Chapter Text
It is winter, when the papers for Chu Wanning’s adoption are signed, and he is led out of the orphanage with Huaizui holding his small, pale hand.
It only started snowing a little while ago. There is not yet snow carpeting the ground, or piling on the cars that line the curb outside of the orphanage. The snowflakes are light and paper-thin, and they cling to the dark strands of Chu Wanning’s hair and melt when they touch the exposed skin of his face.
Chu Wanning has always felt the cold more than others—as if he is missing the warm core that other people seem to have, which softens the bite of the winter months and helps them maintain a regular body temperature. When the wind blows, frigid and stinging, it simply seeps through Chu Wanning’s meagre cotton shirt and threadbare white jumper, and settles into his bones. Outside for only a few minutes, and he is already shivering, his thin lips turning blue.
His new caretaker, Huaizui, does not seem to notice.
His name is Huaizui to Chu Wanning. He had addressed this very clearly once they’d stepped out of the orphanage foyer.
“There’s no need to call me father or anything else,” he’d said. “Huaizui will do fine.”
His hand provides no warmth. It is gloved, yet nearly as cold as the air outside.
Chu Wanning’s new home is much bigger than his old one. At the orphanage, he’d shared a room with four other children. The room that Huaizui has given him is just as big, even though he is the only person who will be sleeping there, and much more comfortable. The bed is large enough that Chu Wanning could lie down on it and stretch his arms wide, and still have room for two more arm-lengths. It is a bed made for a man, rather than a boy of seven years old.
Indeed, if someone entered the room and looked around, they would not be able to tell that it was supposed to be a child’s room. There are no toys, or bright colours, or picture books. There is a bookshelf on the left-hand side which is empty except for three books—two classic literature novels and one poetry book—and a small, fragile crystal figurine of a haitang flower. There is a writing desk pressed into the far corner of the room, across from the bed and beside the large double-windows which look out onto the green hills of the countryside where Huaizui lives. On the writing desk is an untouched notebook and calligraphy set. There is a bedside table with a light blue lamp as its only adornment, and both the table and the lamp still have stickers which mark them as being newly bought.
The only other item of furniture in this colourless, impersonal room is a wooden wardrobe directly opposite the bed. The wardrobe is white, with two full-length mirrors inlaid in the wood. It is very large—wide, and at least twice as tall as Chu Wanning. There are a small number of clothes hung up in it, obviously intended for Chu Wanning, and they only fill up a quarter of the space.
On the outside of the wardrobe, there is a small keyhole, indicating that it can be locked from the outside. There is no key to go with it.
“The man who wants to adopt you is very wealthy, A-Ning, and will have very high expectations of you,” the head matron of the orphanage had sternly informed Chu Wanning, when he was called into her office to be told that someone had selected him for adoption. “He has seen your schoolwork and the prize you won in the district science competition, and he will want you to excel with the opportunities he can provide. It is very generous of him to open his home for you because of your potential, and so it is important that you show him that you are grateful.”
Chu Wanning is grateful.
He did not think he would ever be adopted. He knows, even at such a young age, that he is different from the other children. He is sullen, and he does not like to play running and hiding games, and sometimes when he speaks he sounds too grown-up. The others at the orphanage used to tell him that he was too mean and quiet for anyone to want to adopt him, and it was not difficult to see the surprise in the faces of the adult carers when they learned that someone had specifically requested to adopt him.
He has never had his own room, or his own things. He has never had anyone see potential in him.
So when he walks into the grand, ageing house that will be his home until he turns eighteen, he is determined that he will convince the man who is now his guardian that he made the right choice. Chu Wanning has many flaws, but he can be good. He knows it. If he just fulfils Huaizui’s expectations of him, he can prove that he’s worthy of even a little bit of his attention.
In his heart, a little voice whispers to him shyly. Maybe if he’s really good—if he’s smart enough, and nice enough, and well-behaved enough—Huaizui will want to be his parent, someday. Will want Chu Wanning to call him ‘father’, and will want Chu Wanning to be known as his son.
Of course, nothing is ever that easy.
-o-
Huaizui never hits him.
