Don’t Be a Kept Man

Chapter 97: Come Home with Me

Night was falling, as like an inkstone that had been overturned.
The remaining light was being swallowed up at the edges of the sky as Xun Chuan stared at the endless trail of cars below him on the footbridge.
Taking the chance when Yan Yu was not paying attention, he poofed into a black cloud.
When he did so, the old man in the stall across from them suddenly moved, bending his back to start packing up for home.

Liu Chang Min had just stepped away from a business dinner and was stumbling in a drunken haze, with his driver trying to help him into the car.
He was so drunk out of his mind that he never realized that the car was driving somewhere more remote, a road that did not lead to his home at all.

The driver’s gaze seemed to be glazed over and he robotically stopped the car, 

“Chairman Liu, we have arrived.”

“Hmmm……are we there……”

 

Liu Chang Min fumbled his way out of the car.
As he did so, a night breeze blew by and temporarily broke him out of his hazy mind.
Blinking out of it, his eyes suddenly took in the empty ghost town of buildings that were set to be demolished and rebuilt before him.
At his feet were scattered sprinkles of crushed cement bricks and as he stumbled around in confusion he tripped on some of the debris, rolling around like a ball.

“Tm you know how to drive!”1 

Liu Chang Min climbed back up from the ground, about to blow his top off.
He was going to rage against his driver, but he was instead shocked by the sight of emptiness all around him.
There was no car, only a half demolished building standing in front of him.
The wind seemed to be carrying the sounds of a woman’s screaming in its breeze, and cold sweat dripped down his back.

He frantically wanted to leave, but his eyes suddenly caught sight of a white shadowy figure by a nearby pile of rubbish slowly crawling towards him.
Slowly, slowly, scratching the floor as it crawled as if the footsteps pressing closer were like the god of death’s.

A subtle gaze seemed to be silently watching him from beyond and everywhere, and Liu Chang Min was gripped by fear.
He didn’t even care to look at whatever that white thing was and just ran for his life.
He ran and ran while trying to call his driver, but the signal on his phone never seemed to be able to connect.
Not a single phone call could be made and in one moment his stomach and legs started to weaken.

The residential buildings around here looked to be about half dismantled, in broken states of themselves.
Liu Chang Min ran and ran, for a very long time, but he could not for the life of him find the exit. 

If he turned his head around for one second however, he would have found that the white shadowy figure was always right behind him, and it was inching closer and closer.
Underneath the moonlight, her corroded and terrifying face could be seen very clearly, accompanied by a low guttural laugh.

“You wait for me……I’m going to be there soon……”

“Wait for me……”

She slowly crawled on the ground, leaving a trail of blood behind.
Liu Chang Min was so terrified that fluids were coming out from the lower half of his body.
He couldn’t even walk and he fell, clumsily crawling backwards on the ground to try and escape, 

“What are you! Don’t come over! Don’t come over! AH AH AH AH AH AH HELP! IS THERE ANYONE!!”

He was overflowing with fluids and no one could tell if it was tears or sweat.
Until a sticky rotten hand suddenly grasped his foot and Liu Chang Min woke up from a dream-like trance, snatching a brick off the ground beside him to hit that female ghost’s head ruthlessly.

“Pang–!”

Like the sound of a head being cracked open.

“Pang–!”

Like some sort of liquid was flying out.

“Pang–!”

That hand finally let go of his leg.

Again and again, the sight before Liu Chang Min’s eyes was already a field of red.
He stumbled up and used his sleeves to wipe his face clean.
But the first sight he saw was that female ghost, who he had hit over and over until it no longer held a human shape, had started to move again.
It let out a sound of bones cracking and breaking, and some flesh pieces that looked to be sewn together fell apart.

Liu Chang Min’s pupils dilated.
Seeing that ghost slowly climb back up and with his back up against a hard strong wall, he didn’t even hesitate before running into a nearby half dismantled building, grabbing the rails to boost himself forward as he ran for his life.

“Dok……dok……”

A set of heavy footsteps kept following behind him, moving at a pace that was not fast nor slow.
Liu Chang Min didn’t dare to look behind him and just kept climbing up for his life.
Upon seeing the rooftop entrance above him, he suddenly paused and then hid inside one of the rooms.

