Ch. 007| The Old House at Midnight
Through a sleepless night, Mingye watches phantom footsteps, an unexplained pool of water, and old marks deepen, then messages his mother, who comes home and asks him to tell her everything.
March 16, 2065. Monday. 23:30.
Gu Mingye went back to his room.
Turned off the light. Lay down.
The ceiling was still the ceiling. Outside the window, the alley in the Old River District was quiet.
On a normal Monday at this hour he'd be in the back stretch of evening study at the cram school on Shuyuan Street, almost done. Tonight he was in bed.
The little clock by his bed usually went off at 23:48, in sync with the cram school's roller shutter hitting the ground.
Tonight he'd shut that alarm off. Tomorrow morning he wouldn't have to wake up in sync at 23:48.
But the clock still showed 23:35, 23:36, 23:37 — the numbers kept climbing.
He closed his eyes.
The things in his head wouldn't stop. Everything he'd seen and heard today came around again, one after another, then again.
He turned over.
Onto the other side.
Back again.
00:00.
He gave up on sleep.
Got out of bed, opened the door, walked out.
The living room light was off. Only the little nightlight in the entryway, a faint yellow.
On the coffee table, the closed notebook looked the same as it had two hours ago.
At least, on the surface, the same.
He didn't go over to check.
He went to the balcony, slid the screen door open, stepped out.
At this hour, the middle of the night, the alley in the Old River District should have been completely silent.
It was silent.
Only, far off, the low hum of the last train passing on the Rivermag Line — the last Rivermag at 00:20, the one Gu Mingye usually rode. Tonight he was home.
He leaned on the balcony railing and looked down at the alley.
There was no one in the alley.
00:30.
Just as he was about to go back to his room, he heard footsteps.
From the mouth of the alley, coming this way.
Slow, at a steady pace.
Not someone in a hurry. Not someone coming home either — someone coming home stops at a certain point, turns into a doorway, works a lock. These footsteps didn't stop, didn't turn.
He looked from the balcony toward the mouth of the alley.
He couldn't see it. From the balcony you couldn't see the alley mouth; the old house in front blocked the line of sight.
The footsteps came closer and closer.
When they reached the foot of his old house, they'd pass right below the balcony.
He held his breath, lowered his head, looked straight down.
The footsteps kept walking.
Passed right below him, kept going.
But when he looked down — there was no one in the alley.
The footsteps were still sounding.
They reached the far end of the alley, slowly faded, vanished.
Gu Mingye stood on the balcony, hand on the railing.
The railing was cold.
He thought for a moment about whether to turn on his phone's flashlight and look down more carefully.
He didn't.
He knew that if he turned the flashlight on now, no extra person would appear in the alley. That thing wasn't anywhere he could see it.
On or off, the result was the same.
01:00. Back to his room.
He lay back down.
He left the door open. From the living room he could see a strip of light from someone else's window filtering into the old house's walkway.
He closed his eyes.
Not to sleep — to wait. To wait for the next thing to happen.
He waited almost an hour. Nothing happened.
He didn't know if it was because he was waiting that the thing didn't come, or because he was waiting that he couldn't hear it come.
He thought of what his mother had said — "Grandma said the ones who can see, usually there's only one a generation in a family."
If it was his generation, then from when he was small until now, he should already have seen it many times.
But he didn't remember any.
At fourteen he'd started hearing sounds he couldn't place; back then he thought it was ringing in his ears.
At eleven, when Grandma died, he'd seen nothing.
Earlier than that, what he could remember was all a blur.
Maybe he had seen it, and just didn't remember.
Maybe he'd always been able to see it, and the things he saw were in corners he wasn't paying attention to, so he'd never counted it as "seeing."
02:00.
Half asleep, half awake.
He wasn't sure whether he'd actually fallen asleep. His eyes were closed, but the things in his head were the same batch as before he'd gotten up.
He turned over to face the door.
He heard a sound — from the kitchen.
Water.
Not the big rush of a tap turned on. The kind of drip. One drop, a pause, another drop.
