The two tourists were shoved out the door in a daze. Seeing the crowd that had gathered outside to watch the commotion, and the scorching stares they cast, the two out-of-towners felt deeply embarrassed. They no longer felt like arguing with the owner, so they just turned, chalked it up to bad luck, and walked off quickly.
Ji Yi tilted his head and caught a bit of it as he passed.
Even after the two tourists left, the restaurant owner kept muttering, complaining to the shopkeepers next door. “Can you believe these people? Came in, ordered a whole table of dishes, I made them with real care, and then the two of them complain my cooking’s no good. If it’s no good, why order so much?”
The owner scratched his head and went on, still glaring at the tourists’ retreating backs. “If you ask me, they just wanted to skip out on the bill. And then they made up some nonsense about how the late-night snack they had here last night was so delicious.”
Ji Yi had no idea what had actually happened, and he couldn’t be bothered to join the crowd. Keeping to the shade in front of the shops to dodge the sun, he passed the Changxing Pastry Shop. The owner inside recognized him as someone who’d bought a few boxes of pastries before and greeted him warmly. “Young man, want to buy a few more boxes to take home?”
Ji Yi glanced at the mung bean cakes and said offhandedly, “No need.” Then, remembering old Sun Changxing’s sighs about his good-for-nothing son, he added, “They say it’s better made with fresh mung bean flour.”
He said just enough and no more, but the pastry shop owner froze. Just two days ago he’d dreamed of his long-dead father pointing at him and cursing him for cutting corners, ruining the shop’s good name, and so on. He’d figured it was only a dream, but now a young man had made the same pointed remark in real life, and it left the owner feeling strangely unsettled.
Watching Ji Yi turn into the little supermarket up ahead, the pastry shop owner muttered under his breath, “What’s the difference, really? I always thought my old man just had a picky palate. Are young folks’ tongues this sharp too?”
Ji Yi casually set his delivery package down at the supermarket entrance. The owner was still looking over toward the restaurant, chatting with a regular customer from town as he watched.
Seeing Ji Yi walk in, the supermarket owner gave him a couple of extra glances. He still remembered the misunderstanding they’d had over Ji Yi before, and while his expression wasn’t exactly awkward, there was a certain unease to it.
The regular was picking through the loose goods on the shelf beside the checkout counter, still talking to the owner. “I heard that whole thing is pretty creepy. You think maybe those two customers really did eat here last night? Hey, what time did you keep the shop open till last night? See anyone come by?”
The supermarket owner had felt a bit spooked himself the past few days, but lately he’d been reading a lot of positive, science-minded, forward-thinking material, so he felt full of strength. On top of that, seeing Ji Yi come in to shop, he waved a hand and said to the regular with a smile, “How could that be? Hey, that kind of stuff is all superstition, it comes from our fear of the unknown. I watched a video the other day that said the human brain is incredibly complex, that through imagination it can…”
The owner rattled on for a good long while, then reached over and rubbed his own arm. “It’s pretty chilly today, huh.”
He turned the air conditioner’s temperature up a notch.
The regular lifted his head from the pile of goods and wiped away some sweat. Footsteps came from behind him, it was Ji Yi, walking over with an armful of rice-topping sauces and instant noodles.
“Chilly? Feels pretty hot to me,” the regular said, setting a bag of biscuits on the counter for the owner to weigh. “I still think that restaurant business is a little strange.”
Just then, with a clatter, a glass jar fell down behind the owner. The sudden sound made both the regular and Ji Yi’s eyes snap to the spot behind him.
The owner looked down and saw the jar of soybean paste splattered across the floor amid the shattered glass. He gave a rueful “aiyo,” then looked up with a smile. “It’s fine, I probably knocked it by accident just now. I’ll sweep it up in a bit.”
Looking at Ji Yi standing behind the regular, the owner picked up where the regular had left off. “What’s so strange about it? It’s just a coincidence. Most of the time we scare ourselves. Take this jar of paste that just fell, the truth is I knocked it over without noticing. But some people just have to think of the weirdest explanation. There’s no such thing as ghosts in this world, wouldn’t you agree?”
