chapter 1

When I first saw the comment, I assumed someone was trolling and ignored it.

I scrolled through the chat while listening to the sounds coming from the bathroom.

[Seven showers is nothing. My roommate won’t let us turn on the air conditioner even when it’s thirty-nine degrees.]

[Mine’s the biggest hypocrite. She stays up gaming on voice chat at full volume, but the second she goes to sleep, nobody else is allowed to make a sound. If we do, she sulks for days!]

[Amateurs! My roommate fell down, so I called a cab, took her to the hospital, and ran around taking care of everything. She didn’t even thank me. Then she made me pay her twenty yuan toward the cab fare!]

Reading those comments made my own roommates seem pretty decent. I was about to change the subject when the viewer named Lingfengzi posted the same message again.

[Your roommate showers so much because she’s a monkey.]

This time, the rest of the chat noticed Lingfengzi too.

[Streamer, your roommate has officially been diagnosed as a monkey live on air!]

[Roommate: Forgive me. I was born to be monke.]

Lingfengzi ignored the jokes and apologized instead.

[Sorry. I left out a word. Your roommate is actually a water monkey. She’s bathing like mad because her current skin has dried out beyond endurance. She’ll be looking for someone to flay soon so she can change skins.]

[And you, Streamer, keep your days and nights backward. Your spirit is loose in your body. Of everyone here, your skin will be the easiest to peel.]

My head buzzed.

The chat exploded.

[Aren’t water monkeys basically water ghosts? Don’t water ghosts possess people in rivers?]

[Flaying people and changing skins? Someone’s watched Painted Skin too many times.]

[Scammers will try anything these days. Block them, Streamer!]

Without thinking, I tapped Lingfengzi’s profile. Their avatar showed a Taoist meditating on the edge of a cliff. Their bio contained a single line:

May boundless blessings arise.

I was a full-time civil service exam streamer. I spent every day immersed in the twenty-four-character core values – prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, and all the rest. I should have laughed off superstition like this.

But it was already past eleven at night. The world outside was pitch-black. Rain battered the windows, and the wind wailed like a host of ghosts. Against my better judgment, fear crept in.

While I hesitated, Lingfengzi posted again.

[I know this is hard to believe, so I’ll teach you a few ways to check for yourself.]

[After your roommate comes out, go into the bathroom and squeeze garlic juice onto any hair she left behind. If she’s a water monkey, her hair will turn into waterweed…]

[Or find a chance to look at the crown of her head. Every water monkey has a square hollow there that can hold a surprising amount of water.]

The instant the last comment appeared –

Click.

The bathroom lock scraped open with a piercing sound.

I wrestled with myself for two seconds before opening my bedroom door.

Then I saw the person coming out of the bathroom and froze.

After graduation, I had chosen to study for the civil service exam full-time. To save money, I lived in one bedroom of my four-bedroom apartment and rented the other three to three women.

Zheng Rou was a diving instructor and painfully introverted.

Lin Dayao and Lin Xiaomei were twins and my older paternal cousins. Technically, they were family, though I had only recently met them.

Many years ago, my uncle had traveled to remote Shuili County and fallen in love with a local woman. They had Dayao and Xiaomei, and afterward, my uncle lost contact with the rest of the family.

Only this year, when the twins found jobs in Jiangcheng, did he get back in touch with my father. Dad rented them two rooms at a steep discount.

The first time I met them, they made me a little uneasy. Even identical twins usually had subtle differences, but Dayao and Xiaomei’s faces were exact copies.

I normally told them apart by their hair. Dayao’s reached her waist; Xiaomei’s stopped at her collarbones.

The woman leaving the bathroom now had all her hair tucked inside a drying cap. I had no idea which twin she was.

I guessed and ventured, “Finished with your shower, Dayao?”

She gave a cool hum and headed for her room with an armful of clothes. Two steps later, a sock slipped from the pile. She bent to pick it up.

At that moment, the half-dry cap on her head darkened in a ring, as though someone had poured a small cup of water over it.

My heart clenched. I quietly turned away and pretended not to notice.

Dayao did not seem to notice me either. She picked up the sock and returned to her room.

Doubts surged through me like a tide.

Could Lingfengzi have been telling the truth? Did Dayao really have a hollow in her head that held water?

But her hair was long. If she had not towel-dried it before putting on the cap, bending over could have sent the water trapped in the ends running downward all at once. That would have soaked the cap too.

I glanced at the dark bathroom, then headed into the kitchen.

Better to test Lingfengzi’s other claim than scare myself over what might be a coincidence.