Chapter 38: Dusty Memories

1ST MAR 2023~ VERALUCTL

As Mo Cong went upstairs, his mind was more or less a little dazed, such that he was ambushed in the dark corridor. A hand rudely pressed him against the wall before pushing him into a room. 

After seeing the face of his attacker under the suddenly bright light, Mo Cong gave up struggling. “An Jie?” He had thought after his confession this morning, this person would ignore him for quite some time. He didn’t expect to be dragged into his room the very same night… Did this guy not know that there was an idiom in the vast vocabulary of Chinese called “luring the wolf into the room”?

An Jie glared at him and let go of his collar. “Get in, I have something to ask you.”

Mo Cong adjusted his clothes, the corners of his lips lifting for some unknown reason; he tried his best to straighten up his outfit and with his in his pockets, he leisurely followed An Jie into the living room, sitting down on the sofa. “If you’re asking about what I said today… then it’s true. And I’m afraid I am very much interested in you.”

An Jie’s lips twitched from anger at this brat’s complete lack of shame. “I have absolutely no interest in you. Firstly, I’m not into males; secondly, I’m not a pedophile.”

“A pedophile?” Mo Cong didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he examined the slim body of the youth in front of him. He lit himself a cigarette, held it with his mouth, and didn’t pursue the topic. He felt a little gloomy; An Jie had obviously not taken what happened this morning to heart. Taking in a deep breath then breathing out a puff of smoke, Mo Cong asked, half-muffled by the cigarette between his teeth, “The one who slipped out from under my eyes today was you, right?”

“I didn’t fire the first two rounds,” An Jie admitted honestly, the playful banter subsiding slightly from his face. “Mo Cong, what I’m about to say to you now…”

Mo Cong frowned and interrupted him. “You saw that weed-flower and want me to stay away from Old Gun Zhai and the rest of them?”

“So there is still a part of your brain that hasn’t been covered over by concrete.” An Jie glanced at him without much friendliness. “I’m warning you, this isn’t something a brat like you who’s just been potty-trained can deal with. If not for your sisters, then scram out of this mess for yourself, so you don’t turn into a piece of abstract art too. As for Zhai Haidong… with me here, he won’t dare to do much to you.”

“Who are you?” Mo Cong cut straight to the point, making it clear that he would not be satisfied without an answer. 

“Your grandfather.1” An Jie hit two meanings with one phrase, achieving his goal of alleviating his unpleasant mood. 

Mo Cong didn’t continue the banter like his usual self. He pondered a little, and suddenly spoke. “You know Zhai Haidong and you probably have some sort of deep relationship with He Jingming. You also know that weed… uh, that iris or whatever, and you know its origins… and who left it, right?”

An Jie paused and didn’t say anything, only looking at the young man in front of him who seemed to be hiding something.

Mo Cong sighed and stood up. “Follow me, let me show you something.”

After the two entered the Mo house single file, Mo Jin, who had been sitting on the sofa reciting English with her earphones on, raised her head with a ‘whoosh’, her expression terribly strange, an indecipherable laugh coming from her mouth. Her large eyes swept between Mo Cong and An Jie unpleasantly. 

Even Mo Yu stuck her head out of her room at the commotion. An Jie didn’t know what the two girls were whispering about but judging by their expressions, it was nothing good. 

An Jie rolled his eyes, goosebumps all over him.

Mo Cong led him to the study, turned to squint his eyes at the two girls without saying anything, then shut the door tightly behind him – no gawking allowed.

An Jie crossed his arms, leaning against one of the bookshelves lining the walls. “What did you bring me here for?”

Mo Cong gathered his thoughts, his expression turning serious. “I need to show you something.” He waved his hands and walked to the last bookshelf of the row. The shelf was locked; a thin layer of dust had gathered on top of it and despite looking very much identical to the other old and obsolete shelves, it seemed as if the dust was extra thick for some unknown reason. 

An Jie wiped off some of it with his hands and looked at Mo Cong with confusion. 

The young man casually took out a thin metal wire from his pocket and picked the lock without much effort. The door of the shelf split in two with a creak, letting out the smell of mold from the gap that opened up between them.

“This was my dad’s shelf. Even now, I don’t know where he kept the key. I’ve only seen him open it when I was very young.” Mo Cong picked out a few books at random from the middle. Thin spots of mold had started growing on the yellowing pages; they were all ancient. Flipping to the price at the back, many of them had costed only several cents. 

An Jie frowned. “What do you want me to look at?”

“Come here.” Mo Cong suddenly dragged An Jie’s hand over, the warmth of his hand making An Jie break free subconsciously, not used to physical contact with another. Mo Cong raised his hands innocently. “I don’t mean anything, I just want you to touch a place inside this shelf.”

