Chapter 2: Who Is She?

Just a few days after my eighteenth birthday, I pulled an all-nighter at an internet café. When I stepped out into the early morning, I felt utterly drained, unable to muster any energy. I didn’t think much of it and went straight home to collapse into bed.

When I woke in the afternoon, the exhaustion hadn’t lifted. I fought to get up, but as soon as I stepped out of my room, the world spun before my eyes and a wave of nausea hit me so hard I staggered back to bed and drifted off again.

After nightfall, my mother called for me to get up. I struggled but couldn’t rise; it felt as though I hadn’t slept for days, a weariness I couldn’t shake.

When I woke the next morning, I’d slept nearly twenty-four hours, yet I was still dog-tired—barely able to keep my eyes open. My limbs felt weak, my mind was muddled, and all I wanted to do was sleep. It reminded me of those times when, as a child, people said I’d lost my soul. But that didn’t seem likely; I’d never taken off the cloth pouch my grandmother gave me for protection, and I’d worn it every day for years without incident.

That evening, when my mother came home from work and found me still asleep, she grew irritated. I tried to explain—it wasn’t that I wanted to sleep, I just couldn’t help it; I had no energy.

She immediately demanded, “Did you take off the pouch your grandmother gave you?”

I told her I hadn’t, that I’d felt this way as soon as I got home. She went to the old house to fetch my grandmother.

Grandmother entered and fixed me with a stern gaze. “Ziwu, are you certain you never removed the pouch I gave you?”

I assured her I hadn’t. She examined my eyes, then the pouch itself, muttering, “How strange. Why would this happen?”

She sat beside me, softly murmuring as if making calculations, trying to divine the cause of my sudden affliction.

Apparently finding no answer, she asked my mother to bring her the kitchen knife for a ritual. This time, the knife didn’t stand upright as it had before; she threw it three times, and each time it clattered flat onto the floor.

Mother asked what was wrong, but Grandmother just shook her head, seemingly as puzzled as we were.

After a while, Grandmother told me to lie down in the living room. My mother fetched ashes from the stove and sprinkled them in a circle around me.

Then, Grandmother entered with a bowl of water. When I asked what she was doing, she replied, “I’m asking the spirits for guidance.”

She placed the water-filled bowl before my head, took a chopstick from the kitchen, and touched it to my forehead, chanting softly. She tapped each of my shoulders, then held the chopstick above the bowl and let go. The chopstick dropped in and, instead of falling over, stood upright in the water.

I was still marveling at this when a gust of icy wind swept in through the door, sending a shiver through me. My head grew fuzzy, like I was drifting between dream and waking.

The next thing I knew, I was back in bed. As soon as I opened my eyes, my mother was there, asking, “Ziwu, think carefully—before you came home yesterday, did you encounter anyone strange?”

Strange? I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Grandmother clarified, “Someone you saw and instantly felt uneasy about.”

I racked my brain but couldn’t recall meeting anyone like that. When I said I didn’t remember, Grandmother snapped, “Think harder.”

Her seriousness made me retrace every step of the previous day. Suddenly, the memory surfaced.

During my all-nighter at the internet café, I’d gone outside in the middle of the night for a bathroom break. As I returned to the entrance, I bumped into a woman in a red dress with long hair.

She’d kept her head down at first, and I was about to apologize when she looked up. The sight of her face made the words die in my throat.

On the right side of her face was a large, deep-red birthmark, the size of a palm, as if she wore a crimson mask. The rest of her skin was deathly pale—paper white. Her eyes fixed on me, cold and unblinking, sending a chill down my spine. I hurried back inside, unnerved.

Grandmother gestured at her own face, tracing the outline of a mark, asking if the birthmark looked like that.

The lighting had been poor and I’d been too rattled to be certain, so I said I couldn’t remember exactly. Grandmother didn’t press, but she seemed lost in thought.

Suddenly, my mother broke the silence, anxiously asking Grandmother, “Was it her?”

I had no idea what she was referring to, but I noticed that since I’d mentioned the woman in red, my mother had looked unsettled.

Grandmother snapped, her face stern, “What do you mean, ‘was it her’? Don’t say such things.”

