(I)
July 13th, 1990.Bai Ye's skin began to heal.
Morning sunlight filtered through the iron bars of the ward window.Bai Ye opened her eyes and found that the festering wounds on her arms had scabbed over.She tried moving her fingers.Beneath the layers of peeled skin, new flesh was slowly forming—thin, translucent, like a membrane of rebirth.
A nurse entered the room for her routine checks.Wearing thick rubber gloves and an expression full of caution—clearly still remembering the bite from the other day—she moved toward Bai Ye.
But as she lifted Bai Ye's hospital gown, her face froze.
"Your skin…"
Bai Ye looked down.
The rotten patches had vanished, replaced by pale pink scars, faint and wrinkled like paper soaked in water, no longer bleeding.She touched her face—smooth now. No boils, no cracks.She looked younger.
She should have felt joy.
But she didn't.
She stared at her own hand—and suddenly realized: the sunlight was passing through her fingertips.
Not a metaphor.Literally passing through.
Her skin shimmered with an eerie translucence, revealing veins, bones, muscles—all visible, as if her body were slowly dissolving.
The nurse staggered back in horror.Her clipboard fell with a loud smack.
"D-doctor!" she screamed, bolting out the door.
Bai Ye didn't move.She simply sat there, watching her hand fade—bit by bit—like pencil lines erased from paper.
She smiled.
"Finally…" she whispered.
She used to think the rot was the end of her. Her truest form.But now she knew—the rot was just the process. The shedding.And now, she was metamorphosing into something higher.
She no longer needed skin.No longer needed flesh.
She would become pure malice.A shadow without shape.A ghost no one could hold.
When the doctors and nurses rushed in, Bai Ye was already sitting upright.In the sunlight, her body had become semi-transparent—like diluted milk. Her outline blurred, edges flickering faintly.
"Impossible…" one doctor muttered, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
His hand passed through her.Not pierced—glided through, as if through smoke.
Bai Ye tilted her head, watched his terrified expression, and smiled slowly.
"You can't keep me here," she said. Her voice barely louder than a breeze.
Her body continued to fade—like morning mist dissolving in sunlight.Her face—once festering, then healed—was now just a faint silhouette.Her features like smudged oil paint on wet canvas, blurred beyond recognition.
The heart monitor suddenly emitted a sharp whine.The EKG line flattened.
Panic erupted.
"Resuscitate!" someone shouted.
A defibrillator was wheeled in, but every attempt to touch her failed.Their hands passed through her again and again—grasping at smoke.
Bai Ye watched their futile efforts.And felt something she hadn't in years—pure joy.
She was free.Utterly, completely free.
She floated down from the bed.Sunlight pierced her fading form, casting a faint shadow on the floor—as if she were made of vapor.
Her arms disappeared first.Then her legs.Her torso.Finally, her face.
She no longer had a body.
But she was still there.
She turned to the mirror—there was nothing.Just an empty bed.And panicked doctors.
But she knew—she was still present.
She turned away and drifted toward the wall,and passed through i
(II)
She drifted past one ward after another—some patients were crying, others laughing, and many sat dazed and silent. No one could see her.
She paused outside a small girl's room. It was Hong Yu, dressed in pink pajamas, hugging a worn-out doll while staring out the window. A photo stood on her bedside table: a girl in a pink dress with a sweet, angelic smile.
Hong Yu watched the sycamore trees outside. When Bai Ye passed through the wall behind her, the girl didn't turn around.
"I knew you'd come," Hong Yu said softly. Her childlike voice carried an eerie calm, like a stream flowing beneath a frozen lake. "They said your body disappeared. But you're still here, aren't you? Just... lighter now."
She tilted her head. Her fragile neck looked like the stem of a flower, ready to snap.
Like smoke, Bai Ye whispered into her mind, her voice not made of sound, but of thought—a cold thread wrapping around the girl's consciousness.
"Waiting? Not really." Hong Yu smiled faintly, a knowing, almost cruel curve to her lips. She sat on the bed, legs swinging slightly. "It's more like a feeling. Here," she tapped her temple, "and here," she pressed her chest. "There's always been this buzzing, like a broken radio. Now you're here, and it stopped. It's quiet now... like the sound of snow falling."
Do you like silence? Bai Ye asked.
"Yes," Hong Yu answered without hesitation. She hugged her doll tighter, its hollow eyes facing Bai Ye. "It's too noisy—the voices in my head, the grown-ups outside, their eyes... everything's too loud."
She lowered her head, rubbing her chin against the doll's dirty hair. "They say I'm sick. That something bad lives inside me." Her eyes lifted again, clear and unafraid. "They say it's a devil."
A devil? Bai Ye echoed, amused and resonating with cold curiosity. Do you believe them?
