Chapter 3
Edward Quan ·
A small box sprang out beneath the statue's base.
I looked inside.
Empty.
After searching without finding anything else, I turned to leave.
Then the statue opened its eyes.
Gold-white pupils stared at me.
I gasped and clutched the cave wall.
Those eyes...
I'd seen them before.
In our cellar.
At home, Mother was still brooding over the pendant.
“I only went out for a moment. How could it disappear?”
I said nothing.
It had all happened within a few minutes.
We still hadn't found it.
That suggested it hadn't fallen off.
Someone had quietly taken it.
Remembering the fire, I looked toward Kang's house.
After Mother fell sound asleep, I brought a ladder and climbed into the neighboring courtyard.
The light was still on.
I crept to the door and heard Kang.
“Qiangzi, I think this pendant might be valuable.”
“That bitch next door started getting rich after she began wearing it.”
“Why don't we keep it instead of selling it?”
An impatient male voice cut her off.
“If I don't sell it, should I sell you?”
“The creditors will be here in a few days. Work it out!”
So the pendant was with them.
The fire had been a trick to draw Mother out and start a fight.
Kang hesitated for a long time.
“Qiangzi, there's another way.”
“The older girl next door is old enough now.”
“We could sell her to someone in my home village.”
“That would bring in plenty.”
Cold sweat broke out all over me.
Whatever they intended for me would have to wait.
Right now, I had to get the Yellow Jade Bean back.
Only then could I help my sister recover.
I slipped around to the back of the house, cut the electricity, and tossed a handful of soybeans through the window.
In the quiet night, every bean struck the floor clearly.
Qiangzi sprang up.
“Mum, haven't there been strange things happening all over the village?”
“Is our house haunted too?”
Perhaps Kang remembered the man whose flesh had fallen apart on her bed.
At that moment, the window behind them flew open.
Cold night air rushed in.
The curtain blew straight across Qiangzi's face.
A shriek.
Mother and son bolted outside.
I climbed through the window and pocketed the necklace they'd left behind.
“Little sister, I've finally got it!”
At the cellar door, I hesitated.
I remembered the woman's eyes in the mountain cave.
The same eyes I'd seen in my sister's face.
After a long pause, I called.
“Little sister, I've brought the Yellow Jade Bean you wanted.”
Before I'd finished speaking, a figure appeared in front of me.
I passed the pendant through the crack.
She accepted it carefully and hung it around her neck.
Pale golden light moved within the jade, flickering with her breath.
“Sister, this time I really can recover my body!”
Looking at the delighted girl, I still felt uneasy.
I gathered my courage.
“Whose body will be restored? Yours, or my sister's?”
The figure behind the iron door went still.
A long moment later, an unfamiliar, mournful voice answered.
“You know?”
I gripped the doorframe until my knuckles whitened.
“I've known for a long time that you're not her. I only want to ask one thing. Can she come back?”
The woman let out a breath.
“If I'd known that, I could have stopped pretending.”
“Imitating a little girl's voice is embarrassing.”
“Of course your sister can come back. It simply isn't time yet.”
She went aside to sit and regulate her breathing, paying me no more attention.
I leaned against the door and slowly sank to the ground.
“Little sister,” I murmured. “I miss you.”
The night passed.
The next morning, Mother unlocked the cellar to bring her food.
She was gone.
Mother ran around the village, shouting that some man must have secretly carried my sister off.
But with all the strange things happening lately, who had the nerve to steal anyone?
That day, the elders were holding a ceremony to drive out evil and pray for blessings.
The men whose flesh was cracking and rotting were carried outside.
Through thick incense smoke, they prayed earnestly to be rid of the affliction.
The oldest man, the village chief, stood above them and raised three sticks of incense.
“Heaven bear witness. Our village has lived uprightly for all these years. Now evil torments our descendants. May the gods banish corruption and uphold righteousness.”
He led the other old men in bowing to heaven and earth.
Suddenly, all three incense sticks were cut through the middle.
They fell.
“Righteousness?”
“You old men dare speak of righteousness?”
A familiar woman's voice came from the distance.
My sister.
No.
The woman inside my sister's body.
When she appeared, the face was no longer my sister's.
As I'd suspected...
It was the face of the stone statue.
Mother shrieked and fled.
The younger men, their bodies crumbling like tofu, stared without understanding.
The elders retreated at the sight of her.
“You... You're still alive?”
The chief pointed, trembling.
“You haven't died yet. How could I bear to leave this village?”
“Well? Afraid?”
He struggled to keep his old body upright.
“Witch! You never changed! You dare come back to harm the village again!”
She seemed to have heard the funniest thing in the world.
“I'm a witch?”
“When my tofu filled the villagers' empty stomachs, why didn't anyone call me that?”
