find me with a flashlight (i'm standing right behind you)

by areyouabadwolf2

Summary:

For some reason, Maomao remembers her and Chue's chat about the Moon Prince loitering around the former brothel.

Would she be crazy if she considered it? Everyone else in the building believed it was haunted; if Maomao participated in a group hallucination that hardly counted as crazy.

And so, for some reason or another, Maomao sits on her futon and looks around, before saying, “Um … Ka Zuigetsu?”

There’s a clatter in the bathroom and Maomao’s heart is in her throat.

No way…

 

OR

 

When Maomao needs a cheap place to stay, she doesn't even think twice about the low month-to-month rent at the old Verdigris House.

So what if it used to a brothel, and everyone says it's haunted? She doesn't buy into that stuff and she's faced worse than ghosts.

But when strange things start to happen in her room, and a pretty boy claiming to be a long lost prince keeps appearing in her bathroom, she might have to pay up.

Maomao asks the question she always does: what's the cost?

She should be asking: is she willing to pay it?

Notes:

So this has been haunting me for a while now (haha,) and I finally figured out some problems I was having with it, so here it comes...

I don't know how long it will be, but not super long, a few chapters. Content warnings: Maomao is by no means a trainwreck, but she she is Not Okay. It's not the main point, it's all just mentioned. She's still funny tho! Fair warning, there's not a true happy ending here, but I think it's worth it.

A little lore about me, I ONLY listen to a genre of music called emo rap. I'm hear to tell you about a boy named sewerperson, who has a lot of allegorical and concept songs. haunting, or being haunted by, someone is a recurring theme, and this is inspired by a handful of bars of his. this title is a lyric from a feature verse on a biteki song called 'please say that you love me.'

Chapter 1

A long time ago…

 

Ka Zugietsu readjusts his mask and peeks out of the alley. There’s many things a crown prince shouldn’t do, and sneaking through the pleasure district is certainly one of them. He feels odd without his attendant, Basen, but supposes that is part of sneaking.

 

He steps into the back door as the note instructed and catches the eye of an old woman. Just as he steps toward her, he feels a tug at his robes. “What in the - oh, my, it’s you! How did you get here, little thing?”

 

The crown prince squats down beside the small, black cat with the large blue eyes. The cat balks at his proffered fingers, as she always does, and yowls at him. That’s unusual, she usually doesn’t make much noise.

 

She usually only hangs around his palace gardens, rolling in the flowers and trying to sneak into the greenhouses, honestly. How she ended up here, on a stormy night, is beyond him.

 

“You should go home, Xiaomao,” Ka Zuigetsu tried to scratch her chin and she batted at him. “No place for a good girl like you.”

 

Then he rose and walked farther into the Verdigris House. 

 

He was taken to a back room by the madame, and nervously tapped his fingers upon his arm. He didn’t usually do these things, or go to these places. 

 

A bustle of women come in through the door - the madame, a young assistant who serves him tea, and a trio of fine, but scantily dressed, courtesans. The middle woman speaks, “The madame says you responded to our inquiry and claim you can guarantee my safety. I need proof.”

 

“Then so do I,” the crown prince says. “Let me see the tablet, and I’ll give you whatever proof you need to show my word is good.” 

 

The woman pulls a jade tablet from her robes, which is impressive given they are sparse, and slides it towards him. The tablet is brilliant green, split in two, and defaced. Ka Zuigetsu sits up straighter. She pulls it back. “Now, then. Let’s establish mutual trust. Drink.”

 

“Drink?” 

 

“The tea we prepared for you,” the courtesan has a beautiful smile and it is unnerving. He gets what she is asking: if you’re so important that you can guarantee safety, your own safety is a concern. Prove yourself by drinking this tea, prepared by a stranger out of sight, with no taster. “Drink it.”

 

Ka Zuigetsu really wants that tablet, so he goes to drink. Suddenly, there is a familiar hiss and yowl, and the blasted cat is in the room again, and attacking his ankle! He knocks the cup over. 

 

The madam hollers, “Will someone get that damned thing out of here?”

 

“Wait, wait!” The crown prince says, trying to dislodge the cat from his fabrics. She surprisingly allows him to pick her up. “This is my cat, I apologize, she’s temperamental. Repour it, I’ll drink.”

 

Mrow! The cat is pawing at him, wanting his full attention for once. Usually she ignores him entirely. “Stop it, Xiaomao.”

 

When he raises the new cup to his mouth, the cat makes one last attempt to headbut it away from him but he dodges her. The courtesans watch him swallow. The cat hisses when he reaches to pet her, and darts away. So, so temperamental.

 

His heart is racing, half expecting to feel the tingle of poison at any second, but he’s fine. The beautiful woman hands him the tablet which he stores in his own robes. He tells her he’ll be in touch soon, and rises to leave. 

 

The crown prince, shrouded in his veil, is shown back out the same door, and is only half surprised to find the cat grumbling in the alley. She hisses and yowls and puffs her tail, but weaves between his feet regardless. “What is with you tonight?”

 

Ka Zuigetsu makes it three steps before he stumbles into the wall, and collapses. 

 

He lies on his back, seeing the stars above him, and losing sensation in his arms and legs. Xiaomao, now meowing loudly, climbs across his chest and noses at his chin. She seems distressed. He can’t feel his tongue anymore, otherwise he would tell her it is okay. 

 

It is not okay. The crown prince dies quickly in the alley behind the Verdigris House. He is alone with his cat for only a moment, before the door opens and a bustle of women pour out. “Get him in here before anyone sees - and don’t forget that tablet, dammit.”

 

When they drag his body inside and shut her out, the little cat scratches at the door until her claws bleed at the quick, but no one lets her in.

