The Tale Never Ends

I unzipped the plastic bag, peered inside, and was immediately dismayed by what I saw. I tipped it over and emptied the bag, pouring a few bank cards and a receipt for the payment of lease for this shop.

We shared a quick look. exchanging weak smiles and exasperated chuckles. Nothing could have been more trivial than what we found: a couple of Huang Li’s and Cao Xuedong’s bank cards and lease payment receipts. Shaking my head, I tossed the bag onto the mattress and looked around the crabbed little room.

Only, there was nothing left for us to look into. The room has nothing else besides the bed and the dressing table, save for distinctive scruff marks on the wall which suggested that there was once a portable zip wardrobe here. It was missing now and it could have been taken when they left. If there was anything vital still hiding around, it could only be inside the drawers of the dressing table.

Zheng Shuang knelt down beside the table and opened every drawer, inspecting the insides, and found another receipt and few empty cigarette boxes. “I’m afraid there’s nothing useful here too,” Zheng Shuang grumbled as he got up, slapping the top of the table as he rose.

I stood unmoving and stared at the dressing table. For what it was, I realized it could function as a writing table too. One could have easily removed all the drawers and hide something inside. I hurried over to the vanity table just freshly inspected by Zheng Shuang and drew out every drawer, much to Zheng Shuang’s speechlessness and shock. “God, how have we forgotten about this trick!” Lin Feng exclaimed, “I bet every one of us here did something like this before!”

Lin Feng was barely finished when I saw a little paper box standing in the shadows of an obscured corner inside the empty space of the dressing table. Finding that it looked no bigger than a shoebox and was anxious to see what was inside, Zheng Shuang grabbed it and took it out. He got up and laid it on the table with rays of lights from our flashlights homing on it where we saw the “Cookies” word printed on the top. This used to be a cookie box. I shook it and tried to listen if anything was inside as Chongxi quipped, “If that was bank cards just now, I’d imagine that it’s bank passbooks this time.”

Shaking my head at his joke, I opened the box. A little book and a few photographs laid harmlessly inside. I took out the book, with everyone staring bewilderedly over my shoulders, and flipped to the first page. With the light, I read the first entry, “24th September 2014. The instructor has accepted my invitation to have lunch with me. Everything was fine and could have been perfect if not for that accursed Murong Shiyan. If only he would just vanish.”

“Ah,” I uttered with revelation, “This diary belongs to Huang Li and the entries here began when she first started university, which was also the time when she first met Cao Xuedong.” I riffled to the last written page and read the final entry, “4th July 2018. Daddy’s men came looking for me and they frightened me. It was lucky Xuedong was out taking stocks. Daddy wants me to go back to help him out with Xuedong, but we’re beginning to see the silver lining for our florist shop. We’ve finally saved enough money to get a better place to stay. And Daddy’s look when I saw him as a girl creeps me out. I don’t want to go.”

We looked up, exchanging glances of horror. This was the final entry in the diary; the rest of the diary was blank. I stuck my finger through the pages of the diary and randomly opened a page in the middle. It appeared that Huang Li was not a zealous diary keeper; she rarely filled it in consecutive days. There were numerous instances where the next entry would be days or even weeks after the previous. Everything inside was about her and Cao Xuedong—beginning from her hot pursuit of him until they finally got together after he left the army. I sipped on a cigarette as I went through the contents of the diary. Huang Li’s parents had been separated ever since she was a girl. The diary mentioned no reason for the separation, only that she grew up with her mother. There was very little mention of her father and his company. But if there was anything useful that I gleaned from the diary about Mr. Huang, it would be the many occasions where Huang Li herself described him as “scary”.

It was his discharge allowance from the army that Cao Xuedong had used to pay for the deposit to lease this florist shop and thus began Huang Li’s and Cao Xuedong’s life of scraping by. Yet despite their near-destitution, Huang Li’s happiness and affection for her man permeated through every word and line she wrote. Huang Li was really in love with Cao Xuedong. Truly, madly, and deeply.

I closed the diary and redirected my gaze on the photographs lying quietly in the paper box. Some looked immensely old while the rest looked new. The one at the bottom was a cracked and wrinkled photograph of a young man and woman carrying a little girl about four or five, standing in front of the memorial dedicated to the Great Earthquake, dated 1st October 1999. I smiled at the loving family and muttered, “This must be Huang Li when she was young.” Zheng Shuang took it from me and had a quick look, agreeing with a nod too. The rest of the other photographs were between the years 2000 and 2002, all of them featuring Huang Li and her parents. There was nothing about them after 2002 and that could determine it as the year they became estranged. Huang Li would have been seven then. So this could be why Huang Li was so agitated just now when we were discussing fatherly affection, I reflected. This could really well be why.

