Chapter 133

"Every time we went out, my mother would prepare some glass marbles. When we got to Nanling, we would play the marble-in-the-hole game. As long as I won, she would reward me with a marble. To this day, I still keep those marbles. They are the most precious memories of my mother and me."

"You mean, this person knows your secret?" Zhong Kui leaned sideways on the sofa, supporting her temple with one hand, her grayish-blue nails tapping the sandalwood armrest, listening to his narration leisurely.

"No, the moment I saw this image, I felt my memory undergo a reorganization." Qi Fei said, his eyes dazed, his Adam's apple rolling with his swallowing motion, as if he had returned to his childhood, "'Marble rolls, rolls into the little hole'..." He recited that distant nursery rhyme, "I discovered that I might have forgotten a playmate. In Nanling, besides my mother and me, there was another child with us, because my mother said to me, 'You have one too.' She said the word 'too'."

Zhong Kui's eyes glanced at Qi Fei, her eyelashes casting dense shadows on her eyelids, and then her leaning body finally sat up straight: "Do you want to try what I did to Wu Chun?"

"Hypnosis?"

"Yes, let me guide you into your deep consciousness to see what those missing details really are. Of course, because this is a memory from when you were very young, it will be quite difficult, and it might also cause an impact on your current mental state. Even so, are you willing?"

Qi Fei nodded without hesitation. Fine sweat seeped from the back of his neck, shimmering under the chandelier.

Beads of sweat the size of beans fell from Qi Fei's forehead, soaking his collar along his jawline. His whole body was still shaking uncontrollably, mixed with the sound of his teeth chattering.

Qi Fei's breathing gradually became long and slow. In a trance, he smelled the scent of a quilt drying on the balcony of an old house. The sunlight from when he was three years old suddenly pierced through the years and shone on his eyelids. He saw his mother squatting on the terrazzo floor, amber marbles rolling out of the pocket of her frayed floral apron. The hand that was always stained with flour was now carefully prying open his small fist. "Look, baby," she said, her warm palm supporting his clumsy fingers, and the glass marbles collided with a clear, ringing sound. The sound of cicadas came from the tips of the distant plane trees, and his mother's hair was plated with golden brown. With the swaying motion of her teaching him to play marbles, it swept across his hot earlobes one by one.

His knuckles were suddenly lightly touched by a cold glass marble. Only then did Qi Fei notice that a boy of the same age had appeared beside him at some point. Two chubby hands shuttled through the light spots. That child's fingernails were still stained with grass juice, yet he could use his thumb to flick the crimson marble steadily and accurately. They took turns giggling, and when their elbows touched, they could feel the fine sweat on each other's skin. Qi Fei tried hard to look up to see that face clearly, but in the backlight, only the fuzz on the back of the child's neck was shining, like the last complete outline of a dandelion before it was blown away by the wind.

Suddenly, the sharp sound of glass shattering pierced the dream. Qi Fei's whole body twitched violently on the recliner. He felt the inside of his skull being gripped by an invisible hand, and tiny purple light spots exploded on his retinas. The boy's blurred face twisted into a vortex in the strong light. Sweat rolled down his convulsing spine into the sofa crevices, and a whimper like a young beast overflowed from his throat—his body in reality was resisting the manifestation of the memory with pain. The last thing that flashed in his blurred vision was the boy's wrist with his sleeves rolled up, a dark red birthmark blooming like a petal. This image cut open the sealed scab, causing him to instinctively curl up into a fetal position while under hypnosis.

"Let's slowly come back." Zhong Kui's voice came from a reality as distant as the deep sea, and someone placed a warm towel on his sweat-drenched forehead. The sound of cicadas in the plane trees and the sound of marbles rapidly ebbed away, leaving only the temperature of an orange hard candy about to melt, which remained on his left palm from when their skin touched.

The silver pendant in Zhong Kui's hand stopped abruptly: "I'll count to three, two, one, and you can wake up." Her tail note carried a strange tremor, like the lingering sound of the last string of an ancient zither.

With a snap of her fingers, Qi Fei saw a blinding light from the end of that endless dark tunnel. He instinctively used his hand to block it, and salty tears seeped through his fingers. His whole body felt like it was falling off a cliff, his lower back hitting the sofa back heavily, and he opened his eyes in terror.

In front of him, Zhong Kui's fair, almost transparent face gradually became clear, and the tip of his nose was filled with the scent of sandalwood mixed with a faint smell of blood.

Qi Fei was in tears, his five fingers digging deep into the sofa leather, lost and not knowing where to turn. He stepped forward and hugged Zhong Kui: "Don't leave me, please, don't leave me." His hot forehead pressed against her cold collarbone.

Zhong Kui was not moved by this. She let him hug her, her right hand hanging by her side still clutching the pendant used for hypnosis, and just said coldly: "I am not your mother, Qi Fei. You must wake up completely from your memories."

Qi Fei suddenly let go as if scalded by these words. As he retreated, he knocked over the bone china cup on the coffee table, and the leftover tea stained the carpet with a dark mark. His Adam's apple slid twice with difficulty, and his right hand had already reflexively touched the position of his holster—the stress defense action of this criminal police officer when his emotions broke down. When he realized he was tensing his shoulder blades in the posture of interrogating a criminal, his index finger knuckles pressed hard against his brow.

"Alright, now can you tell me, did you see it?" Zhong Kui looked at him, her eyes carrying a primitive insight like a Luosha.

Qi Fei took a deep breath, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing his trouser legs: "I can be sure that I had a playmate, a little boy, the same age as me." He opened his palms and clenched them again, as if he could still touch the rounded arc of the marbles, "When the marble went into the hole, he would kneel until his knees were red, and he had a dark red birthmark here on his wrist..." His thumb pressed heavily on the protrusion of his own wrist bone, pressing his fingernail until it turned white.

The halo of the floor lamp cut a boundary between light and shadow on his face, and his sweat-soaked shirt clung to his spine. This man, who was usually as steady as a rock when holding a gun, was now neurotically tapping the sofa leather with his index finger, "A three-year-old child would never deliberately cover his cuffs." His voice suddenly got stuck at a sharp turning point, and his Adam's apple rolled twice before he continued, "But I have received full marks in criminal investigation portraiture class, yet I can't piece together the direction of his facial features."

"I think the answer you want is not here with me. You know who you should look for." Zhong Kui looked at him and said, her eyelashes casting spiderweb-like shadows under her eyes, and the silver pendant on her wrist trembled with her cough, as if pulled by invisible threads, "You have to face this matter yourself. I can't help you."

"Great Immortal, you are tired. Go to sleep quickly." Meng Apo's usually cold voice only had tenderness when she spoke to Zhong Kui.