“Once life improved and men broke into my house at midnight, suddenly I was a witch?”
“When the women couldn't control their husbands, I was a witch again?”
“Their men were heaven itself, and I deserved to be trampled?”
“What kind of justice is that?”
Her anger grew with every word.
Then she looked down at the younger men and laughed coldly.
“Generation after generation. The same village.”
“Even your descendants are just like you.”
“You were afraid of me, so you had someone seal my body inside that stone statue.”
“You didn't expect a spark of life to remain.”
“Enough for me to return.”
The beans in her hand shot into the men's bodies.
Their already fragile flesh shattered across the ground.
The chief and the other elders staggered toward their dying descendants.
The moment they touched the bloodied remains, their own skin began to corrode and melt.
Screams filled the village.
The women wept without stopping.
They aged before our eyes.
I paid none of it any attention.
I only worried about my sister.
The woman seemed to read my thoughts.
She sighed softly and took me home.
In the cellar, Mother was boiling a vat of soy milk.
She'd added some unknown powder.
A sharp, acrid smell rose from it.
She stopped only when we appeared before her.
The woman spoke coldly.
“You knelt before me and begged me to teach you to make tofu.”
“You said you couldn't support your two daughters.”
“I pitied you. I risked manifesting in this world to pass those methods on.”
“And you destroyed that manifestation for the life-bound Yellow Jade Bean around my neck.”
Mother trembled.
Her lips moved, but she didn't dare speak.
She knew perfectly well.
The woman had returned for revenge.
“And the methods I taught you...”
“You used them on your own daughter.”
“I misjudged you.”
“Today, I'll seek justice for her.”
She lunged.
Mother hadn't been silent because she'd accepted her fate.
She'd secretly gripped a packet of deadly powder.
Unfortunately for her...
She was frightened and stupid.
She hadn't allowed for the wind at the door.
It blew the powder straight back into her face.
Burning and itching, she clawed frantically at her skin.
In her screaming struggle, she lost her balance and fell into the boiling vat.
The scalding liquid swallowed her.
Even that...
Couldn't make up for my sister's suffering.
At last, everything grew quiet.
I was still wondering how to ask.
The woman spoke first.
“All right.”
“My business in this world is finished.”
“It's time to return your sister.”
That cool voice said exactly what I'd longed to hear.
She looked deeply into my eyes.
“Our agreement is fulfilled.”
“I've borrowed her body long enough. I'll restore her soul now.”
“I've erased her memories of the suffering she's endured.”
“What happened afterward—you can decide how to tell her, a little at a time.”
Back then, I'd watched helplessly as Mother tortured my sister.
Unable to change anything, I'd knelt on the mountain behind the village, begging any passing deity to save her.
I no longer remembered how long I'd knelt.
At last, a voice had sounded inside my head.
“I can save your sister.”
“But I have one condition.”
I hadn't known what that condition was.
The moment I heard she could save my sister, I'd agreed.
Only later did I begin to understand.
She wanted to borrow my sister's body for revenge.
As my sister's face gradually returned, I couldn't stop myself calling out.
“What about you?”
“Without a body... where will you go?”
After a long silence, she laughed softly.
Her voice was growing distant.
Yet I heard it clearly in my heart.
“I was already close to vanishing.”
“Only one lingering attachment kept me here.”
“Take good care of your sister.”
“You're the best elder sister I've ever met.”
A little later, my sister's face was fully her own again.
I sat quietly beside her.
Waiting for her to wake from that long nightmare.
“Sister, before Mother went away to work, did she say when she'd be back?”
Freshly awake, she had questions about everything.
I shook my head helplessly.
“I don't know. Perhaps soon. Perhaps a very long time.”
She looked toward the houses.
“Why did all the men in the village get sick and die?”
“Was it the same illness I've had all these years?”
“And the women have grown old so quickly. Their skin's all wrinkled.”
I stroked her head.
“It's different.”
“Theirs... must be hereditary.”
She immediately hugged my arm.
“Sister, let's move away. I'm scared I'll catch it!”
“Of course.”
“All right.”
As I led her away, we happened to see Kang being dragged along by men from another village.
Having secretly eaten the tofu, she was aging more slowly than the other women.
One of the men spat.
“Old goods like this won't fetch much.”
“We've lost money on this deal.”
Kang saw me by the roadside and began crying for help.
Unfortunately...
I wasn't foolish enough to save someone who'd wanted to sell me.
My sister looked up.
“Will you tell me more of the story about the kind Tofu Maiden tonight?”
I tightened my grip on her hand and smiled.
“Of course.”
“As long as her story keeps passing from one generation to the next...”
“The Tofu Maiden will never disappear.”
My sister and I walked steadily onward.
Together, toward a sunlit road of our own.
The End.
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