CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The street with the aquarium and museum on it is located in the northwest quadrant of the city, less than thirty minutes walking distance from the Chen estate. Once there, Li Feng and Lam Bai ignore the other attractions of the street, mostly brothels, and enter the aquarium first.

Inside the aquarium, a man is talking to a woman sitting behind a counter. The man is tall and muscular, and very angry.

“I just want to look at some fish!” The man yells at the woman. “I don’t want to eat any, just look at ‘em!”

“Even so, it’s three hundred coins or no admission!” The woman yells back. “If you can’t pay, scram!”

“I can pay, fifty coins!” The man yells, holding up a fifty coin piece in his hand. “Worth more than enough to just look at some stupid fish!”

“Go buy a cheap whore, instead,” The woman scoffs at the money. “Get out of the way, I’ve got more customers.”

“Bah!” The man shouts and turns around. “I’ll be back later!”

The man leaves the aquarium, and Li Feng and Lam Bai step toward the counter. “Just the young master and I,” Lam Bai says.

“It’s three hundred coins per person,” The woman says, not changing her attitude toward the price at all.

“That’s a little too expensive for our tastes,” Lam Bai says, leaning on the counter. “Chen Yan personally told us about this aquarium. Would 150 coins for each of us be fine?”

“Guests of the Chen family?” The woman asks. “Where’s your identification cards?”

“Here’s mine, and this is the young master I’m serving,” Lam Bai says, and shows her identification card to the woman behind the counter.

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After a few seconds of looking at the card, the woman hands it back to Lam Bai and speaks. “Alright, two hundred coins for each of you, but that’s the lowest I’ll do,” She says as Lam Bai takes the identification card back.

“That’ll be fine,” Lam Bai says and takes four hundred coins from her pocket and places them on the counter.

“Welcome to the aquarium,” The woman says, taking the coins and depositing them under the counter. “We have tanks on the second and third floors, and skeletons on the fourth floor. Please enjoy yourselves.”

“Thank you,” Lam Bai says, and walks with Li Feng past the counter.

Behind the counter is a wall, and on the other side of that is a staircase leading up. There are two doors behind the staircase, but they’re both labeled Staff Only like in the restaurant. Li Feng and Lam Bai walk up the stairs, and enter a room with tanks filled with fish all across the room.

The tanks line the walls of the building and are spaced periodically throughout the floor, reaching Li Feng’s height. Inside each tank, different fish swim in bluish water. Most of the fish in the tanks are standard, like the ones found at markets near bodies of water. Some tanks have colorful fish in them, and others have fish with strange bodies. Many of the species of unknown to Li Feng, and the fish resembling a pig, complete with pink skin and tusks, is the most interesting.

After looking at all the fish on the second floor, Li Feng and Lam Bai ascend to the third floor. There, Li Feng and Lam Bai look at tanks filled with water-dwelling animals that couldn’t be considered fish. There are crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and a tank in the center of the room contains an octopus.

The fish on the previous floor and the crustaceans on the second floor all swim away from Li Feng and Lam Bai when they approach, but the octopus latches onto the glass, as if trying to attack. Li Feng suspects it’s trying to get free, considering it was recently captured.

On the fourth floor are only skeletons, and Li Feng doesn’t spend much time here. Skeletons are boring, and he’s much more entertained by the unknown fish on the other floors. For a few hours, Li Feng stares at fish he hasn’t seen before in this life or the previous one.

Once Li Feng is satisfied with looking at aquatic creatures, he finds Lam Bai and they leave the aquarium. Going through the lobby, they pass the man from earlier, who has returned.

“How much did you pay to enter?” The man asks Lam Bai, almost yelling at her.

“We paid three hundred coins each,” Lam Bai says, walking past the man without another word.