Chapter 2
Edward Quan ·
But his face…
It was so beautiful you couldn’t look away.
His brows and eyes had a natural gentleness utterly at odds with that cold expression.
The commenter suddenly grew frantic.
[Cố Tu Minh!]
[Where is he? Tell me where he is!]
Tân Di realized something was wrong and connected her video too.
A haggard young woman appeared onscreen.
“What is your relationship to Cố Tu Minh?” Tân Di asked.
“I… am his fiancée.”
Her name was Tiêu Dao.
She said she and Tu Minh had grown up together. They had become engaged as soon as they graduated from university.
A month before their wedding, he had joined a scientific expedition.
Its destination… was the Ailao Mountains in Yunnan.
“After that…”
“Tu Minh disappeared.”
Tiêu Dao looked at me, on the verge of breaking down.
“Where is he?”
The Ailao Mountains. Yunnan.
The place I had first met Tu Minh…
Was also in Yunnan.
With trembling hands, Tiêu Dao showed us a photograph of them together.
In it, Tu Minh had an arm around her.
His eyes were tender. His smile was radiant.
That was… the expression that belonged on that face.
My strength gave out. I sank to the floor.
Faced with Tiêu Dao’s hopeful gaze, I went pale.
“He… isn’t your boyfriend.”
“But…”
“The skin he’s wearing… may belong to your boyfriend.”
Tiêu Dao stared blankly.
Then she began screaming.
“You’re lying!”
“Don’t say that!”
“She may not be.”
Tân Di interrupted her.
“I just calculated Cố Tu Minh’s fate from the birth date and time you gave me.”
“His allotted life…”
“…ended three years ago.”
Tiêu Dao fell silent at once.
She looked as though her soul had left her.
Just then—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Someone knocked behind me.
Cố Tu Minh’s voice…
No.
The voice of the monster wearing his skin.
“Sweetheart.”
“I’m sorry. That was my fault.”
“How’s your nose?”
“May I come in and look?”
I clutched my phone.
I hardly dared breathe.
“Open the door.”
“Sweetheart.”
“If you don’t…”
“I’ll get angry.”
“Open it!”
“Open the door!”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He hammered on the door.
His voice grew increasingly frenzied and distorted.
“You saw!”
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
I looked at Tân Di on my screen.
My lips moved without a sound.
“Help me…”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The door shook violently behind me, as though it might splinter.
Tân Di’s steady voice came from my phone.
“Send me your address in a private message.”
My heart jolted.
With one hand I desperately braced the door. With the other, I shakily sent the address.
A few seconds later, Tân Di said:
“I’ll get my things and come right away.”
“It’s about an hour.”
“For that hour…”
“You must keep the scholar-tree corpse occupied.”
Keep him occupied?
How was I supposed to do that?
I was almost beyond tears when Tân Di continued.
“If it has spent so long disguised as a human, living with you, its purpose is to let its aura gradually blend with yours.”
“It considers you its reserve supply of skin.”
Tân Di had already explained that a scholar-tree corpse’s skin couldn’t last forever.
Even a fresh human skin would remain usable for no more than four years.
Then it would lose its elasticity and vitality, shriveling like bark.
“It isn’t time to change skins yet, so it won’t attack you first,” she explained. “Changing ahead of time is very troublesome for a scholar-tree corpse.”
“Behave normally. Act natural around him.”
“Whatever you do, don’t give yourself away.”
“Now I’ll tell you its weaknesses. Listen carefully.”
She told me to turn off my phone’s screen and slip it into my jacket pocket.
The livestream continued.
I took a deep breath and let my hair down over my earphones.
Fighting the overwhelming terror, I put a hand on the doorknob.
The tension in the livestream was just as intense.
[Please be safe…]
[Master Tân Di, hurry! That thing is terrifying!]
[Oh God, I’m so tense I can’t breathe!]
My palm was slick with sweat.
Holding the cold knob, I squeezed my eyes shut.
At the next sound outside, I opened the door.
“Cố Tu Minh” stood before me.
He looked down at me with cold, dark eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
I glared at him, trying to sound annoyed.
“I fell asleep on the bed, that’s all. Are you trying to knock the whole house down?”
He stared without speaking.
