“That’s easy.” I purred, tightened my grip. “You make me look good, I will make you look good…” the word had barely mused as a gush of wind absorbed me away from where I was. I collided into a hard-stone-liked grip before someone took my chin up.
“Interesting, you are the first one dare to say like that-make me good!” that wasn’t what I expected. I tried to read the expression in his eyes. All I could see was thoughtfulness. He kept everything else hidden, if there was anything else. “I will see what I can find out on one condition—” he cast an eye toward a huge hole in the center of the room. “—jump with me!”
I almost bit my tongue, glaring at him as if look at psycho. “I wouldn’t exactly characterize us as an ‘us’…don’t you think it is going too fast from agency-client to die-for-love? We’re basically not so much familiar with each other, despite we’re lived a little much through today…”
Fox frown at me, looking a little disgusted by my wildly random thoughts. Actually so was I. “I just want to tell you this is a tunnel leading to some other place.”
Flushed, I eyed the hole doubtfully. When I imagined he would have gone first, the lazy smug sounded behind me again. “Even if I would go for love, just relax, you will never be my cup. I swear I don’t like tough girl.”
I had crouched down, ready to swing my leg into the narrow gap when he emphasized the word ‘tough girl’. My foot slipped, and I flew into the blackness. I closed my eyes tight, so I couldn’t see the darkness, scrunching them together in terror, clamping my mouth shut so I wouldn’t scream. It was silent and short. The air whipped past me for just half a second, and then, with a huff as I exhaled, I was caught by hard arms of Fox, who shouldn’t have been here. Before I was stood upright, a light rain had started to fall, except that it smelled stink.
“What’s that?” I murmured, wiping my cheek with my palm while rolling my eyes around and at Fox, whose face was half smeared in inkblot, which made him look slightly eerie, the half darkness giving him an almost African-like appearance.
An impulsion of laughter torn my lips, but it just died in the familiar shriek emanating at the top of the stepladder. “AH, AH, AH, AH, AH, AH—FOX, YOU,YOU, YOU, YOU…HOW MANY TIMES U’RE SCARING MY BABY? I…I WANT TO CRUSH YOU, WIPE THE MAT WITH YOUR ENTRAILS!”
A wheel of wind threw a little old man right into us. Fox seized my upper arm and marched me aside just before a tiny old man smashed into where we’d been standing.
“Inn Ma?” my voice almost jumped into a shriek. I cast a rapid glance around, around and around until the familiar book perfume emanating from the shelves woke my memory—this was Inn Ma Book House, wasn’t it? As ever the bamboo shades were all closed; the square room was bathed in a dim orange light cast by the many lamps, which all draped with veiling. Hundreds of questions popped out of surface in head, but the priority was how we get here in such a short time. If my memory didn’t get the wrong way, Inn Ma House was seated the gap between Phoenix Feather House and Myrtle Store. It felt like one-hour walk… I rolled my eyes at Fox, who looked not as surprised as I expected.
Inn Ma struggled to his feet, enormous glasses that made his eyes appear far too large for his face; his eyes were watering with pain and fury, looking malevolently up at Fox while lips muttered something in which the words ‘my poor little inky baby’.
It was then that I realized what his ‘baby’ meant. The muscle of my cheek couldn’t help twisting once when I stared down at the inkblot in my palms.
“It pains me to admit it, but I do enjoy your surly retort when you pop something you might need.” Fox was wearing a steely smile and his golden eyes were like chips of ice. “Shame is, I’m in a bit of a rush today, I need your hand, little Mama!”
The laughter broke out successfully, this time. The understanding sank itself in my mind and the reason that Inn Ma behaved so beyond himself sank itself in my mind. Fox’s words were really strong enough to kill other’s nerves.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” Inn Ma almost spit the words out, trying to sound angry, as though what Fox was humiliating him, but his hands were busy at the books which scattered on the floor. “Speak yourself…Eugh—Lulu?” he seemed just find my existence and jumped to his feet.
“Hello, Inn Ma…” I forced a smile.
“How come you stay with him?” he asked, but obviously at Fox who made a soft cough of impatient interruption behind me.
