Chai Si's second memory

"Chai Si, Chai Si, wake up. It's time to go home."

A hand gently nudged his shoulder, pushing cracks into his dream. The fragments slipped away and drifted into the distance, and Chai Si opened his eyes.

The sunset clouds on the horizon had already turned pale purple. Long clouds were dyed dark red, as though someone had swept a finger across the sky, leaving streaks of rouge.

The silhouettes of palm trees stood tall against the sky, and dim yellow lights came on one by one in the evening parking lot.

"You were sleeping so soundly. What nice dream were you having?"

Mom stood outside the car window. Seeing that he was awake, she withdrew her hand through the half-open window and straightened up. Although Chai Si couldn't make out her expression, he heard a trace of guilt in her tone. Mom's voice was very gentle, because guilt was a softening agent.

Chai Si couldn't remember. The lights in his dream had been bright, far brighter than the western evening in the parking lot; he had been tall, far taller than he was now.

But he had forgotten everything about what, exactly, he had dreamed.

"No overtime today?" he asked, watching Mom open the door and sit in the driver's seat on the other side.

"I begged the manager to let me leave early today." Mom glanced at him. A little smile rose to her face, but it failed to break through some heavy lid and faded again. "I didn't even dare tell him you'd been waiting for me in the car all day..."

"Why not?"

Mom put a plastic bag on the back seat. The smell of the food inside was familiar. She always brought home some leftovers from the restaurant for their dinner. She started the car and said, "How is that a good thing? If anyone found out, child protective services might take you away."

Chai Si didn't understand what was so bad about sitting in the car waiting for Mom to finish work-the window was half-open, a soft breeze blew inside, potato chip crumbs stuck to his fingers, and the storybook on his knees had slipped to the floor while he slept.

"I'm sorry. It won't happen again. When you grow up, don't complain about me to your therapist. Put your seat belt on."

In fact, it would happen again, because the only person willing to look after Chai Si for very little money was a young woman in the neighborhood, and she wasn't available every day.

Later, Chai Si thought that what he had really wanted to say then was clearly, "I like waiting for you," but somehow, what actually came out was a complaint: "I want to go home and watch TV."

"Okay," Mom said as she left the parking lot. "But only after dinner."

By the time they reached the freeway, it was completely dark. Bright headlights pierced the night, flashing past their old car. The freeway ran high above the ground, with a cliff on the left; looking out from the road, they could see all the way to the distant horizon.

Countless lights shone like stars across vast, sprawling Luo City beneath the night sky.

They had taken this road countless times. It was as familiar as their own kitchen. Chai Si kept looking out the window at Luo City's nightscape while Mom listened to the radio, and they chatted on and off.

Everything happened without warning: when a heavy freight truck on the road ahead suddenly swerved and crashed diagonally through the guardrail on the right, Mom was still joking.

Her sharp intake of breath made Chai Si whip his head around, just in time to see the long truck lying across the freeway ahead.

The piercing screech of brakes tore through the car, but it still couldn't halt its momentum and hurtled straight toward the truck-Chai Si was pinned to his seat by his seat belt, watching the truck grow larger and larger, like an overwhelming catastrophe descending over him. In that moment, he forgot whether he screamed.

All he remembered was turning his head and finding the driver's seat empty.

The seat belt was still buckled, stretched flat across the driver's seat, as though it were protecting an empty seat; the steering wheel, deprived of the hands controlling it, turned slightly.

...Huh?

His bewilderment lasted only an instant. By the time Chai Si reacted and hastily reached for the steering wheel, he hit the truck-in that instant, the hood crumpled and twisted upward, filling most of the windshield and his vision. The next moment, Chai Si sank into darkness and knew nothing more.

Ah, right. Chai Si Monroe died in a car accident when he was five.

...He died, didn't he?

Something felt wrong.

If Chai Si Monroe died when he was five... then who was remembering this from his perspective now, believing he had died?

Another voice raised a small objection.

Did it matter who was remembering? Whether he died didn't matter either.

What really mattered was that if he stopped thinking useless thoughts and simply sank into the warm, amniotic darkness, closing his eyes to sleep, all his struggles and confusion would find comfort and answers... he would never have to worry again...

Never have to... worry again...

Absolutely not.

Chai Si abruptly opened his eyes.

He was lying on the floor. For an instant, the almost blinding white light in the subway car left him unable to see anything clearly.

An intuition that suddenly jolted awake deep in his bones immediately suppressed his instinct to roll over and leap up. He forced himself to stay perfectly still, listening as a rustling sound on the floor passed his ear and slowly receded.

His vision soon cleared again, and he found himself lying in front of a window whose glass was gone.

He still remembered how the glass in this window had bulged like a rubber balloon, with several grayish-white fingers working apart the seam between the glass and its frame. Now the window was empty, and shattered glass lay scattered across the floor and seats.

The resident had crawled in through the window, entering this human world...

But no matter how hard Chai Si thought, he couldn't remember why he had fallen to the floor.

When he fell, the back of his head must have struck the seat before hitting the floor. Now his neck was twisted and ached faintly.

He heard the rustling stop a few steps away. A low, trembling groan came from the driver's throat-but it abruptly fell silent just as it began, as though it had been cut off.

Dead?

Chai Si's heart sank. That Phantasm-

"...So, you're con," a sticky voice said, breaking its words in an extremely unnatural way, "scious then that's good."

It was the resident.

"So you're conscious. That's good." It had said that to the driver, so the driver probably wasn't dead yet...

Chai Si held his breath and slowly shifted his eyes, making out a hazy grayish-white figure standing on the floor nearby. It was difficult to tell, but the figure seemed to have its back to him.

His abdominal muscles tightened inch by inch as he silently raised his body from the floor, little by little, and saw the T-shaped bar lying beside his feet. He didn't pick it up.

Judging by the traces at the scene, it seemed he had fallen before he had managed to do anything...

The hunched, curled-up figure was very short, reaching only Chai Si's waist. Its entire body was wrapped in a grayish-white cloth robe, ragged and torn into strips in many places.

Beneath the grayish-white robe, a grayish-white hand larger than a mop head rested limply on the floor, palm up. Its other hand was raised in the air, holding up three long fingers, one of which was bending toward the driver.

"Mem,ories in, which you, can die three, instances."

Once the pauses were scrambled, even the meaning was difficult to grasp at first. Chai Si froze briefly before realizing it had said, "Memories in which you can die: three instances."

Which meant-

Chai Si understood everything at once.

Horrified, he abandoned any attempt to hide, kicked the driver's ankle, and roared, "Wake up! Don't believe it! You're not dead!"

He had effectively exposed himself-before his next thought could form, a face spun around on that hunched back.

The moment his gaze landed on that face, the subway car rapidly blurred again, disappeared, and slid into darkness. Chai Si fell helplessly backward onto the seat, the resident's sticky laughter ringing in his ears.

"Mem,ories in, which you, can die thirty, nine instances."

So that was it...

As he fell into his memory, that trace of mingled defiance, fear, and agitation swiftly dispersed from the edges of his consciousness like gray smoke.

If the car accident when he was five was the first memory the resident had found in which he could die while reliving it, then Chai Si knew what the second memory it had found was.

The second time his life had been in danger was on the sixth day after the accident.

It was also the day Mom returned from the Nest.

(End of chapter)