Hong Yu frowned slightly, thinking deeply. After a pause, she slowly shook her head. "I don't know. It doesn't talk to me, not like in the books. It's just... there. Dark and heavy. Sometimes it's hot, sometimes cold. Like a burning stone stuck in my throat. I can't cough it up, can't swallow it."
She reached out, drawing an invisible shape in the air. "It shows me things. Bad things. In mirrors, or in other people's eyes. Mom says I'm lying, that I imagine it."
Her voice softened with a flicker of hurt, then steadied again. "But I know it's real. It's there."
Bai Ye's presence moved closer. A chill spread over Hong Yu's bare arms, raising goosebumps. But she didn't flinch.
Are you afraid of it?
"Afraid?" Hong Yu echoed the word like it was a strange flavor. She looked genuinely puzzled. "Sometimes I shake. But not because of it."
She raised her eyes, locking onto the thickest shadow in the air.
"I'm afraid... of what happens if it comes out. If it gets out, will it become light, like you? Or will it... break everything that's too loud?"
Break everything? Bai Ye echoed, intrigued.
This child's eyes weren't windows—they were mirrors. And what they reflected wasn't the world, but its twisted truth.
The nightlight flickered without warning, dimming until it nearly went out. The room plunged into a deeper darkness. Hong Yu's shadow stretched and twisted on the wall. Her doll's empty eye socket seemed to expand, becoming a gaping, devouring mouth.
Then the light sputtered back to life—dimmer now, with a purplish hue.
Where Bai Ye lingered, the air rippled like boiling water. Frost crept across the windowpane from the inside.
A brittle leaf slapped against the glass outside, like a dying moth.
Hong Yu reached out. Her fingers passed through the warped space, touching only ice. She didn't pull back.
Instead, she leaned forward.
Her face twisted with pain and joy—the cold was exactly what she needed.
"So cold..." she whispered. Her lips curved into the tiniest smile. "Like winter glass. So clean."
She looked down at her reddened fingertips, then up again.
"Will you leave? Drift away like smoke?"
I will leave this wall. But I won't vanish.
"Then..." Her voice grew even softer. "Can you take me with you?"
Not yet, little one. Bai Ye's thought was laced with something cruel, almost tender.
Your skin isn't ready to shed. You need to find your mirror first—the one that shows you what 'it' really looks like.
"Mirror?" Hong Yu echoed.
When you can look in the mirror, see it for what it is... and not be afraid.
The blue light cast deep shadows over her pale face, revealing the churning darkness in her eyes. Not Bai Ye's kind of darkness, but something wholly her own.
Bai Ye smiled. Her presence shimmered faintly.
She floated silently to the window, passed through the glass, and vanished into the quiet, dark world outside. The frost on the window melted, leaving only a few winding trails of condensation.
Bai Ye drifted out of the hospital. Below her, the city of Shanghai unfolded like a massive chessboard.
(III)
Twilight bled like a bruise over the sycamore trees of Fuxing Middle Road. Bai Ye hovered beside a utility pole, her gaze fixed on a second-floor window across the street—the same window through which, at eight years old, she'd first peered out at the world. Now, it was plastered over with yellowing newspaper, like a rotting eye sealed shut.
The wind carried fallen leaves that scraped past her ankles. She drifted across the alley. The hallway inside was worse than she remembered, the peeling paint like flaking scabs on old flesh. The air reeked of mildew and boiled herbs.
In the living room, dust coated the table like ash. Cockroaches scuttled across congealed soy sauce stains. On the balcony, her father's white shirt dripped water onto the cement floor, each droplet carving a tiny grave.
From the kitchen came the thud of a cleaver on a cutting board—slow, rhythmic, like a faltering heartbeat. Her father's hunched figure loomed behind frosted glass, casting a marionette-like shadow on the mold-streaked wall.
"Dad," Bai Ye whispered.
Bai Hua jerked upright. His clouded eyes scanned the empty room. "Yezi?" His voice was little more than a croak. "Is that you?"
She stepped closer, reaching out to touch his withered face—and passed through him like mist. His pupils contracted. A harsh cough wracked his body, folding him in half, as if his lungs were rejecting the air itself.
She turned away and floated toward the courtyard. Her mother was hunched over a basin, washing vegetables. Her muttering drifted through the humid air, sharp as broken glass.
"Yezi needs her medicine... That damn girl, always causing trouble..."
Bai Ye stood silently behind her.
"Mom," she said softly.
Li Zhen paused. She spun around, disoriented. "Yezi?" Her voice trembled, then she shook her head and gave a bitter laugh. "Hallucinations again..."
Bai Ye said nothing more. She only watched.
Then she turned and floated toward the front gate.
Sunlight pierced her body, casting only the faintest shadow—like a wisp of smoke about to dissolve.
She looked back one last time.
Then passed through the gate, vanishing into the world beyond.
The sunlight held no warmth.
She no longer needed mirrors.
Because now, she was everywhere.