Chapter 36: Chai Si – Extremely, Extremely, Extremely Simple

Was he wrong?

When five-year-old Chai Si ran forward frantically for a few steps, he suddenly remembered that his injured mother was still lying on the roadside.

At that moment, instinctively halting his steps, he turned back without a second thought and rushed to help his mother up, wanting to run away with her—was he not supposed to do that? Was he wrong?

"I told you to go!"

His mother's scream at that moment was piercingly loud, hardly sounding like someone who, just moments before, was too severely injured to speak.

"Mom—"

He grabbed his mother's arm, managing to utter only a single syllable.

The next second, watching his legs dangling in mid-air, he drifted away from the ground, swaying.

Tilting back a face half-stained black with blood, his mother froze in shock and terror for a fraction of a second before suddenly roaring, "Let him go!"

That thing was not holding Chai Si, nor had it lifted him up.

Belatedly, he realized that a long, dark shadow had pierced straight out of his chest, extending into the air like a sword run through him, suspending him in mid-air—yet Chai Si felt no pain and bled no blood; he merely lost all his strength, feeling groggy and unable to lift his head.

"No need to rush," the resident hummed from behind. "I feel you haven't fully grasped the beauty of the current situation. Let me explain it to you in detail."

His mother's voice, drifting amidst the resident's words, sounded like the whimper of a wolf.

"My absolute favorite flavor to savor and appreciate is 'irony.' This kind of thing is exclusively produced by humans; it doesn't exist in the nest.

"The disappointment of buying a lottery ticket and not winning is still disappointment, but it tastes ordinary and uninteresting, like a box of instant noodles that merely fills the stomach. Yet your disappointment at this very moment is a rare delicacy. Why? Because your hopes have been dashed, creating 'irony'; missing the lottery lacks this exact flavor. I must make you thoroughly understand this exquisite beauty, or my heart will itch beyond endurance."

The resident tossed Chai Si up and down a few times, sighing with satisfaction.

"First of all, your passage has made me wildly happy. One can only enter the nest through a car accident; no wonder you were thirty-six when you first opened the passage... But if this car accident of yours had happened a few months earlier, everything tonight would never have taken place. Do you know why?"

His mother's gaze remained fixed on Chai Si, swaying slightly with him in mid-air.

"Because the resident population of your Luocheng area only just exceeded ten million this year. Look at you, if this car accident had happened a bit earlier, it would have been considered ordinary bad luck; if you had moved this year according to your long-held plan, you would never have entered the nest for the rest of your life... Tell me, isn't the timing of this car accident particularly ironic and remarkably delicious?"

Vaguely, Chai Si recalled that his mother had indeed asked him once if he would be willing to move back to her hometown.

Only at that time, he could not understand what moving had to do with everything happening right now.

"You thought you had escaped, unaware that you had become a guiding dog, leading me into the human world. That was already quite good. If you had gone straight to the police for help upon entering the human world and gotten sent to the hospital, wouldn't that have been dry and terribly uninteresting? Naturally, I would have left by then to find other humans.

"Yet you didn't go to the hospital. Your very first thought was to go home to see your child, to ensure his safety, and in doing so, you exposed the child right before my eyes... How wonderful.

"Had you not loved him so much, he wouldn't have had to die tonight."

Chai Si knew he was crying, and he also knew he wasn't crying for himself.

The sobbing and wailing of his mother on the ground terrified him far more than the dark shadow piercing through his chest.

He used to think he possessed a superpower; whenever his mother was unhappy, he could always make her laugh with just a few words—but tonight, that superpower seemed nothing more than the arrogant dream of another five-year-old child.

"Stop crying for help. Who could possibly save you two?

"Didn't you notice that neighbor who peeked out the window just now shut it again and went back to sleep? Ordinary humans with no passage and no prior contact with residents cannot see me at all... nor can they see the child impaled by me in mid-air. Right now, you are simply a madwoman crying by the roadside in the middle of the night."

In the resident's grip, Chai Si was like a piece of meat stuck on a skewer.

