Work Text:
“YOU’RE GIVING ME BLUE BALLS AT THIS RATE.”
It’s not like Shi Qingxuan expects to get into a screaming match with her kitchen cabinet on a Thursday evening, but there’s heat gathered under the frizzly mess of her hair, and a useless rubber spatula slipping out of her grip. She flushes red with desperation, tears beading in the corners of her eyes. It’s absolutely ridiculous - she feels like a joke, even in her favourite baby blue cardigan and her matching earrings.
But at least the cabinet door isn’t rattling.
Shi Qingxuan slides down to her knees, crumbling in defeat. The grouchy old man who lives down the hall is going to have a few choice words with her tomorrow morning for the noise… fuck. Whatever.
“Why,” Shi Qingxuan gasps, face still buried in her hands, “are you so fucking uncooperative?!”
The cabinet door rattles lightly, almost contrite.
“I just want to-” Shi Qingxuan looks up at the cracked ceiling and inhales deeply what is most definitely black mold in the stale air. “The first fucking time in my life I’m free from my stupid brother and his stupid meddling, with my own fucking money, and my own fucking loans, and then I get saddled with a ghost, which is fine, but then you’ve caused so many fucking blackouts and all my lights flicker when I’m trying to work on a commission, and it drives up my utilities but! I! Pay! Them! Anyway!
“And now I have to pick up more chalk from the store because you’ve been slamming forks into the wall like I don’t have a landlord breathing down my neck every fucking moment! And even then I’m like, OK, fine, you have anger issues, so did my ex, you’re not special, bitch, but then you’re such a cunt about all my guests! And you drive all of them away! So what, now I have to pay for a fucking hotel room?! In this economy?! When I’m already being shafted for rent! All because a ghost is cockblocking me?!”
The dish-drying rack begins rattling, petulant. Shi Qingxuan narrows her eyes at it, jabbing her spatula in its direction.
“Stop that.”
The tremors grow steadily. Her metal mixing bowl is almost falling off the rack.
“Are you fucking homophobic or what.”
It immediately stops. And then the metal mixing bowl throws itself off the rack.
Shi Qingxuan flinches, still unused to the eccentricities of the ghost haunting her apartment. “God. I just. You were like this when I brought that hot gym girl back, and when I invited Caleb from Hinge over. Are you some fifteen century nun? What’s your fucking deal-”
The fork joins the metal bowl with a plink! Shi Qingxuan leans against the wall.
“You’re being so transphobic right now,” Shi Qingxuan jabs the spatula in the direction of the spinning fork, though all the shouting has sapped what remains of her energy for the day. “You know what, I don’t even know why I try. Good night. I’m not talking to strangers anymore.”
A wooden rice scoop joins the bowl and fork on the floor as she pulls herself up. As a final parting shot, Shi Qingxuan tosses her spatula into the mix and leaves the kitchen for her room.
The next morning, she wakes up to half her cutlery on the floor, and a messy scrawl of ketchup on the counter. If she were a lesser woman - that’s to say, easily cowed by inexplicable noises and in a higher income bracket - she would have thrown herself out on the streets at the sight.
“He… Xuan,” Shi Qingxuan squints. “Is that a name-”
To her left, a conveniently placed tea towel begins to hover weakly, its floppy corner wobbling weakly from left to right.
Shi Qingxuan flips it off.
When Shi Qingxuan returns home that night, she sets up a tiny magnetic whiteboard on the fridge, and leaves an uncapped marker on the counter. Cautiously, she peeks around the kitchen. The apples that Zhao Ran gave her are on the floor, but they don’t appear too banged up. No offending utensil on the kitchen tiles.
“He Xuan,” Shi Qingxuan says slowly, positioning her hands on her hips to appear a little more intimidating. “I got you something to write with. You have something to say, you write on it, OK? Don’t throw my apples around. They’re innocent.”
Nothing, for a moment. And then one of the apples is floating up. Shi Qingxuan nods, though the line of her lips is set in a hard line. Firm, but positive reinforcement. That’s what Yushi Huang had said about taming all her farm animals.
Maybe He Xuan can be reasoned with.
But then the apple falls right to the ground. This time, with a sickening splat.
He Xuan leaves her a message on the whiteboard. Or rather, she thinks it’s a message. Maybe it’s an artistic choice. Maybe it’s a secret third thing, an ancient language - come to think of it, she’s never really asked He Xuan how old he, she, they, it is.
