Capturing My Demon King Costar

tw: murder, eye trauma, all having happened in the past

---

The scene dissolves around the woman, making Yao Shen momentarily dizzy with vertigo.

He's on the verge of losing his footing when Xin Hulei's hand shots out and holds on to his arm, pulling him into his chest.

"Endure it, it will be over soon."

Those words, whispered over the top of Yao Shen's head, along with the sudden proximity raise gooseflesh along his arms, making him shiver involuntarily.

He closes his hand into a fist, and slams it softly into Xin Hulei's chest.

"Idiot," he mumbles through gritted teeth.

Xin Hulei doesn't know why he's being insulted but seeing Yao Shen's reddened earlobes he finds that he doesn't much mind.

When the scene reapers around them, all the good humor vanishes.

They reenter the hotel room just as the ghost woman does, a plastic bag filled with drinks clinking loudly where it hangs from her arm when she pushes the door open.

The bag falls to the floor with a loud crash as soon as the woman sees the scene in front of her eyes, her hands flying up to her mouth in shock.

"Shit, you were supposed to lock the door," one of the men says, glaring at the one holding a bloodied knife over the corpse of one of the girls who was entertaining them earlier.

The girl's red qipao is stained almost black from all the blood she has lost, her sallow face almost translucent.

Yao Shen can't hide his own horror at the sight of her empty vitreous eyes, staring vacantly towards him.

He must make some noise to alert Xin Hulei of his distress, because the very next moment a broad palm falls over his eyes. "Don't look."

Yao Shen reaches back towards Xin Hulei to try and hold on to him, ground himself somehow.

The men are all talking over each other, but he can tell one of them must have grabbed the ghost woman by the hair because she starts screaming.

The piercing sound makes Yao Shen flinch, and Xin Hulei lifts his free hand towards his ear, curling his other arm around his head and pulling him into his chest, so he won't hear or see anything.

Xin Hulei keeps looking, though, his gaze unflinching as he takes in the scene in front of him.

The ghost woman keeps shouting in blood-curdling panic, even more so when she's forced to kneel beside the corpse of the young girl.

"Why, why, Hua Mei? She was a good girl, a good girl," her words are slurred by her panicked sobbing.

One of the man laughs, twisting his hands into her hair cruelly. "None of you whores were ever good girls."

The other men jeer, a muscle tightens in Xin Hulei's jaw and his eyes glow red for a split second.

"It's like this, you dumb bitch..." Another man holding a knife grins and runs the edge of the blade under the ghost woman's neck. "We're so rich already, what can't our money pay for?"

Another man cackles, his face distorted in cruel delight. "We've done everything, had all the fun money could buy, we were only left with the fun it couldn't." He waved his bloody hands at the girl. "We gave all your other girls money to go away and leave her behind, they didn't even blink. Who will miss someone like her?"

The ghost woman's sobs don't subside. Her eyes stare in abject terror at the corpse of Hua Mei, a girl she led to this fate like a lamb to slaughter.

She murmurs silent pleas for forgiveness under her breath, but the only person who could absolve her is no longer in the room.

"What are we going to do with you?" the man holding the knife to her neck asks, pushing the blade deeper into her flesh.

The woman trembles, her throat working frantically against the cruel steel biting into her skin. "Please, I didn't see anything, I won't tell anyone."

All the men laugh, delighted that she's reacting in the exact way they expected her too.

"We'll see about that." One of the men takes her limp hands in his and wraps them around a knife's handle. "There, know your DNA is on the murder weapon too."

"It needs to be on the body as well."

The other two pull her up by the hair again, and drag her closer to Hua Mei. "Stab her."

The ghost woman shakes her head frantically, horrified at the mere idea.

No one gives her a choice. The man holding her hands around the knife raises them and brings them down on Hua Mei's chest.

The woman's screaming grows more hysterical, to the point Yao Shen can hear it through Xin Hulei's efforts to muffle it for him.

He presses himself further against the warm chest beneath his cheek, desperate to hide from the horror happening around him.