That last half-sentence was aimed at Ji Yi.
He felt fresh and unburdened, his whole face carefree, as if he were no longer the coward who’d once mistaken Ji Yi for a ghost paying with hell money.
And Ji Yi, meanwhile, was watching, with a complicated look, the tall, burly ghost standing behind the owner, the very one who had just knocked that jar of soybean paste off the shelf right in front of him. It was rather hard to go against his conscience and agree with the supermarket owner.
The tall ghost turned around, and only then did Ji Yi notice he was wearing an apron. He was staring at the supermarket owner, scolding him. “Expired goods, and you don’t hurry up and get rid of them? If you sell them by mistake, even if they don’t upset someone’s stomach, they’ll ruin the flavor of the dishes you make.”
By now Ji Yi’s eyes had dropped back to his own hands, pretending he hadn’t noticed there was a ghost between them.
With a ghost radiating this much cold, heavy yin energy standing right beside him, it would be strange if the supermarket owner didn’t feel the weather was hot.
The ghost didn’t seem to have any ill intent. He walked out from behind the checkout counter, muttering, “I wonder if there are any other expired goods in this shop that haven’t been cleared out…”
He looked positively brimming with a sense of justice, as if he were about to conduct a full inspection.
As he passed by Ji Yi, he caught sight of all the junk food in Ji Yi’s hands and stopped in surprise. He circled Ji Yi twice and said, “Why are you buying all this stuff? No nutrition, bad for your body, and it doesn’t even taste good.”
Just look at those caring words, what a kindly ghost. With that one line, Ji Yi had the ghost figured out.
Ji Yi practically wanted to grab the ghost’s hand and hail him as a kindred spirit. It wasn’t his fault, really. Apart from Wei Hu coming by now and then to cook him a meal, Ji Yi honestly didn’t know much about cooking.
Who else was there to cook for him besides Wei Hu? Ji Yi had almost gotten used to just throwing something together. Cook a pot of white rice in the rice cooker, get through lunch with some rice-topping sauce, and make egg fried rice with an egg for dinner, that was another meal.
Ji Yi didn’t want his family to worry. Every time his mom messaged him on WeChat to check in, he always said he was eating well. In fact, never mind how badly he missed her braised pork and her spicy shrimp.
Ji Yi noticed the apron on the ghost, and thinking back to the restaurant owner earlier, a suspicion formed in his mind. He looked up and struck up conversation with the supermarket owner again. “Boss, what were you two just talking about? What exactly happened with the restaurant owner?”
He feigned ignorance and steered the topic that way.
“Well, it went like this…” the supermarket owner began to answer.
The apron ghost, who’d been about to go inspect the other shelves, did indeed stop in his tracks. Even though he assumed Ji Yi couldn’t hear him, he still went on talking to himself. “It’s just that last night my cooking itch flared up, so I sneaked off to find a spot to cook. Those two smelled the aroma and came knocking. I figured food made with no one to eat it would only go to waste, so I gave it to them. Never thought they’d come back at noon. That restaurant owner’s cooking is just wasting good grain, it’d be a miracle if it tasted good.”
Over on his end, the supermarket owner had about finished, and he ended with a chuckle. “Old Zhao’s cooking really is pretty hopeless. If his weren’t the only restaurant in town, he’d have gone off to work in a factory long ago.”
Hearing this, the apron ghost said again, “How can he compare to me? My master’s ancestors served in the imperial kitchen, and I’ve blended in plenty of techniques from folk masters besides.”
Listening to all this, Ji Yi’s mouth started watering.
“Ah,” he sighed, with real, heartfelt feeling. “I can’t cook either. I’ve been eating instant noodles for near half a month, everything tastes like nothing to me now.”