His punishments are different to how they were in the orphanage. There, if a child was bad, they’d be hit by one of the carers—sometimes with a hand, sometimes with whatever object was within reach. Chu Wanning was rarely bad, but they didn’t always need a reason to hit one of the children. More than once, he’d found himself with a red cheek and fast-developing bruises because of ‘how he’d looked’ at one of the carers. In this sense, Huaizui’s disdain for corporal punishment as being ‘uncouth’ and thus unnecessary was a pleasant change.
When Chu Wanning finds out what punishment he prefers, however, he quickly learns that there are things he likes less than being hit.
The first time it happens, it’s over something silly. A meal that Huaizui cooked which had chilli in it. Not so much that most children wouldn’t be able to handle the heat, but enough that Chu Wanning’s uncommonly sensitive tongue hadn’t been able to hear it, and his eyes had begun to water as his whole mouth burned.
He hadn’t been able to finish the meal. He apologised immediately, but Huaizui was irritated and insisted that he finish the rest. Chu Wanning’s stubborn, willful streak had kicked in. He’d put his chopsticks down and glared at the man, face still red and hot, and had refused to eat any more.
Huaizui had told him to go up to his room. He’d done so, hearing the sound of his guardian’s footsteps thudding heavily behind him, and had expected that he would be beaten for his refusal to eat.
Instead, Huaizui had opened the door of his too-big wardrobe, and told him to go stand inside.
Chu Wanning had stared up at him in surprise.
“Now, Chu Wanning. Do not make me ask you again,” Huaizui had said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Chu Wanning had looked at the man’s hands—much bigger than those of the female carers at the orphanage, and capable of doing much more damage—and had climbed inside.
The door of the wardrobe was closed behind him with a decisive click. Then, Chu Wanning heard the distinctive sound of a key scraping against a lock, and he realised that Huaizui must have kept the key with him for this purpose.
He understood, too late, what his punishment was.
Huaizui’s footsteps moved away from the wardrobe, and then away from Chu Wanning’s room. He’d turned off all the lights and closed the door behind him, so that there was no light visible even from the keyhole.
Chu Wanning was left in complete darkness.
Slowly, with his back against the side of the wardrobe, he had slid down until he was in a sitting position. And he had stared out into the pitch-black emptiness around him.
Darkness, Chu Wanning will learn many years later, does strange things to human minds.
The absence of sight, of visible surroundings, forces the mind to fill in the blanks. Envision what is around it—above, below, surrounding—so that it is easier to predict where one should move. It is easier for adults to visualise the things that they know, rationally, must be around them. They are more capable of separating their own discomfort of the unknown from their logical understanding of their situation.
It is not so easy for children to think like this. Particularly not for unusually clever, imaginative children like Chu Wanning.
For these types of children, the blank spots in the darkness are not filled with what they realistically know to be there. Chu Wanning, sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs on the bottom of the wardrobe, can feel the wood pressed against his back, and can touch it on either side of him. Yet in the darkness, the wardrobe seems unending. Like the shadows stretch out for ever and ever, like an abyss or a black hole. Ready to swallow him up.
The lightless space around him seems to pulsate. Writhing and moving , as if it is a living thing that has wrapped itself around him with no intention of letting go.
Chu Wanning’s throat had closed up.
It is still winter. He was cold when he was sitting down at the dinner table—cold enough that his fingers and toes had felt numb. Now, in the freezing, dark wardrobe, he was shivering uncontrollably. His teeth were chattering, too, though he was not sure if that was because of the cold or because he was afraid.
Chu Wanning could vividly picture hands, reaching out for him while he was unable to see them stretching towards him. Grabbing at his arms and face, clammy and sheet-white, with fingers curled into black claws at the tips. He could see things with sharp needle-like teeth and long slavering tongues, closing in around him and waiting until he was scared enough that he’d taste like fear when they ate him alive.
In the midst of his imaginings, he could feel the back of his neck prickle.
It was the feeling he got, without fail, when he was being watched.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his small voice hoarse. “Please let me out.”
Huaizui was not there to hear him, though. Chu Wanning was alone with whatever was in the wardrobe with him.
-o-
Huaizui returned an hour and a half later. He opened the wardrobe door, and it took a few moments for a violently trembling Chu Wanning to climb out.
“I do not enjoy punishing you,” he’d said, his voice mild. “So I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Chu Wanning had said, and Huaizui had hummed, satisfied.
When it was his bedtime a little while later, he lay down in his expansive, exposed bed. He kept his bedside lamp turned on, and he looked across from him, at the wardrobe.
