There was a young man of about fifteen years old hurrying down the starlit dirt road, which was silent and empty but for a few other shadowy figures darting around. On his face, there was tied a thick white cloth that covered his mouth and nose, leaving only his warm brown eyes visible. In the starlight, they seemed to glow with a bluish gleam. This was clearly Li Jun. The cloth over his nose had several rusty stains on it that looked suspiciously like blood.
It was unclear where he was headed in such a hurry. The dream followed him to the door of a good-sized round cottage. The door had a large “X” painted over it in bright red dye, a mark that looked pointedly ominous.
Li Jun stopped for a moment at the door, tightening his face cloth. Then he raised his warm fist and rapped on the wood.
“Please open the door if you are able! This is Li Jun, working with my father Chief Li’s team of healers to treat the scarlet disease!”
Footsteps stumbled to the door frantically. Li Jun had just taken a step back when the door flung open violently, revealing a haggard-looking elderly woman. Her eyes were shocked wide with fear and stress, and her skin seemed almost gray. Over her mouth and nose there was tied a similar thick cloth to the one Li Jun wore, but it was askew, as though it had shifted as she rushed to the door.
“Please,” she croaked, her voice cracking with urgency. “It’s my grandson. Save him!”
Li Jun bowed his head and entered her home purposefully. At the back of the large, round room there was a little boy — he must be only a toddler — laid on a thick bedroll, his small round head resting on a wooden pillow. He looked fast asleep.
Upon closer examination, his soft baby skin was shockingly pale, like that of a little wan ghost. Li Jun kneeled down by the bedrollside and proceeded to carry out a short routine — checking the toddler’s pulse, feeling his forehead, opening his small mouth and peering inside, and pulling down the collar of his cotton clothes to examine the scarlet rash.
Li Jun’s forehead wrinkled. His warm brown eyes glimmered, the blueness within them looking suddenly grim and sorrowful.
He stood to face the old woman, who was standing nearby and leaning over the child to watch urgently as Li Jun checked him. She looked at Li Jun with wide eyes that shined with hope even as the wrinkled skin around them drooped with age and stress.
“You can cure him, can’t you?” she asked, her voice trembling. “You can make little Ah Xiang better?”
Li Jun’s eyes glimmered, as though he was forcing down tears. What a soft-hearted young man. His warm fists curled by his sides.
Slowly, he shook his head. In a solemn, gentle voice, he said:
“I’m sorry, Miss. He is too late into the scarlet disease. So far, we can only prevent the progression from the most beginning stages of the disease. However, I can pacify any pain he is experiencing with medicine, and provide him with a peaceful sleep.”
The old woman stared at him for a moment, speechless. The light in her eyes seemed to have blinked out, like the extinguishing of a weak candle.
Then, with a banging noise, she fell to her knees and began to sob. She grabbed at Li Jun’s blue clothes, shaking him in her blinding grief.
“You healers!” she wailed, the white cloth falling from her face as she wept. “What are you good for? What is a village chief good for if he can’t stop a disease from killing all of his people? You all can’t save any of us! My grandson, Ah Xiang, Ah Xiang, he is going to die, and all you can do is let him sleep until his soul leaves his body…Useless!”
Her wails were turning to screams now. She was gripping Li Jun’s clothes so tightly that it seemed they would tear at any moment. As she shook and rocked, tugging and clawing, Li Jun’s brown eyes widened.
On the back of the old woman’s neck, there were red crescent-shaped marks creeping up her wrinkled skin. They had been hiding in the collar of her burlap dress, but as she crouched down the collar had moved back slightly to reveal them shining there, bright and fresh as blood…
Li Jun quickly stepped back. But the old woman continued to cling to the hem of his long blue shirt, sobbing infected tears and snot into it ceaselessly.
“Miss!” he called loudly, trying to pull away. “Miss, you are infected as well! The scarlet disease affects the mind as well as the body. If you let go of me, I can brew you both a pain and sleeping medication to comfort you and help calm the situation so that we can talk — ”
The old woman’s wails only grew louder. She was practically shrieking now, her cries like the screams of an injured hawk.
