The Kunlun Files

Chapter 14: What If It's Supernatural?

It was past ten at night when Lu Feng called. "Dajie, my arm suddenly hurts like crazy. I can't even lift it now."

"I told you to see a doctor. What did the doctor say?"

"He said it's a mild strain, nothing serious, gave me some medicine. I used it and it does nothing at all."

"Calling me won't help either. If it's bad, go to the ER."

"It couldn't be that Xiao Hao's ghost came and bit me, right?"

"Can you give your brain a rest? You think about these things all day."

"Dajie, just take a look for me. What if it's a supernatural event?"

"Remember this lesson. Mind fewer of other people's business."

"Dajie — does that mean you're not going to care about me anymore?"

"Did the doctor give you a white bottle — the spray? That's the one that works. You're probably using the wrong one. Spray that."

I hung up and was about to get ready for bed when my chest stung, sharp, without any reason.

The voice rose out of it: *If you don't help him, tonight will be very painful for him.*

"Serves him right for meddling."

*Where is there meddling? All of it is karma.*

"Let him suffer a little. He'll grow a brain."

I always switch my phone off to sleep. Tonight, my thumb hesitated over the button — and I disliked that hesitation intensely.

Then I noticed the beast in my chest was awake, wearing a wicked grin, as if to say: *you can't escape.*

I turned the phone off without a second's more pause.

A little after two in the morning, a knocking jolted me awake. At first I thought I'd imagined it, but when I reached the living room, it was unmistakably my own front door.

I opened the security monitor. Master Wu stood outside — and my first thought was that something had happened to Lu Feng.

"Come with me to the hospital," Wu said the moment the door opened. "It's the kid."

"What happened to him?"

"Middle of the night, high fever. He got up for the bathroom and collapsed. He's been unconscious since."

A chill ran over my whole body. I'd thought Lu Feng was in for a sore arm and nothing more. I hadn't imagined this force would burn him with fever and put him on the floor.

The emergency room at that hour still streamed with people.

When we saw Lu Feng, he was unconscious — though the nurse said he'd woken briefly, and this was likely sleep now.

"He's been staying at my place lately," Wu said. "Lucky I sleep light. I heard him go down in the bathroom. Otherwise the kid would have lain there all night, and by the time I found him in the morning, he'd have been cold through."

"Did you tell his family?"

"Haven't had time. When my people carried him downstairs he still had some awareness — kept saying to find you, to make you save him, that a ghost had definitely bitten him. Insisted I drag you out in the middle of the night."

"Is he always this twitchy about the supernatural?"

"Just look at him, will you? Did a ghost actually bite him or not?"

"There is something unclean lingering on him," I said. "But it's not a ghost."

"Then what is it?"

"We'll see whether the medicine brings the fever down. If it won't break, I'll look deeper."

"I'll watch him. Go sleep in my car; if anything happens, I'll call you."

"I've already slept a few hours. You go rest — I'll call you if anything happens."

After Wu left with his company people, the ward went quiet in the way only hospitals can be quiet — a machine ticking somewhere, a cart's wheels three rooms away, Lu Feng's breathing loud with fever. I pulled a chair to his bedside and watched his face, flushed red all the way to the ears, and thought: *truly, what can't be escaped can't be escaped.*

One bottle of IV later, his temperature had come down a little — but the fever hadn't fully broken.

All that time I watched his great soul. It filled the corner of the room the way weather fills a sky, and it looked, of all things, *happy* — settled over its fevered body like a dragon over a hoard, almost purring. It had waited a long time for this night, I realized. The soul had exactly what it wanted: me, at its bedside, in the small hours, unable to walk away.

The thought did not comfort me.

And the aura tangled around Lu Feng was more complicated than I'd first thought. The thing from the ward had kept its word and stayed gone. But what it had left in him had not.

Many karmic bonds in this world need their moment to trigger. A seed lying by itself won't sprout; every condition for sprouting has to be present. Tonight, the yin energy from the thing on Xiao Hao had wounded Lu Feng — and that wound had completely awakened the past-life bond between him and me. Seeds planted many lifetimes ago had formally begun to sprout this night.

I didn't know what fruit our seed would bear in this life.

Past four in the morning, the fever still hadn't fully receded, but Lu Feng woke. The moment he saw me, his eyes lit up. "Dajie — what are you doing here?"

"Wu brought me."

"Wu actually went and got you—" He broke into a grin, then winced. "Jie. Was I really bitten by a ghost?"

I didn't answer. I gave him a look to judge for himself. "Drink some warm water."

He took the cup from me and drained it in one go. "Jie. Sorry to put you through this."

"Master Wu is getting on in years. You, little friend, need to settle down — the old man can't take too much of this kind of excitement."

"Old man? I went hiking with him and couldn't even keep up. He walks like the wind's under his feet. He walked me like a dog."

"Sick people should talk less. We'll take your temperature again in a while."

"Dajie." He looked at me, earnest as a child. "You're really good to me."

"For the next while — if nothing's pressing, don't go back to school."

I was worried that at this exact juncture, any more contact between Lu Feng and Xiao Hao might trigger the next stage of what was growing.

I'd read the bond between them back in that ward, while the thing still clung to the boy. In one life, they had studied together in an old village schoolhouse. One day the boy who was Lu Feng climbed a tree and fell — and the boy who was Xiao Hao, passing by, caught him with his own body. Lu Feng wasn't hurt at all. Xiao Hao's arm was crushed beneath him.

So in this life, helping Xiao Hao, Lu Feng injured his arm. Arm for arm. The debt had already begun balancing itself, and neither of them knew.

The good news: whatever began between Lu Feng and Xiao Hao looked to be a good bond.

Ours, though — his and mine — had sprouted tonight in a fever ward at four in the morning. And of every ending I could see for it, there wasn't a single good one among them.