The building wasn’t completely demolished but it was completely empty inside.
The front doors of the various rooms seemed to have just been spared and Liu Chang Min quickly locked the door. 

Facing away from the door, he trembled all over as he bit the back of his hand to muffle his mouth, not daring to make a single sound.
His heart seemed about to jump out of his throat in its beating rhythm.

“Dok……dok……dok……”

Those footsteps seemed to be coming closer and then far away, as if it went past and up to the rooftop.
Liu Chang Min wanted to use this chance to run downstairs, but he didn’t dare and could only continue to wait.

“Dok……dok……”

She seemed to have come down from the roof, and her slow, dragging footsteps kept echoing in the hallway, not leaving.

“Are you playing hide and seek with me…… Then I’ll come find you……”

Not a single hint of color appeared on Liu Chang Min’s face as he was paralyzed by fear.

“Pang” a sound and the female ghost pushed open the first door. 

Empty: “Not this one.”

“Pang” a sound and the female ghost pushed open the second door: “Also not this one.”

Liu Chang Min was in the fifth room and he could hear the noise of doors being slammed open coming closer and closer, as if they were the footsteps of the devil coming for his death.
His entire being was in a state of dread and despair, and it was at this time, he suddenly heard the movements outside stop.

“Not here…….”

The female ghost’s slow dragging footsteps came closer and then further: “Must be downstairs……”

Liu Chang Min’s tensed up nerves finally relaxed.
He used his sleeves to wipe the sweat off his face, but he didn’t immediately leave.
He waited for a very long time, before finally standing up, trembling and shivering at the knees.

With all the strength left in him, he tried to not make any sound.
He lightly pulled open the lock and glimpsed through the crack in the door to take a look.
Only after seeing nothing in the stairway did he dare to walk out.

Liu Chang Min’s entire body was about to collapse and he held onto the rusted handle to support his already fatigued body.
He slowly walked down, taking care to not make a sound.
Yet as much as he tried, his surroundings were so quiet that his footsteps were all too apparent.

“Dok……dok……dok……”

He hunched his back and made his footsteps even lighter.

“Dok……dok……dok……”

Liu Chang Min had walked all the way down to the fifth floor and he held onto his knees to take a breather.

“Dok……dok……dok……”

Those footsteps echoed out once again in the building, and Liu Chang Min’s face changed in an instant.
He stiffly lifted up his head and found that white shadow of a figure standing about three steps away from him — that female ghost had been following him the entire time!!!

The female ghost cocked her head, her eyes the only things that were still intact on her entire face, and it looked as if she was smiling, 

“I found you……”

“AHHHHHH AHHHHHH AHHHHH AHHHHH AHHH AHHHH AHHHH–!!”

Liu Chang Min’s soul almost flew away in fear.
His body bent and weakened, and following the downwards slope of the stairs, he rolled all the way down, his painful scream piercing to the ear.
His head bled from all the places it hit as his body rolled all the way down to the second floor.
All the way until he was stopped by the steel bars drilled into the stairs as railings.

Liu Chang Min was exhaling more than he was breathing in and he was choking up blood.
His legs could no longer move either.

The female ghost’s figure faded away, turning back into the figure of Xun Chuan.
He looked down at Liu Chang Min, his beautiful face an ice cold shade under the light of the moon and he slowly walked to stand right in front of Liu Chang Min.

As if he had lost all his patience and was too lazy to play this game of cat and mouse, the resentment surrounding Xun Chuan burst and expanded.
Yet just as he was about to take away Liu Chang Min’s life, a shimmer of golden light suddenly came out of nowhere and blasted Xun Chuan’s decomposing hand, causing it to emit smoke.

“Who’s there!”

Xun Chuan quickly retracted his hand, but it was already too late.
The back of his hand had rotted through.
He sharply glanced towards the door, where an old looking figure had somehow appeared sometime ago.

“Ha ha ha……”

That man let out an old sounding chuckle from his throat, and from what Xun Chuan could see, there was a black mole on his lower chin– it was the old man who worked across from Yan Yu’s stall.

“What a pity.
Died when you were so young.
Hmm…… And a high level malicious ghost.
What a rarity, what a rarity.
Why don’t you follow this old man, and go reincarnate.”

