As a child raised by a "fairy lady," Li Xiu was considered quite courageous among his peers. He had originally thought that after witnessing his grandmother's daily deceptions, he had long since lost interest in such stories of gods and ghosts.
But...
Since returning from the Xiao family villa yesterday, Li Xiu has encountered too many strange things.
Even if his nerves were made of steel, he would still feel a little scared.
Before it was completely dark, Li Xiu had already forced herself to suppress her inner anxiety and ran home like a flash. She stomped down the cement stairs, the edges of which were shiny black, and rushed all the way to her door. Before she even opened the door, Li Xiu heard the familiar sobbing sound again.
Is it the same regular customer who always comes to my grandmother's house? Li Xiu lowered his head, trying to adjust his breathing while neatly placing the half-worn women's high heels at the door to the side. Then he pushed open the door and entered the house.
Everything is exactly the same as usual.
It was still the extremely dim room, and it was still the grandmother sitting in front of the shrine in the dark living room, mumbling to herself, and the middle-aged woman with her back to Li Xiu, crying with her head down.
Li Xiu took a quick glance through the door curtain, and the familiar scene made him feel at ease.
"Grandma, I'm back."
He shouted out of habit.
Grandma seemed to hum softly in response from deeper in the living room, but the sound was vague and unclear.
Li Xiu didn't care about the guests and returned to her room with her schoolbag on her back.
He had just changed out of his school uniform and was about to go to the bathroom to wash his face when he turned around and saw his grandmother's hunched body. The old woman made very little movement, and Li Xiu didn't know how long she had been standing at the door.
Her eyes had been blurry for years, a hazy gray film covering the edges of her pupils, causing them to look half-open when she looked at people. Furthermore, due to age, the fat had long since disappeared from her shriveled skin, leaving only a thin layer of skin, two thin films drooping between her thin neck and chin.
"grandmother?!"
Even Li Xiu was frightened by her grandmother.
"What's wrong...did the guests leave?"
He felt uncomfortable all over because of his grandmother's staring eyes, and couldn't help asking.
Grandma was silent for a long time, and then she slowly blinked her eyes.
"A Xiu, I have to go take food to your brother."
She mumbled irrelevantly.
"You must make sure your brother has enough to eat... Only when he has enough to eat will he be obedient..."
Since Grandma started to lose her mind, similar things have happened more than once. The old lady who used to be shrewd and cunning, who could fool the grandparents and guests with her words, now seemed to have only one thing in her mind: to make sure that Ah Xiu's non-existent "brother" had enough food.
The old man seemed extremely afraid that his "brother" would not have enough to eat.
But if Li Xiu asked carefully, she would just be vague and never explain in detail.
After a few times, Li Xiu could only think that her grandmother's strange temperament and paranoid delusions were caused by Alzheimer's disease, and stopped dwelling on it.
"Yeah, I know. I'll go after I change my clothes."
Li Xiu, as always, comforted his grandmother and spoke.
However, just as he was about to go to the kitchen to get some rice, he somehow remembered the instructions given to him by the old woman with a pale face in the park.
"Giving food to the hungry ghosts is not something a kid like you can do. Those that crawl out of the hungry ghost realm are extremely ferocious, let alone the one you're carrying on your back..."
"grandmother..."
Li Xiu paused slightly, and when he realized it, the words had already come out of his mouth.
"What on earth am I doing by delivering food to my brother? Is this what those people are talking about, the food offering?"
The boy's voice became smaller and smaller.
In fact, before going home, Li Xiu had already used his mobile phone to look up what the old lady had said about "giving food". It said that it was a metaphysical way of giving food to the hungry ghosts so that they could escape from the evil path.
But Li Xiu thought about it and realized that when he delivered food to his brother, he did not recite any scriptures or mantras, nor did he pray for anything, so it seemed that it had nothing to do with offering food.
"What Sisi? You just brought food to your brother, that's nothing!"
Sure enough, even when I asked, grandma looked confused.
Li Xiu looked at her grandmother and had a subtle feeling that she might not even know what the term "feeding food" meant. Although she didn't want to admit it, Li Xiu always knew that her grandmother was just a fortune-teller with no formal education.
But for some reason, when Li Xiu thought of this, he felt a little relieved.
...Just think of it as grandma's superstition.
He said to himself.
Then, as usual, he filled the bowl with raw rice in the evening, brought it to the cramped room, and placed it under the bed.
"Brother, it's time to eat."
Li Xiu said it out of habit.
After putting down the bowl, he stood in the room for a while for some reason.
This time there was no sound of bowls being knocked over under the bed.
Instead, there was a sudden sound of heavy footsteps coming from upstairs, followed by a muffled "bang", and a wet shadow hit the dusty and blurry table in the room.
Li Xiu was startled and looked over, but he couldn't see clearly what was outside his window. He could only see a black soft object.
Like... a mop?
Li Xiu looked at the blurry, slightly swaying shadow and the wet marks it left on the glass window, and frowned slightly.
The building he lives in is very old, so most of the tenants are of low quality.
Li Xiu guessed that the person upstairs washed the mop and placed the wet mop directly on the protruding anti-theft window, and then stuck the mop head directly to the window of Li Xiu's house.
Similar things had happened before, but Li Xiu was exhausted after a long day and didn't have the energy to go upstairs and argue. Plus, there wasn't anyone else in this room...
never mind.
Li Xiu rubbed his temples and left the room tiredly.
*
[Woo-woo—]
The exhausted Li Xiu certainly didn't know that after he left, the "mop" outside the window began to tremble.
On the upside-down head, the bloodshot eyes trembled in extreme fear.
Fishy-smelling water marks kept seeping out of it, brushing out tree-branch-shaped water marks on the window surface, which had accumulated dust for who knows how many years.
A tall figure appeared silently in the cramped room filled with clutter.
He sat upright on the dusty double bed, his slender, nailless fingers carefully resting on the edge of the bowl filled with uncooked rice.
My Ah Xiu...
An indistinct murmur came from the shadows.
[It's really adorable.]
The tall figure slowly leaned down and buried his face in the bowl.
One bite after another.
He devoured the raw rice in his bowl with contentment. From the shadows came the sound of chewing.
[So, he always attracts people like you...]
[Alas, what would my Ah Xiu do without me?]
The author has something to say:
Water ghost fish: ...Fuck.