We couldn't help but fantasize about the female ghost appearing before us, getting her head pinned down while we forced her to cough up rent.
No money? Then she'd have to wash our clothes, cook our meals, do the dishes!
Until the debt was paid!
The old society turned people into ghosts; today, we'd turn this ghost back into a person!
12
A few days later, my friend excitedly told me something.
While showering that night, he'd heard the banging sound again.
This time, he'd had enough and cursed it out with every dirty word he knew. It worked instantly—the noise stopped.
I recalled the legends I'd read about—apparently there was such a thing as ghosts fearing foul language. Cussing them out could scare them away.
So I spent the entire day collecting dirty words during my breaks at work.
I opened the search engine. Standard curses, regional dialects, foreign insults...
That night, I lay in bed with a bellyful of multi-lingual profanity.
I had reason to believe that this time, if the ghost dared to make a move—
I wouldn't just scare her away.
I'd curse her until she cried!
But that night, all the way into the early hours. Nothing happened.
I couldn't hold out any longer and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, I felt, inexplicably, disappointed.
13
Had we won?
Didn't seem like it.
For a long time, I could still hear sudden footsteps in the apartment.
Then the footsteps would pause, and fade away.
As if she'd accidentally made a noise, got scared of being discovered and getting cursed out by two gross dudes—
So she'd tiptoe away and find a corner to hide in.
Waiting for these two jerks to fall asleep before making another move.
I suddenly felt like the ghost, when she was alive, might have been a girl who wasn't very old.
14
One day after work, I came home and found a middle-aged man in our living room, chatting with my friend.
My friend introduced him as our landlord.
It turned out that when my friend went to pay the electricity bill, he'd found the landlord's phone number at the property management office.
After adding him on WeChat and exchanging pleasantries, the landlord somehow suggested he wanted to visit the apartment.
While my friend was explaining the situation, I noticed the middle-aged man had been staring at one particular wall in the living room.
There was a nail in that wall.
Usually used for hanging photos.
Sometimes used for hanging memorial portraits.
15
The landlord treated us to a meal.
After a few rounds of drinks, I gathered my courage and asked if he had a family.
That was when I learned that at the turn of the century, during the national housing reform, he'd been allocated this apartment.
After that, he and his wife had raised their daughter in this place.
That winter, their daughter was fifteen, a sophomore in high school. Heavy snow had fallen, and the roads were icy.
Her mother rode a bicycle to pick her up from school.
On the way home, they were clipped by a passing car.
At the hospital, there was a blood shortage.
Icy roads. A mangled bicycle, its warped wheel still spinning on its own.
The daughter didn't make it.
The mother survived, but with brain damage. She lay in the ICU. According to the landlord, he poured over a hundred thousand a month into keeping her alive.
I thought about that nail on the wall in the living room.
It must have been where he'd hung his daughter's memorial portrait. He'd had to take it down because we were moving in.
The landlord was drunk. His phone kept ringing through the meal. Sometimes he'd put down his glass and fawningly reply to messages from one Manager or another Boss.
I suddenly wanted to tell the landlord: "You know what? Raise our rent."
But the words reached my lips, and I felt how thin my wallet was, so I swallowed them.
My friend and I excused ourselves to go to the bathroom. We pooled our money and secretly paid the bill.
And somehow—
I thought of that annoying banging sound again.
And the feeling, in that half-asleep haze, of being kicked in the back.
It felt—
More like the ghost of a girl, living on in her own home. Unknown, untouchable.
Watching her father suddenly move out, and then one day, a couple of gross guys forcing their way in.
Angry and annoyed, she'd banged on the doors and kicked us. She'd even gone so far as to play-act a hanging corpse.
She hadn't counted on two guys who were so broke they'd staked their claim and refused to leave.
In this dinky little apartment,
three unlucky souls had managed to squeeze in together and stay alive.
16
One day, I got off work early for once and could walk home with my friend.
On the way, we passed a blood donation station. We walked a few steps past it, then backed up.
My friend was afraid of blood. He finally came up with a solution: I'd cover his eyes.
But the moment the needle went in, he still yelped "Ow! Ow! Ow!"
We got our blood donation certificates, along with a few packs of cookies.
Neither of us ate them. We placed them on the coffee table in the living room.
"We tough guys don't eat that stuff," I told my friend—though I was really saying it for her to hear.
"For real, for real," my friend chimed in. "We don't like 'em."
Cussing is bad. We won't do it anymore.
"For real, for real. Leo's the only one with no manners. I don't even swear."
"? You can go... fly a kite."
"No more swearing. Whoever swears is a... little puppy."
17
That fall, we fell in love with watching movies.
We'd huddle in the living room, using a laptop to play old Hong Kong films.
We developed an understanding. When buying braised snacks, we'd get three portions.
The extra portion, we'd set on the coffee table while we watched.
We didn't know if she liked the food, or if she liked old Hong Kong movies.
It's just that those old films always carried a certain unnamed sadness. Neon lights, fleeting and gone.
Of course, we also tempted fate. One day, on a whim, we put on a Lam Ching-ying vampire movie.
And that night, the living room lightbulb burnt out.
My friend said: "I feel a chill. Do you feel it?"
"Watching Lam Ching-ying in summer means we don't need AC."
"It's even chillier now—would you shut up... Do you think she's offended by this?"
I thought about it. Probably not, or she would've done more than just pop our lightbulb. Maybe the girl was just scared of ghost movies too.
My friend was dumbfounded.
Late at night, we'd still hear footsteps in the living room.
But they no longer stopped abruptly. Instead, they faded gently, growing fainter and fainter.
As if she'd lowered her guard, or didn't want to disturb our rest.
"The little sister knows we work hard." I said to my friend at the office, clutching my thermos. "She's growing up."
Then I noticed my friend was shopping for a room screen online.
I asked: "What do you need a room screen for?"
"To section off part of the living room." My friend touched his nose and chuckled. "She's a girl, she needs some privacy."
"...How about you sleep in the living room and give her your bedroom?"
"She's scared of gross stuff, right? Think about how filthy our rooms are... no wonder she was so irritable that first while."
I had to admit he had a point. Going forward, I probably couldn't enjoyably pick my nose and fart with abandon anymore.
By late autumn, the company's financial situation still hadn't improved.
Our combined savings still hadn't crossed five hundred bucks.
But that year, a new holiday suddenly appeared—Double 11.
That night, my friend and I squatted next to the router, each with a cigarette dangling from our lips, eyes bloodshot, refreshing our shopping carts nonstop. In the end, we actually managed to snag a bunch of fresh produce at practically giveaway prices.
We wept tears of joy: "Finally, we don't have to eat noodles anymore!"
A few days later, we crammed into the kitchen. My friend chopped vegetables, I cooked, and we shamelessly chanted in unison: "Little sister, you're on dish duty!"
Steak, boiled fish, steamed broccoli.
A rather chaotic meal, mostly because we had no idea what she liked.
Three sets of chopsticks, three bowls of rice. My friend and I ate in silence.
I couldn't help myself—I picked up a piece of meat and put it in her bowl.
My friend gave me a side-eye.
I said awkwardly: "She's still in school. She needs to eat more meat."
My friend, not to be outdone, also placed a piece of fish in her bowl.
In the partitioned living room, two scruffy guys ate their meal in silence. The extra bowl was piled high with food.
She didn't wash the dishes, of course.
But that night, I had a dream.