Forcing myself to stay calm, I slipped past him and headed for the kitchen.
His gaze followed me like a shadow.
I turned back with an awkward look.
“Are you hungry? Shall I make you something?”
He studied me, seeming to weigh something up.
A few seconds later, he smiled.
Then he came over and put an arm around my shoulders.
“All right.”
Goosebumps rose all over me.
As soon as he let go, I went into the kitchen.
He started to follow.
But the moment I lit the gas stove, he stopped in the doorway.
Through the glass, I saw his silhouette halt.
Relief washed over me.
Tân Di was right.
The scholar-tree corpse was afraid of fire.
Thinking back over our life together, he had never once entered the kitchen.
He had never smoked, either.
I cooked as slowly as I could.
With enough ingredients, I might have produced an entire feast of eight dishes and a soup.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the kitchen to help me stall.
Half an hour later, his cold voice sounded beside my ear.
“Sweetheart, suddenly I’m not hungry.”
My heart clenched.
How had he got in?
With a gentle but irresistible motion, he took the spatula from my hand and set it aside.
“Sweetheart.”
“The moon is beautiful tonight.”
“I’d like to go for a walk.”
What was he planning now?
I went rigid, afraid to move.
Tân Di’s quiet voice sounded in my earphones.
“It’s a full moon tonight.”
“The scholar-tree corpse needs moonlight to maintain the bond between its skeleton and its skin.”
“That means it has to go out.”
Thank goodness!
I almost cried with relief.
Once he left, I would be safe.
I could take the chance to escape.
But then he closed a hand around my wrist.
“Sweetheart.”
“Come with me?”
It sounded like a question.
In reality, I had no choice.
He tightened his grip.
As he pulled me downstairs, my legs seemed to stop obeying me.
The moon was bright and full.
Pallid light spilled over the road, stretching our shadows.
A gust of wind rustled the roadside trees.
Dead leaves swirled around my ankles.
Everything felt horribly wrong.
I shivered.
He smiled.
“Sweetheart.”
“Why are you trembling?”
Somehow, he had led me into a deserted park.
It was midnight.
The place seemed more sinister than ever.
My voice caught.
“Tu Minh…”
“I’m scared.”
“I want to go home.”
“What is there to be afraid of?”
He was as gentle as ever.
“I’ll always be with you.”
Then I looked down.
One glance nearly scared the soul out of me.
Our shadows lay clearly on the stone paving, unobstructed in the moonlight.
Behind mine, his tall shadow kept lengthening.
The skin around him began to writhe, as though something was about to burst out.
I was so frightened I forgot to breathe.
Tân Di shouted in my ear.
“This is bad!”
“It knows you’ve discovered what it is.”
“It’s going to use the full moon to change skins!”
My phone was in my jacket pocket, its camera facing out.
Almost everything I saw was being shown to the entire livestream.
Tân Di’s voice snapped me out of it.
A hand had settled on my shoulder.
No—not a hand anymore.
A tangle of branches wound around bones.
“Run!”
“It hasn’t freed its legs from the skin yet!”
Without hesitation, I knocked its hand away and fled.
There were no footsteps behind me.
I couldn’t stop myself looking back.
A glistening heap of skin and flesh lay on the ground.
A stark white skeleton was struggling out of it.
Scholar-tree branches coiled around the bones.
Its limbs had turned woody. I could no longer tell where the wood ended and bone began.
One leg came free.
It lifted its head toward me…
And smiled.
My scalp prickled.
I burst into tears of terror.
My legs shook, but I didn’t dare stop for a second.
Tân Di spoke rapidly into my ear.
“Listen.”
“A scholar-tree corpse has poor eyesight.”
“It can’t see clearly at night.”
“Find somewhere to hide.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes at most!”
Her words steadied me.
I drew a deep breath, forced myself to calm down, and searched for cover.
There was a small children’s playground nearby.
My eyes lit up. I ran toward it.
There was no time to find anywhere better.
I scrambled up a tube slide.
When I looked up again, the scholar-tree corpse had shed its skin completely.
It stretched its limbs, bared its teeth in a hideous grin, and rushed straight toward me.
I slid down at once.
Bracing my hands and feet against the walls, I held myself suspended halfway down the tube.