Shi Qingxuan shifts her weight to her left hip, arms crossed in concentration. The scribbles are uneven, shaky and aborted. Like someone with an incredibly limp wrist tried to write.
She snorts, and immediately a fork falls to the ground. Swatting her hand in its direction, she says, “Relax. I’m just trying to figure out what you’re writing.”
Another fork joins the first. And then a spoon.
“He Xuan,” Shi Qingxuan says, before He Xuan can drop another unsuspecting piece of cutlery on the floor. It refrains from doing so. “I notice you’re very good at dropping things on the floor.”
He Xuan doesn’t respond. Weirdo. Getting shy at a compliment like that. Shi Qingxuan turns back to the whiteboard, tapping her chin. She unsticks it from the fridge, placing it on the counter next to the marker instead.
“Why don’t you try writing now instead? Is it easier for you if it’s on a flat surface like this?”
She moves back to the fridge, picking out her store-bought onigiri for lunch. Giving He Xuan a bit of privacy. Maybe it’s just shy about having bad handwriting - maybe it’s some type of complex it’s got about handwriting. Not everyone’s blessed with fine motor skills like Shi Qingxuan. She won all the calligraphy contests back in school. Maybe that’s why He Xuan has a grudge against her. It’s petty enough.
She hears the marker uncap. Shi Qingxuan turns away to hide her smile. As she heats her lunch up, the marker falls onto the counter. Shi Qingxuan bustles over to the whiteboard, heart thrumming excitably-
Idiot.
For the longest time, that’s all that He Xuan writes. Always idiot, idiot, dummy, stupid, idiot. But at least her forks are safe from blunt-force trauma.
Finally, Shi Qingxuan jabs her finger at the marker menacingly (as menacingly as she can with her messy hair in two pigtails and a yellow sweater with embroidered ducks) just as it begins to hover shakily.
“Stop calling me idiot!”
The marker pauses, but continues on its relentless (and very unsteady) path.
“You’re such an ass! My name is Shi Qingxuan!”
The marker’s just made contact with the whiteboard when it pauses, ink blotting a small circle.
Shi Qingxuan rounds on the stationary stationery (heh) and holds her hand out. The marker flops on its side.
“Shi, as in teacher, Qing, as in green, and Xuan as in… hmm. Well, kind of like depths. It’s written like that.”
Shi Qingxuan replaces the marker on the counter, stepping back to allow the invisible poltergeist some space to admire her hard work. Well, she’s sort of gotten used to this whole haunting thing a little too easily - imagining a cartoonish sheet-covered ghost tilting its head at her neat calligraphy.
“We have the same ‘Xuan’,” Shi Qingxuan prompts. “So, you know…”
The marker rises again, and Shi Qingxuan peeks over at what He Xuan might write next. Maybe it’ll copy her name.
A violent screech, a loud thwack: the marker spins rapidly on the floor, having scratched a harsh, heavy line across her name, before flinging itself against the wall.
Shi Qingxuan scowls, striding across the kitchen to pick up her poor, dollar-store marker. Temperamental little bitch.
Sometimes Shi Qingxuan doesn’t get hungry at all. She wakes up, and then there’s just this strange gnawing inside her and a deeply unsatisfied itch. It gets worse when she has to get ready for the day, all her mirrors suddenly inhabited by a creature bearing her resemblance. Like someone’s tweaked the line of her jaw, the shadows under her eyes, the width of her brows to make an uncanny replica of her own form.
On days like these, Shi Qingxuan barely gets an appetite. She gets back into bed after drinking a cup of water, drawing her duvet over her ears as the banging of her kitchen cabinets begin anew with fervour.
“SHUT THE HELL UP!” Shi Qingxuan yells, pressing her head under the pillows.
“-UT YOUR HELL UP!” comes shrilly from her upstairs neighbour.
Finally, by evening, it dies down.
Her kitchen is a mess. But it’s not just the cutlery or the broken plates. It’s also the scribbling all over the counters and her fridge.
Hungry. Hungry. Idiot. Shi Qingxuan. Hungry. Hungry. Stupid. Idiot. Xuan. Empty. Empty. EMPTY.
“Maybe you should feed it,” is what Xie Lian says when Shi Qingxuan slithers miserably to his thirty-first workplace after locking all her cutlery into a cabinet.
“What,” Shi Qingxuan says, flopping her head on the counter.
Xie Lian carefully scoops out more ice for a cocktail. Somehow it manages to explode on him. “It sounds like you’ve got a hungry ghost on your hands.”
A hungry ghost? “Is that why it’s always in my kitchen?”