Chastened, my mother glanced at me and left the room. Grandmother regarded me with a strange, conflicted expression, as if she wanted to say more but held back. I asked what was wrong, but she just shook her head.

Drowsiness and nausea washed over me again. I asked if I’d lost my soul, but Grandmother said this was different, that she’d have to use another method to help me.

To give me a restful night, she drew a diagram—something like a bagua—on the floor beside my bed, calling it a spell formation. She wrote my birth date on yellow paper, set a bronze censer atop it, and lit three sticks of incense.

Whether it was the ritual or just the comfort of being cared for, I soon felt much better.

The next morning Grandmother announced she needed to perform a ceremony for me and had to go to town to buy supplies. Before leaving, she warned me not to step outside the courtyard for any reason.

Left alone, I tried to piece things together. Was this sudden listlessness connected to the red-dressed woman outside the internet café? I’d felt fine before seeing her, but everything changed after.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that she was involved. My mother and grandmother clearly recognized the woman with the red birthmark—otherwise, why would my mother react so strongly?

I tried to recall if I’d ever seen her in the village, but drew a blank. She seemed familiar, yet I couldn’t place her.

At noon, Old Liu, the village chief, hurried over to ask if Grandmother was home, saying he had urgent business with her.

I said he could tell me, but he shook his head.

As he turned to leave, I remembered the woman and asked, “Uncle Liu, has there ever been a woman in our village with a large red birthmark on the right side of her face?”

He stared at me in shock. “A woman with a red birthmark on her right cheek? You’ve seen her?”

I nodded, explaining I’d seen her two nights ago. His eyes widened even further and his voice rose, incredulous. “You really saw her?”

I confirmed it, expecting some explanation, but he just gave me a complicated look, sighed heavily, and left without looking back.

Watching his hurried departure, I realized Old Liu must know the woman in red. Why else would he react like that? But I couldn’t understand why he looked so troubled.

Toward evening, Grandmother and my mother returned, bringing with them a white coffin.

I’d seen red and black coffins before, but never a white one. I asked what it was for, and Grandmother replied it was for the ceremony.

As they organized their purchases, the village chief arrived, spoke to Grandmother in hushed tones, and she hurried inside to fetch her ever-present cloth bundle before heading out again.

It was after nine when Grandmother returned, exhausted. My mother asked what had happened, but Grandmother, glancing at me, swallowed her words.

Though nothing was said aloud, my mother’s eyes kept drifting toward me, filled with the same complex emotion I’d seen in Grandmother the night before.

The three of us sat together in silence, the atmosphere thick with tension. I felt sleep closing in and went to bed. No sooner had I lain down than that eerie sensation of being watched crept over me, stronger and clearer than before. It startled me awake.

As I raised my head, I caught a glimpse of a red shadow flicker past the window. I couldn’t help but cry out. My mother and grandmother rushed in, asking what was wrong. I told them someone had been watching me through the back window.

“Mom, come look!” my mother called urgently as she peered outside. I hurried to join her, and a chill ran down my spine.

There, on the window ledge, were two black handprints.

The fingertips pointed inward—toward my room—as if someone had braced their hands on the sill to peer inside and watch me sleep.

Remembering the red shadow, I immediately thought of the woman in red.

“Mom, was it her? Has she really come back?” My mother’s face was ashen. I asked who “she” was—was it the woman with the red birthmark? But she said nothing, looking instead at Grandmother.

“What must come, comes. Why be afraid? I’m not dead yet,” Grandmother said, sounding more irritated than frightened. She moved aside and began muttering calculations. I pressed my mother for answers, but she only glanced at me and remained silent.

Their silence only reinforced my suspicion—it had to be the woman in red, and both my mother and grandmother knew her.

But why would she watch me sleep? And if she was from our village, why had I never seen her before?

I stared at the black handprints, and, unable to resist, reached out to touch them. I expected nothing more than a dusty mark, but the instant my fingers made contact, it felt as though I’d touched needles. I jerked my hand back in pain.

Grandmother quickly drew new talismans and stuck them over the window and door. Only after that did the house finally fall quiet for the night.

The next morning, as soon as I woke, I felt a sharp pain around my right eye. I hurried to the mirror to check—and what I saw made me collapse to the floor in terror.