Chapter 6.1: Social Ghost
Fu Heqing had no idea with what kind of mindset this skeleton toy had blurted out such an explosive remark—probably some peculiar habit unique to non-human species.
He stared at Mu Mu and, out of a distinctly human streak of malice, deliberately tried to scare him.
“Do you know that behavior like yours could get you arrested by the police?”
Mu Mu didn’t know—he didn’t even know what the police were. Still, observing the painter’s expression and tone, he asked cautiously, “Should a ghost be afraid of the police?”
Fu Heqing lowered his head and looked at Mu Mu on the floor. He didn’t answer directly, only said, “If you stay in this villa, you won’t need to be afraid of anyone.”
Mu Mu didn’t understand what that meant. He shook his head instinctively, and the next second, the bathroom door was shut.
Mu Mu stood blankly at the doorway for several minutes. Only when he heard the sound of running water from inside the bathroom did he belatedly realize that he had probably been rejected.
“Alright then, I’ll just look around by myself.”
While waiting for the painter to take his bath, Mu Mu toured the painter’s room again.
Fu Heqing’s room was very minimalist, with hardly any impractical items. The color palette leaned cold, and with only a dim little lamp on, the room felt especially lonely inside the vast, empty villa.
With nowhere else to go, Mu Mu set his sights on the other person’s bed—more specifically, on the pillow that looked soft and fluffy.
Before he even had the chance to wreak havoc on the painter’s bed, he accidentally bumped into a pile of small bottles while climbing onto the nightstand.
Some of the bottles were empty; from others, white little round tablets spilled out all at once.
“I’m doomed.”
Looking at the scattered white tablets, Mu Mu didn’t know what they were, but he knew for sure that he’d gotten himself into trouble.
He hurriedly picked up the bottles that had rolled away, then jumped down to the floor and gathered the white tablets one by one, putting them back into the bottles.
When Fu Heqing came out, he happened to see the little skeleton picking up the very last white tablet from the floor and putting it back into the bottle.
Seeing the painter emerge from the bathroom, Mu Mu felt extremely guilty. He put the small bottle back where it belonged, stiffly waved at Fu Heqing, and tried to slip away before the painter had time to react.
“Good night then, Mr. Painter~”
Mu Mu waved, preparing to say goodbye.
“Where are you going?” Fu Heqing called out to stop him.
Mu Mu glanced at Fu Heqing. Seeing that the other man didn’t seem inclined to bring up the trouble he’d caused, Mu Mu finally relaxed a little and answered proudly, “To patrol your territory, or go count the stars!”
Although from the moment his consciousness was born until now he hadn’t encountered any other ghosts, he still felt that patrolling territory was a very necessary task.
“I don’t need to sleep, you know. Ghosts don’t get tired.”
“Of course, if Mr. Painter is scared being alone, I can also stay here and keep you company.”
Mu Mu added considerately.
When Fu Heqing didn’t respond, Mu Mu quietly slipped out of the room and began thinking about where he should start.
Tracked by the surveillance cameras the whole way, Mu Mu patrolled several rooms before suddenly starting to feel a little bored.
He sat down on the staircase leading from the first floor to the second and seriously reflected on himself.
He seemed unable to focus on patrolling his territory the way he used to.
Because he kept getting distracted, thinking about whether the painter had fallen asleep yet, and whether going back to say another word to Mr. Painter now would disturb his sleep.
For the first time, he felt that the night was far too quiet, far too long—there were still six hours to go before humans woke up.
But he clearly hadn’t been like this before.
Mu Mu had read books; he knew that when humans interacted with other humans, they were supposed to leave each other some private space and not be too clingy.
This was only his first day making a human friend—he couldn’t be like this.
Mu Mu stood up and continued climbing the stairs. Yet after passing the second floor, he hesitated only briefly before heading up to the third, muttering to himself, “I’ll just take a look to see if Mr. Painter has fallen asleep.”
He carefully pushed open the door to Fu Heqing’s bedroom and suddenly noticed that there was still a faint light inside. It seemed to be coming from a phone, a tablet, and a laptop scattered across the bed.
The pale light made a person’s complexion look even more sickly.
The painter was sitting on the bed, staring straight at the computer screen. But the moment Mu Mu pushed the door open, he shifted his gaze, and their eyes met.
“Mr. Painter, aren’t you sleeping yet?” Mu Mu peeked in through the crack of the door, his tone carrying a hint of surprise as well as confusion.
He pushed the door open and squeezed into the room. On the way to the bedside, Mu Mu felt that he had stepped on something—light red in color, like a water stain, or maybe some kind of spilled drink. But the little skeleton couldn’t smell anything.
Just as he was about to bend down to check, the painter activated the cleaning robot.
The painter seemed to let out a soft chuckle. “I don’t need to sleep.”
Those words immediately diverted Mu Mu’s attention, and he retorted in confusion.
“You don’t need to either? But you’re not a ghost, Mr. Painter—how could you not need to sleep?”
Mu Mu tried to reason with Fu Heqing. “All humans need to sleep, either during the day or at night.”
“I’ve heard that if humans don’t sleep, they get ugly.”
Seeing Mu Mu looking so earnest and confident, Fu Heqing bent down, picked up the medicine bottle on the nightstand—the one Mu Mu had spilled earlier—and, right in front of him, tossed it into the nearby trash can.
