Chapter 34: Chase - The Second Memory

"Chai Si, Chai Si, wake up. It's time to go home."

A hand gently nudged his shoulder, fracturing his dream. The fragments slipped away and drifted into the distance, and Chai Si opened his eyes.

The evening glow on the horizon was already a pale purple, the long clouds stained a deep crimson, as if someone had smeared rouge across the sky with a fingertip.

The silhouettes of palm trees stood tall against the heavens, and in the dusk-lit parking lot, dim yellow lamps flickered on one by one.

"You slept so soundly, what good dream were you having?"

Standing outside the car window, his mother saw that he was awake, pulled her hand back through the half-open pane, and stood straight up. Though Chai Si could not clearly see her expression, he detected a hint of guilt in her tone. Her voice was exceptionally soft, because guilt acts as a softening agent.

Chai Si could not remember. The light in the dream had been very bright, far brighter than the western dusk in the parking lot; and he himself had been very tall, much taller than he was now.

As for what the dream was actually about, he had forgotten it entirely.

"Aren't you working overtime today?" he asked, watching his mother open the car door and slide into the driver's seat on the other side.

"I begged the manager to let me leave early today." His mother glanced at him, a trace of a smile rising, but it failed to pierce some heavy lid and dissipated once more. "I didn't even dare tell him that you've been waiting for me in the car all day..."

"Why didn't you dare?"

His mother placed a plastic bag on the back seat; the scent of food emanating from it was familiar. She always brought home leftovers from the restaurant to serve as their dinner. Starting the ignition, she said, "This is hardly a good thing. If anyone found out, child protective services might come and take you away."

Chai Si did not understand what was wrong with waiting in the car for his mother to finish work—the window was half open, the breeze blew in softly, his fingertips were sticky with potato chip crumbs, and the storybook on his knees had slipped to the floor while he fell asleep.

"I'm so sorry. It won't happen again. When you grow up, don't go complaining to a therapist about me. Put on your seatbelt."

In truth, it would happen again, because the only person willing to watch Chai Si for a tiny fee was a teenage neighbor girl who lived nearby, and she did not have time every day.

Later on, Chai Si thought that what he had truly wanted to say back then was clearly, "I like waiting for you," but somehow, what actually spilled out of his mouth was a complaint: "I want to go home and watch TV."

"Alright," his mother said as she left the parking lot. "You can watch after you finish eating."

When they merged onto the highway, it was pitch dark. Bright headlights pierced the gloom, flashing past their dilapidated car. The highway was elevated, with a cliff on the left; looking out from the road, one could see the distant horizon stretching endlessly.

The vast, sprawling city of Los Angeles lit up countless star-like lights beneath the night sky.

They had traveled this road countless times, knowing it as well as their own kitchen. Chai Si kept his gaze fixed on the night view of Los Angeles outside the window while his mother listened to the radio, the two of them chatting in fits and starts.

Everything happened with terrifying suddenness: when a heavy freight truck ahead suddenly swerved its head and smashed obliquely through the right guardrail, his mother was still laughing and talking.

Her sharp intake of breath made Chai Si violently snap his head around just in time to see that long truck blocking the highway ahead.

The screeching, ear-piercing shriek of emergency brakes tore through the entire cabin, but the car could not halt its momentum and continued straight toward the truck—pinned to his seat by the seatbelt, Chai Si watched the truck loom larger and larger, like an overwhelming catastrophe descending upon them. In that instant, he forgot whether he had cried out or not.

He only remembered turning his head to find the driver's seat empty.

The seatbelt was still buckled, stretching smoothly across the driver's seat as if protecting a vacant chair; the steering wheel, bereft of the hands that controlled it, twitched slightly.

...Huh?

The bewilderment lasted only a flash. When Chai Si snapped out of it and hurriedly reached for the steering wheel, he slammed into the truck—at that very moment, the hood crumpled, twisted, and rose, occupying most of the window and his field of vision. The next second, Chai Si plunged into darkness and knew nothing more.