“Maybe I didn’t make it all the way upstairs.” He whispered, before Inn Ma grunted in a low voice “Actually, you never started it”. “There’s a deranged psycho killer after us—correctly, her, you know… how good she smells…” he broke his sentence and peered down at my shoulders, thoughtful.
An extremely tense silence followed these words.
Then I read the understanding dawn on Inn Ma’s eyes. The color drained slowly from his small face as he watched. A terrible look of mingled fear and fury came over his expression. “You say silence?”
“I trapped it in Old bird’s dungeon, but that won’t buy much time.” Fox had dropped his unctuous tone and his smile. “So I need you help to hold him back for a while.”
“Are you kidding me? The chances are I am going to die!” Inn Ma stammered, jigged to his feet, trod on the hem of my shoes and I stumbled slightly onto a book aside. Without a warning, a rumble of noise under my feet, making me jumped out. The book seemed to be alive, fluttering the pages painfully, until I moved my feet. It darted through the break out, straight into the air. As though feeling its summon, all the books flew up from every direction, here and there, surrounding us.
“You, this wooden head, who let you brace silence by yourself?” Fox snapped, then making a whistle toward the books in the air.
My mouth hung open like big O. What exactly I was witnessing? Hallucination, again? Was there too much hallucination today so that my head was dizzy hardly?
The book that I stamped whooshed down and perched on my shoulder. Suddenly a spasm of convulsion shook its pages, like possessed by epilepsy. The pages flipped frantically. Hundreds of hundreds characterizes were shaken down from the books, forming into the downpour. The ink rain was soon coming down too thick and stink that it was as though bucket of ice-cold rotten fishes was emptied repeatedly over our heads.
“I just need the smell of the ink to disturb cold-thing meanwhile cover our trace…” Fox’s voice dropped into a whisper for a while. My head spinning harder, I had to clutch his sleeve to balance my pace. Then it was Inn Ma’s gibber. “…fine, you’d better wish your plan works…don’t blame I didn’t remind you, she is Shawl’s favorite! Take care of her, or he will wipe the mat with your entrails!”
A snort hummed. “I have your word, now, sent us to Myrtle!” a swift pull thrashed me into his arms again. His breath was suddenly beside me. “Little trouble, I don’t want there to be any confusion. Inn Ma’s ability to keep us from harm will outweigh your comfort. Just hold up!”
His grip was so tight that I felt it almost cut my breath off. And I really wanted to tell him that I was out of comfort zone for a long time. But it was too late to spit it out because the floor under our feet went soft. The corner of my eyes revealed a pool of ink which was getting flood almost drowning our shoes. Then the ceiling started to heave far away until the last sight of the room was blocked by the dark liquid bubble. I felt I was falling deeper and deeper, elbows tucked tightly to his sides, blurred waves flashing past me. It was a blinking second before the whirl slowed down; Fox threw out his hands, and brought himself to a halt in time to prevent ourselves falling face forwards out of somewhere.
“Ew—gross, I thought I’d never get used to that.” Fox sniffed slightly his sleeve, holding out a hand to pull me to my feet.
“That is my word.” I said. Inside fear bubbled with the smell of rotten fish in my stomach. But I had barely set my legs straightened while a misty voice of Myrtle was suddenly right behind me, making me jump around. “Oh, imagine my shock at finding you here, my lord!”
Then I saw a shinning, high-heeled pink shoe emerging from the inside of fluffy gauzy—followed, almost immediately, by the slimy woman I was too familiar with. As Myrtle stepped out of the gauzy into the light flooding from the windows, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face, large, purple, liquid-looking eyes. Her hair was causally drawn back to her waist. She was dressed from head to foot in pink satin, and many magnificent diamonds gleamed at her hair, and on her fingers.
I blinked, wide-eyed. Myrtle was beautiful, but I never knew she could be so shinning. Her face relaxed into a gracious smile when she walked forwards towards Fox, bobbed a curtsy. Fox just barely nodded his chin.
“What a surprise to see you since you’ve been disappearing for a while.” Myrtle circled us, with a look at both of us, up and down, but most on me.
