One second, two seconds, three seconds passed…
The pain he’d expected didn’t seem to come.
On the contrary, Wen Zhi felt something warm, gentle, and peaceful, like his mother’s amniotic fluid, lightly enveloping his body.
It seeped through the gaps between his eyelids, passed through his refractive system, and reached his retina, conveying an obvious message and conclusion.
The light still shone.
Darkness hadn’t descended.
So he tentatively opened his eyes again.
Then he saw it: a hazy, faint, but unmistakably real white light, as pure as the full moon.
‘Wasn’t the fire put out? Where’s this light coming from?’
Doubt rose in Wen Zhi’s heart, but he soon found the answer.
He spotted the source of the light at a glance.
“Ding?”
The Ghost stared at its own body in confusion.
After the fire went out, its cartoonish body began emitting a faint white light, keeping the almost tangible darkness at least half a meter away.
“…You can glow, too?”
Wen Zhi’s weary, numb nerves managed to summon a trace of surprise.
In the glow of the white light, he realized he was bare-chested again, and the Diary he’d tucked into his waistband was nowhere to be seen.
He rubbed his temples and forced himself to focus.
After looking around and thinking for a moment, he lifted the Ghost from around his neck and set it on his head so its light could spread more easily.
“Stay here and don’t move for a while. I’m going to find something.”
‘Can I glow?’
The Ghost had only just realized it, since it hadn’t had this body for very long and didn’t know exactly what it could do.
Just moments ago, when Seventeen had cut Wen Zhi apart, the Ghost, clinging to his neck, had narrowly escaped thanks to good luck.
It had clung tightly to Wen Zhi’s neck, not daring to move even a little.
Before it could figure out what was happening, countless crawling shadows had put out the fire.
For a moment, the Ghost had thought it and Wen Zhi were done for.
And then, somehow, it could glow.
The Ghost stared at its own hazy, white-lit body and fell into thought.
How did that work?
‘Whatever. At least I don’t have to face the darkness directly.’
The Ghost thought optimistically.
It shifted slightly, found a more comfortable position, then obediently followed Wen Zhi’s instructions and stayed still, playing the part of a light bulb.
Wen Zhi waited a while, making sure the sinister darkness outside really couldn’t break through the faint light.
Only then did he relax a little and carefully feel around.
The Ghost on his head quietly watched him do all this.
Soon, Wen Zhi found what he was looking for:
—His own kidney… More precisely, the Diary tucked into his waistband.
The Diary lay quietly amid the blood and organs spilling from the cleanly severed edge of his waist.
Strangely, it was spotless and, like the Ghost, emitted a faint glow, only much dimmer and less noticeable.
Even so, it stood out in the dark.
Wen Zhi had been lucky.
When the Shadow cut him apart, the Diary tied around his waist hadn’t fallen off, and his waist hadn’t flown too far away.
Otherwise, according to the rule that the Ghost respawned within 5 meters of the Diary, if the Diary had gone too far, the Ghost would have been taken along with it.
Even if the Ghost could glow, Wen Zhi wouldn’t have had the light’s protection, and the darkness would still have swallowed him.
After taking a few tentative steps, Wen Zhi confirmed that the light from the Ghost stayed firmly around him as he moved.
He grew bolder and hurried toward the Diary.
Soon, Wen Zhi picked the Diary back up from the pool of blood and organs that was still warm.
Just as he was about to take his next step, countless noisy sounds rose from the previously silent darkness.
It was as if countless beings within the dark were clamoring, but in the end, all those sounds merged into one—the familiar voice Wen Zhi knew.
“Teacher.”
A familiar person—or the Shadow of someone familiar—appeared at the edge of the light, materializing before Wen Zhi.
Light always cast shadows, and unusual light naturally reflected unusual shadows.
“It hurts so much… I feel awful… There’s nothing here. I’m so lonely… Teacher, please, please save me…”
The Shadow called out to Wen Zhi, wailing in pain.
At last, it reached out toward him from the edge of the light.
The hand made of Shadow stopped before the light, at the boundary between life and death, the dividing line between existence and nothingness.
It was as if all he had to do was reach out and pull her, and she could come back.
An impulse stirred in his heart.
“Glug.”
Wen Zhi’s throat felt strangely dry, and he couldn’t help swallowing.
Don’t respond!
Sanity shouted at him over and over.
Don’t answer her!
He should turn away and ignore her cries and pleas.
But his feet felt rooted to the spot, unable to move, while something inside his skull trembled and evaporated.
Wen Zhi knew very well that this was just Night’s trick.
He had to face reality.
He couldn’t save her.
He couldn’t save anyone.
Just like in that fire twenty years ago, he could only survive alone.
But for some reason, something inside him was boiling and churning, urging him to make a choice that ran completely counter to reason.
The man’s lips quivered slightly.
He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but just then, a faint pain pricked the crown of his head.
The Ghost had given it everything it had, tugging at his hair with its tiny hands, which didn’t even have fingers.
He came to his senses a little.
So he turned away and ignored the Shadow.
“…You big liar. You promised you’d take me home…”
His heart ached, as if a piece of it had been scraped away.
“You big liar…”
The Shadow’s voice slowly faded, dissolving into countless meaningless, jumbled sounds.
Finally, the darkness swallowed them all, leaving only hollow silence.
‘Sorry.’
Wen Zhi lowered his eyes and kept the words he couldn’t say to himself.
Then he saw the Ghost, sprawled across his hair, lower its upper body.
Even with its tiny face drawn in simple lines, its overwhelming worry and concern were obvious at a glance.
Wen Zhi paused, then smiled.
“Sorry for making you worry.”
‘As if I’d worry about you!’
‘Wait, I guess I am a ghost…’
The Ghost realized this in a daze.
‘Then no ghost would worry about you!’
It couldn’t understand why Wen Zhi kept hesitating over and over when faced with someone who wanted to hurt him.
It was so frustrated with him.
If Wen Zhi had ignored its warning this time and insisted on getting himself killed, there wouldn’t have been anything the Ghost could do.
It would have had to consider switching to someone else…
Except it couldn’t.
On this Deserted Island, there were only one and a half intelligent living beings: Wen Zhi counted as one, and the Ghost counted as half.
So the Ghost could only secretly lower its opinion of Wen Zhi from “more or less a person” back to “a foolish, hairless ape.”
Then it would think about how to save him.
It couldn’t be helped.
It had no choice.
“Oh, right,” Wen Zhi said, remembering something.
He added,
“Thank you.”
He spoke sincerely.
‘Hmph ╯^â•°, at least you have some sense and know how to say thank you.’
Since Wen Zhi had shown the proper attitude, the Ghost decided it would put up with him being foolish now and then in the days to come.
‘Gee, I hope the days ahead are a little easier.’