Chapter 33: Chaisi—The Thing He Hates Most

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Time—he needed time.

In the brief span of twenty or thirty seconds, one upheaval had followed another, each more unexpected and incomprehensible than the last.

But Chai Si knew that if he were given even a little time, he could connect the individual “points of light,” joining them into a clear and intelligible pattern.

Perhaps everything in the world was chaotic and complicated, but Chai Si believed it could always be understood this way: first, seize enough crucial points of information from the confusion and noise; then use the points to illuminate the whole, connecting them into lines and drawing out the complete framework of the thing.

Unfortunately, time was precisely what he lacked most at that moment.

When Chai Si turned his head and his gaze fell upon the black glass bulging high into the vehicle’s interior, he knew he had made an unavoidable mistake. There was no way he could not look at the window—no one could resist looking—but the moment he did, his attention was divided.

In that instant of distraction, the newly exposed wire behind him sparked and leapt upward, whipping through the air toward the back of his head.

Even the air had been twisted and drawn taut by the current. He seemed able to smell the electricity, to feel a flickering blue burn against the skin of his neck.

…No matter how skilled a person was, no one could move faster than electricity.

Chai Si closed his eyes.

The instant before the shock seemed extraordinarily long. Memories resurfaced of the electric shocks he had endured years ago while searching for a passage, as though warning him of the stabbing pain about to pierce him.

Yet after no more than a single breath, Chai Si opened his eyes again.

He heard the crack of the current, the driver’s muffled groan of pain, the heavy thud of a body collapsing to the floor… But he felt nothing from the electricity itself.

Someone had been shocked. It was not him.

Chai Si whipped his head around and, as expected, saw the driver sprawled on the floor behind him. His face was ashen and ghastly, his body curled as it convulsed again and again, as though someone had seized a nerve inside him and pulled it taut. He could neither straighten himself nor escape.

The wire had lost its earlier liveliness. It drooped limply on the floor a short distance away, motionless, as if ashamed of its mistake.

Chai Si glanced at the window, swelling larger and rounder like a balloon, then at the driver one step behind him. For an instant, he nearly laughed.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said, picking up the T-bar from the floor and weighing it in his hand. “I’m very lucky. I steal the luck of the people around me.”

The driver could not speak at all. He seemed barely conscious.

“You followed my gaze and turned to look at this window too, didn’t you? I was distracted and let go of you.” Chai Si was not asking for an answer. He needed to sort out what had happened before him. Staring at the window, he said, “You saw it become like this, grew frightened, and took a step back—only to take the shock meant for me. Am I right?”

A string of low sounds rumbled in the driver’s throat.

That seemed to confirm it: the Rumor mimic could not control the movements of the host it inhabited. Otherwise, the driver would not have stepped onto the wire simply because he was afraid.

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“I have to thank you. Because you took the shock for me, I have a little time now.”

Carrying the T-bar, Chai Si walked step by step toward the curved window ahead, which looked as though it were nine months pregnant. When he was still two steps away, he swung the T-bar high and brought it down with all his strength, striking into the pitch-black window.

There was no sound of shattering glass. Instead, the window sank inward like a sheet of rubber, causing all his force to fall into emptiness.

There should have been a Resident behind the window, one capable of entering the human world. It was only natural that the T-bar would have no effect on it.

“What I’m about to say isn’t meant for you, but for the thing inside your mouth… The ‘Rumor,’ correct? May I call you that?”

The driver lay on the floor, half conscious and half unconscious. The voice beneath his cheek had also fallen silent, as though in tacit acknowledgment.

“For a mimic, possessing a certain degree of intelligence, knowing how to protect itself, is truly remarkable. But you have no self-awareness, and your intelligence is not high enough. Otherwise, you would not be a mimic—you would be a Resident.”

A human hand-shaped impression appeared on the puffed-up window, as though it had been blown full of air. Pressed against the glass from behind, it spread five fingers wide and began to feel its way slowly across the surface.

Wherever the hand moved, Chai Si’s gaze followed.

“If you were intelligent enough, you would have realized that I threatened the driver and attacked him not because I wanted to hurt him, but because I wanted to get to you. That chain of cause and effect is too complicated for you. You don’t understand it… You have only instinct.

“When the driver you inhabit found his life in danger and fell into a state of fear and panic, your instinct for self-preservation was awakened as well. I don’t know what you look like, but it seems you must depend on a human being in order to exist. If that person dies, you’ll be in serious trouble, won’t you?”

The driver stopped convulsing and lay still on the floor. A thread of consciousness remained in him; his eyelids trembled as they opened and closed halfway.

From between his slightly parted lips, a tiny voice rapidly cried, “Help me! Help me!”—almost as though it were calling for help on the driver’s behalf.

Chai Si turned his gaze back to the window. His distorted reflection appeared in the bulging black glass, and as the corners of his mouth lifted, the reflection revealed half of a twisted smile.

“Who are you calling for help?”

Chai Si did not know whether other people’s fates were as full of sardonic black humor as his own. If he had not been the person involved, he might almost have laughed aloud.

After all, half the reason the driver was so terrified was that the mimic had created the rumor of a “subway serial killer,” convincing him that he had encountered one. This also proved, from another angle, that the Rumor did not possess sufficiently high intelligence.

It was unaware of what effect the rumors it randomly created would have on its own host.

“From the ‘subway killer’ and the ‘fallen wire,’ I can see that you cannot create things out of nothing. You cannot simply say something and make it appear.

“Whatever you say must have some basis in reality. If no one had died in the subway, you could not have created the rumor of a ‘subway killer.’ If there had been no wire here, you could not have conjured one into existence just by speaking.

“The wire couldn’t kill me, so you summoned a Resident capable of entering the human world… But you didn’t truly want to return to your nest. You merely sensed that you could hide from me there.”

A surging black sea rose within Chai Si, and for one instant he felt the urge to seize the Resident behind the window and twist it into powder and fragments between his hands.

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Sometimes, he wished he could use these hands to twist his entire life into pieces.

When he finished speaking, the carriage fell into a brief silence.

The mimic made no sound. The driver’s breathing was as faint as a thread. At last, the hand behind the window felt its way to the place where the glass met the frame. As though undoing a seam, it began slowly tearing the glass downward.

“I don’t know how low your intelligence really is. But if you can understand even a single thing I’ve said, you’d better send the Resident back to its nest now…”

If this mimic truly wanted to go home, it had had no shortage of opportunities before today.

There must certainly be hunters around Wesley. Any hunter would have a passage, allowing it to hitch a ride back. Even if it could not come into contact with a hunter, why had it not summoned this Resident capable of entering the human world sooner?

“Help me…”

The mimic spoke again. This time, its voice was not hurried. After hearing Chai Si’s words, it seemed to have grown somewhat hesitant. When it cried out again, its final word carried the rising inflection of a question.

“Help me?”

“I want you to send it back for two reasons.” Chai Si’s tone was calm. “First, once the Resident enters, I can protect myself, but I cannot guarantee your host’s life.”

Several gray-white fingertips reached through the gap between the glass and the frame. Chai Si watched them and said quietly, “Second… Your instinct is correct. I truly have no passage and cannot enter the nest.”

For a moment, both the Resident and the mimic seemed to wait for him to continue.

“But this is not the first time I’ve encountered a Resident.”

Chai Si watched his own reflection and slowly rolled his shoulders and neck.

“What I hate most are Residents capable of entering the human world. Whenever I see one, I can’t help losing my temper. Fortunately, they’re rare, so I don’t lose it very often.

“But today, you brought one of them right in front of me.”

Chai Si sighed.

“If you truly want to protect yourself, you’d better not make me angry.”