“But humans also don’t eat things they’ve picked up off the floor.”
…
Mu Mu walked through the pitch-dark corridor. Today, the sounds echoing from the depths of the hallway were no longer just the click-clack of the skeleton toy’s joints and the jingle of bells, but also two sets of footsteps—one ahead, one behind.
He had thought about it for a long time and still couldn’t figure out what “humans don’t eat things picked up off the ground” had to do with “not needing to sleep,” but he knew it had to be because of the trouble he’d caused.
Listening to the footsteps inside the rooms, Mu Mu deliberately slowed down, waiting so that the two sets of footsteps were completely staggered, rising and falling in turn, making the place sound unexpectedly lively.
As he listened to those two sets of footsteps, he suddenly felt that patrolling the territory wasn’t quite so boring after all.
Fu Heqing followed behind Mu Mu and had never felt the villa to be this large before.
It might also have been because the little skeleton’s steps were simply too small. Just following Mu Mu on his “patrol” of the first floor alone had already taken two full hours.
“Is this how you pass the time?” Fu Heqing asked.
“Yeah! Don’t you think it’s really interesting, Mr. Painter?” Mu Mu said cheerfully as he climbed the stairs.
“Every room is waiting for me to come and look at it. They can’t move, and if no one goes to see them for a long time, they’ll turn all dusty and dull.”
The next second, the long-limbed Fu Heqing picked Mu Mu up and finished everything the little skeleton was supposed to do for the rest of the night in just over ten minutes.
Looking at the task that had suddenly been completed, Mu Mu thought for a moment, then recommended, “Actually, counting stars is really fun too. Mr. Painter, want to try?”
“Ever since I got this new body and could touch things, I haven’t gone star-counting very often.”
The moment Mu Mu mentioned counting stars, he couldn’t wait to drag the painter up to the rooftop on the fifth floor.
The fifth-floor rooftop was an open-air garden, furnished with a barbecue grill, projection equipment, and quite a few lounge chairs.
Mu Mu climbed onto one of the loungers with practiced ease, lay back to gaze at the starry sky, and started counting from the Big Dipper, one star at a time, occasionally bursting out with some particularly interesting anecdote from the past.
Before long, seeing Fu Heqing close his eyes, Mu Mu let out a soft little hum, his tone tinged with a bit of envy. “I told you, humans are supposed to sleep.”
Leaning back in the lounge chair, Fu Heqing heard every bit of the little skeleton’s humming. Even if he couldn’t fall asleep, he could at least rest for a while in the quiet of the night.
…
The next day, when the first ray of dawn peeked over the horizon, Fu Heqing opened his eyes, his expression clear and alert.
The moment he opened them, he found himself staring straight into a pair of exceptionally beautiful cat-like eyes.
In the next second, that lovely face vanished, and the little skeleton leaning against him made a faint rustling sound.
The instant he waited for the painter to look over, he burst out with boundless energy, greeting him as if he had been waiting for a long time, a carefully prepared surprise—exactly like the newly risen sun.
“Good morning, my first human friend!”
“Thank you for keeping me company yesterday, Mr. Painter. I was super happy.”
Fu Heqing lowered his gaze to the jubilant skeleton toy. His expression was complicated. After a moment of silence, he said nothing at all, simply standing up and once again lifting Mu Mu as he left the rooftop.
“It feels so nice to have someone with you overnight,” Mu Mu said, dangling from the painter’s hand, waving his arms and legs excitedly, swaying back and forth.
“And today’s weather is definitely going to be great, I just saw the sun!”
Perhaps because it had been windy and rainy for days, the little bit of sunshine today felt especially precious.
Mu Mu sprawled on the windowsill of the studio, looking outside. On a sudden whim, he asked, “The weather’s really nice today, let’s go out and have fun!”
Fu Heqing’s hand paused as he picked up his paintbrush.
But Mu Mu, off to the side, didn’t notice. Still staring at the sun outside, he went on talking to himself. “Come to think of it, I’ve been in the villa for so long and I’ve never seen you go out to have fun.”
At that, Mu Mu became entirely animated. He climbed down from the windowsill, looked at Fu Heqing, and shuffled over to rub up against his leg, sticking close—like a cat acting spoiled.
“Mr. Painter, could you take me to a little park to play?”
“Not somewhere crowded. I can pretend to be a toy, hang me on your backpack, or put me inside it…”
Before Mu Mu could finish speaking, Fu Heqing’s flat, emotionless voice cut in.
“No.”
The single word made Mu Mu’s heart shatter into pieces.
“B-but—”
Mu Mu racked his brain and still couldn’t come up with a proper “but.” Tugging at the painter’s pant leg, he said pitifully, “I just really want to go out and play.”
“I finally have a physical body and can communicate with other people. I don’t know how long this situation will last.”
“I just want to make more friends, to touch things more, to feel things a little longer—before I turn back into a ghost that can’t be seen or touched.”
“Rule three.”
“Don’t bring up boring people or boring things in front of me.”
Fu Heqing’s voice grew even colder. He glanced at the little skeleton on the floor, bent down, and grabbed him, pulling him up in front of himself. His fingers slowly traced over the surface of the skeleton toy as he stared at it, reiterating once more:
“I don’t want to go out.”
For the first time, Mu Mu saw a very clear emotional preference in the painter’s eyes, and he froze on the spot.
So Mr. Painter hated going out.