 

Nowadays…

 

When Maomao rents a room at Verdigris, she knows it's not anything grand. 

 

But Maomao’s cheap. And broke. She just needs a room for the rest of the year, to finish her schooling and move on.

 

If it smells a little, and the neighbors yell at odd hours, big deal. Maomao grew up in real poverty, this isn’t all that bad. It’s warm, mostly, and the water runs. Her door locks and she has a window. There’s room for her plants and books, and her futon. That’s enough for now.

 

She learns pretty quickly  not to mention where she lives though. Most people react one of two ways. Either they’re disturbed because Maomao is slumming it, or they’re disturbed because the place she’s slumming it is supposedly super haunted.

 

The thing is, Maomao doesn’t believe in hauntings. She’s a toxicologist in training, a scientist at heart. There is no basis for hauntings . More than likely, people are just afraid of the neighborhood for the living people, and use the dead as an excuse to not seem like an asshole.

 

Either way, it doesn’t matter to Maomao. She just needs to make it a few months until she can graduate, and get the hell out of this city.

 

So she ignores the comments from others, and the odd ghost tours who loiter on the curb out front. She ignores her weird neighbors who ask if she saw that man limping in the hall last night with his cane, or the syphilitic woman moaning down in the basement, or the giggling prostitutes in the lobby. 

 

Maomao would love to say no, she hasn’t, but unfortunately that just sounds like her childhood, so some nights she does indeed see that in her nightmares. But never in her apartment!

 

It's several weeks into living there before Maomao notices anything off. Her life is busy. She studies full time at the university on the Good Side of the City, attends her internship at the hospital, then has to hock it back to her neighborhood to the Flower Garden where she works as a spa attendant. The clientele sucks, but the tips are good. Luckily Maomao works on the actual day spa side, applying her anatomical and herbal expertise as a masseuse and esthetician. She knows the girls on the night spa side work a lot harder with a lot worse people.

 

So when Maomao is at her humble abode, she’s usually sleeping, regardless of the time of day. When she is awake, she works on her assignments, tends to her small indoor garden, and concocts her experiments.

 

She doesn’t have much room to try things out here, so she sticks to small healing and pain remedies that she tests on self inflicted wounds on her forearm. Maomao hardly ever feels the initial injury, so some days it feels moot to ease her pain. More than anything, Maomao can try out the occasional mind altering substance, when she has spare change - alcoholic spirits, hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana edibles, aphrodisiac candies. She knows they’re no good for her, and usually regrets it, but her curiosity persists. Maybe one of these days she actually will feel something, if she can just find the right toxin.

 

It is on one of these days, sitting in the frame of her open window and stubbing out a joint, that she first experiences something … odd. It had been a long day, and she could feel her physical body relaxing. She rises and closes the window, before flopping on her bed. Maomao sits there for an unknown period of time before she hears a rustling of paper. She turns her head to the side and sees the pages of her textbook open and fluttering, as if they were being leafed through.

 

Maomao hoists herself and heads to close the window, and cut off the breeze -

 

But the window is already closed. 

 

The rustling has stopped. Maomao squinted at herself in the reflection, brain moving slowly from the weed. She glances back at the textbook, which lies open on her small table. She’s certain she had closed that, too, after her studying.

 

With a frown, she glances between the book and the window, open and closed, trying to connect the dots. Maybe she is too stoned for this. She shakes her head and returns to bed, pulling the covers over her. 

 

After that incident, there’s a handful of unexplained experiences that Maomao chooses to ignore entirely. 

 

First, Maomao finds that at certain times of day, the temperature of her room drops suddenly. Usually in the early mornings or dead of night. She mentions it to the superintendent, who just shrugs and tells her it’s the dead of summer, she should be grateful for the chill.

 

Second, she notices things being straightened out. Maomao is not a careless person, but she lives alone in a small, shitty room. Neatness is not her main concern. If her pens are crooked and her laundry unfolded, who cares. At the same time, it’s sort of nice to come home to a tidier place, so she doesn’t question it. Maybe she’s sleepwalking (sleepcleaning?)

 

Then, she starts to notice her books being rearranged. Maomao has a small collection of personal books. Most are texts on botany or medicine, but she may also have a handful of … more erotic works. She’s not a particularly sexual person, and tells herself it's all read in pursuit of a better understanding of anatomy. Every few days she has to reorder them. The nonfiction texts are occasionally left open to pages on various natural poisons, while the porn books are often shoved back into place haphazardly, like someone started to read them and then got too embarrassed to continue. Couldn’t be Maomao, but it must have been.

 

When she finds small, precise characters traced in the margins of her notes, she starts to get concerned. In neat calligraphy that is definitely not hers, someone ponders herbal toxins, specifically ones with few side effects. Paralysis is scribbled more than once. So is wood sorrel, though Maomao doesn’t understand why - wood sorrel can be toxic in large quantities but it wouldn't cause paralysis. She should know that, so why would she write it? Despite the fact that it is clearly not her handwriting, it had to be her who wrote it.

 

One night while Maomao sleeps she is awoken by a loud crash and sits up. In the dark, something - no, someone - is moving away from her and then is just gone. She quickly turns on the light but there’s nothing, no one. Her window is locked, her door is locked, the bathroom is empty. There’s nowhere else to hide in here. The only thing out of place, is her largest pot has been knocked off the window sill, and her budding hemlock plant lays strewn about the floor in its potting soil. 

 

Maomao hangs her head and sighs. She has no clue how she managed that! 

