The first time I knew the world wasn’t fair was three years ago, on a noon with the sun pinned high like a blazing coin.

I was being shoved out of a corporate glass door, tossed like trash into the street glare. Their reason was laughable—a stain they said I was born with. I was Wu-born, so I “raised gu and kept ghosts,” a bad omen that would blight their company. I hadn’t done a thing, just worked hard and kept my head down, yet their words stung like thrown pebbles.

They pushed me past the threshold and into the public gaze, finger-pointing like thorns pricking skin.

I was lost. Yes. My chest felt like fog rolling in.

Because tales about the Wu people coil like smoke around a fire, I didn’t even get the choice to be ordinary.

I was born to be met with cupped malice, even inside a polite, peaceful city.

I hugged my jars and bottles on a park bench, glass clinking like wind chimes, wondering how to turn myself into something plain. The sun sank like a red coin toward the trees, and I still had no whole answer.

Should I hide, and spend a life alone in shadowed hills?

I was thinking that when my eyes caught a little girl peeking from behind a nearby tree, her look shy as a deer at the edge of a stream. Her eyes were clear and black, obsidian polished by rain; one glance could tug a heart.

I admit I was caught by her. Every move she made was the quiet grace I’d seen in storybook angels.

I lifted a hand and waved, the gesture small and soft, telling her I was only a luckless worker just fired by a soulless firm, no danger, no storm.

She read my intent. After a short battle behind that tree, she gathered courage and came forward, steps light as a bird, her fine pale face tight with nerves like a string pulled taut.

Maybe she’d strayed and lost her way while playing with family?

I tried to guess the little one’s thoughts, but soon saw that her bright eyes kept blinking toward the jars in my arms where insects drowsed like amber seeds.

“Do you like these insects?”

I offered her a jar to bridge the space between us, glass glinting like a tiny lantern. It worked. She smiled, a clean curve of dawn, and nodded hard.

“I do.”

She was truly a lovely little one.

We talked a long while, names traded like beads. I learned she wasn’t a lamb lost on a family outing.

She was an orphan. She grew up in an orphanage not far off, brick faded like old leaves.

Why was she here alone?

Because her friends there wouldn’t play with her. So she slipped out through a hole in the wall behind the orphanage, dust on her shoes, and she’d be going back by herself later.

She was brave, a willow sprout bending but not breaking.

She impressed me more. As a reward, I gave her a small bottle I’d made, clear as river water. Inside was an insect she’d never seen: a hun-chong, a soulworm. In our Wu rites, it keeps a human soul resting inside its body after death, like a lamp holding a flame. This one had never been awakened or consecrated, so it was harmless, just a sleeping seed.

“Can you… really give this to me?”

It was probably her first gift. Her delicate face brimmed with joy, cheeks pink as peach skin.

I liked that unguarded expression. The haze clamped over my heart thinned, sunlight spilling through like warm tea.

We lingered in the park until the sun slid down the roofs. When the shadows stretched long, and we had to part, she tugged my sleeve and asked, “Will you be here tomorrow?”

By plan, I should’ve gone home, packed, and vanished into a deep mountain valley to live like a stone. The little one’s sudden arrival shattered that plan like ice in a cup.

“If you want to meet, then… I’ll be here.”

Her face was too tender to refuse. I answered as if spellbound, a moth to a small lamp.

Perhaps she was a little demon, charming the world into a sweet ruin. Watching her go, light-footed as a sparrow, I sat on the bench and smiled at my own thought.

Time can move fast in a single day.

Like waiting on a park bench for someone worth that wait; every second feels full, each tick a seed sprouting.

We started meeting more and more. Each time, the little one shared orphanage tales like marbles shaken in a palm, and I listened quietly, a stone beside a stream, speaking only now and then.

It looked strange to outsiders, but I was entranced, caught like a fish in clear water.

Good days don’t long linger. By chance, I learned angels walking the earth aren’t always met with gentle hands.

Yes.

I saw more than one bruise on her arm, blue blooms like crushed violets. She explained, saying she fell while playing tag with friends. The story clattered; I didn’t believe that clumsy lie.

Because she had no friends. The bright world she showed me was self-made—paper suns pasted on the wall.

Anger rose in me like struck fire. I decided to go, alone, and look into that orphanage.

I would be careful, a cat in dusk. I wouldn’t break into the little one’s private life like a storm.

I knew well, if the kids there learned I was Wu-born, their “friends” might rouse worse than mischief, stones ready in hands.

I moved cautiously. To visit the orphanage, I talked with people until my tongue went dry. The moment they learned I was Wu, the smiles turned, masks slipping to sneers like knives.

They cursed and drove me off, told me to stay away from their door, even raised broomsticks and wooden poles like spears. If Uncle Lin, the security guard at the gate, hadn’t stepped in, I’d have tasted a hard beating that day.

Heaven doesn’t forget the stubborn. After almost a week of begging, the director finally gave special permission: two hours in the morning.

Not from kindness. They suspected something foul had appeared in their back yard—dirt that felt like cold breath. They wanted the Wu-born man to take a look, to fix it if I could.

I agreed.

Even if they meant to use me like a borrowed knife, I would find the bully who hurt the little one.

I slipped into the orphanage with dawn light, and in the rear yard I found the stain—a lone wandering soul, thin as smoke, with no tether to the living.

I didn’t know its origin. Such souls drift like autumn leaves; reason doesn’t hold them. To keep it from touching the little one, I used our family rite and broke it, a quiet extinguishing, like pinching a wick.

Afterward, the director didn’t thank me. He at least said I could stay those mornings, a grudging nod like a locked door left half open.

I used those two hours to hunt the bully, eyes open like lanterns. Each day, nothing. Emptiness, empty as a dry well.

And then, without me knowing when it changed, the little one began to smile for real. Unlike the early forced curve, her stories now held names I’d never heard, friends sprouting like grass after rain.

It should have made me glad. Still, I couldn’t feel light. Around her shoulders, I sensed a thin drift of death-qi, ash-smoke clinging.

I’m no formal exorcist. I couldn’t read the why of that shadow. I knew this much: where death-qi hangs over a head like a pale crown, a life’s thread frays.

I grew anxious, breath tight as a drum. I asked her not to go out alone. I shortened our meetings, cutting time like cloth—from every day, to every other, to once a week. The death-qi didn’t retreat. It thickened, heavier, like storm clouds gathering.

I almost went mad. I sought respected exorcists, knocked on doors like rain. My damned Wu blood closed every door, latches slammed by cold hands.

In the end, the little one died. A truck took her, metal roaring like a beast.

Uncle Lin told me: a few naughty students planned a trick. They threw her glass bottle—her treasure she kept with her for meals and sleep—out through the orphanage gate. She ran to get it back. A heavy truck passing by struck her, and her small body flew like a rag in wind.

When I heard it, the sky fell, a roof shattered. I never thought her death would knot back to me like a snared thread.

If I hadn’t given her that tiny gift, maybe none of this would have happened.

I burned with regret, choked on sorrow, seethed with anger, fell into pain, tasted despair, and finally sank into a cold, quiet lake.

After a time of stillness, I found a way to stand among “ordinary” people.

Hell stands empty; the devils walk the earth.

I will bring her back, with gu and ghost-raising. Even if she returns as a puppet that obeys only my voice, I want her to touch that moment of happiness once more.

If anyone tries to stop me?

I’ll turn them into puppets, the same as the little one.

—Bai Qiu’en