There was a bagua copper mirror in his palm and it was this that cast the golden light that hurt Xun Chuan.
He was like a shu-shi, but he also wasn’t, as there was an air of evil around him.

Xun Chuan darkly said, 

“Mind your own business.”

He tightened his fingers in the air, and the neck of Liu Chang Min who was laying on the ground went crooked, immediately cutting off his breathing.
The old man didn’t stop him when he saw this happen and he smiled instead, revealing his mouthful of yellow crooked teeth, 

“Young man, it’s not good to harm others and take their lives.
This makes me unable to not take you down.”

A malicious ghost taking someone’s life, even if the heavens don’t care, a normal shu-shi could not not care.

Sensing his hostility, the color of Xun Chuan’s eyes turned dark red.
A thick black cloud of resentment was directed to attack the old man, but a baby’s cry suddenly rang out.
That resentment suddenly disappeared soundlessly just as it was about to reach that old man.

Xun Chuan’s face immediately changed.

There was a transparent baby, drenched in the colour of black, sitting on the old man’s shoulder.
Its eyes were as red as blood and its teeth were sharper than daggers.
They glimmered frostily in the dark, and its cheeks were puffed up, as if it was chewing on something.
Letting out a “Ge Zhi Ge Zhi” sound as it chewed, it swallowed up the resentment that Xun Chuan just sent over.

Xun Chuan coldly laughed, 

“So you are an old hag who raises little ghosts!”

He knew that he was not the opponent of this old man, and he didn’t plan to hit his head on this wall.
Yet that old man cast a spell and an invisible wall surrounded him, trapping him inside.

 

“Ha ha ha, so what if I raise my own little ghosts.
Aren’t you also that man’s own little raised ghost? Why don’t you follow this old man rather than that sickly bastard.”

The old man thought Xun Chuan was Yan Yu’s own raised little ghost.2

Xun Chuan tried to force his way out, but the moment any part of his body touched the barrier, it would corrode him to the bone.
From the amount of pain that reaction caused him, he began to curl up and his face turned even whiter than it already was.

The old man was about to finish his curse, as if preparing to take in his soul.
He faintly smiled as he looked at him, 

“It is your misfortune to meet me.
You can’t get out.
Give up and don’t think otherwise.
If you don’t want your soul to fly away, stay obedient……”

He didn’t get to finish when all of a sudden, his body swayed.
Following his thunderous fall, smoke and dust flew everywhere before revealing a man standing right behind him.

Yan Yu lifted his eyes, looking silently at Xun Chuan as his chest heaved unevenly, almost as if he had sprinted here.
His breathing was also uneven and he threw aside the brick in his hand, stepping closer into the dark of the night.

The ghost baby on the floor screamed when it saw him and aggressively flew over towards Yan Yu.
It opened its mouth, viciously biting into his hand, but the next second it was being corroded through by his blood and began to shriek in pain.
Yan Yu was emotionless as he squeezed its throat and with the flash of a talisman, the shape of that baby dissipated in a cloud of black smoke.
Replacing his body in Yan Yu’s hand was a transparent black pearl full of resentment.

Seeing this Yan Yu slightly furrowed his eyebrows and with a flip of his wrist, slipped that pearl into his pocket.
He then lifted his hand for a spell and waved away the barrier around Xun Chuan.

Half of Xun Chuan’s face was in its skeletal form, and he rose up from the ground with great difficulty.
His hands felt like they were dropped into a fire and corrosion could be seen visibly spreading all over.

Yan Yu took a look at Liu Chang Min who was already dead and said in an indecipherable tone, 

“You came here to kill?”

Xun Chuan reached out to touch his face and then put his hand down at his words.
He sensitively felt that the thickening air around him and he fakely smiled as he said, 

“I’m a malicious ghost…….
malicious ghosts that can’t kill people, can they be called malicious?”

The old man on the ground twitched and let out a painful cough.
He seemed to be waking up and Yan Yu didn’t even look at him before coldly making him faint again with a kick.

Xun Chuan suffered a heavy injury and his body shape was shifting between a ghost and a human.
Yan Yu seemed to want to pull him over but he was swatted away by Xun Chuan.
His pair of eyes were viciously glaring at Yan Yu, as if he was a creature being driven into a corner, 

“I don’t need you to care! I am someone who likes to kill people! One day or another, I will even kill you!”