The screaming stops, but the horror doesn't.

The ghost woman has grown completely still, her eyes glazed. "I didn't see anything, didn't see anything," are the only words she's still capable of saying.

The man who seems to be the leader of the group snorts. "Maybe it's a good thing you walked in here, now we won't have to go to so much trouble to clean up this mess."

She looks up at him in confusion, her mind completely blank. "I didn't see anything."

He smirks cruelly. "That's right, you didn't, and you won't be able to say anything either," he says, and brings the knife down towards her eyes.

This time, she doesn't make a sound.

---

Yao Shen can feel the swoop in his stomach as the scene around him dissolves. 

"You can look now," Xin Hulei says, letting go of him.

Yao Shen has a pretty good idea of what took place, but he's still glad Xin Hulei shielded him from the worst of it.

The room is empty now, save for the ghost woman, sobbing in a pool of her own blood, and staring at the bloodied sheets where Hua Mei's body was before.

Xin Hulei approaches her, touching her thin shoulder lightly. "It's over now."

"I didn't see anything- I didn't do anyth-"

Yao Shen kneels at her side, his tone curt. "Ma'am what's your name?"

She cranes her neck towards the sound of his voice, she seems to respond better to reproach than gentleness, probably a reflection of the guilt she feels.

"My name is Du Liyan," she says. 

"Du Liyan, you're dead, you need to move on," Yao Shen says, keeping his voice steady.

His words make her shake her head desperately. "No, it's Hua Mei who is dead, her family...no one knows what happened to her. I need to help her."

Yao Shen looks up at Xin Hulei, giving him a meaningful look. 

It seems they have found the reason behind Du Liyan's earthly attachments. 

"Do you know the identity of the men who attacked Hua Mei?" Xin Hulei asks.

The ghost's shoulders heave with a barely restrained sob. "They introduced themselves as businessmen, and they probably gave me fake names when they hired the girls -- they all do."

Xin Hulei doesn't make any comment. "Do you have any record, any registry of what happened here?"

She nods vigorously, her eyebrows drawn over her empty eyes. "I- I always set up a hidden camera when we entertain guests outside, uh, our place. For safety, and uhm...blackmailing."

That means that somewhere in the room there's a record of all the atrocities those men committed.

The woman lets out an anguished sigh, and points towards a decorative wall hanging. "It's right there, but I can never grab it."

Yao Shen makes a move towards it, but Xin Hulei stops him. "We need to leave first."

Du Liyan throws herself at Xin Hulei's legs. "Please, help Hua Mei, she deserves justice."

Xin Hulei touches the woman's shoulder. "We'll help both of you."

As soon as he's done speaking, the scene dissolves around them like fog.

---

Back in the real room, Du Liyan resumes her sobbing and rocking back-and-forth on the bed, as if nothing had happened.

Yao Shen searches behind the wall-hanging and finds a tiny camera hidden in the watercolor swirls. Behind the painting, a tiny device holds the memory card with the camera's recordings.

"I'll go through the footage, hopefully it will be clear enough," Xin Hulei says, as Yao Shen hands him the memory card. "You don't need to see it."

Yao Shen shakes his head. "No way, I want to help too."

He feels an odd sense of responsibility towards Du Liyan and Hua Mei. Hua Mei's spirit didn't stay behind, but that doesn't mean she didn't die with grievances. Part of her must have been glad to move on, glad not to be alive any longer after all the hardship she had to endure.

Xin Hulei gives him a searching look, his dark eyes growing almost soft. "That's kind of you."

Yao Shen shrugs. "It's the right thing to do."

"Not everyone would see it that way, many people would be glad to look the other way." 

Yao Shen shrugs again.

Xin Hulei wraps one arm around Yao Shen's waist. "Little menace, what am I going to do with you?" His voice is unbearably fond

To himself, Yao Shen answers, 'keep me', but dispels the idea as soon as it enters his mind.

Better not fool himself thinking about things he can't have.