Big Sister

The hallways were pitch-black that all patrol would need lights to see things. Liu Xiaodan and Tang Mingming walked shoulder-to-shoulder as if one of them would get lost in the darkness. Soon, they arrived at where the disposal shoot should be. Like expected, a woman stood alone in the hall.

Her white skin was contrasted by the black clothes she had on. However, the clothes ended up being black bags. Her hair was also covering her face. She turned to the two men and stared as she had no idea what she did to attract the ire of the new supreme being in the prison.

"Hello, can I ask you something?" Liu Xiaodan walked towards her, and the woman began to inch backward. "Wait, I just want to see your eyes."

"No, no eyes…" The wind carried her faint voice as she used her hands to cover her face. "No eyes… no, no…"

"Do you know about the ghost in the sick hall?" Liu Xiaodan asked again as he stopped approaching her.

"No, no… no sick hall… don't want…"

Liu Xiaodan looked at Tang Mingming, and the other shrugged his shoulders. The man then looked around and remembered where she came from exactly that time he last saw her. He then began walking and even courageously past the woman holding her face.

No new bags were there, but he still pushed the bags out of the way. He felt the floor panels as if looking with the palms of his hand.

However, the woman noticed him when he had pushed the bins out of the way as well.

Like a normal ghost, she grew protective of her object of possession. She began to ooze warning aura, but Liu Xiaodan cared too little about it. The woman then began to scream and ran towards him, her hair parting and her vertical forehead-to-chin mouth opening widely.

Then again, the miasma built a wall between them, causing the woman to get stuck. Liu Xiaodan kept searching the place before he noticed a bump on the floor. He then tried to scratch the floor panel off, but that was helpless.

"Xiaodan, be careful." It was Tang Mingming's voice that echoed in his ear. When Liu Xiaodan realized what happened, he turned around and saw no traces of the two ghosts. A flashlight then suddenly shone on his face, and he hissed as he covered his face with an arm.

"What the hell? Aren't you…? Wait, you're an inmate!" Seeing that Liu Xiaodan had pushed off the things while searching the floor. "Are you looking for something? You're trying to break out of this place, aren't you?!"

"Wait, wait, no… I'm looking for something else!" Liu Xiaodan sat on the floor and raised both hands. "Sir, I'm not escaping!"

The guard then raised a brow and walked towards him and saw the strange shape on the floor. "What's in there?"

Liu Xiaodan shook his head. "I don't know yet. Can I borrow anything that could break through the cement?"

"Are you crazy? Why would I let you break the floor?! Get up from there." The guard growled as he grasped at Liu Xiaodan's collar and was about to call in the break out… when he heard someone howled softly nearby.

He felt the hair at the back of his neck stand. He turned to a direction and saw a silhouette of a person sitting on the floor.

"Wuuu… wuwuwu…" The person continued to howl. He slowly panned the flashlight to the side and cast a light on the person on the floor. The person had his hands on his face, and he was howling softly without paying attention to the guard.

"What on earth?" The guard was about to approach the crying person, but Liu Xiaodan got to his feet quickly and grabbed the guard's neck from behind. With a chokehold, his other hand grabbed the old man's forehead.

The guard then tried to grab him and flip him off of his back. "You!"

"I'm sorry!" Liu Xiaodan's palm felt so cold against his forehead. In the end, he lost consciousness. The father then eased him down and left him on the floor. He then searched the guard for any kind of key.

Tang Mingming, who only sighed as he acted to distract the guard, walked to the father and watched him rejoice upon seeing a key. "Is that enough?"

The father went to the bump and used the key to chip off the cement. "I need to make sure I won't damage what's underneath."

A pout was Tang Mingming's reply, but he patiently waited as Lu Xiaodan managed to break a huge plate of cement. There was a compartment on the floor—stuffed with black bags, and it contained a small jar. He took it out, but he couldn't see inside as the liquid had dried up and clouded the supposed clear exterior.

Inside was a box filled with faded photos and torn pieces of newspapers. Some of the pieces were drenched in weird liquids that had dried and blotted the ink.