 

It is the next week in the mildewy laundry room that Maomao is approached by her strangest neighbor, Miss Chue. Miss Chue lives in the room below with her husband - or supposedly, for Maomao has never actually seen the husband. The woman is overly familiar, and a bit nonsensical, but Maomao doesn’t mind. It’s not often she spends time with other people outside of work or school, and Miss Chue is just strange enough to be tolerable. 

 

“Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao!” Chue waves from atop a laundry machine.

 

Maomao smiles, “Miss Chue, Miss Chue, how are you?”

 

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” Chue drawls. “Because I finally have one for you.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

Miss Chue grins. “A ghost story, of course!”

 

Maomao rolls her eyes and says, “Haven’t you told them all by now?”

 

“Uh-uh! I thought this one was always a bunch of baloney, so I never bothered. But then the Quack told me he saw him for himself! Outside of your door, no less, Miss Maomao!” Chue hops off the machine as it beeps. 

 

Maomao feels the hair on the back of her next stand up. “Saw who?”

 

As the women load their machines, Chue tells her neighbor, “Why the last imperial of course! The Moon Prince! Guen thinks he’s here!”

 

“Who?” Maomao asks again, confused.

 

Chue rolls her eyes. “You know! The only son of the last emperor, who went missing one night never to be found again! Historians have searched for him far and wide, but there’s little clues. According to his Wikipedia page, records indicate the prince was a peculiar boy, who didn’t want to ascend the throne, and begged his father to set him free. I always figured he just escaped! But Guen thinks he saw him here outside your door, which means he’s been here the whole time!” 

 

“Wait, no, I know about the Moon Prince story,” Maomao sighed. They learned the tale in school, he’s something of a national mystery. There’s like three documentaries on him but Maomao has seen none of them as it never particularly interested her. “Who the hell is Guen? Did we get a new neighbor?”

 

“Guen is Quack, Maomao. Silly girl!” 

 

That makes sense. Sort of. “Okay, so say there are ghosts here - what the hell would the Moon Prince be hanging around here for, least of all at my door? This is nonsense, Miss Chue, but good try.”

 

Chue pulls a pack of chocolate covered raisins from her pocket and munches. “He died here obviously, like all the others.”

 

“You think the last prince of Li died at the Verdigris House? What would he be doing here?” Maomao held her hand out.

 

Her neighbor obliged her and waggled her eyebrows. “Hmm, what would an unmarried prince be doing at the most esteemed brothel of his time, you ask?”

 

Maomao huffed a laugh. “Well, say it’s true then, at least he didn’t die a virgin.”

 

On the other side of the room, a box of laundry soap suddenly clatters to the floor, startling both women. They glance at each other before going over. No one else is here, and yet in the dusting of the chemical is a large foot print retreating towards the boiler room, which remains locked at all times. 

 

Maomao tests the knob anyway, even though neither woman saw anything other than the box of powder go flying through the air out of nowhere. Miss Chue is humming suspiciously beside her. “You don’t think it was…?”

 

She stares blankly at her friend. Like hell is Maomao going to bite. This building is full of drafts, so it was clearly that. Though she is still thinking of an excuse for the footprint. “No, I don’t think it was a ghost, you idiot. They aren’t real and even if they were, they’re certainly not here.”

 

“Not even,” Chue leaned in and leered. “The ghost of Ka Zuigetsu?”

 

Ka Zuigetsu is the historical birth name of the Moon Prince. Whom Chue seems to think died after a night of pleasure right here in this building back when it was a functioning brothel, and now lurks in the moldy laundry room to spy on two broke girls washing their underwear.

 

Man, this guy would be quite the pervert, according to Chue.

 

“Obviously not!” Maomao barks as her machine buzzes. She ignores Chu's oooooing and wooooo ing in her spookiest voice while she switches her things over. She ignores her so good that she forgets about it entirely, particularly the part where Chue never elaborates on the long gone mystery Moon Prince supposedly being spotted outside Maomao’s room specifically. 

 

The thought crosses her mind that night when she pulls her head up from spotting in the sink and there’s an angel behind her.

 

Okay, angel is dramatic, he’s a man but he’s devastating. Maomao loses her breath at his fine face and long dark hair, before remembering there is a man standing behind her and spins around. 

 

But he’s gone.

 

There’s no one there - not in the shower or behind the door or under the bed. Maomao is usually a stoic person, and has been in some perilous situations before. But her heart is racing. 

 

She saw him.

 

So she’s either been crazy all this time, and been imagining someone nosing around her room, or someone is actually in her freaking room!!

 

Maomao drags her hands down her face. She had only just gotten back from her shift - she hasn’t had a drink in days, hasn’t tested anything new lately, this isn’t a side effect. If she’s seeing things, it’s a purely Maomao produced hallucination. Maybe being crazy is not so bad? 

 

No! Maomao shakes her head. Maybe for normal people! 

 

But Maomao comes from crazy. Her mother lost her mind in a schizophrenic episode and never recovered it. Maomao is short one finger tip for that. Her father is the opposite - he can’t even see what’s real, and has to imagine people as chess pieces just to keep them straight.

 

Maomao is logical. Scientific. Precise, even when she may be reckless. She can’t afford to be crazy, she’s trying to get far away from crazy.

 

Okay, so if there’s no one here and she is not crazy, what possibilities does that leave?

 

For some reason, Maomao remembers her and Chue's chat about the Moon Prince loitering around the former brothel. 

 

Would she be crazy if she considered it? Everyone else in the building believed it was haunted; if Maomao participated in a group hallucination that hardly counted as crazy.

 

And so, for some reason or another, Maomao sits on her futon and looks around, before saying, “Um … Ka Zuigetsu?”

 

There’s a clatter in the bathroom and Maomao’s heart is in her throat. 