If it was a year ago, someone from a nearby house would have come running to ask what the matter was. But since the scarlet disease had arrived to the village of Pianjian last summer, all of the families in the nearest houses had fallen ill and died. Some of their infected bodies still lay within their cottages, rotting as the days passed, since no one dared to pull the still-infected bodies out into the street. And besides, even if there were living villagers nearby, they would not dare to enter a home with a scarlet “X” painted on the door. They would not have even dared to leave their cottages, for fear of catching the scarlet disease from staying out on the street too long and breathing in the poisonous, rank infected village air.
“Please, Miss,” Li Jun repeated, desperately trying to pry the old woman from his knees, which she was now hugging tightly. “Miss, I can help the both of you through the pain! Miss! I am very sorry, but I need you to let go! If you just allow me to gather my ingredients — ”
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The door burst open.
Li Jun tried to turn around, but he couldn’t with the old woman clinging to him like a bee to honeycomb. Even the terribly sickened toddler had begun to cry in his sleep, adding to the mind-numbing racket.
Pale hands appeared suddenly and pried the woman off Li Jun with harsh strength. She was pushed to the ground, where she sprawled near her grandson, continuing to sob into the floor — even more loudly now.
A figure dressed in dark burlap clothes moved in front of Li Jun. Li Jun’s heart rose. By the unruly, shining black hair that was tied up into a ponytail with a scarlet ribbon, the worn and pale hands, this was unmistakably Shao Cheng, fifteen years old at least by now. His shoulders were broader, and his height had increased as well. A scarlet cloth belt was tied around his waist.
From the front, he was glaring down at that old woman with eyes that looked like they might spew fire and sparks at any moment. His mouth was obscured by a cloth that had been tied over his nose and mouth, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that his lips were curled into a disgusted sneer beneath it as he bore down on the old woman, his shadow towering over her figure.
“How the fuck can you be mad at him?” Shao Cheng spat, curling his fists. He shifted on his feet, like he wanted to kick the old lady, but he remained standing where he was in front of Li Jun, restraining himself—just barely.
“How the fuck can you be angry with him?” Shao Cheng repeated, his voice like both fire and ice. “Did he start this disease? Is it his fault no healer in this fuckass village knows how to cure it? Are you trying to kill him by holding onto him? Do you think that’ll make you feel better for not being able to save your grandson or some stupid shit?”
He crouched down, his shadow obscuring the face of the old woman, who had gone silent. She was staring up at him with large, shocked eyes, her face stained with tears and snot as her body trembled with silent sobs.
Shao Cheng pointed a long pale finger back at where Li Jun stood still as a jade statue a short distance away.
“Don’t you fucking dare do something like that again,” he hissed, eyes flashing with contempt. “Don’t touch him. Don’t yell at someone who’s trying to help you. You don’t have long to live, seeing as you’re as infected as you are. But if you pull something like that on a healer again, I'll put you out of your misery myself!”
With that, he stood. He swept toward Li Jun and snatched him by the wrist, pulling him out the door forcefully.
“Come on. Don’t come back to this house again.”
Li Jun seemed dazed. He allowed himself to be pulled along in Shao Cheng’s harsh grip. As the two young men walked out the door, however, there was a whistling noise.
Shao Cheng’s eyes flashed, as did Li Jun’s. Both of them ducked at the same time.
Something sailed past them through the doorway, shattering on the dirt road outside the cottage with an ear splitting sound. It was a bronze mirror, now smashed into hundreds of shining, precious shards.
Behind them, the woman had risen stumblingly to her feet and flung the mirror with all her strength. When the young men turned around, one with dark eyes flaming, the other with wide eyes of shock, they saw the old woman standing, chest heaving hysterically.
She glared at Shao Cheng with a look that could be said to be even more hateful and ferocious than a raging fire—even more hateful than the disgusted glare he’d cast at her. With her gray, wrinkled skin and the scarlet crescent-shaped rashes crawling up her collarbone, she looked ghastly, like a vengeful ghost.