The owner scanned a barcode as he chatted back. “Kids your age who can cook are rare to begin with. But still, better to cut down on the instant noodles. If it really comes to it, just go eat over by Beishan, there are a few places over there with decent flavors.”
“Beishan’s so expensive,” Ji Yi said. He’d noticed the apron ghost had been listening to him the whole time, occasionally sighing “poor kid,” so he pressed his case harder. “I’ve been out of work for a good while now, trying to start my own business. I don’t have much money on me, so I’ve got to save where I can.”
The apron ghost looked to be pushing sixty, next to him Ji Yi was practically grandchild-aged. With Ji Yi playing up his hard luck like this, the apron ghost felt quite sorry for him. “Poor child. Ah, if it weren’t such a scorching day, I’d go home with you and make you a whole table of good food to build you back up, even with just a couple of eggs.”
The supermarket owner encouraged Ji Yi. “Starting a business, huh? That’s great. It’s a good thing you young people these days are willing to venture out and eat hardship. That’s how a real man should be.”
Ji Yi gave the supermarket owner a manly smile. “Boss, do you carry any dark-colored sun umbrellas here? I’m afraid of the sun.”
Two minutes later, Ji Yi opened up a black sun umbrella, gathered up his things, and ignored the owner’s complicated, hard-to-read gaze, while also pretending not to notice the cool, chilly something standing beneath the same umbrella as him. There were a lot of people coming and going in town, it wasn’t a good time to talk to the apron ghost yet.
Once he reached his electric scooter, Ji Yi stared at the umbrella and said to himself, “Hard to ride with an umbrella up. I’ll fold it away first.”
The umbrella slowly closed, and he could still hear the apron ghost’s muffled voice from inside it. “Aiyo, it really is dark in here.”
Ji Yi put the umbrella into the scooter’s cargo box, twisted the key with a delighted, frolicking sort of grin, and shot off toward Hongye Village in a streak.
Ji Yi parked the scooter in front of the old house. The door stood open, he hadn’t shut it before heading out. Lin Zhao wasn’t always around, but there were often a few old ghosts in the house, and Ji Yi was confident no one would dare come and steal from a place like this. And if they did, they wouldn’t get away so easily.
As it happened, Lin Zhao was in the old house just then. Hearing the sound of Ji Yi parking, it came out from inside.
Before leaving, Ji Yi had mentioned he was going into town to pick up the guesthouse’s signboard, so Lin Zhao crouched beside the scooter, watching intently as Ji Yi lifted the delivery down, and demanded, “Open it and let me see.”
Ji Yi figured Lin Zhao was worried he’d really had “Little Ji’s Place” made into the signboard. “Relax, I promise it’s not a weird name.”
He opened the package in front of Lin Zhao. The whole signboard went for a fresh, elegant style, and paired with the two characters “Dai Shan”, Awaiting the Mountain, it had a particularly nice feel to it.
“Dai Shan,” Ji Yi said, gazing at the characters on the signboard. He’d seen the design mock-up before placing the order, and back then it hadn’t stirred anything special in him. But now that the signboard had arrived and he looked at those two characters again, something felt different inside.
Is it a person waiting for a mountain, or a mountain waiting for a person? The emotions of waiting and longing seemed to reach straight into the heart.
The black cat looked up at the signboard for a while, then turned and walked off without a word. Before leaving, its gaze drifted faintly toward the black umbrella in the scooter’s cargo box, then pulled away as if it couldn’t be bothered to care.
Ji Yi set the signboard off to the side and carried the black umbrella and his food inside. Before he could tell the apron ghost that he actually could see ghosts, Old Li had already heard the noise from the inner room, come out, and hurried over.
With his back to the apron ghost, Ji Yi was busy putting his things away, seeming not to have noticed the apron ghost’s presence at all, which made it easy to assume the apron ghost, glancing around every which way, was some stray ghost who’d followed a person home.
Old Li, the righteous security guard, said, “Hey, hey, hey, who are you? Where’d you come from? How can you just walk into someone’s home like that?”