He was full of thorns at this moment, and he was screaming from the bottom of his heart.
Yan Yu wiped away the blood on the back of his hand and forcefully grabbed onto Xun Chuan’s wrist.
With a low and heavy tone to his voice, he said, 

“Come back with me.”

“I won’t go!”

Xun Chuan’s eyes were so red, blood was dripping out.
He viciously bit at Yan Yu’s wrist but was stopped by Yan Yu’s hand which grabbed onto his chin.
The human and the ghost were frozen like this until Xun Chuan harshly shoved Yan Yu away, 

“You leave! I don’t need you to care! When I was being bullied you weren’t there! When I was getting murdered you weren’t there either! Why are you caring about me now!”

“Yan Yu, the one I hate the most is you! I hate you to death! You don’t understand anything! You don’t know anything!”

“Do you know? If I didn’t run away that day, I would have been played to death by him! How long did I wait for you! How long did I wait for you! Why didn’t you appear! Why!”

That day was like a thorn, piercing deep and hard into Xun Chuan’s heart.
As time passed, it would fester and fester, and just lightly touching it, it would cause so much pain that it would be hard to breathe.

The two of them have separated and then came back together numerous times.
Like a lotus root that would never really be separated, like a knife slicing into water, they would be tied together in the end.
That rainy night when Xun Chuan was waiting for him, in the end Yan Yu did come to meet him.
Like how it was in the beginning, and the numerous times after, he had never been able to be cruel enough to close off his heart and end this.

There was only one time he did so.

The only one time.

The only one time…..

Xun Chuan felt himself teetering on the edge, about to lose his mind.
When he was a human, he wasn’t happy.
When he’s a ghost, he is even more unhappy.
He fought with his life to push away Yan Yu when he was suddenly pulled into an embrace.
The embrace started tightening and his struggle was forcefully stopped.

Yan Yu didn’t say anything, but the strength he used seemed to be trying to mesh Xun Chuan into his blood and bones.
Xun Chuan did not seem to have any strength left in him to struggle anymore and he emotionlessly stared at the scarred up wall in front of him, as if looking at his own scarred up life.

Yan Yu’s pale white finger caressed his terrifying face, before grabbing the back of his head and bending down to kiss him on the lips.
Sending in a string of “human” air, slowly breathing it towards Xun Chuan.
Xun Chuan wanted to push him away but he was caught in a deathly hold by Yan Yu, unable to move an inch.

Yan Yu had a body that was normally cold, and with the two of them like this, and both their bodies ice cold, it was hard to tell who was colder.
The injury on Xun Chuan’s face was slowly recovering but the kiss did not stop.
His face and eyes trembled and his fingers tightened and loosened, loosened and tightened, tightened and loosened, and then Xun Chuan used his strength to grab onto Yan Yu’s shirt.

The two of them did not separate for a long while.

Yan Yu closed his eyes, smoothing down his back, 

“Don’t leave by yourself next time……”

“Don’t be in a place I can’t see.”

Moonlight rained down on the broken building, silently shining upon them and Yan Yu sounded as warm as the colour of the moon.

“Come home with me.”

 

 

Notes:

 

*1 tm: If you ever see “tm”, it’s taking the first letters of the sound of your/his/her/their mother, which is along the line of swears like motherfucker/piece of dumbshit/fuck etc.

*2  Apparently originating from Thailand, it’s basically taking on this belief of “raising a small ghost”, specifically a child’s soul (who obviously passed away or died), and sealing them into a specifically made plate or figurine model, to use to fulfill your wishes.
This is supposed to use up your own luck, which obviously ends poorly for the person, but the good thing is that this “child” will listen to all your commands and fulfill your wishes.

The other caveat of this has been said that to sustain the “child”‘s life, it will require blood.
The more it grows the more blood it will need.
Some ways to get this “child” is to curse an unborn child still in a pregnant woman by cursing it before it dies or by forcing the unborn baby to die in the womb or when they have died but their soul still remains in the spirit realm, etc.
etc.
So anyway, it has very bad connotation – there’s more but it’s mostly been covered by articles of “celebrities” and saying they are using such things to boost their popularity, so it’s a bit harder to find the original sources.