With a whoosh, it swung him through the air, sweeping an arc past his mother—and after she lunged forward in a vain grab, it hoisted Chai Si high up again.

"Oh, the two of you crying together, you're crying enough to make even me feel sad. Don't be like that; I do possess a sliver of mercy. How about this, I'll give you a choice."

Staring upward in a daze, his mother's eyes glistened with moisture; yet it was not the glimmer of hope.

"Residents capable of coming to the human world are very, very, very rare—not even one a decade. Far fewer than humans with passages. Isn't that unfair?"

The resident smacked its lips—if it had lips.

"The conditions for coming are hard to meet, very harsh. Having managed to arrive, one might carelessly fall right back into the nest. Next, I will tell you the method to send me back to the nest."

His mother instantly froze. She murmured, "W-what?"

"Very, very, very simple. You still have a rope around your waist, right? Actually, that is also a part of me. As long as you cut it, the passage for me to come to the human world will also be severed, and naturally, I will return to the nest. Do you not believe me?

"Well, there's nothing I can do about that. All I can say is that for residents like us who can come to the human world, the moment the passage is cut, we drop back into the nest—just like that. If you don't believe it, try it."

"And the choice?" Pressing a hand to her waist, his mother asked breathlessly, "What is... the choice you're giving me?"

"Oh, it's whether or not to cut the rope."

As these words fell, the air fell into a perplexed silence for a second or two. Chai Si couldn't see clearly, but his mother must have furrowed her brows.

"Why... why shouldn't I... cut it? You have... a trap..."

"Wrong, I have no trap," the resident said levelly. "I am a very, very, very trustworthy person. Since I allow you to cut the rope, I will never stop you. Besides, the rope can regenerate. Just make sure you think it through before you cut."

Chai Si felt himself being lifted, suspended high beside a massive, flat, dark shadow; the resident seemed to rub Chai Si against its face a few times, almost affectionately.

"Your child, however, will not be let go by me.

"So your choice is: one, do not cut the rope, I stay and kill both you and your child; two, cut the rope, I take your child's corpse back to the nest, and you spare your own life."

Chai Si felt the flat, dark shadow that served as a face bulge outward, pushing his body up slightly—the resident was smiling.

"I guarantee your child will definitely die tonight. The only difference is whether you want to be buried with him."

That sharp, desolate scream from his mother, even after so many years, still pierced like a knife into Chai Si's chest.

He had indeed died; no matter what his mother chose that night, he was undoubtedly killed by the resident...

A voice in his mind, not belonging to Chai Si, kept trying to convince him: Yes, you died that night. Do you remember? Your tiny body in a cast, hitting the ground with a dull thud right before your mother's eyes...

Were residents who came to the human world really that scarce?

One came when he was five years old, and now another had come.

...Of course he hadn't died that night.

Chai Si refused to die in the moment of that car accident, because if he died in the accident, he would never again be able to see his mother for the last time.

He still remembered the warmth of his mother's body when she held his shoulders that night.

Chai Si similarly refused to die at the hands of the resident, for reasons slightly more complicated: first, the resident was heavily injured that night and driven back to the nest, so the sanity lingering deep within his mind refused to let him believe the resident had killed him back then; second, had his five-year-old self died that night, he would never have been lifted out of the pool of blood by Uncle Kai.

As he strained his neck, deliriously wanting to turn his head for a final glance at his mother, Kelunan covered his eyes.

"L-listen to him, go quickly," his mother's intermittent, final words echoed from the warm darkness of a palm. "From now on... Mom leaves you to him."

Had he not met Uncle Kai, he would never have known what truly happened to his mother, nor would there have been a place in this world to shelter his soul.

Regaining consciousness inside the subway carriage, Chai Si did not open his eyes this time.

Sitting up in total silence, with his focus heightened, his five senses were magnified and enhanced manifold: following the rustling micro-sounds, the faint, raw, fleshy scent of the resident, and the breathing of the subway driver... he mapped out a topographic diagram of the carriage in his mind.

Driving the resident back to the nest was "very, very, very simple."

All he had to do was sever the path by which they came.