 

 No way…

 

Suddenly in her bathroom doorway is the angel from the mirror, blinking at her, looking equally surprised. Her jaw is open and her mind is blank. He speaks first. “I didn’t think you’d know my real name.”

 

Maomao reels her head back. “What?”

 

The beautiful man scratches at his head. His silky hair is pulled up in a little bun but mostly cascades around his shoulders. His eyes are a deep violet and lovely, his bone structure nearly flawless. But on his right cheek is a ragged scar and he has deep bags under her eyes, equal in their purple hue. He is in very formal and very fine robes, and holds his hands together in his sleeves. 

 

“I’m not used to hearing it,” he says. “Let alone being called for.”

 

“What?” Maomao repeats, dumbfounded.

 

The man furrows his brow. “ What what? You called for me, I’m just responding. It’s the polite thing to do.”

 

With a shake of her head she springs up and onto her feet on the futon, so she is slightly taller than his very tall form. “ What are you doing in here, you pervert?!”

 

“Pervert?” The angel looks incredulous and offended. “I’m not a pervert! I’m just … stuck here!” 

 

Maomao snaps, “You’re just stuck in a woman’s bedroom? It’s you who’s been reading my porn, hasn’t it -“

 

The beautiful man flaps his billowing sleeve, and looks embarrassed though he doesn’t blush. “Stop! I read the pornography once, mind you I had no clue what it would entail. I was looking for more reference material.”

 

“I bet you were.” Maomao narrowed her eyes. Then shook her head. “Get out of my room!”

 

The beautiful man makes a surprisingly unattractive face as he grimaces. “Fine.”

 

And then he walks straight towards her, and just as Maomao has the wherewithal to try to backpedal, he is gone and all she feels is a sudden drop in temperature. She’s all alone.

 

Maomao does what a sane person always does when confronted with their potential insanity: absolutely nothing. 

 

She is far too busy and far too broke to loiter on this. Either the man was there and willingly left, or she imagined him. Neither is ideal.

 

For the next few days, nothing happens. No strange breezes, no reorganized desk, no beautiful men in her mirror.

 

Then one night there is a knock. She looks through the peephole but the hallway is empty. Maybe someone dropped something by? So keeping the chain secured, she opens the door. Just as she does there is another knock.

 

But no one is there. Wait…

 

Maomao shuts the door and turns to her bathroom door, which is also shut. Please, god, not this again.

 

As much as she does not want to, she does reach for the knob, which is unusually cold and opens the door.

 

This time she is not surprised by him. Just annoyed. He smiles at her, like they’re old friends, “Hello -“

 

Maomao sticks her head in the bathroom and he stumbles back. “How in the world do you get in here?”

 

She knows she should be mad and maybe even scared but at this point she’s so curious as to how. Besides, he did knock. Maomao knows bad men, and this guy isn’t one. He seems marshmellowy, and sort of fancy, and plain strange. 

 

He blinks. “I don’t know, sometimes I’m just here.”

 

“Okay, but why?”

 

“Because this is where I am.” He says this as if it makes perfect sense. By this point they’re on either side of the door frame, and he’s sort of looming over her. He’s quite tall but she’s also quite short.

 

Maomao pinches her brow. “Try again, buddy.”

 

He frowns at her use of the word buddy . “I’ll have you know I was here long before you, little thing!”

 

“What are you the previous tenant or something?” Maomao says it, but even she knows it’s unlikely. That explains almost nothing. 

 

“Or something,” he smiles, saccharine sweet. His words are casual but his inflection sounds so proper.

 

Maomao can - nay must - kick this man out again. Even if he will just show back up like a beautiful stray cat. She should, no questions asked. And yet, curiosity is both her greatest strength and weakness …

 

“I’m only asking once again. Why are you in my room?” Maomao glares.

 

“Because I can’t leave,” the man blurts before her question is done. Then he sighs and says. “Or I can’t go far, that is. I’m … tethered. To this place. And before you ask why I don’t know for sure - aside from my understanding that some spirits linger after death in the place they die until they find resolution, I truly have no explanation. So there it is.”

 

“Oh, so you’re dead?” Maomao says sarcastically.

 

The beautiful man sighs and pouts to the ceiling. “You don’t believe me.”

 

Maomao wants to say, obviously!!!! But instead she finds herself asking, fingers to her chin, “Say you are dead. You’re not truly … Ka Zuigetsu, are you?”

 

He blinks down at her, eyes wide. He sounds like the shocked one when he says, “I am, truly. Or was. It’s still so strange to hear my name again.”

 

Oddly enough Maomao has an easy enough time accepting this guy thinks he’s a ghost haunting her bedroom. Who is she to really question it, after all? She doesn’t have a better answer after trying to find one.

 

But that he’s actually the ghost of history’s greatest mystery, the lost Moon Prince, Ka Zuigetsu? Come on! 

 

Maomao plays along. “I suppose it would be strange to hear your name after being dead for so long. I think the history channel says you went missing over 110 years ago.”

 

“The blasted history channel!” He throws his head back. “They get it all wrong! For instance - that is my name, but never what I was called. It’s an offense for anyone but a higher rank to use an imperial’s true name.”

 

“So only the emperor could call you Zuigetsu?” Maomao cocks her head. 

 

He nods with a frown. “Exactly. It’s rather confusing as a young boy.”

 

This seems like a sensitive subject. “So then, what did they call you?”

 

At this he brightens, almost sparkling, “Ah, Jinshi! You should call me that, too, Maomao.”

 

She narrows her eyes. “How do you know my name?”

 

“I heard other tenants speak to you,” Jinshi points to her desk. “Your name is written in all your books. Also, I’ve read your mail. You have a lot of credit card debt.”

