Looking concerned, the boy came right up to her. Something fluttered in her chest. He had a very nice face. Pity she wanted to smack it.
“You seem okay, but are you actually feeling okay, Rooroo?”
“Rooroo?” she spluttered, immediately flicking her sword to his neck.
To her surprise, the boy smirked. “You’re giving literal meaning to the phraseshe woke up and chose violence.”
He laughed as if he’d said something witty. And he didn’t seem to care that Rui had a blade to his throat, or that she could inflict a grievous injury on him with a mere turn of her wrist. In fact, she could’ve sworn he was enjoying this. The boy was grinning at her like a fool—no, not a fool.
He was staring at her like he was in love. Withher.
Rui pressed her blade harder against his neck. A little more, and she would draw blood. “You have two seconds to tell me who you are and what’s going on.”
The boy went still, his eyes slowly widening with comprehension. A stream of curses erupted from him. Something about trickster gods, a mahjong game, how heshould have known...
Rui didn’t understand a word of it. From his curse-filled rant, it seemed as though he had been in the underworld with her too.
But why couldn’t she remember him?
Shethoughtshe remembered her journey in the underworld well. She remembered Nikai the Reaper, the Guardians, the strange forest and how it had tried to trick her into staying by pretending to be her dead mother. She even remembered the room with all the mirrors, the memory of her past life as Lei Ying and howshehad died. But when Rui concentrated, she sensed gaps in her memories. She couldn’t remember anything about the Fourth King, and she was certain she had gone to his Court. And she definitely had no recollection of the boy in front of her.
He had stopped swearing, and they locked eyes. His expression unmoored her, and his voice trembled when he spoke. “You don’t know who I am, do you? You’ve forgotten me.”
Rui didn’t know why, but she was suddenly on the verge of tears too. There was an absence in her heart she couldn’t describe. A loss soinfinite that it would have been unbearably painful if she actually knew what it was.
Her fingers loosened, and her sword fell to the floor with a clang.
The beautiful stranger standing in front of her wasn’t an enemy. He was nobody.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t remember you at all.”
54
Zizi
I don’t remember you.
Who knew four simple words could feel so devastating?
Zizi shifted on his chaise, angling his head to get a better look at the love of his life, who was playing fetch-the-sparkly-ball with his cat.
He had spent the last hour trying to jog Rui’s memory, hoping that she was only momentarily disoriented from her underworld journey. He’d recounted how they met, their work together, some of the more heated arguments they’d had over the years about life and the philosophy of magic. He had made her favorite coffee and waved the ghostie earrings in her face.
He’d even blasted what he secretly thought of astheir songthrough the speakers. They used to make up lyrics for the chorus together, because while the tune had an upbeat tempo and was fun to dance to, if you listened carefully, the love story being told through the lyrics was incredibly sad. Past Rui used to treat it like a competition, trying to one-up him with funnier, happier, sillier lyrics. But present-day Rui didn’t remember any of this. At least she said his earrings were cute.
“How can you not rememberthe Fourth King if you remember going to his Court? Or should I say,myCourt?” Zizi had asked, after they exchanged notes on her time in the underworld. He was insulted that she rememberedRaymondbut not himself.
Rui’s face scrunched up in concentration, and she looked annoyed and adorable.
“I’ve got nothing,” she said. “He’s—I mean you—are a blank space when I try to recall any conversation I might’ve had with you. Or him. It’s like you’re—he’s—ugh, this is too confusing.” She huffed. “What I’m trying to say is that Four-Zi is part of the scenery when I try to recall things. Like ablob of paint or a random splotch that doesn’t really do or add anything to the full picture.”
Zizi was incredulous. “Four-Zi? That’s a ridiculous sobriquet. And ablob? Never mind.”
Giving up on questioning her, he’d lain on his chaise to mope. However he sliced it, Rui’s selective amnesia was Zizi-shaped—andFour-shaped, if you counted the fact that she remembered the key moments of her past life as Lei Ying but nothing about the King.
Was this all a twisted joke from the Elder Gods? Zizi didn’t think so. He had won their mahjong game fair and square, and he couldn’t think of a reason why they would want to take Rui’s memories. Maybe it had to do with the ritual Rui had gone through to get to the underworld. Rui had mentioned that her memories of that and what she and Madam Meng had spoken about were hazy.
The Reverie had been empty when he’d arrived two days ago to look for Rui, and he’d found her alone in the tearoom. Zizi wished he’d waited and interrogated Madam Meng before they’d left. He’d tried to contact her again, but there was no response, and he didn’t want to leave his shophouse while Rui was still here. She’d eaten the breakfast he made and complimented his coffee. Maybe he was delusional, but it felt like shewantedto be around him, and that gave him some hope.