Xie Lian hums, reaching for a lemon to slice as garnish. He cuts himself on the knife.
“You said it wrote that it was hungry, right?”
“Yeah, well, but it also called me ‘idiot’, ‘dumb’, ‘stupid’,” Shi Qingxuan lists them on her very intact fingers. “It’s sooooo rude, and now I have to spend money on it??”
“You don’t cook often, do you?” Xie Lian laughs, scratching his chin. “Well, I suppose I don’t either…”
“You do! Just… not very... well.”
Xie Lian shrugs, turning around to reach for something on the shelves, when he slips and falls onto a convenient stack of Macallan bottles. A hush falls over the bar, its patrons craning their necks to look for the sound.
Shi Qingxuan props herself up over the counter. Shards of glass, scattered like stars under him. Chestnut hair drenched black and sticking to his face. Most tellingly, the thick, potent musk of whiskey rising in the air.
A very flushed, very resigned Xie Lian just smiles sheepishly at her. “Let’s talk outside?”
Three is most definitely a crowd, especially when her guests are now of human origins. But at least this Hua Cheng guy knows how to cook. He had very gently, very skilfully directed both Shi Qingxuan and Xie Lian to the corner while he flipped and tossed and chopped and seared his way through the unfamiliar bags of groceries. For once, her kitchen smells a little less like death and a little more like mouthwatering roast.
“You’re really good at cooking,” Shi Qingxuan chirps, slightly on edge now that there’s an actual, tangible, live audience in her house. “You’ve got such a talent!”
Hua Cheng shrugs, his smile only reserved for Xie Lian. “Ge-ge, do you want to try it first?”
Xie Lian shakes his head. “Not now, it’s important that the food is untouched until after the ritual.”
“Ge-ge knows best.”
Shi Qingxuan nudges Xie Lian with her elbow. “Be careful. My ghost is homophobic.”
With great effort, they watch as a drawer shudders itself open. A fork clambers against the sides of the drawer before falling defiantly onto the floor. Hua Cheng continues to hum.
The ritual is extremely straightforward, as it happens. There’s light prayer, joss sticks, and candles. And the entire arsenal of Shi Qingxuan’s cutlery on display - plates to bowls to saucers, topped with delectable dishes. Some of it looks like fine dining. Some of it looks more than fine for dining. Shi Qingxuan wants to shake Hua Cheng’s hand profusely, but she thinks Xie Lian might accidentally light her entire apartment on fire.
The forks are quiet the entire time, even after they excuse themselves from the kitchen so that He Xuan might eat in peace. Symbolically, of course. Shi Qingxuan didn’t miss the many boxes of tupperware that Xie Lian lugged along with him.
“So, his name is He Xuan?” Hua Cheng says, startling Shi Qingxuan from her spying.
She whips her head back from where it had been surreptitiously craned around the corner of the wall. “I think so.”
“Hmm… and you told him your name.”
Shi Qingxuan nods.
“Hmm,” Hua Cheng smirks, “and he hasn’t possessed you.”
Oh. Right. That’s one thing she hadn’t considered. “I mean… I don’t think so. He’s just banging all my pots and pans and forks. He loves my forks.”
He might also be transphobic, the thought pops into Shi Qingxuan's head and she can't hide the snarmy grin taking over her face.
“Hmm,” Hua Cheng says again, because he’s cryptic like that when it comes to anyone not-Xie Lian, and she’s not about to question the guy who cooked a feast with her faulty stove. “Well, I don’t think that’s a problem for you.”
Shi Qingxuan peers over the wall again, where it’s silent, and the dishes are just turning cold and dry on the counter top. “Yeah, I guess it hasn’t really been.”
He Xuan uses the whiteboard more frequently after that. Sure, he dangles her forks when he’s bored or upset with her, but nothing’s been broken so far. It’s almost amicable, and the sudden peacefulness is startlingly unfamiliar. So instead, she rescues a windchime from the thrift store and ties it to her cabinet. When it flutters with the lightest sound of spring, Shi Qingxuan knows he’s here. It’s a cute idea, and He Xuan’s taken to it too.
Shi Qingxuan
eat
This time, he’s circled her name twice. Shi Qingxuan grumbles, but dutifully flips through the cookbook that Xie Lian gifted her.
“Do you want curry for dinner?” Shi Qingxuan asks, flipping between beef lentil soup and chana masala. “I still have the canned chickpeas from before.”
The windchimes bristle with a strong, almost luminous quality.