“That’s hurt, my lady,” chortled Fox, shaking his sleeves, trying to get rid of those smelly liquid. “You are never out of my mind for these years. See, the first visit after my return is here, right?”
She wrinkled her nose, but still smile. “Perhaps that isn’t what’s in your heart!” her pace slowed and stopped before me. “Your new pet?”
Now I felt I was dog-tired of retorting with his ‘friend’. The wave of numbness was wrapping my thoughts, blurring my sight. Standing by the fire was very cozy; listening to the patter of the drops down from our cloth, and Fox’s low voice even made my mind drift away for one or two second until a high soprano pulled me back. I just barely get some sentence like “—I am the last of my kind. Whatever wrongs you have done, do not make me responsible for the death of my noble breed—”
“Myrtle, I am not forcing you into our battle-”
“Then you think you’re strong enough to stand up to those cold things?” I could tell she was trying to sound disdainful, as though what Myrtle was saying was barely worth her notice, but her fingers gave her away; they clutched her satin, shaking.
“I just want to be a quiet and handsome boy, okay?”
It’s a miracle for me to feel the corner of my lip twist again.
“I don’t have much education, but don’t try to fool me!” Confusion dawned on her face. My comment had refused to connect with them. Why did the conversation involved with him go to the eerie way every time?
“Clean her up; find something to cover the smell of her soul from the others.” He was drying his sleeves before hesitated, and then added. “Find some clean robe for me first…I will pay handsomely.”
“—rich and bitch—” her words were no sooner out of her lips than her phone buzzed. She dug out a pink cell phone while stretched out one finger, whirled in the air. Several threads were thrown down from ceiling, entwining around my limbs. The next instance, I was suddenly hung ten feet height, swaying in the air like a ridiculous puppet.
“Woo—get me off—” scream darted out with a break as I stole a glimpse downside. Dizzy, and the room seemed to rotate. “F-o-x-” but he had disappeared behind a door, and when he turned up, he was wearing a clean robe with the phone in his hand. He paced toward the windows. I saw he fiddled the phone for several times, then held the phone upside down to his ear, and laid the other hand against the glass. His silhouette looked shaken a little.
The threads, clutching around my body, grew more and more. They seemed alive and weaved themselves along my body in a frantic speed. Swaying like a puppet in the air distracted my concentration, but I didn’t miss something which changed his tone. His voice went sharper in surprise. I listened hard to get each syllable, recombining them together—“Inn Ma…store…broken in…some claws and blood…” —the broken content drained the blood from my face. I tried to get more, but his voice was low and quick, difficult to hear. I heard some hoarse voice greet, and Fox raced through the situation too fast for me to understand much. I was numb, horrified, deathly afraid. And yet, until the thread stopped weaving and freed me to my feet onto the floor, I could feel that I was missing something important. Something that would summon desperation out of the chaos. “What happened?” I dared not to put these into words, suppress the suspicion with my entire mind.
Fox didn’t respond, focused on his own thoughts.
My short encounter with Inn Ma just now was not something that had faded or dimmed in my mind, and I still remembered every word he’d said. Fox was still talking, his voice not quite frustrated. Overbearing but with an edge. Then the edge abruptly won out over the overbearing. Fox cut the phone without waiting for an answer. He turned around, and froze, staring at me with a look that could be called…shock, or more than that.
“Hey—anybody here?” I waved one hand in front of his eyes, but action froze, too when I saw a figure in the oval mirror on the left—a girl was wrapped in a milky robe, practically fitting, convenient, except for the long sleeves, and cool enough. It set off to perfect her slim waist, tightly black sash showed shameless breasts for my age; a billowing white skirt with thunder-pattern rim spread above my knees, avoiding all encumbrance of walk.—this new reflection delayed comprehension of all the audience until a door bell broke the ice.
Fox shifted, shook his hair to cover his face with some awkward cough. “Thanks, Myrtle…”
When I was half dragged through the back door, her indignant scream was echoing a very long way behind. “Damn it—accounting on the bill again? Do you have any idea how much debt in my pocket?”