With his arms wrapped around his thin frame, Chu Wanning had done his very best to pretend that a fearful, intrinsically intuitive part of him wasn’t absolutely certain that something was looking at him through the keyhole.
-o-
It happens a few times after that.
Chu Wanning tries—he tries so hard to be good. In the orphanage, he was always one of the better behaved children, and could avoid the worst of the punishments by pure virtue of remaining overlooked. With Huaizui, though, he is the only one there, as so whenever he messes up Huaizui notices immediately.
Once, it is because Huaizui tells him that he needs to make himself breakfast in the mornings before school, because Huaizui is too busy to cook for him. Chu Wanning ends up burning his breakfast and filling the kitchen with smoke, and Chu Wanning is eternally thankful afterwards that the fire alarm wasn’t set off. Once, it is because he got distracted while doing the extended educational work that Huaizui set for him at home, and spent nearly his whole allotted time learning about electrodynamics and diamagnetism rather than what he was supposed to be doing—which he remembers vaguely to be mathematics. Once, it is because his teacher called Huaizui to tell him that Chu Wanning had fallen asleep during class. Too many hours of lying awake, too afraid of the thing that was in his wardrobe to make himself vulnerable by closing his eyes, had taken its toll on his young body. As a result, he’d found himself beginning to drift off in the middle of lessons.
The most common reason that he gets in trouble, however, is because of the same reason he was first locked away. No matter how hard he tries, and how much he tells himself he’ll just do it, he can’t make himself eat spicy food.
He tries to shove it down before he can taste it—to inhale it straight down his throat, and wash it down with water, but Huaizui snaps at him for eating with poor manners. Anything else he tries ends consistently with him coughing and spluttering, tears streaming uncontrollably down the sides of his face.
“I’m sorry,” he says to Huaizui, already inching away in anticipation of the man’s response. “I—I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it. I just can’t eat it.”
Huaizui just sighs, a deep, disappointed sound that makes Chu Wanning nearly as upset as he is about what’s going to come.
And as he is every time he misbehaves, Chu Wanning is locked in the dark.
When he has only been a little bad, it is for half an hour. When he has done something to really displease Huaizui, it is two hours. Two hours which can feel like days, as he huddles as far into the back of the wardrobe as he possibly can be, and waits for it to be over.
Today is one of the two-hour days. Huaizui has truly gotten frustrated with Chu Wanning’s continued intolerance for spice, and his failure to build up a tolerance despite his punishments. He has found something that even Chu Wanning’s fear of the dark hasn’t been able to overcome, and it annoys him to no end. So he has told Chu Wanning that every time he does not eat, he will be spending extra time locked in the dark, until he gets over his ridiculous stubbornness and learns how to do as he’s told.
So Chu Wanning sits in the wardrobe, with small bumps raised on the fine skin of his arms and ice slicking its way down his spine. With the dark, blinding and all-encompassing, enflaming that acute fear that devours all other feelings.
The feeling of being watched has never gone away, though it is always worse when he is actually in the wardrobe, or in pitch darkness. It is so constant that Chu Wanning has come to expect it, and is more surprised when he doesn’t feel that prickle at the back of his neck. Still, he keeps very quiet and very still as he sits, and tells himself in his own head that it will be over soon, just like all the other times.
But today, as it turns out, is not like all the other times.
Today, as he looks out into the shadows, Chu Wanning feels fingertips brushing against the skin of his cheek.
He gasps, audibly, and flinches back—certain, now, so certain that some creature, some monster, has actually come to eat him, while he is locked in the wardrobe, and Huaizui will never know until it's too late, and he’s going to die here —
“Hello?” something says from within the darkness.
Chu Wanning stops breathing.
His heart stutters, and he goes perfectly still.
“....Hello?” he asks.
He hears the sound of something moving, somewhere in front of him. It sounds far away. Farther away than it could be in the confined space of the wardrobe, and certainly farther away than it had been when it had brushed against his cheek. It is the rustle of clothing, and the sound of something crawling towards him on its hands and knees.
It stops before it gets too close to him. Chu Wanning strains his ears for anything else, but there is only silence. Silence, and darkness.
It is unbearable.
“Who are you?” he whispers into the shadows.
His voice reverberates through the wardrobe, even hushed as it is.
