"Meng! Time to get to work! Business hours started ages ago — get up or I'm docking your pay."
Hu Tao slapped the table.
Meng didn't stir. The man slumped across from him, Chang the Ninth, was the one who mumbled a reply.
"Girl… you've grown so big…"
A moment later he lifted his head and opened his eyes at Hu Tao, thoroughly bewildered.
"Sorry. Wasn't talking to you."
Hu Tao gave an awkward little laugh and apologized to Chang the Ninth.
Chang the Ninth looked her over, said nothing, and shuffled off toward the outhouse.
The moment he was gone, Hu Tao brought her palm down flat on Meng's shoulder. He jerked upright, startled clean out of his sleep.
He raised his head and blinked at her in confusion. "Director? What are you doing in my house?"
"Your house?"
Hu Tao's voice went flat. "You sat here drinking the entire night. It's already working hours, and now you've made me come fetch you in person. That's coming out of your wages, no argument."
"Huh?"
Meng stared blankly, and then it caught up with him.
He'd had too much to drink yesterday. Rain had come down in the middle of the night, the tavern had a stove going, and he'd simply bedded down where he sat.
His face went pale, and he pressed a hand to his aching head.
"Never mind the 'huh' — get moving. We can't keep a client waiting."
Hu Tao waved a hand at him.
"Right."
Meng nodded and started to rise. Then his eyes went to the empty seat across the table. He was quiet for a beat before he said, "Director, once the funeral's done today, could you take me up to Wuwang Hill?"
"Wuwang Hill?"
Hu Tao stopped where she stood, eyes narrowing at him, a dangerous glint sliding through them. "Meng. You didn't just finish reading 'anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day' and get some notion in your head that you've got no business having, did you?"
"No, no, nothing like that."
Meng waved both hands hurriedly, then glanced again at the empty seat opposite. "Director, do you remember? Yesterday, after we finished the book — that ghost you mentioned, the one called Little Nine?"
"Of course I remember. What about her?"
Hu Tao arched an eyebrow.
"Last night, while I was drinking, I heard the fellow across from me calling out that exact name…"
And with that, Meng laid out everything he'd overheard.
"So your theory is that the little girl's ghost I ran into on Wuwang Hill — the one called Little Nine — might be the childhood sweetheart he last laid eyes on down by the river?"
Hu Tao's brow lifted when he'd finished.
Meng nodded. He was just opening his mouth to confirm it when Hu Tao pointed past his shoulder. "That fellow you say was sitting across from you. Would that be him?"
Meng went stiff and turned on instinct — and there stood Chang the Ninth behind him, face freshly washed, a fresh bottle in his hand.
A sharp crack.
The bottle slipped from Chang the Ninth's fingers and burst against the floor, wine and glass spraying across the boards.
"What… what did you two just say?"
Chang the Ninth's face was pure disbelief.
"That's, uh…"
The color drained from Meng's face.
When he'd woken up, Chang the Ninth's seat had been empty. That was the only reason he'd raised the matter with Director Hu at all.
It had never occurred to him that the man hadn't left.
And now he had no idea how to explain himself.
He could hardly say it to the man's face — that he suspected Chang the Ninth's childhood sweetheart had never moved away at all, that she'd died.
"I asked you what you just said! What ghost called Little Nine?"
Chang the Ninth surged forward and seized Meng by the collar, his eyes red as he shouted.
The shout pulled every head in the tavern around. Even the proprietress came over, though she was pleasantly drunk herself and couldn't manage much speed.
"Settle down first."
Hu Tao's eyes narrowed. "Let go of him. I know you're in a hurry for answers, but don't be in such a hurry. Meng may have dragged me down to a tavern to collect him this morning, which has not put me in a generous mood — but he's a Wangsheng Funeral Parlor employee, and I look after my own."
The proprietress reached them at last, urging Chang the Ninth to calm himself and talk it through properly.
Little by little the fight went out of him. He let go of Meng's collar. "Then say it. What is this about?"
"Actually, it's like this."
Hu Tao said, "Meng here listened to you talking in your sleep last night, and then he happened to have a dream of his own. Dreamed that I met a ghost called Little Nine up on Wuwang Hill. So when I turned up this morning, he started telling me all about it — insisting the ghost in his dream was your childhood sweetheart."
"Rubbish! Absolute rubbish!"
Chang the Ninth's fury boiled over. "Little Nine is alive and well — her family moved, that's all! And you have the gall to wish her dead?!"
"I think it's rubbish too. Bad enough to have a tasteless dream like that, but then to stand here gossiping to me about a stranger's life — as if there were any such thing as ghosts in this world!"
Hu Tao piled onto Meng right alongside Chang the Ninth.
Having finished scolding him, she turned back to Chang the Ninth. "Peace, friend, peace. He's new to the trade, the pressure gets to him, and this is what comes of it. Don't waste your anger. Tell you what — last night's drinks are on us. How does that sound?"
"Brother, it was my fault. I shouldn't have run my mouth."
Meng offered his own apology.
The two of them sounded sincere enough that Chang the Ninth let it go. He simply ordered another bottle and sat back down, waiting for it in silence.
The bottle came quickly.
Hu Tao told the tavern proprietress to put it on the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor's tab, then took Meng and left.
Chang the Ninth watched their backs disappear through the tavern door.
He let out a cold snort, poured a cup, and threw it down his throat. Then another, and another, muttering to himself between swallows. "Impossible. It's all rubbish… How could Little Nine be dead… Impossible… How… could she…"
And yet, once the thought had taken root, it kept spreading through him without end.
As though it made sense of everything.
Why Little Nine had never once come to find him, all these years…
Why her family had packed up and moved in such a rush back then…
Why… after the day he'd left her behind at the riverside, he had never seen Little Nine again.
The hand holding his cup shook harder and harder, until every drop of the wine had spilled out of it.
Terror and grief rose up and all but swallowed him, and the thought grew harder and harder to push back down.
It wasn't possible…
It could not possibly be true…
Just then a gust of wind came in through the window, and the copy of 'anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day' lying on the table riffled open, pages fluttering.
They came to rest on the passage where Meiko Honma dies by the river.
Another gust blew through.
The dry rustle of turning pages.
They stopped on the bridge that Jinta "Jintan" Yadomi walked across after he made his confession to Meiko Honma.
[If Menma had been able to grow up like anybody else — could she have become Jintan's bride?]
Chang the Ninth stared at the line and went utterly still. A single track of tears slid down his cheek and dripped onto the floor.
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