Chapter 12 Rui
Rui
Something incredibly soft was nuzzling her cheek. The warm weight on her chest was . . . purring?
Rui cracked one eye open. A black paw with pink toe beans was zooming in. She closed her eye with a sigh. But Mao continued
to tap on her nose, until finally, Rui gave up on sleep.
She nudged the cat off and tried to sit up, yelping as pain pierced her shoulder and ribs. The pajama top she had on was two
sizes too big and printed with tiny colorful cupcakes—totally not her style. Hazy memories seeped into her mind: the Night
Market, the Revenant, Song Yiran’s desperate voice speaking to her as he ran all the red lights racing to Mort Street . . .
She’d slipped into darkness, only to be greeted by pale blue eyes when she regained consciousness.
Heat crept up her neck when she remembered Zizi asking for permission to remove her sweater so he could tend to her wounds.
There’d been no time for modesty. Better to survive and live with the mortification of him seeing her in a bra than die on
his ridiculous chaise. At least it was the nice lacy bra Ada had given her for her birthday.
Gingerly, Rui unraveled the bandages around her ribs. A new scar had formed on her side. Pink and tender, it looked like it
was weeks old instead of a few hours young. Her light brown skin was pallid, and she could see the faint tracing of green
and blue veins. Teeth chattering, she rubbed the unpleasant gooseflesh on her arms and wrapped the blanket tightly around
herself. A faint scent of strawberries and mint wafted from the sheets. It was a scent that lingered around Zizi.
Was this his room?
A shiver went down her spine, though this time it wasn’t from the cold. She came to the shophouse often enough, but she’d never been up on the second floor, let alone Zizi’s bedroom.
The walls had paintings of broken clocks against surreal landscapes with deserts and azure skies. Old film posters with yellowing
edges hung next to them, and colorful geometric ornaments and other bric-a-brac lined whatever horizontal space in the room
that wasn’t the floor. Clothes covered the length of the love seat by the window, and books lay carelessly everywhere, like
Zizi had been reading a dozen different ones at the same time. Rui spied some titles on philosophy, history, and astrophysics,
and one odd-looking book that had a plain white jacket and red lettering on its spine—The Eleven by J. Hesina.
The clutter felt deliberate. Like it was a show for someone else.
Rui sank back into Zizi’s bed. Her heartbeat elevated. It’s just a bed, she chided herself. A mattress, a thing with coils and foam, nothing more. It wasn’t even a comfortable one. She looked up with a sigh. The ceiling
was painted like a map of the night sky, a rich indigo with thin white lines joining white dots into varying shapes. If she
were an astrologer, she’d know the constellations, but stars never held her interest. They were too dangerous, like dreams
that could cut you if you tried too hard to touch them. How often did Zizi lie here, pondering his false heaven?
Something rattled against the nightstand.
There were seventeen missed calls, seven voice messages, and twenty-four unread texts on her phone. They were all from Ada.
ARE YOU ALIVE?!?! shouted the last text.
The light shining through the window shutters told her it was midmorning. She’d been absent from campus the entire night.
Ada had to be out of her mind with worry. But a Zizi did not exist in Ada’s world, and neither did a Rui with ties to the
underground magic community. Rui wanted to keep it that way. How could she tell Ada about being attacked by the strange Revenant
from last night without explaining who Zizi was and the work she did for him?
Rui had to lie again. There was no other way around it. That was the problem with keeping secrets. Sometimes, you had to tell a lie. To cover that up, you told another lie, and then another and another, until the lies became the secret itself.
Rui placed her phone back on the nightstand next to her sword bag. As her mind came up with various excuses to hide the truth,
she started to feel out of sorts. It wasn’t her injuries; those were physical, cuts and tears that would heal.
Something else had changed. There was a wrongness inside her.
She closed her eyes, searching for that place of quiet where her magic resided. Her fingers twitched. Her breathing grew strained.
There was nothing. Just the beat of her heart.
The spell she’d cast was supposed to be temporary, and the transfer of spiritual energy would last minutes. Why did her qi
feel so out of flux now? Why did she feel so . . . hollow? Was it because the spell was meant for Revenants, and not humans?
Zizi. He would know what to do. He could reverse the spell. It was simple, wasn’t it? Child’s play for someone like him. Everything
was going to be fine. Everything had to be fine. As if her thoughts had summoned him, there was a soft knock on the bedroom door.
“Rui?”
“Yeah?”
Zizi poked his head in. He had twisted his bangs back, securing them on top of his head with a metal hair clip. Rui wanted
to remove it, let his hair spill over his eyes. She lingered a moment too long. Suddenly, he was looking at her looking at
him.