A beat. And then—
“Who are you ?” the voice asks.
It is a child’s voice. A boy’s voice.
Chu Wanning blinks. His mouth opens a little, as he considers how he should respond to that. He is still very afraid, but there was a playfulness to that voice. A petulance, even, that sounds so very human.
“I… I’m Chu Wanning,” he says, hesitantly.
There are more sounds of movement. Of whoever is in front of him crawling closer, until they are right before him. Close enough that he can hear the sounds of their breathing.
“Hi, Chu Wanning. I’m Mo Ran.”
Mo Ran.
It is a remarkably normal name, for something that lives in the darkness.
“What are you doing in here, Chu Wanning?” Mo Ran asks him.
He can feel Mo Ran’s breath, faint against his face. As if Mo Ran’s own face is only inches away from him.
“I’m being punished,” Chu Wanning says. “I was badly behaved.”
“What did you do?” Mo Ran asks. He sounds curious.
“I…” Chu Wanning suddenly feels embarrassed about the reason he’s being punished. For some reason, he doesn’t want this boy in the wardrobe to think that he’s childish, for not being able to handle spicy food. He says it anyway, because it’s the truth. “I don’t like spice. I didn’t finish my dinner.”
There is a shuffle. The sound of a child sitting on the floor and crossing his legs. Chu Wanning can hear his feet brushing against the wooden bottom of the wardrobe, and knows that he is barefoot. This is comforting, for some reason—it provides a starting image for him to work off, when he thinks of this boy.
“Really?” Mo Ran asks. “That’s weird. I love spice.”
Chu Wanning frowns into the darkness. Mo Ran’s voice isn’t judging, but Chu Wanning still feels inadequate.
“Why are you here?” he asks, determined to turn the subject around.
“I’m being punished too.”
Chu Wanning didn’t expect that response. Though, when he thinks about it, it makes sense. Why else would there be another little boy locked in the dark with him, unless he was being punished as well?
“What did you do?”
He wonders if maybe Mo Ran didn’t want to finish his food, either.
He hears, but does not see, Mo Ran shrug.
“Broke the rules,” he says. “I’m not good at doing what I’m told, so I’m in trouble all the time. This is the longest they’ve ever left me for, though.”
This is the longest Chu Wanning has ever been left here as well. He thinks it might even be past the two hour mark. Closer to two hours and fifteen minutes, maybe, which makes sense considering how angry Huaizui was.
“How long have you been in here?” Chu Wanning asks.
“Guess,” Mo Ran says, a hint of humour in his voice.
“Two hours?” Chu Wanning guesses, predicting off his own idea of a long punishment.
“More,” Mo Ran says.
“Three?” Chu Wanning guesses again, eyes widening in the dark.
“More.”
“Five?”
“More.”
“Eight?”
“More.”
Chu Wanning stares, blankly, horrified.
He had been upset when Huaizui had locked him in here, but he doesn’t think he’d be locked in for more than eight hours. He suddenly feels that he’s been very lucky, and he shouldn’t feel so sad at all. He also feels bad for Mo Ran, and a rush of sympathy flows through him.
“Are you scared?” he asks, quietly.
He’s petrified, and he’s been here for at least less than a quarter of the time Mo Ran has been here. He can’t imagine being kept in the dark for so long, and he thinks he would want someone to check and see if he was okay.
“Nah, I’m not afraid of the dark,” Mo Ran says dismissively. Then he pauses, as if thinking. “I am hungry though.”
Chu Wanning frowns. “Hungry?”
There is silence for a moment. The sound of Mo Ran shifting in place. Chu Wanning feels that sensation of being watched intensify sharply.
It isn’t as scary though, now that he knows it’s Mo Ran and not a monster.
“Yeah. I get hungry pretty easily, and they don’t like it. I’m not allowed to eat when I’m being punished.”
Mo Ran said he’d been in there for more than eight hours. That meant more than eight hours without eating.
Chu Wanning had been punished by having his food taken away in the past, and he keenly remembers what it felt like to go a day without eating. His stomach pangs in sympathetic response, and he feels even more unhappy for Mo Ran.
“...I’m sorry.”
When Mo Ran responds, there is both surprise in his voice and an odd warmth.
“Silly, A-Ning. Why would you apologise? It’s not your fault.”