The sound of the sliding compartment door behind us was slammed so hard that the ash over the ceiling was shaking off. When the muffled pang rang, cut us from the world of the other side, it revealed a long tunnel before us. It was dim, but not black at the bottom. The journey was uncomfortable, owing to the fact that it felt too ordinary to be normal since I had been through the bungee jumping and drowning. And the pain on the shoulder made it nearly insufferable.
The light from the lines of skylights provided a faint glow, reflecting wetly from the stones under our feet. The light simmered and Fox was a faint, white radiance beside me. His arm around my waist pulled me swiftly forward. My limbs tripped and stumbled my way across the uneven stone surface. It was the moment that I noticed the glistening skin of his arm where his sleeve was shaken away. It was shinning in the dim light, like diamonds. But when the light vanished for a second, it turned out a morsel of scale.
My eyes widened.
The sound of my staggering footsteps echoed through the black space; it sounded so wide, but I couldn’t listen. There were no sounds other than my frantic heartbeat and the soft sigh once beside me.
“Hang on, we’re close…” he reached his free hand across his body to hold my head, which flinch away instantly. “Little trouble?”
My heart stopped, and then broke into a sprint. A cold sweat dewed on the back of my neck and my hand turned to ice.
He waited, watching and listening to my reaction.
“It’s not too late for us to have a practical discussion.” I finally whispered.
He looked down, his lashes casting long shadows across his cheekbones, and dropped his hand in the air to pick up my frozen left hand. He played with my fingers while he spoke. “Yeah, it is a little much for you to live through. I thought you’d never asked…”
I tried to swallow. “Those are not questions.”
“Then, what?”
“The truth?” I asked, only mouthing the words.
“Well, I can help out the story, whatever you want to know.”
I took a deep breath. “Who—what are you?”
His eyes flashed up to mine, shocked. “Sensitive,” he muttered. “How…do you know…”
“Maybe you should do some makeup to cover the scale on your skin.”
Comprehension attacked his expression. His lips scowled into a bitter smile. “When I get weak, it’s kind of hard to maintain the decent appearance…” he said, his face going from white to pink in a sudden blaze of chagrin. “Little trouble, you know, truth is the antidote to fear, but sometimes it is also the toxicant to ordinary. Once it gets to you, you might never come back your life. Are…you ready for that?”
“You won’t…silence a witness of crime?” I titled my head back and asked in a shaky voice.
He laughed at me. “Your logic is really a myth. But being afraid is a good thing. You should know what happened today has revealed one glimpse of that world in front of you, wildly beyond your knowledge, which will be probably lead your life to another way, sometimes with a bad end.”
“Don’t you think it is bad enough now?” I blinked. “There is a radiant monster in Feng’s house, hunting us with the reason that only god knows, and my shoulder got a snap…blah, blah, blah, Isn’t that enough?”
Fox’s face was impossible to read as he thought through my answer.
“You’re sure you want me to identity myself—now?” he finally asked. “Swear no regret, no fear?”
“I swear on my behalf,” I nodded seriously, an excitement tense rolling through my mind while guessing what kind of alien he would be.
“I am a dragon.”
There was a brief pause.
And then, I was suddenly the one having hysterics. “Dragon?” I gasped out between the paroxysms of giggles. “…I’d thought…that…you would…say…mermaid! That appearance …fit to…you better.”
He suddenly freed me from his grips; at the meantime I could feel the air was shaking, shaking and shaking… a cold trickle of fear began to ooze down my spine. With sudden, chill certainty, I realized what I was witnessing: the frame of his body was blurring, and then slowly disjoined into a steam of golden light, which sorted deeper into the gloom.
My eyes were so wide with disbelief that it felt like they might fall out and trace into where it vanished. Seconds tickled by. Then, deep down the blackness sorted out a graceful dragon; the golden glistening around his body split the air, diving right down to me. The wriggling movement happened to be locked in the air, just one inch away from my face. So I could see him at the same level. His liquid gold eyes turned hypnotic as they held mine.
