Chai Si: Very, Very, Very Simple

Had he been wrong?

After five-year-old Chai Si had run a few frantic steps, he suddenly remembered that his injured mother was still lying beside the road.

He had instinctively stopped then, turning and throwing himself back toward her without a thought, wanting to help her up and run with her-should he not have done that? Had he been wrong?

"I told you to run!"

His mother's scream at that moment was so loud and shrill that she hardly sounded like the person who had been too badly injured to speak just moments before.

"Mom-"

He grabbed his mother's arm, only managing that single word.

The next second, he watched his dangling feet sway farther and farther from the ground.

His mother tilted up her face, half blackened with blood. Shock and terror froze it for an instant before she shouted furiously, "Let him go!"

That thing was not holding Chai Si, nor had it picked him up.

He belatedly realized that a long black shadow had pierced out through his chest and extended into the air, like a blade that had run him through and hoisted him aloft-but Chai Si felt no pain, nor was he bleeding. He had simply lost all his strength, dazed and unable to lift his head.

"No hurry," the resident buzzed behind him. "I don't think you've fully understood the beauty of the situation yet. Let me explain it to you carefully."

His mother's voice drifted between its words like a wolf's whimpering howls.

"One of the flavors I most enjoy savoring is 'irony.' Humans produce it in abundance. There's none in the Nest.

"The disappointment someone feels after buying a losing lottery ticket is disappointment too, but it tastes ordinary and uninteresting, like a cup of instant noodles that only fills your stomach. Your disappointment right now, though, is a delicacy. Why? Because there's 'irony' in your dashed hopes, a flavor a losing lottery ticket lacks. I have to make you fully understand this beauty, or I'll be itching unbearably."

The resident bounced Chai Si up and down several times and sighed in satisfaction.

"First of all, your Pathway delighted me to no end. You can only enter the Nest through a car accident. No wonder you were thirty-six before you opened your Pathway for the first time... But if this accident of yours had happened a few months earlier, none of tonight would have happened. Do you know why?"

His mother's gaze stayed fixed on Chai Si, following his slight swaying in midair.

"Because the resident population of your Luo City region only passed ten million this year. Look at you. If this accident had happened earlier, it would just have been ordinary bad luck. If you'd moved this year, as you'd been thinking of doing all along, you'd never have entered the Nest for the rest of your life... Tell me, wasn't the timing of that accident particularly ironic? Particularly delicious?"

Chai Si vaguely remembered that his mother had indeed once asked whether he wanted to move to her hometown.

But back then, he could not understand what moving or not moving had to do with any of this.

"You thought you'd escaped, never realizing you'd become a guide dog leading me into the human world. That was already quite good. If you'd called the police for help the moment you returned and been taken to a hospital, wouldn't that have been dry and boring? Naturally, I would have left to find other humans.

"But you didn't go to a hospital. Your first thought was to go home and see your child, to make sure he was safe, yet you exposed him to me instead... How wonderful.

"If you didn't love him so much, he wouldn't be dying tonight."

Chai Si knew he was crying, and he also knew he was not crying for himself.

His mother's sobbing and howling on the ground frightened him more than the black shadow piercing his chest.

He used to think he had a superpower. Whenever his mother was unhappy, he could always make her laugh with just a few words-but tonight, that superpower seemed like another five-year-old's conceited dream.

"Stop calling for help. Who could possibly save you?

"Didn't you notice that neighbor who opened their window to look just now closed it again and went back to bed? Ordinary humans without a Pathway, who've never had any contact with residents, can't see me at all... Nor can they see the child I've skewered in midair. Right now, you're just a madwoman sitting beside the road crying in the middle of the night."

In the resident's hands, Chai Si was like a piece of meat on a skewer.

With a whoosh, it swung him through the air, sweeping him in an arc past his mother-after she lunged forward and grabbed at empty air, it lifted Chai Si high again.

