Henry waved his staff for what felt like an age and still came up empty—no sign of Liao Ruochun. He retreated, defeated. Now it was time for the second medium.
The crew shouted through a megaphone until Mumu stumbled out of the production trailer like someone dragged from a slumber. She looked ridiculous in a haute-couture gown that sat on her like a costume gone wrong.
Her assistant had secured a dress that actually suited her—long, elegant, made to flatter—but Mumu had insisted on a scandalous miniskirt and strapless top, studded with comically oversized gems. The effect was less “glamorous” and more “loud new money.” On a tall, model frame those jewels might have glittered; on her they clashed, making her look like a local tough in an ill-fitting parade jacket. Yet she adored all those stones. More sparkle, she’d convinced herself, meant more value.
Now the dress was grubby.
Sarava drifted up beside her and sneered, giving her a contemptuous sideways glance. “Well, well. Look who crawled out of the dirt,” she mocked. “Anyone can come out and put on a show these days.”
Mumu tightened—ready to snap back—but stopped when she caught Ji Wangqiu’s gaze. She forced the anger down because she’d spent the morning cultivating an image just for him; she couldn’t afford a public scene. Inside, though, she was spitting nails. She had rehearsed this: the perfect walk, the hip sway, the coy toss of the head—she’d assumed he’d be watching. In truth, Ji Wangqiu hadn’t even glanced her way. All her preening had been for nothing—an embarrassment she swallowed in silence.
She strut-walked as if on a runway, hips exaggerated, lips at the ready for flirtation. Only after she’d put some distance between herself and the entrance did she drop the act and breathe normally.
This school, Sarava had jeered, was tailor-made for Mumu: saturated with black magic. Here, “black magic” read as accumulated resentment—different people called it different names, but the meaning was the same. Mumu carried with her the hairpin that belonged to Liao Ruochun, but her route differed from Henry’s: she headed, incongruously, for the restroom.
Class had just let out and the campus burst to life like a shaken jar—students swarmed everywhere. The production crew tried to hold them back, but a few prankish kids slipped through. A cluster of them barreled up to where Mumu had just entered the restroom.
They jabbered at her, half-showing off, half-warning the crew not to push them away. If Mumu had known the leader’s face she would have recognized him—Mu Jiajun. As the staff hauled the kids away, Mu Jiajun shouted over his shoulder at Mumu, voice ringing with that peculiar certainty only children have.
“Third rule of school: in the bathroom—don’t look up! Don’t look up!”
Mumu frowned. She caught only the end of what they shouted as the group was dragged off, some parting cry about “staying away from people who leave the school.” She wondered what they meant but didn’t press it.
Before she came, Mumu had skimmed the briefing her assistant handed her and then dismissed it. The ghost story—an abandoned baby spirit, a “wanling”—seemed laughable to her. A small spirit, a little nuisance; nothing a medium of her caliber couldn’t handle. She’d come to the campus thinking this would be an easy triumph and an irresistible opportunity to catch Ji Wangqiu’s eye.
She had no idea that the bathroom she’d chosen was the one tied to the rumor about senior Liu Yun’er’s abandoned infant—the infamous stall everyone avoided. Warnings had been whispered, but Mumu didn’t take them seriously. She’d dealt with low-level spirits before; they were tricks and cheap theatrics compared to true mediumship. The kids were overreacting, she thought. She even let contempt curl around her words as she watched them led away.
“Country bumpkins,” she sniffed, chin high. “This place is stuck out in the sticks.”
Only a single photographer from the show had followed her; manpower had been shifted to controlling the crowd outside to avoid energy contamination that might skew a medium’s reading. In the narrow, closed restroom the stink hit them like a physical hand.
Both of them reflexively clamped hands over their noses. It was the kind of smell that scraped the inside of your throat. Mumu’s face contorted; she gagged. She retched at the sink. What she brought up was mostly bile; after the first heaves there was nothing left but bitter gastric acid.
The photographer fared slightly better—he grabbed a jacket and held it over his face like a shield. The stench was so concentrated that it masked other odors. Mumu focused on the filth—bitter, sour, rotten—and didn’t notice the undercurrent until later: something metallic, coppery. If she’d been less preoccupied with her dignity she might have told the difference, might have realized the scent wasn’t just the residue of neglect. It was the thick, old tang of blood left to fester.
She let loose a string of curses at the school, blaming the administration for letting the restroom fall apart. “This place is disgusting—like a cesspit. They can’t even afford a cleaner, let alone a decent air freshener. Pathetic.” She spat the words like a committing herself to indignation. Venting felt safer than admitting how bad she felt—how fragile and hollow.
Her stomach continued to rebel. She washed her face in a clumsy, desperate attempt to clear her head, then pulled off her coat to use it as a makeshift mask. She cupped water and splashed it over her eyes, squinting into the bright, drab tiles.
The light above her dimmed without warning, sliding into twilight. Only when the dull thud of something heavy hitting the floor echoed through the bathroom did she jerk her head up.
She hurriedly wiped at her face with the coat, but nothing budged. The smear on her eyelids refused to come clean. No matter how hard she tried to open them, everything stayed black. A sting bloomed under her lids as salt-rimmed water worked its way into her eyes; it made her flinch shut even tighter.
Panic edged at her breath. She scrubbed until her hands burned and her skin went hot, but her eyes were stubborn—sealed behind that thick veil. She sank down onto the cold ceramic tiles, heart pounding, and groped in the dim for anything to hold onto. The tiles were familiar and treacherous beneath her fingertips; every small sound in that hollow room sounded amplified, and something unseen brushed the edge of her hearing like a whisper from the dark.
She could feel the world narrowing to that single, urgent need: to see.