“You see, little trouble, mermaid thing does not agree with my grace. I am a dragon—descendant of an ancient and sacred race, the most powerful of all the creatures. There was a time when we were revered and living with you, human. Of course, so were many other races; there are a lot of spirits like us sharing this land with you, good or evil. We’re the guardian of treasure for the royal. Dragon and human had a special relationship. We were their sworn protectors. But then human had a bit of a falling out. I guess, you could say they got tired of being baby, so we left, but some of other races stayed, like…some kind that you might be familiar—Inn Ma, who’s the last Bunshinsaba; Oh, Myrtle, she is the granddaughter of spider goblin…” He paused, cocking his head to the side. “But, don’t worry, most of time, they are just living their life in the shadow, never cross the line. Even dragon like me, sometimes just comes back for a visit; we’re supposed to be belonged to the different world without a cross. But to be monogamous seemed not to be the nature of the fate. Since it create our encounter, I hope this moment is the right time to introduce myself-”
A smile crooked on his face. I thought so.
I still stared at him with my eyes frozen wide. There were too many things to take in, but those familiar names continued knocking the breath out of me. It was too shocking to think about anything else, hard to concentrate on his introduction. They…were not human!
“Try to center yourself, little trouble.” He reminded me, smiling.
I breathed. “It’s…a kind of hard under the circumstances.” I swallowed, trying to make my voice not shaky. “So…how old are they…I mean, Inn Ma and Myrtle?”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha—” a convulsive laugh shook his frame, which soon was dazzled by the sudden glaring light. My eyes narrowed. The next second I popped my eye open, Fox had recovered his human appearance. “You always had a way to give me such a hard time.” He took one step toward me, and lowered his head at the same level with mine. “I think Old bird has what you want.”
My eyes were wide again, exhaustion forgotten. “You mean…Feng is…” what?
“Oh, you’re so better off not knowing. But if you insist, more supercilious, condescending, patronizing…or overbearing… choose one as you like to call.” Fox chuckled, avoiding my question.
My eyebrows scowled. Then the ice suddenly locked my shoulders. Before I could collapse with the wave of pain, Fox had pinned me deep in his chest. His good smell from his robe emanated into my nostril, clearing my mind as I heard his low voice. “…your wound is getting worse…little trouble? Hang on, I get you to Old Camel right now!”
Without a warning, I felt his hands wrap around my waist and lifted me up in his hold before the path started to slant downward again, taking us deeper into the ground, and it made me claustrophobic. Only Fox’s fingers, soothing against my hair, kept me from screaming out loud.
“F…ox?” I muttered, gritting my teeth tight to fight against the convulsion.
“Momoky-”
Wind weakened his sound. “What?” I was shaking and I thought it was from pain. It wasn’t until my teeth started to chatter together that I realized I was cold.
“Momoky, it’s my name. Mo is good, if you like.” He repeated.
“Whatever…” I locked my arms around his neck to avoid sliding down, panting. “I think hospital is keeping more advantage than Old Camel—” Of course, not the one that Shawl and Old Feng were in.
“For the sake of your life, the latter is better for you. An earth god picks his teeth with ancient poison in your wound.”
“He— crap…sounds I get a group of alien neighbors.” I moaned. At the right moment, I had a feeling whether this world went crazy, or I got mad.
At the end of the tunnel was a torii—the wood beam was covered layer of moss. A small door made of thinner, interlaced bars was standing open. Mo ducked through and hurried on to a larger, brighter room. The grilled slammed shut with a clang, followed the snap of a lock. I was shocked to look behind me.
The picture started wobbling.
On the other side of the small space was a low, heavy wooden bridge. It was very odd to decorate house with a bridge. Mo hugged me, stepping onto the stairs, and I glanced around in surprise to find Old Camel lying in a pool of vomit over the worn carpet. Behind me, Mo tensed, his jaw clenched tight when he hopped around the mess and gave a kick on his chubby body. “Get up, drunky!”
For a few moments, I took in the scene of Camel trying to rise out of the slippery vile stuff from his stomach. The reek of vomit and raw spirits almost brought my breakfast up. Dizzy, I struggled to fight it back, but only slipping into the unconsciousness.
When everything sank into the darkness finally, I just heard Mo’s scream.
“NO—TROUBLE!”
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