 

Maomao can’t believe this guy! So much for being dead for decades! “I knew it! You’re no ghost, certainly not from last century! Come on, the history channel? Credit card debt? Those are way too modern.”

 

Jinshi, or whatever, sighs. “What do you think I stare into the corner all this time? I’m tethered here because I’m looking for something! So I read people’s books and watch their televisions and read their mail to try to find it. I’ve modernized, thank you.”

 

Maomao shakes her head. “No.”

 

Jinshi balks, “No, what?”

 

“No, thank you!” Maomao flaps her arms. “I’ve had enough crazy for a lifetime. You need to leave, sir.”

 

“Well, wait, now, I’m only going to come back.” Jinshi turns big, sad eyes on her.

 

“ Why?” 

 

“Because I’m looking for something,” Jinshi says, and she feels that cold creep in again. “And I swear to god it’s you.”

Chapter 2

Summary:

He sighs, “It mattered at the time, beyond just its effect on me. Now, it only matters to me - I died with regret.”

Maomao crosses her arms. “What kind of regret exactly?”

“All kinds,” Jinshi looked down at his hands, turning them over, as he spoke softly. “But my biggest regret might be that I left a … friend behind. I suspect that’s what I need to come to terms with most.”

That seems personal, again. Maomao really doesn’t want to know this guy's sob story. She has lived a long, hard life full of sob stories, and has often suffered because of them. She doesn’t have regrets like the average person, because she hardly lives a life capable of earning them - to regret something is to have possessed something worthwhile once, and ruined it. You can’t regret having been born into the gutter, and simply finding your way through the sewage of life. That’s called wishful thinking or hope, or some equally useless concept.

Notes:

meo i am so excited to share this! i hope you like it. <33

Obviously Maomao tells him to kick rocks. In no universe is he looking for her.

 

However, the pervert is polite, and does leave when she says it again.

 

It’s just, more so, he disappears. Maomao can’t explain it, and she hates that feeling.

 

He also, big surprise, reappears the next day. This time Maomao is in the bathroom and Jinshi knocks on the door from the outside. She frowns to the empty room, looks at her pants around her ankles, and keeps peeing.

 

He knocks again. 

 

“Occupied!”

 

There’s a shuffle and a huff. “Well, when will you be done?”

 

Maomao does not respond. She just flushes the toilet, turns on the shower and pretends this is not real.

 

Because it’s not real. He is not real. Maybe Jinshi is a ghost, sure, but ghosts aren’t real. Now, Ka Zuigetsu was real once, but Jinshi can’t be - couldn’t have been? - him because Jinshi is not real.

 

What’s more to say? There is no more knocking.

 

So Maomao washes her hair in her dollar store shampoo, and rewraps her bandaged left arm. She looks in the mirror and wipes away the fog. Then she ferociously towel dries her hair because her plugin dryer broke last week and she can’t afford to replace it. Finally, she hangs up her towel and walks into her room, naked as the day she was unfortunate enough to be born.

 

“Finally, I thought you were - oh, oh my god, what are you doing?!” 

 

Jinshi sure looks real sitting on her futon. 

 

Real stupid.

 

He’s got both hands over his eyes and is looking towards the ceiling. “Where are your clothes at?”

 

Maomao sighs. This is her room, and he is not real. She’s not engaging with this. So she crosses the small room to the basket of clean clothes, folded neatly.

 

Which reminds her of the weird breezes and the tidy desk and the loud noises. He already admitted to reading her books, and must have been the one who wrote the notes in her margins and did her laundry. 

 

Crouched down on the balls of her feet, she can’t help but laugh. At least her delusion is helpful in regards to her chores. She grabs some undergarments and gets dressed. He remains on the futon, prudishly withholding his gaze. Unable to help herself, she says, “I’m covered now.” 

 

JInshi opens his eyes, and then quickly looks away again. “Those are see through!”

 

“Well, there’s not much to see,” Maomao crosses her arms. “Besides I have questions.”

 

“Get dressed or I will leave, and take my answers with me.” He’s returned his hand over his eyes. 

 

Maomao shrugs. “That’s not the threat you think it is - I can live without you perving in my apartment.”

 

The beautiful man only pouts. He peaks through his fingers once, but quickly shuts them when he sees her, still half covered in a sheer, but really quite modest, set of undergarments. 

 

Finally she sighs and yanks open a drawer, pulling out a sweat suit. As she dresses, she says, “You’re being awfully cavalier for a man who died in a brothel. Certainly you’ve seen worse than me, mister, but I’m actually covered now.”

 

Jinshi warily withdraws his hand, and seems to be relieved at the ratty green outfit. “Thank you. And I didn’t die in the brothel, I died in the alley outside the brothel - that makes a big difference.”

 

“Prostitutes still pull tricks in alleys,” Maomao deadpans. She is getting off topic but the point needed to be made.

 

“I didn’t come to the brothel for sex!” Jinshi says, looking aghast. 

 

Maomao wants to make another quip, but puts a finger to her chin and just goes hmmmm.

 

This makes Jinshi sit up and say, “What is it?”

 

“I’m trying to figure out,” she mumbles slowly, as if solving a math problem in her head. “What value is added to my delusion by you being a virgin? Is it just a comedic effect?”

 

Jinshi’s jaw drops, “Delusion? I’ll have you know, I’m very real -”

 

“- You’re not even going to deny the virgin part -”

 

“That’s irrelevant!” Jinshi huffs, looking embarrassed, fists balled up and resting on his knees. “I am real, Maomao! I told you I’m here for a reason. I need your help.”

 

“Considering you’re in my bed, sir, is it that irrelevant?” Maomao smirks and ignores his cryptic words so she can keep poking fun at the easily flustered apparition, or whatever he is. 