"The papers were forty years ago…" Liu Xiaodan carefully straightened the pieces and realized that the paper didn't feel like a normal newspaper. When he examined the contents, he didn't find anything else but reports about activities inside the Wangguan prison. "Prison paper?"

"Weird. The prison never had newspapers." Tang Mingming tampered open the dirty jar and saw a deflated eye inside. "The eye here didn't survive."

"Eye?" Liu Xiaodan raised his brows and then looked down inside the jar and got suffocated by the smell that came with it. "How could someone be so cruel? To think that they were allowed to do this in a prison…"

"How good is the world you live in, Xiaodan?" Tang Mingming pouted as he put the lid back. He then looked at the side where the lady in the black bag was lying down, watching them tamper with the things.

"Do you know that you are incomplete? We'll be taking these back so you can be complete and able to cross over…"

"Not coming?" She reached out an arm.

"No, I'm not coming."

…

After struggling to carry the box, the jar, and the bags that the woman possessed; Liu Xiaodan ended up borrowing a trolley to transport the items. Like in a stealth game, Tang Mingming helped him spy and run past the other guards in the area.

All they heard was the sound of a trolley being pushed around. That, in itself, was something none of them would want to hear for long.

In the end, Liu Xiaodan was pissed as soon as they managed to get to the sick hall. The elevator was out of power when they got there. It seemed like elevators were all non-operational after dark. However, Tang Mingming was laughing his ass out from the face Liu Xiaodan was making.

"Please help me some more, Ming." Liu Xiaodan sighed as he massaged his forehead. His laughter by then was something designed to irritate everyone else.

"I would need a lot of energy to operate a machine this big." Tang Mingming snickered before patting Liu Xiaodan's back heavily. "Just carry them to the top, one at a time."

"You…" Liu Xiaodan sighed. Even if Ruan Jin and the others were the ones he was with right now, they would just say the same. The only saving grace was that Wen Taio would carry most of it.

Thinking about them made his heart hurt. He hadn't seen my friends for a few days, and he couldn't even talk to them as well. The school had released an order against it, and they would be in deep shit if they broke it. Li Feng was already excusable since the school had kicked him out earlier.

Prioritizing the future of his friends, Liu Xiaodan would rather not think of them again.

Ding! The elevator suddenly lit up and opened. The two were shocked to see a small child inside. Guangru tilted his head as he saw the trolley and the black plastic bags. "Baba, whose are those?"

"I don't know her name, but thanks for the lift." The father chuckled as they entered the elevator and went straight to the top level. He then asked Guangru who rode the trolley. "How is outside?"

"Everyone's still safe. Guangru is keeping them okay…"

"Thank you, Guangru."

Tang Mingming eyed at the duo and hummed as he kept on thinking about something. Then, a black shadow extended behind him. In his mind, Yi Junhai asked him while his shadow arms wrapped around Tang Mingming's shoulder.

'What are you thinking about?'

'Can you see it? Guangru seems to be so lucky to meet Xiaodan. Could this wimp be Guangru's real father when he was still alive?'

'Guangru isn't human. He had no father.'

'Then, it's wrong to call him a dybbuk, right? Because dybbuks are once human spirits that didn't get born…'

'That's true. However, Guangru wanted to be human.'

'What's so good about being human?' Tang Mingming scoffed in his mind. He never had a good experience as one, and he had a feeling that this punishment had gone by for many forgotten lifetimes already.

He then felt Yi Junhai lift his chin and made him take a look at Liu Xiaodan who was squatting down to pet the small child.

'I thought you were watching.'

The elevator soon got on the floor, and the child even went 'wheee' when the trolley proceeded. Liu Xiaodan felt the coldness of the place like when they were there that morning. The girl still stood in the middle of the hallway, and she felt a tingling sensation from the things he brought.

"Would you like to see what I have for you? I told you I would return them to you."

The girl then moved to the trolley. Liu Xiaodan fetched Guangru and stepped back from the trolley. She kneeled next to it and took the box first. She took off the lid and had the pieces fly around her, the articles facing here seemed to be about a certain person.

A smile drew across the girl's face. "Big Sister…"