Chai Si: The first resident he encountered

At first, people came and went in the hospital room.

Unfamiliar faces came and went, their features soon blending together until Chai Si could no longer tell who was who. He remembered traffic officers, nurses, doctors, detectives, social workers... Every blurry, flesh-colored face opened its mouth and poured an endless stream of questions at him.

Who was his mother?

Where had they gotten onto the highway?

Had he noticed the car door? Was it closed? Had she jumped out?

What about his father? Oh, he had never met him?

Did he have any other relatives?

Apart from saying, "My mother's name is Daisy Monroe," Chai Si could not answer a single question.

Sometimes, Chai Si used to imagine that he actually had a father, and that he was a CIA agent working undercover overseas, or a brilliant scientist researching a secret project, which was why they could not meet-all perfectly ordinary childhood fantasies.

But over those days, Chai Si sat alone on his hospital bed with his arm in a cast, watching one stranger after another come and go, leaving snacks, empty paper coffee cups, cigarette butts, business cards, and countless questions in the room...

All his innocent fantasies fell away before reality, as though he were shedding a shell that had long since ceased to fit.

"It's just me," he told the police officer. "I'm the only one at home now."

That day, he heard several people talking by the door-whether they were police officers, social workers, or something else was difficult for a child to tell.

"I've been doing this for decades, and I've never seen a mother run off like this." The middle-aged man chewed tobacco as he spoke. "Parents who leave in the morning and never come back, sure, that happens all the time... But how could she disappear from a car crash?"

"It is strange. Nothing at the scene shows how she disappeared," another, younger-looking person said. "Ironically, though, if she hadn't suddenly vanished, that kid probably wouldn't have gotten away with just a broken arm."

"Oh, right, you mentioned that earlier. Something about which way the car was pointing?"

"Yeah. You've heard how drivers instinctively turn the wheel left in an emergency, leaving the passenger seat to take the impact? That doesn't always hold true. Some drivers steer toward wherever there's more room. But in this accident, the kid's mother had no choice. She could only turn left-"

Because there was a cliff on the right.

That answer occurred to Chai Si at the very moment the middle-aged man said, "Oh."

"She probably disappeared from the driver's seat before she could turn the wheel, or just as she started turning it. Once you let go, the wheel returns to center, right? According to the kid, he instinctively grabbed the wheel after he noticed his mother was gone... That happened to make the car veer a little to the right, but, remarkably, not too far. It didn't smash through the guardrail and plunge off the cliff. Instead, it was just enough for the kid to get away with the least severe injuries possible. It was practically a miracle."

"What a lucky kid," the middle-aged man said, then stopped himself. "...No, I can't really call him lucky. Only five, and already without a mother or father. What happens next?"

"His mother has a distant aunt living in Blackmoor City. She's agreed to come look after him for a few days," a third person interjected. "But whether she'll agree to become his permanent guardian is another question... If she won't, he'll have to go to a children's home or a foster family."

Chai Si was discharged on the third day, with a broken arm in a cast and a bill he had no idea what to do with.

His great-aunt was getting on in years. Her glasses kept slipping to the tip of her nose, and she began nodding off as soon as eight o'clock rolled around. Neither she nor Chai Si knew how to get along with the other. The usually noisy, bustling little apartment was so quiet it seemed empty.

On the sixth night after the accident, Chai Si could not fall asleep, no matter how hard he tried.

His aching arm was part of it, and his great-aunt kept snoring after she fell asleep. Every time he raised his head, there was an unfamiliar, hill-like back lying in his mother's bed.

By midnight, Chai Si could no longer stand the boredom and torment. He quietly climbed out of bed and went into the living room. There was nothing there either, really. He thought he wanted to play with his toys, but after staring at the box for a while, he did not even reach out to open it.

Chai Si went to the window and looked down at the familiar, deserted street.

If only Mom would come back, he thought. Right now, walking home along the street, wearing the clothes she disappeared in, carrying snacks and breakfast she bought for me, her keys jingling with every step...

Though he was only five, Chai Si had already realized that his imagination would not become reality.

So when he actually saw his mother walking down the street, step by step, he leaned forward in shock and struck his face against the glass with a thud.

"...Mom?" he called softly.

The apartment was on the second floor, still a long way from his mother, but she raised her head toward him as though she had heard.

For that moment, Chai Si did not move, his forehead pressed against the cold glass.

Half his mother's face was covered in blood.

In the night, the blood was darker than the darkness itself, making half her face look as though it had been swallowed by nothingness. One eye would not open. Only the other, buried in the black blood, looked at him, its pupil glinting faintly.

But it really was his mother.

The moment their eyes met, his mother reached out and waved hard several times, just as she used to when she picked him up from kindergarten. Then she continued limping and staggering toward the apartment, nearly tripping in her haste.

