Chapter 5

Chapter 5

How did that not count as bringing glory to the nation?

I opened myself up to all kinds of people, working hard to dissolve the hostility of the mortal world.

Even on the inconvenient days of the month, or when I was burning with fever, I never took a break.

The customers’ preferences were endlessly bizarre. Some specifically went after girls who weren’t feeling well.

No matter how much it hurt, no matter how awful I felt, I had to endure it.

This was physical labor, but it was skilled labor too.

If you wanted to stand out in the industry, you needed brains and emotional intelligence on top of that.

Luckily, I had talent, and I was willing to work hard.

My memory was excellent, especially when it came to faces. One look and I never forgot.

It was a kind of passive memory, like there was a camera inside my brain.

First it took the picture, then, like a camel, it would bring it back out in my spare time and slowly chew it over.

Any customer I had ever received, I could quickly pull up his information from my “database”-

The compliments he’d given me, the details he’d complained about, what he liked to be called, the topics he was good at, the music he liked, his go-to songs, what brand of cigarettes he smoked, what brand of liquor he drank, what business his family ran, who had recommended him, which other customers he was friends with, and what taboos he had…

I knew how to set myself on fire, which made them feel like they were amazing.

I also knew how to melt them, which made them feel like I was amazing.

Whenever I thought about how the love I gave them would flow on to even more people, I felt sincerely happy.

Take Uncle Xiong, for example. In the past, the moment he got home, he would turn the whole place upside down.

Now, after venting all his evil fire with me, he could go home calm and peaceful, a good husband and a good father.

His wife, who would originally have taken her anger out on the nanny because of his temper, would no longer do so. The nanny would no longer pass that anger on to the butcher at the market. The butcher, in a bad mood, would no longer snap at a delivery rider. The two of them would no longer start shouting, shoving each other, pulling knives, and maybe even ending up with someone dead…

And all of that had been dissolved through my efforts.

I took a water flosser out of my toiletry bag and rinsed between my teeth while daydreaming about my great karmic merit.

Just then, a strange “Gèi” sounded beside my right ear.

I turned off the water flosser.

“Gèi, Gèi, Gèi-”

It wasn’t a hallucination.

It was real. Clear as day. Gèi, in the fourth tone.

It sounded like someone’s throat had been flattened, their tongue glued to the bottom of their mouth, so all they could do was struggle out a bubbling “Gèi, Gèi.”

The sound made my brain feel like its lobes were sticking together. My whole body crawled with discomfort, and I wanted nothing more than to turn my own skin inside out and scrub it clean.

Suddenly, a fat, hulking figure swayed into view in the mirror. His chubby face squeezed his features out of place.

Before I could even cry out, he wrapped his arms around me from behind.

“Shaluo, why aren’t you sleeping with me?”

I came back to myself and realized it was Uncle Xiong. I let out a small breath of relief.

His triple-fold chin rested on my shoulder, and he took the opportunity to press me against the sink, rubbing himself against me from behind as he panted, huffing and puffing.

He was almost fifty. Did he have a death wish?

But I couldn’t exactly refuse him outright, so I reached for the condoms in the little box on the sink.

As I lifted my hand, however, I saw in the mirror that Uncle Xiong’s face had turned a swollen crimson.

A length of bloody intestine, like a skinned snake, was slowly writhing around his neck, looping around him again and again, tightening more and more.

I screamed and spun around.

Ghosts in movies always loved to be mysterious, startling people, appearing and disappearing, pulling jump scares. In any case, they would never let you see them clearly the moment they showed up.

But this ghost was very down-to-earth. It didn’t bother with tricks.

The intestine was still there.

Visible to the naked eye.

It was continuously squeezing up from the pipe in the drain with wet, squelching noises, coiling around his ankles, climbing up his thighs, his groin, his chest, and tightening around his neck.

Only when I saw Uncle Xiong’s face turn the color of pig liver did I snap back to my senses and, without thinking about anything else, lunge forward to tear at the intestine.