 

And from one second to the next, Jinshi disappears and is replaced by a cold drop in temperature, only proving further that this is in fact, an absolutely imaginary situation.

 

Until that cold seems to creep right up her spine, and suddenly against the sensitive skin just behind her ear, she hears his melodic voice say, “Don’t I feel real now?”

 

She feels his cool breath and smells something like peaches. His lips definitely feel real when they barely graze her neck as he speaks. There is a presence looming behind her, solid like a body. Every hair on her body seems to stand up, and her instincts tell her not to turn around, not to look, but she’s only been made more curious. He is still here, but how did he get there?

 

Maomao spares a glance up, and makes eye contact with herself in the bathroom mirror through the open door across the room. There behind her is this angel, eyes maybe a touch darker than before. She watches his hand come up to pull her hair behind her shoulder. The small shiver when he smiles, full lips still brushing her skin where her pulse has spiked, is visible to her, too. 

 

Just as she swallows and parts her lips to speak, his head comes up almost unnaturally fast and they make eye contact in the mirror. In the same exact moment there is a knock at her front door, she once again watches the not-real ghost named Jinshi, disappear into thin air and leave her shivering.

 

Several seconds pass, and Maomao jumps when there is a knock at the door again. “Open up, Maomao, or I’m coming in myself!”

 

Maomao groans internally - that would be the landlady. Could it really be the end of the month already? “Hang on a sec!”

 

She rustles around under her bed for the box she keeps her cash stashed in, and counts out the bills before putting the rest away. Then she takes the few steps to the door and opens up. Outside is a tall, old woman who was probably beautiful in her youth, but is now worn down by decades of smoking and hustling. Despite living here in this dump, she wears fine jewels and hair ornaments, and expensive makeup, even if it is excessive. Her gravelly voice curtly says, “Pay up, kitten.”

 

With a sigh, Maomao holds out the bills. As if on instinct, they tug of war over them, not wanting to fork over all that cash in one go, but Maomao must relent. The old Madame counts them out slowly, and mumbles around her pipe, “By the way, you know your rent is going up if you’ve got someone else staying here.”

 

“I don’t.” Maomao’s brow draws together. “Have anyone else staying here, that is.”

 

The Madame pockets the bills and shrugs. “I’m only warning you. Guen was yapping on about some handsome man coming and going from your place. Since it’s just one guy, I imagine he’s not paying for it, if you know what I mean. Your little boyfriend keeps hanging around, you will be though. No free rides in life, kitten.”

 

The last part is said as she turns away, and Maomao’s brain is going a million miles. Handsome man, in her room? That sounds like … but that’s not real! Although, it was the Quack who had told Chue about seeing Ka Zuigetsu’s ghost in the first place, outside Maomao’s door in fact. As she retreats back into her room, several thousand yuan poorer, she’s wondering once again what the hell is going on. 

 

“You need to be careful of that woman,” Jinshi is back again, peeking around the bathroom doorframe. 

 

Maomao glares. “You need to be careful of who sees you, or else you’ll own me 1,000 bucks,”

 

“What?”

 

“Nevermind - look, you need to explain what the hell is going on here, mister. Obviously you’re not a delusion of mine if other people are seeing you. And if I’m seeing you, then you’re not a ghost either, because ghosts don’t exist. You read my books, you fold my clothes, you live in my bathroom? What is this? How are you -?”

 

Her words are cut off by a cool hand over her mouth, belonging to the angel who is suddenly in front of her. Instinctively, Maomao spits and he pulls away shaking his hand off. “Was that necessary?”

 

“Yes,” Maomao said, retreating to plop into her desk chair.

 

With a sigh, Jinshi drops onto the futon. “I already told you. I was born Ka Zuigetsu a very long time ago. I was looking for something then - I was trying to … right a wrong, so to speak. Then I died here. I’ve been tethered to the place ever since, because I have not yet found what I need. I believe that you can help me.”

 

There’s a lot of bullshit in there that Maomao really wants to dig through. She knows she should be wary of this, a strange man with a strange story squatting in her room, but she’s so curious too. So she starts with a pressing question, “What were you looking for?”

 

“In general, proof,” Jinshi frowns. “On that evening specifically, a jade tablet.”

 

“Why?”

 

Jinshi props an elbow on his knee, and his chin on his fist. “I was looking for an … alternative option to my situation. It’s a bit complicated. Or it was. I suppose it doesn’t matter nearly as much now.”

 

“If it doesn’t matter, then why does it keep you here?” Maomao asks without thinking, curiosity overpowering her rational mind that tells her it doesn’t matter why.

 

He sighs, “It mattered at the time, beyond just its effect on me. Now, it only matters to me - I died with regret.”

 

Maomao crosses her arms. “What kind of regret exactly?”

 

“All kinds,” Jinshi looked down at his hands, turning them over, as he spoke softly. “But my biggest regret might be that I left a … friend behind. I suspect that’s what I need to come to terms with most.”

 

That seems personal, again. Maomao really doesn’t want to know this guy's sob story. She has lived a long, hard life full of sob stories, and has often suffered because of them. She doesn’t have regrets like the average person, because she hardly lives a life capable of earning them - to regret something is to have possessed something worthwhile once, and ruined it. You can’t regret having been born into the gutter, and simply finding your way through the sewage of life. That’s called wishful thinking or hope, or some equally useless concept. 

 

“Why are you in my bathroom though?” She changes topics.

 

Jinshi blinks up at her, “Oh, I’m not always there. It’s just an easy access point for me, mirrors tend to be. I’ve been all around Verdigris, but lately I’ve been waiting for you to find me.”

 

Maomao turns her back, sitting in the chair properly and drums her fingers on the table top. Nothing he just said made any sense. She only has more questions. “Why are you waiting for me?”

