Chapter 26 Rui
Rui
Rui knocked on the door of the shophouse for a while before impatience got the better of her. Zizi wasn’t one for the usual
security measures. The simple lock couldn’t deter a child. She took two steps back and gave the door a good kick.
The lock broke easily, and the door swung open.
She hesitated. If Zizi had security, it would come in the form of spells. Perhaps she had too much faith in him, but she was confident that whatever
countermeasures he might have set up, he would’ve made sure she, of all people, could bypass them safely.
She stepped over the threshold, letting out a loud breath when it was clear she hadn’t lost an arm or an eye. It was quiet
inside.
“Zizi?” she called out. “Mao?”
The wind chimes whistled softly. But there was no cat and no boy.
The kitchen sink was filled with unwashed dishes, and a half-drunk mug of old coffee sat on the counter. Zizi wasn’t the neatest,
but he always kept his kitchen clean.
The stairs creaked as she went up to the second floor to the bedroom. It looked suspiciously unchanged since the day she’d
woken up in it. For a few long moments, Rui stared at the ceiling of stars, wishing for the first time she could name them
all.
There were two other rooms left to explore. One turned out to be a walk-in wardrobe full of pajamas sorted meticulously by
color, and surprisingly, an assortment of formal wear. Rui tried to imagine Zizi in a tux. She would’ve laughed in his face . . .
if he were here. She inhaled the scent of mint and strawberries and boy, and walked out, a strange twisting in her chest.
Half camouflaged in shadow, the third door was nestled into the wall at the end of the corridor. It was narrower than the other two doors and it had no knob.
Part of Rui wanted to leave it alone. But most of her was too curious. She gave it an exploratory nudge and then, a bigger
shove. It held. Whatever was behind that door would remain a secret for now.
She went down to the fake closet, stooping to press the secret button in the corner.
Nothing happened. No gears whirred; no door opened. Zizi’s spell lab was out of bounds.
“Where is he?” she sighed.
Zizi never missed her calls. In fact, he hardly went a day without texting her about something or other. This silence was
deafening. Three other mages had vanished since they were hired to create a similar separation spell. Could he be the fourth
to go missing? She wasn’t sure if the three other mages were still alive. What if Zizi . . .
She banished that thought from her mind, sinking down onto her favorite armchair. In some ways, Zizi was her oldest friend.
He was after Mama, before Ada, a brief time when fourteen-year-old Rui was on the verge of self-destruction. She’d found refuge in a strange shophouse
and a stranger boy. Without Zizi around, she felt out of step with everything.
The ticking of the wall clock grew loud in her head. It felt like she was running out of time. She wanted her magic back.
She wanted her revenge. But the stakes were higher than that now. Zizi was missing; the Blight was creating more Revenants;
and Nikai had said the destruction of the underworld was imminent.
She had to find Four’s soul or the vessel that held his power. Yiran’s face surfaced in her mind, but Rui huffed at the empty room.
He didn’t fit the bill. He’d been born with a weak spirit core; he couldn’t house the soul of a god.
She glanced at the clock. There was still time to go to the Night Market to scout for information. Maybe Auntie Lian knew
something about magical containers.
Something red and black caught her eye on her way to the front door. The cover of an instant ramen cup sticking out of the trash. She picked it up, memories flashing.
Last autumn . . . the ghost earrings in her hand—a surprise gift for Zizi—he was working on something . . . an old locket.
Rui dug deeper into the memory. In her mind’s eye, she saw Zizi tearing the seasoning packet for his instant ramen with his
teeth.
“Are you even listening to me?” he had said. “I’ve been trying to unseal this locket for three days and it’s not happening.”
Rui was playing fetch-the-sparkly-ball with Mao. Zizi complained a lot about his work, and she’d grown accustomed to it. “Stop
whining and try again.”
He’d glared without malice as he paced, twirling his cigarette like a philosopher in an existential crisis. “The client’s
expecting to see what’s in this damned locket tomorrow. If I don’t get it done, I won’t get paid and I’m going to starve—Rooroo, are you really stealing my food in my dire time of need?”
Rui put the chopsticks down. She’d zoomed into his ramen while he was distracted and talking. “It was just a bite.”
Zizi looked aggrieved. “It’s almost as if you enjoy seeing me suffer.”
“Don’t be absurd. Are you sure you tried everything? Who did the locket belong to?”
“The client’s mother. It was stated in her will for the locket to be given to her favorite child.”
“Are you sure your client is her favorite child? Maybe the locket isn’t meant to be opened by him.”
“Wait,” Zizi exclaimed, running to her, “repeat what you just said.”
“Maybe the locket isn’t meant to be opened by him?”
