Chapter 9 A Chance Encounter
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
Thirty years ago …
Over the past year, the Japanese occupiers have reinforced the wall around Kowloon to make it a prison for the ghosts of their enemies, but in doing so they have created a space where resistance flourishes.
Mei Chi is a solid part of that resistance network, and has spent the better part of three years running errands and passing messages through a neighborhood that is increasingly drowning in spirits.
Sometimes, that work yields visible results. When she steps through the door of the street restaurant that morning, she is confronted by the spectacle of three strangers sitting on the restaurant floor.
“What’s going on?” she says to Lau Yik, who is talking quietly with another man.
He turns to her. “A few prisoners, from one of the smaller Japanese camps outside the city,” he says, in a low voice. “We freed them this morning, and brought them here.”
Even as he speaks, one of the three people lifts their head and cries out, “My daughter! You are still alive!”
Mei Chi freezes.
The woman before her is shivering and crouched, a thin scarf wrapped around narrow shoulders. Black hair is heavily streaked with white, while hunger and worry have drawn shadows across a weary face.
“Please, I am so sorry. You must forgive me!” The gaunt woman inches forward, limping. “I did not mean to leave you, daughter. I came back to look. I could not find you, but still, I returned. You must believe me!”
For a moment, Mei Chi can almost see it. Despite the gap of years, there is something in the woman’s jawline, in the slant of her shoulders and the tilt of her nose, that reminds Mei Chi strongly of her own reflection, on the few occasions she has chanced to see herself.
But then they lock eyes, and the certainty is like a stone in her belly. No. Mei Chi feels strongly that this woman is not, in fact, her mother at all. How she knows that, she can’t explain. It just doesn’t feel right.
“I’m not your daughter.” Mei Chi takes a step back. “I think you must be mistaken.”
“Mistaken?” Thin hands knot together, fingers entwining anxiously. “No, I would know you anywhere, I would…” She pauses, face growing pale. “Wait. Wait. Which one are you? Which one of you lived?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Mei Chi shouts, filled with a terrible panic she can’t explain. She wants to run out of here, hands over her ears, but her feet seem rooted to the ground.
The woman stares with bulging eyes. “Are you … her?”
Mei Chi wheels toward Lau Yik. “Who is this lady?”
“Like I said, just a war refugee,” he says, frowning. “She calls herself Daiyu, no family name. Do you know her, Mei Chi? She seems to know you.”
“Mei Chi,” Daiyu repeats, turning a sickly color. “You—you are Mei Chi. Not my daughter!” She begins to wail, a keening and terrible sound.
“Yes, I just said I’m not your daughter,” Mei Chi retorts, both alarmed and exasperated.
“So you recall nothing?” Daiyu says, between her tears. “The island … the girl … me … none of it?”
“For the last damn time—”
In that moment, the world disappears briefly.
Mei Chi’s senses are overwhelmed by a rush of spiritual energy and a sound that reminds her of radio static.
Somewhere far to the north, reality distorts.
A force so violent and destructive that it hardly bears imagining has rocked the world, sending repercussions that a spirit can feel with every wisp of their being.
Mei Chi staggers, gasping, hands clutching over her head. As if that could make any difference to the reverberant sensation she’s just experienced.
“Little sister?” Lau Yik catches her elbow. “What is wrong?”
She tears out of the room, the refugee woman forgotten, stumbling outside to her knees on the concrete.
Other people glance her way, surprised by the commotion. None of them can sense it, whatever it was. They look at her blankly, exchanging glances.
But the ghosts have also noticed. And whatever knack allows a ghost talker like her to speak so easily with the dead, it has also made her sensitive to the same forces.
Every single spirit, and every single exorcist or medium, stands taut and alert, looking northeast. Staring, despite the clusters of buildings and smog. Staring in the direction of Japan.
Mei Chi does not yet know the name of the city that just died in a single breath, or its exact location. Hiroshima is over two thousand kilometers away, too far to see the nuclear blast with physical eyes.
But she feels it, oh so clearly. Every ghost and shaman from here to China to Russia to Guam and all the places in between—they feel the spiritual energy of a hundred thousand souls being blasted from flesh into spirit.
It is like a portal to hell has opened.
Tears are running down her face, and she can no more stop them than she can explain their presence.
Her eyes are a flood, her heart a storm.
Though neither scientist nor soldier, she knows in the depths of her essence what has occurred.
Humankind’s destructive power can impact even the spirit world.
“What is it?” Lau Yik is outside, next to her now. He hasn’t missed the collective reaction of the city’s nearby ghosts. “What’s happening?”
“Either the war has ended,” Mei Chi says, wiping her nose on her sleeve, “or the world has.” Her nose is bleeding, she realizes.
It’s her last thought before passing out in a dead faint.
Mei Chi does not see the strange refugee ever again. She is still unconscious when, during that post-bomb confusion, Daiyu quietly slips away, taking her secrets with her.