“You,” she breathed, her voice trembling with rage. She shakily stabbed a wrinkled finger at Shao Cheng, gripping her skirt until her gray knuckles turned white.
“YOU!” she repeated, her shriek tearing through the air like a howling wind, piercing the ears of anyone unfortunate enough to hear. “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT, YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOUR FAULT, AND YOUR BITCH OF A MOTHER’S FAULT, AND YOUR BASTARD FATHER’S FAULT! IF YOU ALL HAD NEVER COME TO THIS TOWN, WE WOULD NEVER HAVE SUFFERED LIKE THIS! NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED! I HOPE YOU DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS! I HOPE YOUR CORPSE BURNS IN THE SUN UNTIL IT ROTS, AND IT’S PECKED AT AND NEVER BURIED! YOU!”
At this point, Li Jun took Shao Cheng’s hand and forcefully pulled him away from the cottage doorway and down the street. It took some effort to drag him forward, as Shao Cheng tried violently to pull away and return to the cottage door to scream back at the woman, but Li Jun held on extremely tightly and pulled with great force, determinedly striding down the road with a stumbling Shao Cheng who was choking on rage in tow.
“Don’t listen to her,” Li Jun muttered, his voice serious. “She’s spouting nonsense. She’s gone crazy.”
Shao Cheng said nothing. He only gripped Li Jun’s warm hand tightly with his own pale, cold hand—so tightly his nails nearly dug into ad broke Li Jun’s skin. Both of them knew that that old hag wasn’t the only one who had been saying such terrible things about Shao Cheng’s family since the outbreak began, but neither of them said that. The two of them continued down the road, the moonlight casting strange shadows in their wake.
From far behind them, that vengeful old woman’s voice still echoed, much farther off, but still as terrible:
“ALL SPIRITUALLY DUMB PEOPLE OUGHT TO JUST KEEL OVER DEAD! WHY IS IT US WHO ARE DYING INSTEAD? LOOK WHAT MISFORTUNE YOU HAVE BROUGHT UPON THIS VILLAGE, YOU BASTARDS! I PRAY ALL OF HEAVEN’S RETRIBUTIONS ON YOU! MAY YOU HAVE PAIN, UPON PAIN, UPON PAIN FOR HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF YEARS! MAY YOUR SOUL NEVER REST! CURSE YOU!”
Her venomous curses writhed in the air, trailing after and clinging to the two boys like smoke.
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The dream — was it a dream anymore? It felt as real as being awake now — faded to blackness once again. There was that floating sensation, though it was short this time.
Voices came quickly, whispering from all sides.
“Did you hear? Those Shao bastards have been murdered.”
“Murdered? All of them?”
“Not quite. Only the mother and father are dead. Didn’t you hear? A group of diseased villagers with nothing left to lose finally snapped and went to the Shao’s mangy old cottage last night. They threw flaming mud bricks in the windows and killed Shao Yuze and his wife Wu Meilin!”
“No way! They killed them on purpose? Isn’t that—a bit much? But…in any case, I guess bravery really does arise in the face of sure death…I’m too afraid to go near that family for fear of being cursed with something even worse than the scarlet disease!”
“I’m the same as you, I’ve always been scared stiff. But killing Shao Yuze and his wife was an accident, apparently. I heard those villagers were just trying to destroy the belongings inside of the house in anger. But Shao Yuze and Wu Meilin were hit right in the heads by bricks, and died by morning! Now all that’s left of that spiritually dumb family is their bastard son...”
“Hmph! It’s a tragedy, but a good thing all the same. Now our town will be rid of some misfortune, at least…”
“Yes! Perhaps the scarlet disease will decrease at last!”
“I hope so! But their son is still lurking around, isn’t he? Don’t you think he might continue to bring us misfortune? Three spiritually dumb people are a triple curse, but one is still a curse…”
“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but let’s hope he dies quickly from the plague, or something else…That’s best for everyone…”