“Are you sure your client is her favorite child? Maybe the locket isn’t meant to be opened by him.”
“Wait,” Zizi exclaimed, running to her, “repeat what you just said.”
“Maybe the locket isn’t meant to be opened by him?”
He gripped her shoulders. “That’s it! You absolute genius, I think you solved it. I swear I could—” He stopped talking, looking as surprised as she felt to discover they were caught up in a hug. He sprang back and resumed his pacing.
Rui’s ridiculous little heart had raced and raced. What had Zizi meant to say? Hastily, she’d drunk a gulp of soup to drown her flustered thoughts. The spiciness of it caught up with her, and she coughed, regretting her decision.
“If the locket is for the mother’s favorite child, then the sealing spell can only be broken bythatchild—not me,” Zizi concluded. “There’s nothing that I, even with all my astounding talent, can do, because that’s not how the spell is supposed to work. Simple but effective.” He clapped. “Thank you, Rui. Finish your ramen and get lost. I’m going to call the client over right now.”
“You’re welcome?” Rui sputtered as Zizi shoved the bowl into her hands and pushed her toward the front door.
He’d phoned her the next day to tell her that the locket had been sealed by a voice spell. All the client had to do was say his name and tell it to open. Zizi had seemed impressed by the cleverness of it.
The plastic ramen cover crunched in Rui’s hand now. She dropped it and ran back up the stairs. The third door stared at her with its narrow shape and puzzling lack of hinges.
What if it was sealed by a voice spell? A spell that would open it for the right person. But that person would be Zizi, not her. Still, she had a feeling about it. If she had no trouble breaking into his shophouse, maybe...
“It’s Rui,” she said, feeling more than a little silly. “Let me in.”
She placed a tentative hand on the wood and pushed.
The door remained shut.
It’s not going to be so easy, not when it comes to him.She sighed. Whatever was behind that door had better be worth the humiliation.
“It’s Rooroo. Open up.”
Something touched her cheek. Like a kiss from a ghost.
The door creaked open.
Rui shook a fist at it. Amused and aggravated. It had worked, but only because she used that horrible nickname. She was going to find Zizi, and she was going to murder him.
She went in.
There was a cozy-looking futon on the ground with a fluffy blanket, an old swivel chair, and a table with a stack of sketchbooks on it. Unlike the other two rooms, this was small and bare. But Rui knew at once this was where Zizi actually slept. Nothing and everything about him made sense to her.
She slid a finger across the desk. Dust. He hadn’t been in here for a while. No one had. On a whim, she swept the charcoal sticks and colored pencils off the sketchbooks and flipped to a page.
Lifelike eyes stared back through unevenly cut bangs. A drawing of a girl’s face. Attention had been paid to the way the tip of her nose was slightly upturned, the generous loop of her smile, and the narrow point of her chin. The portrait was detailed, riveting because of how the nuances of the girl’s expression were captured in the moment. The rest of the notebook was full of random illustrations of clocks and trees and buildings.
With trembling hands, Rui went through every sketchbook. The pattern repeated. The girl’s face kept appearing, sometimes sad, mostly happy. It was as though the artist chose to remember the girl that way: a smile on her face, joy in the crinkled corners of her wide-set eyes. It was clear the artist had spent an inordinate amount of time observing every line and angle of the girl’s face, and that this tender obsession had bled into each charcoal stroke.
It was also clear that the girl was Rui, and the artist was Zizi.
The final sketchbook was larger than the rest, and when she flipped to the last page, her breath caught.
Like the drawings before, it was Rui again.
But this Rui was different. Her hair was long, running past her shoulders, and her face older. She was standing by an ancient-looking wisteria tree, wearing a purple layered dress that flowed down to the ground. The young woman’s hand was raised, like she was reaching out for someone. There was something magical about the drawing, and as Rui trailed a finger down the page, she almost expected it to spring to life. But it wasonly a sketch. Nothing more. An image of an older Rui in the future, manifested by Zizi’s imagination.
“Well, this is creepy,” Rui said to the empty room.
But she knew her heart felt otherwise.
The voice spell Zizi had placed on the door must’ve been a silly joke to himself. He hadn’t meant for her to ever see this room or his drawings. He didn’t know that she’d come looking, or that she’d figure out how to break the spell.