Gu Mingye opened his eyes.
Before his mother left for work, she always checked the kitchen gas and the tap. She never left a tap running.
He sat up.
02:30. To the kitchen.
Light from the entryway nightlight, across the walkway, just barely reached the kitchen.
The kitchen tap was off.
The counter was dry — no.
In the middle, near the sink, there was a small pool of water.
Not big. About half a palm.
But the counter was slanted, and ran toward the sink. Any water that landed on it should run into the sink.
How this pool had stayed where it was, he didn't know.
He touched it with a finger.
Water.
The temperature was about the same as the room.
He looked at the sink. The sink was dry.
If this pool had leaked from the tap, there'd be a trail — running from the tap to the edge of the sink, then spreading from the edge across the counter.
But there was no such trail. This pool was like it had simply appeared in this spot.
Like it had just come from somewhere, sat a few minutes, and hadn't yet come back to room temperature.
03:00. He looked up.
On the kitchen wall, the spot where Grandma used to paste the lintel talisman. His mother had torn it off later and painted over it.
That spot had a faint mark, a shade different from the paint around it — a circle with a piece missing.
Gu Mingye knew this mark. It had been there since he was small, since they'd first lived in the old house.
Normally the mark was so faint you had to look hard to make it out.
Tonight, the mark — it was deeper than usual.
Not brighter. The line had thickened. Like someone behind it had taken something and traced the circle over again.
He stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking up, for about ten seconds.
The circle didn't move.
But it was clearer than usual.
He remembered how, after Grandma died, his mother had cleared out the old house, peeled the talisman off the lintel, put the paper into a contractor's waste bag. Later she painted the wall.
The paint had been meant to cover this circle.
But tonight, under the paint, the circle had surfaced again on its own.
It wasn't that the paint had flaked. The paint was still there — the wall still felt like paint.
It was the circle, surfacing itself out from behind the paint.
Like something wanted to be seen.
03:30. The living room.
He came out of the kitchen, into the living room.
On the coffee table, the closed notebook.
It looked the same as when he'd put it back two and a half hours ago.
He crouched, leaned in close.
The cover was the one the school handed out, white, printed with a butterfly.
A butterfly.
The spot Teacher Lin had tapped.
This afternoon it had looked like the ordinary butterfly it was — plain school-cover printing.
Now — the rim of the butterfly's wings looked like something had deepened it, just a little.
Same as the circle on the kitchen wall.
The line of that circle had thickened, the color sinking in.
Like someone behind it had taken a pen Gu Mingye couldn't see and traced the outline of the butterfly's wings over again.
04:00. He sat down on the couch.
Took the notebook from the coffee table onto his lap.
He didn't open it.
With his thumb, he lightly touched the edge of the butterfly's wing on the cover.
The feel of the paper hadn't changed.
But he could see the dark rim along the edge, different from this afternoon when he'd looked after his shift.
This afternoon, the edge had had the faintest motion.
Now it wasn't moving.
Like the thing had moved from the edge to the center. From moving to still. From the talisman slip to the cover.
He closed his eyes and thought.
Then opened them and turned the notebook open.
The red talisman slip, black ink, was still tucked between that day's page and the next.
He took it out.
Set it on the coffee table.
Turned on the desk lamp.
04:30. The slip under the desk lamp.
The red paper, red.
The black ink, black.
In the middle, the character 過 — "pass" — still there.
But it wasn't the same as this afternoon.
This afternoon the block of ink in the middle had been warm. The frayed rim around the edge had been cold. The center raised, the edge faint.
Now — the block of ink in the middle was cold.
The frayed rim at the edge was warm.
The whole thing reversed.
Like the slip had pulled back into the center the thing it had been trying to push outward — but what it had drawn in was more than just the block of ink that had been in the middle.
The slip had become a little heavier.
Not that the weight had actually increased. It was that, held in the hand, there was a sense of it "being there" different from before.
Like something had moved in.
05:00. His phone.
Gu Mingye put the slip back in the notebook, closed it.
Picked up his phone.
