Chapter 33 Your Face #2
Then you realize, with a jolt, that he hasn’t said Mei Chi: he has said Mercy. An English name, or perhaps just an Anglicized version of the Chinese original. Similar, ish, in sound. Very different in meaning.
“Thanks,” you say, distractedly, brain already churning.
Chen Mei Chi … to Mercy Chan.
Your guess was right. She’s changed her name.
She’s changed her fucking name, dropping the Hakka for a mix of Cantonese and English.
Because of course she has. And before that, there were probably no records of her anywhere, thanks to the war.
She’s been safely hidden away until you casually found her, today.
Fate, you decide, has a spiteful sense of humor.
The crowd disperses, everyone going back to their daily routines. Mercy, or whatever the hell she calls herself now, is already gone. Time for you to go, too. At least for now. A heat is building up behind your stolen eyes, though you try to ignore it.
You make it two blocks before ducking into a nearby doorway and bursting into tears.
People mind their own business in Kowloon. No one comes over to bother the grown woman who is crouched in a dark, filthy corner, bawling her heart out uncontrollably. Just as well; you’d have probably wrung the neck of anyone who tried, in that particular moment.
Seeing Mami again rocked you, but not like this. You never felt a connection with Mami, the way you once had with Sea Sister—with your aunt.
So many emotions collide that you can barely think or breathe, choking on your own sobs.
The whiplash of adoring her, fearing her, hating her, then seeking her all these years, to thinking she was gone, then finally stumbling on her—as a person of local importance, it seems—in this small neighborhood …
the staggering breadth of that emotional journey, culminating in this moment, has your head and heart spinning in different directions.
When the storm inside you calms and your skin has run out of human tears, you drag a dirty sleeve across a snotty nose and allow your lungs to take deep, steadying breaths.
Crying is good. Crying is sweet. You’ve learned to value it when in human form, since water ghosts can’t weep. In the wake of that turbulence, your mind is serene and calm again, like the surface of the ocean on a clear summer day.
You know exactly what you want to do, and precisely how you’re going to do it.
Several hours later and you’re back in Kit Ling’s flat, showered and changed and sitting at her desk as you look through all her resources.
All her notes and files, her plans and collated knowledge.
If you want to make this city suffer, and make Mei Chi understand the pain she’s put you through, then you’ll need every scrap of it.
As Kit Ling, you have access to government records on wartime ghosts. These records indicate that there are 446 “significant spirits” who were captured by teams of Taoist priests and Catholic exorcists, working in tandem, for a few years after World War II ended.
Every single captured ghost was either involved in the resistance, or somehow survived the Japanese occupation.
All but a handful had never been a threat to Hong Kong, but their existence had offended the returning government.
There was no official term for this operation; it was simply referred to as a city-wide spiritual cleansing.
It’s likely that a majority have expired into nothingness and bad energy, but you are determined to free as many as possible.
The difficulty is in the details. It’s possible to get a few bottle gourds out, as Kit Ling smuggled you out.
But start stealing hundreds of ghosts, and you’ll likely get caught.
Attempting to set them free is also dicey: there is still a lot of security in the building, and many of them would be recaptured swiftly.
What you need is a way of tying up the city’s resources, even if it is just for a single night, while you launch a multipronged plan from different angles. It is not unlike the sort of military strategies that Wing Yun used to work on, with your help.
You pick up a pen, and start making notes. Hours go by unnoticed. Day darkens into evening, then full night. Still, you work.
Only in the early hours of the morning do you sit back in the chair and stretch. Your stolen body aches, its vision blurry from overuse and its back creaking from being bent over a desk for so long.
The plan, though, is done.
It goes something like this.
First, you’ll keep pursuing Kit Ling’s schemes with regard to Kowloon, because it suits your agenda of punishing Hong Kong, but most importantly, because Kowloon is her home, and she does not deserve to keep it.
Cause havoc in the district, as a ghost—you can do this yourself, though it means getting your hands dirty.
Log those deaths, and keep tabs on everything.
Use this rocketing rate of murder to push for demolition of Kowloon, and create tensions between the district and the wider Hong Kong government.
Second, arrange for a high-profile murder to happen in Kowloon.
Who exactly, you’re not sure yet, but you’ll figure that out when the time comes.
This will necessitate a police raid, if handled correctly.
They will likely be accompanied by regiments of exorcists and priests, to handle the sheer number of spirits inside.
Third, set a trap within the district. Once the police go in, make sure they’re locked within Kowloon’s walls, busy fighting the triad. Busy fighting ghosts, too, hopefully. This part, you have some ideas for handling; a few options to explore.
Fourth, free the ghosts locked away in civic building basements. With the police busy and chaos rampant, you’re confident of overpowering those who remain.
Fifth, step back and allow the havoc to unfold. Even if only half of those four hundred ghosts have endured, they will be angry and strong, and happy enough to unleash their fury on the city in one explosive wave.
That, combined with much of Hong Kong’s police and supernatural forces being tied up in Kowloon, will batter the city badly.
While all that is happening, you’ll also be dealing with Mei Chi. You have ideas for that, and they cause your lips to twist into a dark grin every time you play out those little scenarios.
This is going to be fun.