 

“You can help find the answers I need,” Jinshi said simply. “Your background in toxins and botany, once I realized it, I knew it would help me. And I found myself … drawn to you, since you first arrived a couple months ago. I noticed you right away.”

 

“Noticed me?” 

 

Jinshi nods. “Yes, I noticed you. I couldn’t help it, you remind me of someone but I can’t remember who now. I think - well, nevermind that. I’ve been waiting a long time for someone like you, Maomao. Will you help me?”

 

Maomao shook her head, still facing away. But her mouth moved on its own, “How exactly?”

 

Suddenly she felt that coldness creep along the floor and pool around her, Jinshi was crouching beside her. “I died here and I know what I was killed for that night, but I don’t know why or how. If you can help me answer those questions, I think I can let go.”

 

He is watching her closely. Maomao shuts her eyes and exhales, then stands to pad over to her small nightstand. Jinshi remains crouched as she rifles through it. Finally, she holds up a baggie with ‘psylocibin’ scrawled on it and several dried mushrooms inside, and curses. “Well, I guess I can rule out hallucination - I definitely haven’t touched these yet.”

 

Jinshi looks incredulous, and she keeps speaking so she doesn’t have to hear whatever it is he was going to say. “You’re not a delusion or a hallucination. You’re just a guy in my bathroom who’s going to get my rent increased if he doesn’t learn to be discreet. Why would I help you?”

 

“Because you’re curious. I can see it.” Jinshi smiles, voice far too velvety when he says. “A normal girl would’ve gone running in the opposite direction, if I was really just some random guy in their bathroom.”

 

“I’m not a normal girl,” Maomao says. “I’m well aware.”

 

He rises to his full height. “Don’t hear it as such a bad thing. I’m not a normal guy, I’m dead; though I was no better in life, either. We’re not too different, Maomao. You can help me, and I can offer you something in return. Answers.”

 

“When your answers are insane like this, I don’t need them.” Maomao waved him off. 

 

“No, not about me,” Jinshi cocked his head, and she thought he looked more like an animal than a man. “About you - and why you ended up back at Verdigris House. Maybe I can set you free, too.”

 

It’s not real. What he is offering can’t be. How can it be? How can he even know that the gutter she was born into was the same one he claims he died in? While Maomao took this room for its cheap rent, she knew of it with a deeper familiarity, one she didn’t like to admit. To live here because it was her only choice was one sort of pathetic; to be from here and have come back willingly was another. It doesn’t matter that she’d only been a baby when she left this place.

 

Verdigris House ceased to be a brothel decades ago when prostitution became illegal. But desperate men and women alike, continued to come to Verdigris, then just a boarding house, all the same to make needs and ends meet. Maomao knows because her mother was one of those desperate people. Unwell in the head and ignored by society, she traded herself for rent money and street drugs, both means to survive. She was the kind of sick that people won’t look in the eye when they see, will offer pity only after they’ve gotten far away, but never in the moment. Her father was no better, just more supported. He was educated and enabled, but wildly misunderstood by his family and the world around him, which left him lurking in the same shadows as her mother. They might have thought they were twinflames, or soulmates, or something that justified putting their sickness together and making a baby, but they were just two broken people.

 

Her childhood was one of wild inconsistencies, moving from hovel to hovel, with the occasional stint in a car or a foster home, until her father’s family tracked her down. Then she would be briefly relieved of her suffering, until one parent or the other turned up, sober and on the right track to take her to ‘their new beginning’ because they were ‘starting over.’ Sometimes her parents were together and sometimes not. This always cycled through, until she was almost twelve - and then when her mother started to go downhill, it wasn’t from any drugs. But she was sick all the same. 

 

Her mother induced a different reality - one that made Maomao out to be the one responsible for her pain and suffering and brokenness. What had just been an inconsistent, unclean and negligent, childhood became a violent one. Maomao lost her left pinky finger. Later in the hospital her uncle Loumen had told her she would come home with him; she wouldn’t see her parents anymore after this. Later she would learn that her father, as sick with love as he was in the head, would go home with her mother. Maomao could wonder her whole life why a man who said he loved her so much loved a sick woman more, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

 

Maomao never dared ask why he hadn’t saved her sooner, afraid of the answer. Life was better with Loumen, who was kind and soft spoken. Things were consistent for the first time - food, school, home life. She found interests in medicine, like Loumen, and plants and herbalism. He never told her he loved her or was proud of her, but Maomao learned the value of actions from him, because he showed her. When Maomao was seventeen, she woke up to find Loumen dead on the living room couch, seemingly gone in his sleep. She had called EMS, and sat beside him, counting down the minutes until her life changed again.

 

It did change - she worked two jobs and finished the last few weeks of her schooling. She sorted out Loumen’s estate, which she had hoped would sustain her, but as he came from an important family who more or less tried to avoid acknowledging her and her birth father, she saw nothing of it. Her parents never returned her calls. Just after graduating, Maomao packed a few bags of clothes, some important items, Loumen’s best books, and tossed her keys on the counter for some other Kan to find. Then she boarded a city bus and rode it to the university she had been accepted to before her uncle’s death.

 

She filled in all the forms for housing and aid, and waited on the bench all day until she was approved. In the counselor's office, she did the math. With what her scholarship was, she could maybe make it to graduation if she supplemented it by working and staying diligent. So Maomao did. At nineteen, she heard about the gig at the Flower Garden, which paid more than her noodle shop and tutoring jobs combined, plus tips, for less hours.