The others came at more present dates. Most, if not all, of them were taken within the last two years. I flicked through the photos, taking in each for a second or two until I suddenly saw one that made me smile. It was a wedding photo of Huang Li and Cao Xuedong. Despite our enmity, it was a photo that no one could resist feeling happy for. Quietly, I handed it to Zheng Shuang. “Let’s go,” I said, getting up, “Let’s go back. We’ll continue tomorrow.” I began walking out without waiting and Zheng Shuang protested before I was well out of earshot, “Wait a minute, continue what tomorrow?!”

As we lazed on the couches at my villa in Nanhu house later, Huang Li’s diary sat diffidently on the coffee table in front of us. “From the photos and her entries in the diary,” I pointed out, “It’s no secret that Huang Li loved Cao Xuedong very, very much.” “So?” Zheng Shuang asked, still oblivious of where I was getting at. “So, don’t any of you feel what’s wrong here?” “But what is wrong??” Almost everyone asked in unison. I licked my lips and turned to Edelweiss. “Dearest, put both of us into Huang Li’s and Cao Xuedong’s shoes. Can you see what’s wrong?”

She blinked and pondered for several beats and her head shook dubiously. “You,” I barked, looking at Lin Feng this time, “Put you and Yuanyuan into their shoes, can’t you feel what’s wrong?” Lin Feng’s forehead creased into a frown as he thought hard. But he too, failed to make out anything odd. “What about you, Chongxi?” I turned to the final pair in the house and said, “What about Xiao Yu and you…” My voice faltered. The sight of the blank and dazed look on his face was answer enough for me.

Na San came through the door, heaving and puffing as he carried a carton of coke. He laid it to rest on a corner on the coffee table with a dull thud, fished through his pockets for the change, and gave them to me. I ripped the carton open and tossed a can each to everyone and all around me with a symphony of pops and fizzles ringing around me. I took a swig off my own can and said, “We’ve overlooked something before. Remember about how we defeated the Bamen Dunjia enchantment?” Everyone bobbed their heads, save for Na San and Chongxi. “So, if Huang Li was really so in love with Cao Xuedong, how could she not know that her husband was lying dead for an entire morning just opposite from here? She did not even look around for him and in the end, it was we who told her about his death the following morning. Is this even an acceptable behavior of a person who’s madly in love with her husband?”

The revelation seemed to hit everyone so hard that breaths were held and tongues were tied for literally seconds before the silence was shattered by an exclamation from Zheng Shuang, “Oh, Gods in Heaven! I haven’t thought so! Yes, you’re absolutely correct! No person madly in love would sit still for a whole night while the person she loves is missing! There’s no way she wouldn’t be worried no matter how confident she was of his safety!” “Indeed,” Lin Feng agreed and said, “Huang Li was so calm when we saw her the following morning. Us being fine should have immediately meant that Cao Xuedong was in danger. But still, she was as suave as the smoothest silk!”

“But what does this revelation reveal?” Big Sister asked from her corner, clutching her can of Coke. I spouted a puff of smoke and said, “So this reveals that something has happened between Huang Li and Cao Xuedong then that has caused them to be strangers. I daresay it’s what Huang Li told me about. What her father had done to them both. I still can’t say precisely what. But I’d surmise that whatever savagery he inflicted upon them has changed their behavior. Just like how Huang Li and Cao Xuedong became insensitive to everything in their surroundings. Don’t you feel that Huang Li, Cao Xuedong, and the rest of the four people we’ve seen just now behaved like living corpses?”

“Does that mean you know what’s wrong with them?” Edelweiss asked beside me. The question made Chongxi look at me and I looked deeply at him too. “I noticed just now during the interrogation that there was something wrong with Huang Li’s soul. Her soul looks unstable.” I nodded, concurring to his findings as I added, “I suspect what Huang Li’s father had done was to tamper on their soul. People with their souls damaged often look dazed and dimwitted. I’m sure you’re no stranger to this behavior, Zheng Shuang?”

Zheng Shuang nodded. “Of course,” he said, “The Third Apostle of the Creed was like that.” “Yep,” I nodded and continued, “Only, Huang Li’s different from the Third Apostle. In the latter’s case, I had taken part of his soul. So he’s reacting only by his most primitive instincts. But Huang Li and the rest like her are different. They still maintain much of their consciousness and motor ability, with only their emotions completely blotted out. It’s as if…”

“As if what?” Zheng Shuang threw in.