Rui blinked away and pretended to yawn.
“You’re awake,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Mmmff,” she agreed from inside her blanket fort. “You can come in.”
Zizi flip-flopped into the room with a big mug of coffee in one hand. He placed the mug on the nightstand and sat on the side
of the bed. Rui wished she had brushed her teeth or at least rinsed her mouth. There was a bruise blooming on his left cheekbone.
“What happened to your face?”
“Nothing.”
Rui cleared her parched throat. “Will the spell wear off soon?”
Zizi’s face did a complicated thing. He was angry and upset and afraid all at once. “Don’t freak out, but your core is damaged.
There’re signs of deep magical trauma. Layers of trauma, not just from last night, but from before.”
He meant the night her mother was murdered. She’d never found out how she managed to scare the Revenant away.
“So it’ll take a while for me to heal, but can’t you reverse the spell first?” If she couldn’t train, it would mean postponing
her retake of the simulation test.
Zizi mumbled, “I’ll explain everything downstairs.”
“Okay.” Rui shivered. “I’m freezing. Is this normal?”
The taut line of Zizi’s mouth didn’t match the softness in his eyes. “Why don’t you take a hot shower before you go down?
Bathroom’s that way. Towels are inside, and your sweater too—I couldn’t figure out how to mend it, but at least I got the
stains off with some scrubbing.”
“You washed my sweater? By hand?” Even if he meant nothing by it—and Rui was certain it meant nothing—the act of him taking
care of her clothes felt oddly intimate.
“I figured you’d need it when you woke. It was gross, all that blood and dirt. Of course, you’re more than welcome to keep
the lovely top I chose for you.”
“Ha ha. Thanks.”
Zizi made a face. “Your boyfriend’s still here, by the way.”
Rui gave the blanket an indignant kick. “Song Yiran is not my boyfriend.”
“Why not? He’s cute and he’s filthy rich.” There was a challenge in Zizi’s tone. But Rui couldn’t figure out what the challenge was or what it meant.
“He’s not that cute.”
Zizi seemed pleased with her answer. “Did you know he has violent tendencies?”
“He’s just a coddled rich kid. He’s soft, like mochi.”
Zizi scrunched his nose. “Tasteless. Sticks to your teeth.”
Despite herself, Rui laughed. “I met him for the first time last night. I don’t even know him. Anyway,” she sighed, “I’m taking
a break from dating boys, girls, and anyone in between. I don’t have time for a relationship.”
Zizi gave her a peculiar look. It was brief, but for some reason it made her remember that he was also a boy and, thus, on
her do-not-date list.
She pulled the blanket back around her. “Why don’t you go downstairs? I’ll be there soon.”
He nodded and left the room.
Rui picked up the cup of coffee, downing half of it in one gulp. Hot liquid scalded her tongue, but it was nothing compared
to the revolting taste in her mouth. She tried not to gag. It wasn’t coffee; it was some medicinal concoction that tasted
like dirty roots and mud.
“Why didn’t he warn me?” she groaned, dragging herself to the bathroom.
The rush of water soothed her body, and gradually, the pain eased. But when she finally got out, the chill in her bones remained.
Her sweater was still damp, so she put on the fluffy white bathrobe instead. A tiny, pasty-faced human with bedraggled hair
stared back in the mirror. She pinched her cheeks, trying to get some color back into them.
Feeling utterly sorry for herself, Rui shuffled to the top of the stairs. She could see Yiran curled up on the floor next
to a bookshelf. His face was covered by his leather jacket, and his hoodie had patches of dried blood. His clothes must’ve
gotten stained when he carried her to his two-door coupe and sped her here. Typical rich boy. It wasn’t surprising he had
a license and his own car. A nice one, too. She hoped she’d bled all over his expensive leather seats.
In the kitchen, Zizi was smashing coffee beans with a pestle, the sleeve of his bat-winged cardigan flapping as his arm went
up and down.
A groan came from under the leather jacket. “Stop it, I’m trying to sleep.”
Zizi continued to bang away.
Yiran scrambled up, eyes bloodshot, hands itching for a fight. He spun around, looking for something to grab, finally settling
on a stash of paper. He threw it in the air.
The floor was littered with hell money. The face of a bearded old man wearing a grand black hat with wingtips glared up at
Rui from each rectangular piece—the mythical King of Hell.
She sighed. Yiran sure had a knack for disrespecting the dead.
Zizi glowered. “You’re going to pick up every single one of those and stack them back properly on my shelves.”