Yao Shen is confused by Xin Hulei\'s words.

"But wasn\'t the last guy Yan Shuyi himself?" he asks, supporting his cheek on his open palm.

Xin Hulei eats a mouthful of rice with scallions, chews carefully, and then hums -- giving Yao Shen absolutely nothing.

"Do you think I\'ll stop finding you hot if you\'re no longer a mystery?" Yao Shen asks, stirring his noodles viciously in an obvious fit of pique.

Xin Hulei hums again. "Perhaps."

Yao Shen thinks he\'s going to leave it at that, but he adds, "Perhaps, I\'m protecting myself."

"From what?" Yao Shen asks, frowning.

"From what happened the last time I trusted the wrong person."

"And what happened?" Yao Shen asks, unable to disguise his curiosity.

Xin Hulei takes a thin slice of beef from his side of the table and deposits it on Yao Shen\'s bowl. "Eat."

For about two minutes, Yao Shen contemplates letting the issue go, but there\'s something nagging at the back of his mind. Perhaps it\'s related to the dream, memory, whatever it was, but he just knows that however good things might have been at one point between him and Xin Hulei in the past, they didn\'t end that way.

"Does this have something to do with why you were so determined to prove I wasn\'t a human?" Yao Shen asks, keeping his tone casual.

Xin Hulei puts down his chopsticks and lights another cigarette, which raises Yao Shen\'s hope that he\'s going to humor him.

"I\'m still not 100% convinced," he says, his eyes impassive as they stare at Yao Shen from across the table. "I\'m just giving you the benefit of the doubt."

"Who do you think I am?" Yao Shen asks, swallowing painfully around the food already in his throat.

"You remind me of someone," Xin Hulei says. "A half-remembered nightmare."

Ah, that doesn\'t sound great. From where Yao Shen is standing they\'re more like half-remembered dreams. They\'re pleasant right?

Of course there\'s the ghost kings\' cryptic words nagging at the back of his mind, reminding him that a fun romp in the sheets wasn\'t all there was to it.

"That\'s uh, great for me," Yao Shen says self-consciously, after an uncomfortable prolonged silence.

Xin Hulei lets out an amused huff and shakes his head. "I want to trust you, if that helps."

Only marginally, but Xin Hulei is still smoking his cigarette, and Yao Shen feels like he\'ll probably continue to indulge him while it lasts.

"The \'last guy\' is he the one you half-remember?"

Xin Hulei takes a deep drag and nods, Yao Shen\'s eyes drift towards the cigarette between his fingers, the cherry is almost at the filter, he needs to be fast.

"Why have you forgotten?"

"I still remember parts of it. I remember his face, I remember parts of conversations, enough to string together a chain of events." His smile around the cigarette is self-deprecating. "I remember my own devastation when I realized I had been betrayed."

"What happened?" Yao Shen asks, not noticing he\'s holding his breath.

"Do you want to see?" Xin Hulei asks, his voice dropping several octaves, rumbling through his chest like the engine on a great machine.

Yao Shen licks his lips. "Yes."

Xin Hulei leans forward across the table, both his elbows on the tabletop. At first, Yao Shen doesn\'t know what he\'s supposed to be looking at, but then he notices it.

Xin Hulei\'s eyes are different colours, one of them is the same vivid sapphire as Heimao\'s while the other is pale grey and doesn\'t have a pupil.

That\'s not all, as Yao Shen\'s gaze drifts over Xin Hulei\'s face, taking in the differences, he notices the crimson seal between his eyebrows, the sharp points of his teeth when the opens his mouth, the two stout black jade horns sprouting from his temples, one of them broken at the stem.

"This eye is blind," Xin Hulei says raising one fingertip to point at the pale eye. The tips of his fingers are dyed black in a smooth gradient that disappears into his natural skin tone on the second knuckle.

With the same finger he points at his broken off horn. "Another souvenir, hurts when it\'s cold now."

Yao Shen is at once mesmerized by Xin Hulei\'s appearance, and  scared of being the one responsible for his injuries.

Xin Hulei brings the cigarette to his lips one last time and takes a long drag, the cherry flaring bright orange.

He puts it out on the tabletop.