"Oh dear, the two of you crying together are making even me sad. Don't be like that. I do have a sliver of mercy. How about this? I'll give you a choice."

His mother stared up blankly, moisture gleaming in one eye, but that was not the light of hope.

"Very, very, very few residents can come to the human world. Not even one in ten years. Far fewer than the humans with Pathways. Tell me, isn't that unfair?"

The resident smacked its lips-if it had any.

"The conditions for coming here are harsh and difficult to meet. Even after finally making it here, one careless mistake can send us falling back into the Nest. Now, I'm going to tell you how to send me back."

His mother suddenly went still. She murmured, "Wh... what?"

"It's very, very, very simple. There's still a rope around your waist, isn't there? That's actually part of me too. All you have to do is cut it, and my Pathway into the human world will be severed as well. Naturally, I'll return to the Nest. You don't believe me?

"Then there's nothing I can do. All I can say is that those of us residents who can come to the human world fall back into the Nest as soon as our Pathways are severed. It's that simple. If you don't believe me, try it."

"The choice?" With one hand pressed to her waist, his mother asked breathlessly, "The choice... you're giving me. What is it?"

"Oh, whether or not to cut the rope."

After those words, even the air fell silent in confusion for a second or two. Chai Si could not see clearly, but his mother must have frowned.

"Why... why wouldn't I cut it? You have... a trap..."

"Wrong. I have no trap," the resident said matter-of-factly. "I'm a very, very, very trustworthy person. If I let you cut the rope, I absolutely won't interrupt you. It can grow back anyway. But you'd better think carefully before cutting it."

Chai Si felt himself being raised, suspended high beside a huge, flat black shadow. The resident seemed to rub Chai Si against its face a few times, as though being affectionate.

"I won't be letting your child go.

"So your choices are: one, don't cut the rope, and I stay here and kill both you and your child; two, cut the rope, and I take your child's corpse back to the Nest, while you save your own life."

Chai Si felt part of the flat black shadow that was its face bulge, pushing his body up a little-the resident was smiling.

"I guarantee your child will die tonight. The difference is whether you'll join him in the grave."

Even after all these years, his mother's shrill, anguished scream still stabbed into Chai Si's chest like a knife.

He had died after all. Whatever his mother had chosen that night, the resident had unquestionably killed him...

A voice in his mind that did not belong to Chai Si kept trying to persuade him. Yes, you died that night. Do you remember? Your little body in its cast hit the ground with a thud, falling before your mother's eyes...

How were residents who came to the human world rare?

One had come when he was five, and now another had come.

...Of course he had not died that night.

Chai Si refused to die in the moment of the car accident, because if he died in the accident, he would never get to see his mother one last time.

Even now, he still remembered the warmth of her body when she held him by the shoulders that night.

Chai Si likewise refused to die at the resident's hands, for slightly more complicated reasons: first, the resident had been gravely injured that night and driven back into the Nest, so the reason lingering deep in his mind would not allow him to believe it had killed him that night; second, if his five-year-old self had died that night, Uncle Kai would never have lifted him from that pool of blood.

When he strained to lift his head, wanting in his daze to turn and look at his mother, Caironan covered his eyes.

"Listen... listen to him. Go," came his mother's halting final words through the warm darkness of that palm. "From now on... Mommy's leaving you in his care."

If he had never met Uncle Kai, he would never have known what had happened to his mother, nor would there ever again have been a place in the world for his soul to call home.

As his awareness returned to the subway car, Chai Si did not open his eyes this time.

He sat up soundlessly. As he concentrated, his five senses sharpened, growing several times more acute. Following the faint rustling, the resident's faint raw, fishy smell, the subway driver's breathing... he drew a map of the car in his mind.

Driving a resident back into the Nest was "very, very, very simple."

He only needed to cut off the route by which they had come.

Lately, after finishing each chapter, I've been writing a few hundred extra words to build up a reserve for bonus updates... The idea is good, but the progress is really a little too slow.

(End of chapter)