An Jie was more or less a rather impatient person and it took a lot of perseverance for him to push down his temper. “Where?”

Mo Cong picked up his hand again. Such a normal action yet when Mo Cong did it, it felt so ambiguous. An Jie felt a little gloomy and thought, was this lad born with the talent to become a specialist pervert, with a niche in harassing men?

The shelf was tall. Even though the two could both be said to be tall and slender, they still had to stand on their toes. Mo Cong guided An Jie’s hand into the shelf, past a row of old books, and searched in a corner near the top.

Soon, An Jie’s fingertips felt an obtrusion. Shocked, he had no time to keep teasing Mo Cong. He quickly judged the shape of the carving, his originally perfunctory expression turning serious. “A torch, now!”

Mo Cong took off the keyring on his belt; a thin stream of light hit the carving. An Jie cleaned away the surrounding light and that extremely exquisite carving appeared in front of the two abruptly – 

An iris flower. 

Identical to the one on the dead man’s head.

An Jie froze, his fingers still touching the carving, like time had stopped for him.

Why was Li’s mark here in Professor Mo’s bookshelf? Why did Professor Mo’s archeology team happen to be there at the same time he was in the desert? Why was the team equipped with so much advanced military technology, yet consisted of mostly elders, scholars, and women? Why did the iris appear in Beijing, half a year after he arrived? Why did that yellow monkey ignore everyone present today and insist on attacking him?

What did those final crazed words from Shen Jiancheng mean? Who had sponsored him? And why was he so obsessed with that ancient city?

Everything lined up like a giant puzzle. Something like a black hole formed in this quiet study, so that not even light could escape, so that no one could discover its secret… yet faintly, there was a string that connected everything together.

The string faded in and out; An Jie couldn’t cleanly capture it from amidst his thoughts. 

Who was it? Was everything a coincidence… or on purpose?

Including the fact that he, An Yin Hu, had been turned into an eighteen-year old youth in the span of a single night.

He just realized that there was a row of cold sweat trickling down along his spine. Mo Cong might only be confused, but An Jie felt as if something nuclear had gone off in his head; his nervous system and reflective arcs were rendered into nothingness, all channels in utter chaos. He grabbed onto Mo Cong arm, the strength making the young man frown. “Who knows about this?”

Mo Cong thought about it. “This was my dad’s shelf. You see the books inside? Apart from him, not even my mother has touched it… Li Biyun probably doesn’t even know it exists. As for the girls…” He shook his head. “This shelf was always locked up and the old man never let us know the whereabouts of its key. I happened to find it by accident when he fell asleep on the table and the shelf happened to be unlocked. I thought the carving looked a little familiar when I saw that head today, I didn’t think it would actually be the same.”

“How do you remember what happened then so clearly?” An Jie asked cautiously.

Mo Cong paused, not speaking for a while. After some time, he muttered, “Because that time, my dad beat him. He’s always been that same cowardly man his whole life, he never even raised his voice. He was always so pitiful even in front of his children. That was the only time he had been violent.”

It turned out that Old Mo… Mo Yannan, wasn’t as naive as he appeared. At least from what Mo Cong had described, he wasn’t oblivious to the origin of that iris flower.

An Jie leant heavily against the shelf door. “Never talk about this to anyone. Pretend you don’t know it either, do you hear me?”

Mo Cong looked at him quietly. “I can pretend I don’t know, but what if someone else knows I have something like this in my house?” He paused. “An Jie, did you really only meet my dad in the Great North West?”

I have no reason to lie about something so trivial… Or at least something I had assumed was trivial.” An Jie sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lock the shelf. I’ll tell you about R·Li.”

“Who?” Mo Cong asked, confused.

“R·Li.” An Jie turned and pulled out the revolving chair from behind the writing desk, spinning a half-circle with one foot as the axis. There was only a dim light on in the study; half of his face was hidden in the shadows, looking strangely enticing. “It’s expected that you’ve never heard of him, he disappeared more than a decade ago.”

“More than a decade ago?” Mo Cong looked at this An Jie who appeared unfamiliar in both expression and tone, and subconsciously retorted, “Then how would you know?”

“More than a decade ago, I was only slightly older than you now.” An Jie chuckled, his hands overlapping. “I personally ended his legend.”

Author’s Notes: I have to make an announcement, children. I’ll be going out next week, it’s very possible that I won’t be online. I’ll come back to school next weekend, mmm, updates will resume after I come back. But I can’t promise about the time before. Of course I will update, but definitely not daily updates. I will save my writing in the draft box.

Ah, don’t hit me. 

1A mild swear in Chinese. Basically An Jie is implying his true age, and dismissing Mo Cong insultingly at the same time.