When Yao Shen looks down, both the cigarette butt and the burn marks are gone.

"How do you know it was him, if you don\'t remember?" Yao Shen asks, unsure now if he should have pried.

"There were witnesses, those who nursed me back to help saw it happen," he says, his lips flattened into a thin line. "Besides, he didn\'t deny it."

The next time Yao Shen lifts his eyes to look at him, Xin Hulei is back to his usual fully human appearance.

"It should be fine to go back," Xin Hulei says, checking his wristwatch. "All the naughty ghosts must be out to play by now."

Yao Shen knows he\'s just making a play on his stupid WeChat display name, but he can\'t help the cold shiver that runs down his spine -- or how closely linked fear and desire are.

---

As soon as Xin Hulei takes them back to Yao Shen\'s hotel room, he hears the System judgmental voice.

[Congratulations for growing 70% closer to the Demon King. Seventh reward unlocked: Sleep Upgrade III. Once again this System lost connection with Host for a period of several hours.]

Yao Shen pays the system no mind, nor the reproach in its cold tone.

The hotel is deserted at such a late hour, and they have no problem walking the corridors around Ye Fang\'s room in search of anything out of the ordinary, undetected.

They walk in silence for some time, without nothing of note happening.

"Ye Fang seemed really scared, but she also seemed irrationally superstitious," Yao Shen says, worrying that he might have roped Xin Hulei into a wild goose chase. "Is it possible she could have imagined everything, or exaggerated the proportions?"

"Exaggerated maybe, but she isn\'t delusional," Xin Hulei nods towards the end of the corridor. "The temperature drops around here, it\'s the second time we\'ve come this way, and I\'ve noticed it both times, there\'s something here."

Yao Shen looks into the darkness, it\'s possible the air has grown colder, but how is he supposed to tell the difference between the presence of ghosts and an overactive AC?

"Ye laoshi must have been sleeping very  poorly," Yao Shen says, sparing Ye Fang\'s hotel room a cursory glance  as they walk past it.

"It\'s always worse for people who are particularly credulous," Xin Hulei says. "If you believe in ghosts, it\'s more likely that you\'ll unintentionally draw them to you."

"How so?"

Xin Hulei gives him a smile from the corner of his lip. "Have you heard of any atheists being haunted?"

Yao Shen snorts. "You\'re saying she brought this on herself?"

He shrugs. "In a way...would she know there were ghosts around if she didn\'t have so many protections in place against them?"

"So...ignorance is bliss?"

Xin Hulei chuckles, and continues down the corridor.

He\'s probably not thinking much of Yao Shen\'s remark, while Yao Shen himself is taking it to heart.

Just like what Ye Fang doesn\'t know can\'t hurt her...the same is true for Xin Hulei.

Yao Shen decides to give himself permission to stop worrying about what might have or have not happened between them in the past.

In any case, Yao Shen has no memories beyond what he sees in those inconvenient dreams, and by his own admission, Xin Hulei\'s own recollections are blurry.

So, ignorance is bliss.

For both of them.

"Wait," Xin Hulei says, stopping Yao Shen with an arm across his chest. "Are you hearing that?"

Yao Shen strains his ears and thinks he can make out the sound of muffled crying, coming in from the room on their left.

He puts his hand on the door, and takes it away with a start. "It\'s ice cold."

Xin Hulei shoulders him out of the way, and fits that odd key, that Yao Shen has seen once before the first time they went to \'Hell on Earth\', into the keyhole.

The door opens with one turn of the key.

It\'s obvious there\'s no guest staying in the room at first glance. It has that air of otherworldly cleanliness that speaks of frequent visits from housekeeping, and none from paying customers.

The crying grows in volume as they walk into the room.

Yao Shen feels all the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He draws closer to Xin Hulei, holding on to his arm.

There\'s a figure hunched on the bed, holding her knees to her chest and sobbing loudly.

She doesn\'t seem to have noticed their presence.

Yao Shen clears his throat and she turns around with a start. "Who\'s there?"

He\'s momentarily confused as to why she can\'t see them, but then the wind scatters the clouds obscuring the moon and moonlight floods the room, illuminating the woman\'t empty eye sockets and the tracks of blood running down her pallid cheeks.