Chu Wanning feels embarrassed again. Both because he apologised and Mo Ran called him silly, and because Mo Ran called him A-Ning. The others at the orphanage called him A-Ning as well, but he didn’t like it when they said it.
For some reason, it sounds nicer when Mo Ran says it.
“I know it’s not my fault,” he says, his voice edging towards a snap as he fights off his embarrassment. Then, just as quickly, he is filled with regret. He softens his tone. “I’m just… sorry. That they aren’t nice to you. It’s not fair.”
He can’t explain it, but he knows that Mo Ran is smiling at him.
“You’re pretty sweet, aren’t you?” he says.
Chu Wanning blushes, and is suddenly very thankful that it’s pitch black.
“Mo Ran!” he says, his voice sharp, but still tinged with mortification.
He can hear Mo Ran laughing at him. He has a loud, delighted laugh that is very pleasant to the ears.
“You’re easy to tease. You don’t have to feel sorry for me, being stuck here. How can I feel sad when I have you to keep me company from time to time, huh?”
Chu Wanning doesn’t want to go back into the dark again. But he also… doesn’t like the idea of Mo Ran being alone.
“You could come with me,” he says, his voice halting.
His heart beats a little in his chest. It is only once he notices this that he also notices that it hadn’t been beating in fear, like normal. Sometime during his interaction with Mo Ran, his terror had melted away into inquisitiveness about about his bizarre conversation partner. It is not an unpleasant realisation.
“Go with you?” Mo Ran asked, sounding confused. “Where?”
Chu Wanning’s shoulders hunch in his discomfort at having to explain. His hands flutter from grasping around his arms to wrapping around his knees, and he opens and closes his mouth a few times before finding the right words to say.
“To my home. It’s… not like a family, and Huaizui is strict sometimes,” Chu Wanning says. Then he hurries to add, “But he doesn’t stop me from eating.”
Mo Ran is quiet after that. He is quiet for so long that Chu Wanning begins to worry that he has embarrassed himself again, and that Mo Ran doesn’t like him at all and will think he’s weird and too clingy for making the offer. The nervousness that this thought brings is enough to make Chu Wanning curl into a tighter ball, and consider telling Mo Ran to forget it, that he was being ridiculous.
But then before he can rescind the offer, Mo Ran says—
“You’d really let me come with you.”
And there is wonder in his voice.
Chu Wanning nods. Then he realises, humiliatingly, that Mo Ran can’t see him nodding.
He forces out a response. “Yes.”
“Why?” Mo Ran asks. There is a challenge, in that word. As if he does not believe Chu Wanning.
Chu Wanning thinks about this carefully.
“Because… your carers aren’t nice to you. And I think that Mo Ran—” he stops, then starts again. “I think Mo Ran deserves to be treated well.”
He sounds awkward when he says it. He knows he sounds awkward. It’s exasperating, because he really means it.
“Will you make me go away later?” Mo Ran asks.
There is a trace of angst in his voice that makes Chu Wanning’s chest go tight.
“No, of course not,” he says, and this time his voice comes out firm.
“Never?” Mo Ran asks.
“Never.”
“Promise?”
His voice is strangely intense—low, and serious. The sort of tone that doesn’t sound quite right, on a little boy.
It is enough to make Chu Wanning hesitate, just for a moment.
But then he thinks of Mo Ran, who has been sealed in the dark for more than eight hours, and who has people that look after him who won’t let him eat. He thinks about the fact that he called Chu Wanning ‘A-Ning’ and has a very nice laugh. He thinks about the fact that Mo Ran told him he was sweet.
He doesn’t want Mo Ran to stay in the dark, and it’s not like his home isn’t big enough for Mo Ran to live there. The matrons and carers didn’t think Chu Wanning deserved to live in such a big, comfortable place, and Chu Wanning doesn’t think he does either. It only makes sense, since he has so much space, to share it with Mo Ran. Huaizui rarely comes into Chu Wanning’s room, and he has all their groceries delivered by someone else, so he probably wouldn’t even notice if there was an extra person living there.
There is… also the fact that Chu Wanning is a little bit lonely.
It would be nice. To have someone to share his space with, when Huaizui was gone during the day. To have someone who could laugh, and talk, and smile.
“...I promise,” Chu Wanning says, eventually.
Mo Ran’s response is immediate, and ecstatic.