He should have hurried to wake his great-aunt at a time like this, but at that moment, Chai Si did not even remember that she was in the apartment. He ran straight to the door, opened it, and thumped down the stairs.

"Mom!"

Chai Si ran toward her as fast as he could. If his mother had not quickly caught him with one hand, he would have crashed into her arms, cast and all. "Mom, what happened to you?"

"I had a little fall," his mother said breathlessly, bent halfway over. She gave a laugh. "It hurts like hell. Your arm-"

"Where did you go?"

His mother studied him for a while before saying, "Somewhere... somewhere very strange. But that doesn't matter. I'm back. Don't worry, I'll never go there again..."

As she said this, whatever strength had supported her on the walk home seemed to drain away all at once, and she collapsed by the roadside like a pile of building blocks suddenly kicked apart.

"Mom?" Startled, Chai Si hurried to help her up.

But he could not really lift her. It was more like he clung to her arm and sank to the ground with her.

His mother waved a hand to show him she was all right. "I'm just tired... Let me rest... Are you home alone?"

"Great-Aunt came from Blackmoor City," Chai Si answered.

"Go home... Tell her to call an ambulance..."

Chai Si looked down and discovered blood all over the front of his body, his arm, and his cast.

"Go... hurry." His mother's voice was so low it seemed a gust of wind could scatter it.

Chai Si nodded hard several times. Before getting up, for some reason, he suddenly reached out with a trembling hand and lightly touched his mother's body.

Perhaps he wanted to see where she was hurt and how badly, but his hand touched something strange instead.

"Mom," Chai Si said, taken aback. "What's that wrapped around you?"

At that moment, his mother's face froze.

Never in his life had Chai Si seen such a frightening face-because its owner herself was submerged in utter terror.

Fear, heavy and suffocating as concrete, gradually pressed down on the air. For an instant, Chai Si suddenly wanted to shrink until he was so small that no one could see him, including his mother.

His mother did not look down at her waist, as though her fear would not become reality as long as she did not look. Her one open eye stared fixedly at Chai Si. He could not tell whether tears had welled up in it, but it shone with a frightening brightness.

"Wh... what? What's wrapped... around me?"

Without realizing it, Chai Si had already started crying. Tears kept crawling down his face, tickling his skin.

"I, I don't know." He did not know what he was afraid of, either. Not daring even to pull his hand away, he kept it at his mother's waist and said in a trembling voice, "It... it feels like a thin rope..."

Just then, he felt the rope beneath his hand move slightly.

As though someone had tugged on its other end.

The other end...

Chai Si dimly realized that the rope around his mother's waist must have another end.

"Don't look."

He heard his mother's voice, almost pleading with him. "Don't look back, Chai Si... Go home. Run, hurry..."

But Chai Si paid no heed. His body seemed to have been taken over by another version of himself. He involuntarily stood, stepped around her, and looked at the ground behind his mother.

A rope lay slack there, stretching away into the night, gradually disappearing into darkness that even the streetlights could not illuminate.

...How strange. Who tied a rope around Mom?

The rope moved again.

"Chai Si! Come back!"

Chai Si froze. Only then did he realize that he had unwittingly followed the rope several steps forward. He glanced back at his mother, then turned around again-this time, there was more ahead of him than the night, the street, and the long rope.

At some point, a huge black figure holding the other end of the rope had appeared right before him.

"Run!" His mother's furious shout was almost a shriek. It sent a shudder through Chai Si and snapped him fully back to his senses.

Before he could make out the black figure's appearance, he turned and ran. He might have screamed, or he might not have. A neighbor might have turned on a light, or perhaps not.

At that moment, the world suddenly stripped away its facade of rational order, revealing the nightmare beneath, like dark, filthy water. Nothing felt real anymore.

He heard the black figure speak.

Its voice stretched across the night, drifting through the air.

At the time, he could not understand it, yet every word carved itself deep into his bones. Later, Chai Si came to understand what those words meant, but by then, times had changed and everything was too late. He never let himself think about them again.

Only once, while interrogating a traitor, did the resident's words suddenly spring into his mind for some unknown reason.

When Chai Si came to his senses again, someone had their arms around his waist, and someone was begging him to stop. Punch after punch, he had beaten the traitor into an indistinct mass of blood and flesh, no more human in shape than a heap of sludge.

"Thank you."

The resident said, "The only way I can enter the human world is to find a dog, put it on a leash, and let it lead me in. You didn't think you'd really escaped me, did you? Did you really think you could come back and reunite with your son? Ah, let me have a taste... I hear humans' shattered hopes are the most delicious thing of all."

I thought about Chai Si's mother's name for a while and finally settled on Daisy.