effect is too complicated for you. You don't understand... you have only intuitive instinct.

"When the driver you inhabit had his life threatened, when he fell into a state of fear and stress, your instinct for self-preservation was triggered too. I don't know what you look like, but you seem to need a person to attach yourself to in order to exist. If that person dies, you're in serious trouble, aren't you?"

The driver stopped convulsing and lay on the floor. A thread of consciousness remained; his half-open eyelids trembled faintly.

From between his slightly parted lips, a tiny voice rapidly cried, "Help, help!"-almost as though calling for help on the driver's behalf.

Chai Si turned his gaze back to the window. A distorted reflection of himself appeared in the bulging black glass. As the corner of his mouth lifted, the reflection showed half a twisted smile too.

"Who are you asking to save you?"

Chai Si did not know whether other people's fates were always as full of ironic black humor as his own-if he had not been the person involved, he could almost have laughed aloud.

After all, half the reason the driver was so afraid was the "Subway Serial Killer" rumor the Phantasm had created, which made the driver believe he had encountered a serial killer. This also indirectly demonstrated that "Rumor" was not intelligent enough.

It could not recognize what effect its randomly generated rumors would have on its own host.

"Judging by the 'subway killer' and the 'wire coming loose,' you can't conjure things from nothing and have whatever you say appear.

"What you say has to have some basis in reality. Without people who died in the subway, you couldn't create the 'subway killer' rumor. Without a wire here, you couldn't just talk an extra wire into existence.

"When the wire couldn't kill me, you summoned a resident capable of entering the human world... but you don't really want to return to the Nest. You merely sensed that you could hide from me there."

The ink-black waves surging within Chai Si gave him a momentary urge to seize the resident behind the window and wring it into tiny bits of powder and fragments.

Sometimes, he wished he could use these hands to wring his entire life into pieces.

As his words fell, the bus sank into a brief, deathly silence.

The Phantasm made no sound, and the driver's breathing was barely perceptible. The hand behind the window finally felt its way to where the glass met the frame. As though unpicking stitches, it began tearing the glass down bit by bit.

"I don't know just how low your intelligence is. But if you can understand a single thing I say, you'd better send that resident back to the Nest right now..."

If this Phantasm really wanted to go home, who knew how many opportunities it had had before today?

Wei Xilai was certain to have Hunters around him, and Hunters had Pathways that could give it a ride back. Even if it could not reach a Hunter, why had it not summoned this resident capable of entering the human world sooner?

"Help..."

The Phantasm spoke again, not so quickly this time. After hearing Chai Si's words, it seemed a little hesitant itself. When it called for help again, its words ended in a question mark. "Help?"

"There are two reasons I'm telling you to send it back." Chai Si's tone was calm. "First, once the resident comes in, I can protect myself, but I can't guarantee your host's life."

Several grayish-white fingertips poked through between the glass and the frame. Looking at them, Chai Si said quietly, "Second... you sensed correctly. I really don't have a Pathway. I can't enter the Nest."

For an instant, both the resident and the Phantasm seemed to be waiting for him to continue.

"But this isn't the first time I've seen a resident."

Looking at his own reflection, Chai Si slowly rolled his shoulders and neck.

"What I hate most is residents capable of entering the human world. When I see one, I can't help losing my temper a little. Fortunately, they're very rare, so I don't lose my temper often.

"But today, you summoned one of those things right in front of me."

Chai Si sighed.

"If you really want to protect yourself, you'd better not make me angry."

After rushing and rushing, I finally finished a chapter before the day was over!

As I slowly get back into my daily routine, it's about time to consider giving all you dear readers some extra chapters... Sigh, if I took a month off starting today, but counted every update during that month as an extra chapter, would that be a little too sneaky? The sneakiness would be written all over my face, wouldn't it?

PS: Barring anything unexpected, updates will be at night from now on. I still work during the day, and I've built up a huge backlog of work.

(End of chapter)