Page 27 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
Other people glance her way, surprised by the commotion. None of them can sense it, whatever it was. They look at her blankly, exchanging glances.
But the ghosts have also noticed. And whatever knack allows a ghost talker like her to speak so easily with the dead, it has also made her sensitive to the same forces.
Every single spirit, and every single exorcist or medium, stands taut andalert, looking northeast. Staring, despite the clusters of buildings and smog. Staring in the direction of Japan.
Mei Chi does not yet know the name of the city that just died in a single breath, or its exact location. Hiroshima is over two thousand kilometers away, too far to see the nuclear blast with physical eyes.
But she feels it, oh so clearly. Every ghost and shaman from here to China to Russia to Guam and all the places in between—theyfeelthe spiritual energy of a hundred thousand souls being blasted from flesh into spirit.
It is like a portal to hell has opened.
Tears are running down her face, and she can no more stop them than she can explain their presence. Her eyes are a flood, her heart a storm. Though neither scientist nor soldier, she knows in the depths of her essence what has occurred. Humankind’s destructive power can impact even the spirit world.
“What is it?” Lau Yik is outside, next to her now. He hasn’t missed the collective reaction of the city’s nearby ghosts. “What’s happening?”
“Either the war has ended,” Mei Chi says, wiping her nose on her sleeve, “or the world has.” Her nose is bleeding, she realizes.
It’s her last thought before passing out in a dead faint.
Mei Chi does not see the strange refugee ever again. She is still unconscious when, during that post-bomb confusion, Daiyu quietly slips away, taking her secrets with her.
In less busy times, Mei Chi might have looked for the other woman. Her past is a mystery, after all, and it is possible that amidst the confusion, Daiyu might genuinely have had some tangled memory to unpick and examine.
But there are plenty of other things, horrific and immediate, to occupy her thoughts in the present. For when Mei Chi wakes a few hours later, the news is out: Hiroshima has been obliterated by American nuclear bombs, awash with a hundred thousand screaming ghosts. More and more and more civilians die after the initial blast, sickened by radiation.
By the time she even remembers the encounter with Daiyu, the other woman is long gone, and there are fresh things for Mei Chi to think about.
Three days later, the same devastation wipes out Nagasaki. Mei Chi has no love for her occupiers, but she still cannot look at the pictures. On the thirtieth of August, mere days before capitulating to Allied forces, Japan surrenders Hong Kong back to Britain. And Kowloon, by extension, also gains its freedom.
The end of the war means no more Japanese occupiers to fight, and thus, nomore resistance fighters to pass messages for. Mercy is ecstatic to see the end of war—but also needs to find different work, as she realizes quickly enough.
Luckily—or unluckily, depending on your point of view—work comes looking for her.
A few weeks later, Mei Chi comes back to the cha chaan teng from one of her daily errands, only to find the entire place on high alert.
Armed men are loitering outside, wearing white shirts and dark slacks, each with a black strip of cloth tied around their upper arms. These are the early days before the triad has enough wealth to give its members uniforms and tattoos. The men do not react as she walks closer, and in fact they gesture her to go inside.
“Who are you?” she says uneasily, addressing the closest of the bunch.
“Friends,” comes the curt, unconvincing reply.
She glances back the way she’s come. A hard-edged young man is now standing in the alley, blocking her exit. His smile, when he offers it, is thin and unpleasant.
“Go inside,” says the first man, again. “She’s waiting on you.”
“Who?”
He lights a cigarette and doesn’t answer.
Belly roiling, Bao on her shoulder, Mei Chi steps into the eatery’s dim interior.
More men lurk within, leaning against walls or sitting at tables. There must be a dozen or so in total, counting the ones waiting out on the street. It feels like more, in such crowded confines. Lau Yik is nowhere to be seen—probably out, he’s forever busy—and the few people whom Mei Chi does know are keeping very quiet in the corners of the room.
Sitting at a table in the center of the cha chaan teng is a commanding young woman, dressed in a Tang-style suit. She seems only a few years older than Mei Chi, but is considerably more handsome: smooth-skinned, even-featured, good teeth, no scars. Dark hair all neatly pinned.
Mei Chi recognizes her instantly: Cobra Lily.
Bao growls softly, fur prickling along his back, and Mei Chi can’t fault him.