Opened LINE. From his mother's side, the last message was the one she'd sent before going out last night at 21:50: "Off to work."
Gu Mingye thought for a moment.
His mother had told him that if he saw anything, not to handle it himself — to message her.
He typed: Mom, the slip changed.
Hit send.
The message went out, turned to Read.
On her side, she was typing.
About ten seconds later, the reply: I'll be home within half an hour. I took the day off.
Gu Mingye looked at those words, "I took the day off."
For his mother to take the day off meant she'd already swapped or handed off her shift with the head nurse. Taking the day off at five in the morning — that wasn't the kind of thing a head nurse would normally grant easily.
When she explained it to someone, she wouldn't give the real reason. She'd say "something came up at home," or "my kid isn't feeling well."
Gu Mingye didn't know what his mother had told the head nurse.
But he knew she'd finish dealing with it before she came home.
Gu Mingye looked at the screen.
The phone screen went black, lit itself back up, went black again.
He set the phone down.
05:15. The living room.
He sat on the couch and waited.
The living room light was on. The desk lamp was on. His school bag sat beside the couch.
On the coffee table, the closed notebook, closed the same as before.
But Gu Mingye knew it wasn't the same.
The notebook, closed, on the coffee table.
The dark rim along the edge of the butterfly's wing showed clearly under the light.
Gu Mingye reached out and switched off the ceiling light.
Left only the desk lamp.
The notebook's cover, in the light of the desk lamp, went quiet.
The butterfly was still that same butterfly.
But the dark rim along the edge, it seemed, now wouldn't move.
He didn't know why he'd switched off the ceiling light.
If the living room was too bright, his mother would see everything he was seeing now the moment she stepped through the door. He wanted to give her a transition — coming in all the way from the alley, time to adjust.
Or maybe he needed that time himself.
From the cram school's roller shutter hitting the ground last night at 23:48, to now, 05:15, was six hours and twelve minutes.
The things that had happened in that stretch, he hadn't finished sorting in his own head yet.
Before his mother got home, he wanted to sort it a little, work out how to tell her.
But the more he thought, the more he felt the things in his head had no order to be sorted into. They'd just happened.
05:30. In the alley.
There were footsteps in the stairwell.
Different from the empty footsteps in the night.
These had weight and rhythm, and they'd stop at the door.
It was his mother.
Gu Mingye didn't get up.
He listened to the key turning.
The door opened.
His mother stood in the entryway.
Hair flat, her nurse's ID still around her neck, a backpack slung crooked on one shoulder. She hadn't changed her shoes, just stood there, looking into the living room.
She saw the notebook on the coffee table.
Saw the living room with only the desk lamp on.
Saw Gu Mingye sitting on the couch.
She didn't speak.
Slowly she crouched, changed into slippers, set the backpack on the floor beside the shoe cabinet.
Then she came in.
Walked to the couch, sat down beside Gu Mingye.
She didn't ask "what happened." Didn't reach out to touch his head.
She just sat there.
Looking at the closed notebook on the coffee table.
After about a minute, she spoke.
"Did you sleep?"
"No."
"How many times did you get up in the night?"
"Twice."
His mother nodded. She reached out, picked up the notebook from the coffee table, set it on her own lap. Didn't open it.
"I'll just look at the cover first," she said. "When I'm done looking, I'll decide whether to open it."
Gu Mingye didn't answer.
His mother turned on the desk lamp, held the cover up to the light, looked at it for a long time.
She didn't touch the butterfly.
Just held the cover at different angles under the lamp.
With the light from straight above, the dark rim along the edge of the butterfly's wings looked like a flaw in the school's printing.
With the light from the side, the dark rim didn't look like a printing flaw. It looked like someone had taken something of a particular depth and traced the outline of the butterfly's wings over again from the back of the paper.
His mother finished with the cover, closed the notebook, set it back on her lap.
"Mingye."
"Mm."
"Now tell me, start to finish. From last night when you finished looking at the slip, to just now when you messaged me — what happened in between."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
【Ch. 007 End · The Old House, Old River District, Qingcheng】
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