In less busy times, Mei Chi might have looked for the other woman. Her past is a mystery, after all, and it is possible that amidst the confusion, Daiyu might genuinely have had some tangled memory to unpick and examine.
But there are plenty of other things, horrific and immediate, to occupy her thoughts in the present.
For when Mei Chi wakes a few hours later, the news is out: Hiroshima has been obliterated by American nuclear bombs, awash with a hundred thousand screaming ghosts.
More and more and more civilians die after the initial blast, sickened by radiation.
By the time she even remembers the encounter with Daiyu, the other woman is long gone, and there are fresh things for Mei Chi to think about.
Three days later, the same devastation wipes out Nagasaki.
Mei Chi has no love for her occupiers, but she still cannot look at the pictures.
On the thirtieth of August, mere days before capitulating to Allied forces, Japan surrenders Hong Kong back to Britain.
And Kowloon, by extension, also gains its freedom.
The end of the war means no more Japanese occupiers to fight, and thus, no more resistance fighters to pass messages for. Mercy is ecstatic to see the end of war—but also needs to find different work, as she realizes quickly enough.
Luckily—or unluckily, depending on your point of view—work comes looking for her.
A few weeks later, Mei Chi comes back to the cha chaan teng from one of her daily errands, only to find the entire place on high alert.
Armed men are loitering outside, wearing white shirts and dark slacks, each with a black strip of cloth tied around their upper arms. These are the early days before the triad has enough wealth to give its members uniforms and tattoos.
The men do not react as she walks closer, and in fact they gesture her to go inside.
“Who are you?” she says uneasily, addressing the closest of the bunch.
“Friends,” comes the curt, unconvincing reply.
She glances back the way she’s come. A hard-edged young man is now standing in the alley, blocking her exit. His smile, when he offers it, is thin and unpleasant.
“Go inside,” says the first man, again. “She’s waiting on you.”
“Who?”
He lights a cigarette and doesn’t answer.
Belly roiling, Bao on her shoulder, Mei Chi steps into the eatery’s dim interior.
More men lurk within, leaning against walls or sitting at tables.
There must be a dozen or so in total, counting the ones waiting out on the street.
It feels like more, in such crowded confines.
Lau Yik is nowhere to be seen—probably out, he’s forever busy—and the few people whom Mei Chi does know are keeping very quiet in the corners of the room.
Sitting at a table in the center of the cha chaan teng is a commanding young woman, dressed in a Tang-style suit. She seems only a few years older than Mei Chi, but is considerably more handsome: smooth-skinned, even-featured, good teeth, no scars. Dark hair all neatly pinned.
Mei Chi recognizes her instantly: Cobra Lily.
Bao growls softly, fur prickling along his back, and Mei Chi can’t fault him.
The young triad queen is the only daughter of the man who once ran the Snakeskins.
Her rise to power began when her father died during the war, which might have been considered suspicious under other circumstances.
Everyone had bigger problems during the occupation, though, and she seems mostly to have gotten away with her coup.
Mei Chi offers a clumsy bow. “Good morning.”
Cobra Lily leans her elbows on the table. “So you’re the neighborhood exorcist. I heard a lot about you in the war. Is it true, what they say?”
“I don’t know, Madam,” Mei Chi says, carefully. “What do they say?”
“That you are not like other exorcists. You deal with ghosts differently, and have no fear.”
Mei Chi’s mouth speaks before her brain can stop it. “Of course I have fear. Ghosts are fucking terrifying.”
Cobra Lily raises her eyebrows. “Yet you still deal in spirits.”
“Men are afraid to die, but still become soldiers,” Mei Chi says. “I like money and I want to eat, but I don’t want to sweep streets, or work in brothels. My only talent is for talking with ghosts, so that’s what I do. Whether it’s scary or not.”
“Motivated by money, then,” the triad queen muses.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Mei Chi says, a tad shortly. “Poor people know the true value of money better than rich people.”
“Wise words, for a street scamp.” Cobra Lily’s smile is predatory. “I’m here because I’m looking to expand my … operations, now that the war is over. I have need of new employees for my plans to take off.”
“I see,” Mei Chi says, neutrally. “May I ask what it is you want with me?”
“The people of this city need order and protection, especially from all these ghosts, and I can give it to them. If you want to be a part of that, I think we could work together.”
“Do I have a choice?” The question slips out before her common sense can rein it back.
“Do any of us? Or do we just walk the path laid out for us, by fate?” The triad queen tilts her head. “A word of advice, little girl. Don’t ask questions like what will happen if I refuse. Instead, ask me questions like how well can you pay.”
Mei Chi shrugs. “Okay. How well can you pay?”
“Very well. You’ll have a place to live, luxury goods, and you’ll never be hungry again. What do you say, little ghost talker?”