He gripped her shoulders. “That’s it! You absolute genius, I think you solved it. I swear I could—” He stopped talking, looking
as surprised as she felt to discover they were caught up in a hug. He sprang back and resumed his pacing.
Rui’s ridiculous little heart had raced and raced. What had Zizi meant to say? Hastily, she’d drunk a gulp of soup to drown her flustered thoughts. The spiciness of it caught up with her, and she coughed, regretting her decision.
“If the locket is for the mother’s favorite child, then the sealing spell can only be broken by that child—not me,” Zizi concluded. “There’s nothing that I, even with all my astounding talent, can do, because that’s not how
the spell is supposed to work. Simple but effective.” He clapped. “Thank you, Rui. Finish your ramen and get lost. I’m going
to call the client over right now.”
“You’re welcome?” Rui sputtered as Zizi shoved the bowl into her hands and pushed her toward the front door.
He’d phoned her the next day to tell her that the locket had been sealed by a voice spell. All the client had to do was say
his name and tell it to open. Zizi had seemed impressed by the cleverness of it.
The plastic ramen cover crunched in Rui’s hand now. She dropped it and ran back up the stairs. The third door stared at her
with its narrow shape and puzzling lack of hinges.
What if it was sealed by a voice spell? A spell that would open it for the right person. But that person would be Zizi, not
her. Still, she had a feeling about it. If she had no trouble breaking into his shophouse, maybe . . .
“It’s Rui,” she said, feeling more than a little silly. “Let me in.”
She placed a tentative hand on the wood and pushed.
The door remained shut.
It’s not going to be so easy, not when it comes to him. She sighed. Whatever was behind that door had better be worth the humiliation.
“It’s Rooroo. Open up.”
Something touched her cheek. Like a kiss from a ghost.
The door creaked open.
Rui shook a fist at it. Amused and aggravated. It had worked, but only because she used that horrible nickname. She was going
to find Zizi, and she was going to murder him.
She went in.
There was a cozy-looking futon on the ground with a fluffy blanket, an old swivel chair, and a table with a stack of sketchbooks
on it. Unlike the other two rooms, this was small and bare. But Rui knew at once this was where Zizi actually slept. Nothing
and everything about him made sense to her.
She slid a finger across the desk. Dust. He hadn’t been in here for a while. No one had. On a whim, she swept the charcoal
sticks and colored pencils off the sketchbooks and flipped to a page.
Lifelike eyes stared back through unevenly cut bangs. A drawing of a girl’s face. Attention had been paid to the way the tip
of her nose was slightly upturned, the generous loop of her smile, and the narrow point of her chin. The portrait was detailed,
riveting because of how the nuances of the girl’s expression were captured in the moment. The rest of the notebook was full
of random illustrations of clocks and trees and buildings.
With trembling hands, Rui went through every sketchbook. The pattern repeated. The girl’s face kept appearing, sometimes sad,
mostly happy. It was as though the artist chose to remember the girl that way: a smile on her face, joy in the crinkled corners
of her wide-set eyes. It was clear the artist had spent an inordinate amount of time observing every line and angle of the
girl’s face, and that this tender obsession had bled into each charcoal stroke.
It was also clear that the girl was Rui, and the artist was Zizi.
The final sketchbook was larger than the rest, and when she flipped to the last page, her breath caught.
Like the drawings before, it was Rui again.
But this Rui was different. Her hair was long, running past her shoulders, and her face older.
She was standing by an ancient-looking wisteria tree, wearing a purple layered dress that flowed down to the ground.
The young woman’s hand was raised, like she was reaching out for someone.
There was something magical about the drawing, and as Rui trailed a finger down the page, she almost expected it to spring to life.
But it was only a sketch. Nothing more. An image of an older Rui in the future, manifested by Zizi’s imagination.
“Well, this is creepy,” Rui said to the empty room.
But she knew her heart felt otherwise.
The voice spell Zizi had placed on the door must’ve been a silly joke to himself. He hadn’t meant for her to ever see this
room or his drawings. He didn’t know that she’d come looking, or that she’d figure out how to break the spell.
Rui had entered the room expecting something else altogether. Not this. This told her how Zizi truly felt.
She closed the sketchbook and sank onto the futon, hugging her knees close. She didn’t know how or what to feel. But a quiet
ache was growing in her chest, a longing for something she couldn’t describe. Her mother’s death had brought Rui magic, and
it had also brought him.
She was still sitting on the futon when her phone rang.
Yiran’s voice crackled from the speaker. “I’ll be at the station in five. Are you there already?”
How long had she been at the shophouse?
“I’m on my way,” she replied curtly, and hung up.
She threw a last glance at the stack of sketchbooks and walked out.