Slick and slimy, with a cool, sticky feel.

It clearly had substance, but when I grabbed it, my hand closed on empty air.

Uncle Xiong rolled his eyes back, stretched his neck straight, and collapsed to the floor.

My mind snapped clear in an instant.

Ghost or hallucination, it didn’t matter. I could not let Uncle Xiong die on my “shift”!

“Uncle Xiong! Uncle Xiong!”

I patted his shoulder. When he didn’t respond, I hurriedly dragged him onto the living room carpet, laid him flat, and checked his breathing.

The entire clubhouse was fitted with signal jammers, so there was no way to call 120.

But every room had an emergency service call button, and there was an AED in the hallway.

Chest compressions first.

Check his mouth for any obstruction.

I rushed out to get the AED, hitting the call bell on the way.

Power on, attach the electrode pads, defibrillate according to the voice prompts.

The current surged through.

The intestines shuddered violently, then slithered back down the drain with a wet, slippery sound.

By the time the clubhouse attendant rang the doorbell, Uncle Xiong had already regained consciousness.

He waved the attendant away and leaned back against the sofa.

“Shaluo, how did you do that? Just now was seriously… amazing.”

He tugged at the flesh on his neck, let out a heavy breath, and revealed a strange, satisfied smile as he trembled faintly.

I looked at the AED on the floor, at a loss for words.

In my right ear, that strange “Gèi, Gèi, Gèi” laugh sounded again.

Along with the laughter, the intestines squeezed out of the drain again with wet squelches.

Then came shattered organs, torn strips of skin…

Before long, a small mountain of flesh had piled up in the bathroom.

Like a huge heap of Lego made of meat.

I couldn’t count them all.

At least three thousand pieces.

The scattered chunks and bits of flesh were like a group of bewildered children, shoving and jostling each other as they wriggled, spliced together, stacked up, and tried desperately to find where they belonged-only to keep getting it wrong.

At last, they barely managed to pile themselves into the shape of a person, black blood seeping from the seams.

It wobbled and scraped its way out of the bathroom.

Because it had no bones, it had a hard time maintaining its shape while moving.

One step, and the intestines it had finally stacked in place came apart.

Another step, and its nose fell off.

It could only keep walking while picking up pieces and patching itself together, terrifying and ridiculous and pitiful all at once.

I tilted my head and glanced at Uncle Xiong. He was still immersed in the afterglow from earlier and hadn’t noticed a thing.

I was the only one who could see that heap of corpse meat.

“Gèi! Gèi! Gèi!”

Its two lips were stuck upside down on its forehead, and whenever it laughed, half a lip fell off.

Human fear comes either from the unknown, or from insufficient firepower.

I didn’t know what this thing was, but it was afraid of electricity and could be physically attacked. In that case, there was nothing to be scared of.

I took a small pink whip down from the wall rack in the reception room.

The tip was electrified; when swung, it trailed shimmering light. Some guests were very fond of it.

Uncle Xiong, drenched in sweat, covered his crotch with a troubled expression. “Shaluo, another day. Another day, all right?”

I gave him a coquettish smile. “Uncle Xiong got quite a scare just now. Let me dance a little something to help you calm down.”

I turned toward the smart speaker. “Xiaocai Tongxue, play Breathe on Me.”

The smart speaker replied, “All right. Playing Britney Spears’s Breathe on Me for you.”

As the music started, I swayed my body to the beat and, with the motion, lashed the whip at that pile of “guts and bits and pieces.”

“Uncle really wishes he could be twenty years younger…” Uncle Xiong’s mouth hung half-open as two streams of blood trickled from his nose.

As for that heap of “human offal,” it twisted and lurched this way and that, dodging a few lashes before finally being struck. Unwillingly, it scattered across the floor and vanished.

A melancholy “Gèi” echoed from deep inside my ear canal.