Ah, yes. Having suffered a car accident at the age of five, Chai Si Monroe had died right then and there.

...Or had he died?

Something felt off.

If Chai Si Monroe had died at the age of five... then who was the one reminiscing from this perspective, the one who believed he was dead?

Another voice raised a tiny protest.

Who was reminiscing? Did that question matter? Whether he had died or not didn't matter either.

The truly important question was that if he stopped uselessly thinking, and simply sank down into the warm, amniotic darkness, closing his eyes to sleep, all his struggles and confusion would be comforted and answered... He would never have to worry again...

Never have to... worry...

Absolutely not.

Chai Si abruptly opened his eyes.

He was lying on the floor; the blindingly harsh lights inside the subway car momentarily left him unable to see anything at all.

An instinctual surge of panic from the depths of his bones instantly suppressed his urge to flip over and leap to his feet. He forced himself to remain completely still, listening to the rustling sound on the floor slide past his ear and slowly recede into the distance.

His vision quickly cleared. He realized he was lying in front of a window frame that had lost its glass.

He still remembered how the glass of this very window had bulged outward like a rubber balloon a moment earlier, with several gray-white fingers dismantling the seams between the glass and the frame. Now the window was completely empty, with broken glass scattered all over the floor and seats.

The residents had crawled in through the window, stepping into this mortal world...

Yet no matter how hard he tried, Chai Si could not remember why he had fallen to the floor.

When he fell, the back of his head must have struck the seat first before hitting the ground. At that moment, his neck was twisted and throbbed with a dull ache.

He heard the rustling sound stop a few paces away. A low, trembling groan issued from the driver's throat—the groan had barely begun before it was suddenly cut off, as if choked out.

Dead?

Chai Si's heart sank. That artifact—

"...So, you're con," a viscous voice said with deeply unnatural phrasing, "scious? Then that's good."

It was a resident.

"So you're conscious, then that's good." Since it directed those words at the driver, the driver probably wasn't dead yet...

Chai Si held his breath, slowly rolling his eyes to see a vague, gray-white shadow standing not far away on the floor. Though difficult to make out, it felt as though the shadow was turning its back to him.

His abdominal muscles contracted and tightened inch by inch. Silently, without a sound, he lifted his body from the floor and saw the T-bar lying right beside his feet. He did not pick it up.

Judging by the traces at the scene, it looked as though he hadn't had time to do anything before collapsing to the ground...

The hunched, curled-up figure was very short, reaching only to Chai Si's waist. Its entire body was wrapped in a gray-white robe that was tattered and torn into strips in many places.

From beneath the gray-white robe, a gray-white palm larger than a mop head rested limply on the floor, palm facing upward; its other hand was raised in mid-air, extending three long fingers, one of which was curving down toward the driver.

"Me, mory to die, three, places."

Once the phrasing was disrupted, even the meaning became difficult to grasp at first hearing. Chai Si startled slightly before realizing it meant "three memories that can be allowed to die."

And that meant—

Chai Si understood everything in a flash.

Struck with horror, he no longer cared about concealing himself. He kicked the driver's ankle and roared, "Wake up! Don't believe it, you're not dead!"

He had effectively exposed himself—before the next thought could even form, a face spun round upon that hunched back.

The moment his gaze landed on that face, the subway car once again rapidly blurred, vanished, and slipped into darkness. Chai Si involuntarily fell backward into the seat behind him, the viscous laughter of the resident ringing in his ears.

"Me, mory to die, thirty, nine places."

It really was like this...

That mixture of lingering reluctance, fear, and anxiety dissolved rapidly from the edge of his consciousness like gray smoke as he tumbled back into the memory.

If the car accident at age five was the first memory the resident had dug up—one where he could conveniently die while reliving it—then Chai Si knew what the second memory it had dug up would be.

His second brush with mortal danger had occurred six days after the car accident.

It was also the day his mother returned from the hive.