“Thank you, A-Ning. I’ll pay you back, okay? I’ll look after you, and eat all your spicy food so that you don’t have to, and protect you when it’s dark and you’re scared.”
Chu Wanning’s face feels hot again. “You… don’t have to.”
“Nah, I’m gonna,” Mo Ran says, and Chu Wanning can hear the grin in his voice. His own lips twitch up responsively, entirely against his own will. “We’re friends now, and that’s what friends are supposed to do.”
Chu Wanning is taken aback. He’s not quite sure at what point in their conversation they’d become friends. He’s not even sure what requirements need to be fulfilled in order for two people to be classified as friends.
Friendship has always been something alien to him. Something he understands, in theory, and has seen in the interactions between other children, yet has never been able to apply to himself. He’s nervous, almost. He doesn’t know how to be a good friend, and he’s worried that if he’s bad at it, Mo Ran will regret being his friend.
“I’ve never had a friend,” he says, more to himself than to Mo Ran. Too late, he realises his admission.
“No?” Mo Ran asks, and Chu Wanning prepares himself for the derision that he knows is inevitable. He’s seven, and he knows it’s not normal for someone as old as him not to have had even one friend. “That’s okay. Neither have I.”
Chu Wanning feels immediate relief.
It’s not so demeaning, then, if Mo Ran hasn’t had a friend either. Mo Ran is amiable, and seems very confident, so if he hasn’t had a friend before then maybe Chu Wanning is normal. This way as well, maybe Mo Ran won’t notice if Chu Wanning isn’t good at being his friend.
“Because we’re each other's first friend, that makes us best friends, okay A-Ning?” Mo Ran says, as if this is an irrefutable fact.
A little glow sparks in Chu Wanning's stomach, little glow in his stomach, when Mo Ran calls him A-Ning.
“Okay,” he says.
If he doesn’t know how to be a friend, then he knows even less how to be a best friend. He’s aware that it’s even more special than a friend, and he thinks that he’s very lucky that he is Mo Ran’s first friend, and therefore got to have the title before anyone else.
He thinks that perhaps he and Mo Ran can figure out how to be best friends together.
“Best friends forever,” Mo Ran says, and sounds very satisfied with the words.
Forever.
Chu Wanning feels giddy. He’s never thought, before, that anyone could want him forever.
-o-
Huaizui opens one of the two wardrobe doors and lets him out fifteen minutes later. It has been two and a half hours, and the absolute longest that Chu Wanning has ever been locked in the wardrobe.
“Have you learned your lesson, Chu Wanning?” he asks the small boy, once he has stood up straight and brushed the dust off his white shirt.
“Yes,” Chu Wanning says, solemnly.
In the very back of his mind, Huaizui thinks that something is different about his ward. He attributes it to a greater conviction to be well-behaved and avoid punishment, and does not realise that the difference is that this time, Chu Wanning isn’t shaking with terror as he leaves the wardrobe.
He nods at the boy, appeased by the perception of his teachings bearing fruit, and even claps Chu Wanning on the shoulder before he leaves the room.
He takes the key with him, as he leaves. The wardrobe doors remain unlocked.
Once Chu Wanning has heard Huaizui’s footsteps disappear down the staircase, and most likely towards the left wing of the large house where his office is, he turns back to the wardrobe. He reaches out a slender hand, grasps the old-fashioned, western-style bronze handle, and opens the left-hand wardrobe door.
A small figure—a little bigger than Chu Wanning, but not by much—is crouched in the back corner of the wardrobe.
Large eyes peer at him through the curtain of Chu Wanning’s hanging shirts.
They are a colour Chu Wanning has never seen a real person have before. A colour so dark it could almost be black, except for the stream of sunlight that has come in through the windows and illuminated a striking violet hue in his irises. His skin is a darker tan shade than Chu Wanning’s, which is unexpected, for a boy who’s been trapped in the shadows for so long. His hair is different to Chu Wanning’s as well—short and messy, whereas Chu Wanning’s is kept traditionally long and well-combed.
He is, Chu Wanning notes with a little surprise, very pretty.
“You can come out now, Mo Ran,” he says to the boy.
Mo Ran smiles at him with gleaming white teeth, and climbs out of the wardrobe.
“Thanks, A-Ning,” he says. “We’re gonna have so much fun.”