 

For all the ways the job was better, it was also worse. Maomao felt herself brushing up against the underbelly of a life she hadn’t had to live in a long time. Since Lumen’s death she had struggled, but she wouldn’t say she suffered. When a passing customer mentions Verdigris one day, it tickles something in Maomao’s brain. After work that day, she reads her student email on her bus ride home, to see her dormitory apologizing to residents, but there was a fire through several floors and extensive damage. Those on the top four floors could call to set a time to collect their belongings. Maomao had lived on the second floor, and lost everything.

 

The only plus side to this was she didn’t have to spend her scholarship money on housing, which meant she should have enough to actually cover all her credits through graduation. But Maomao needed somewhere to live, if she wanted to change her life and her luck. Verdigris had spun in her head all night, where she sat in the 24 hour student library, trying to sleep. The next day she took the bus again to Verdigris, where nothing looked familiar. It was just an apartment building, with a FOR RENT sign. Maomao stood across the street and dialed.

 

Someone, who she now knows was probably the Madame, asked her what she wanted. She told her a cheap room. 

 

“For the night or the month?” The gravely voice had asked, like it was perfectly normal.

 

Maomao told herself it wasn’t worth it, but she was curious. She was desperate, too, but in a different kind of way. So she dug her fingernails into her palm and said, “The month.”

 

It had been less bad than Maomao thought, though still quite odd. She only needed to stay here less than a year before she could move on. She could swallow the small bit of pride she possessed and tell herself it meant nothing, because it really was cheap and she really was broke. There was no delusion about that and she could literally not afford to be picky. Even once all the strange things started to occur, and now when a strange man appears in her room. If she survives this, then it's not that bad.

 

But this - this idea that he knows something about her - is crazy. How can she help him, when she is trying to help herself? He can draw her in with a little bit of mystery but it doesn’t change anything for her. He can’t fix her or solve her problems or answer her questions, not really. Sometimes people get the shit end of the stick. Maomao was just a street cat her whole life, unlucky and unloved.

 

Nonetheless, she stood from her chair and walked over to her futon, curling up on her side. She didn’t look at him again when she asked “Why should I be careful of her?”

 

Jinshi seemed confused before he realized his earlier words, “Oh, the Madame. She reminds me of someone as well. I get a bad feeling.”

 

“Me too.” Maomao says, but doesn’t elaborate.

 

They’re quite a long time before he says. “Will you think about it, helping me?”

 

“If I say no, will you actually leave me alone?” Maomao yawns. 

 

Jinshi sighs, “I won’t bother you again, if you truly mean it, but I told you I can’t leave here.”

 

Maomao weighs it in her mind. Real or not real, there’s no getting rid of him completely it seems. For whatever reason, this, like all the other unexplainable and unfortunate things, is happening to her. Either she’s crazy and seeing things, or she’s crazy and being haunted. The third option is they’re the same option, and it doesn’t matter if she calls it something else. Maybe she is tied to this too - maybe she came to Verdigris, just like her mother did, so she could lose her mind, too.

 

If it isn’t this, it will be something else. That’s usually the way life goes. At the least, she’s losing her mind in an interesting way, which she can appreciate. And so Maomao pulls the cover over her head and calls out, “Come back tomorrow, after I’m done with work.”

 

“You’ll help me?” Jinshi sounds muffled, and surprised.

 

She holds still. “I’ll try.”

 

“That’s all I can ask for.”

 

Maomao feels the chill through the blanket when he disappears again. She swears it pauses, for just a moment and brushes over her face.

 

In the beginning… 

 

Ka Zuigetsu finds the little black scrap of a cat by accident.

 

He is avoiding someone (Gaoshun) because he does not want to study political treaties from 300 years ago. He wants to play in the garden, like a normal boy. 

 

So he’s hiding in the bushes when he hears the vicious growl. She sounds like the rattle he had as a baby. She is a baby, a small, angry, flea infested kitten who is also hiding in the bushes. The little thing’s left leg is a mess of scars and burns, and seemingly missing a toe. 

 

Ka Zuigetsu is immediately interested. Poor thing! Here all alone. What has happened to something so small? Is anyone looking for her? Probably not. 

 

It takes some coaxing to get close enough to grab her, and then she is really angry. Her claws tear his knuckles up when he holds her in one hand. He has never had a scar before, and he hopes it was deep enough to do the trick.

 

He shows Gaoshun, who is also interested but pretends not to be. He pretends to be exasperated with the crown prince. The crown prince pretends he does not see the attendant rub the kittens ears, mostly because he is jealous of how she purrs for him.

 

Surien tells him no, absolutely not. And the young prince, aware he may have no choice in his life but certainly has power over others, says yes, absolutely. So they compromise and she allows the kitten to live in the courtyard. 

 

Over the next 10 years, she remains his best friend. He imagines, if she could talk, she would say he is barely tolerable. Luckily she’s a cat and can only offend him in action and not words.

 

She seems to be the only creature he’s ever met that can rebuff him. The way she deliberately moves when he comes to her, but never outright runs away. The way she shows her soft belly, only to kick at him when he reaches for her. The way she looks at him as if he is just one of the gross bugs she insists on catching and eating.

 

For all her indifference, she’s not totally immune to him. At some point, he sneaks her out to the larger palace grounds and she bounds away, only to stop and look back to chirp at him. He follows her to a shady grove and leans back to watch her scratch at the bark of a tree. 

 

The crown prince dozes off and wakes to a warm weight upon him. Before he opens his eyes, Ka Zuigetsu just knows the little cat is curled up on his stomach. He can feel the vibrations of her and looks down to confirm what he suspects. She is not purring, no, she’s growling, blue eyes on him. She blinks slowly.

 

Just that once he brushes his thumb over her nose, the soft space between her eyes and her growling stutters to a stop.

Notes:

thoughts??