Chapter 41 The Finale

When I woke up in the morning, I realized that it was the last day of our agreement. I woke Fatty up and washed my face.

How will he show up? What will be the first thing he says? Will he be alone when he comes out? If there’s a bunch of things following him out, will I have to kill them all?

I checked my ammo and sat in front of the bronze door with two guns. After thinking it over, however, I decided it was inappropriate.

Truthfully, I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I yawned and put the guns behind me.

Fatty came over and handed me a phone. “Let’s listen to some music. What should we listen to today?”

“What do you have?” I brought it over, clicked on the app, and found that the playlist was full of square-dancing songs. I figured Little Brother would probably shrink back behind the door if I played this, although I did find it quite interesting.

“Don’t you have anything else?”

“There’s a song that’s been very popular recently. A little girl in Banai sent it to me.” Fatty took the phone back, searched through it for a long time, and then showed me the title: “See You Again.”

I made sure the volume was low and hit play. It was all in English. I listened to the song silently, and even Fatty didn’t speak.

“It’s been a long day without you my friend,
And I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again.” (1)

Fatty hummed along. The song was quite nice, so I kept silent and listened for a long time.

Is he not coming out? I sighed. Fatty slowly fell asleep beside me, snoring lightly.

I struggled to stay awake, but I couldn’t help feeling sleepy listening to the music.

In the dim light, I saw the bronze door open.

I’m just like the little match girl (2), I thought as I rubbed my face and opened my eyes.

Sure enough, nothing had actually happened.

I knew it wouldn’t work, so I looked at Fatty and started talking to him.

“The people in that village make a dessert from glutinous rice and brown sugar. Since there’s plenty of rain in the village, a special weed called Yuzaishen grows there. The petals of this weed are put into the dessert, and are said to help with memory. Of course, it’s only a local legend.”

I kept yawning as I spoke. My consciousness began to blur, but I didn’t stop talking. I don’t know how long I stayed up, but in my hazy state, I suddenly felt someone slowly sit down beside me.

I hesitated for a moment, glanced sideways, and saw the other person looking at me as well.

Fatty slowly woke up and looked at us.

I saw a familiar face and indifferent eyes reflecting the light of the bonfire.

People say that when you forget someone, the first thing you forget is their voice. But when he spoke, it wasn’t unfamiliar at all.

“You’ve aged,” he said

The music was still flowing in this place close to hell.

Fatty came up, hooked his arm around Poker-Face’s shoulder, and caused him to stumble: “How can we compare with Little Brother? And you were willing to come out!!”

Poker-Face swayed from all the jostling.

I pulled down my sleeve, covered the scars on my arm, and stood up.

He smiled at me and I lifted my bag. “Let’s go.”

We just…haven’t seen you for a long time.

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I live at the North Sea and you at the South Sea,
I asked the wild goose to pass a letter but was told they could not.
Each of us held a cup of wine and talked amid spring wind with peach and plum blossom,
For ten years we missed each other before lamps during night rain outside. (3)

-Grave Robbers’ Chronicles: Ten Years Later (end)-

<Chapter 40> <Table of Contents><Chapter 42>

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TN Notes:

(1) This was in English on the raw if anyone cares. Same with the song title “See You again”. I found 2 versions. The Wiz Khalifa version ft. Charlie Puth is here and the one without Wiz Khalifa is here. Based on the ambience they’ve got going on, I feel like they’re listening to the latter lol

(2) From Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. The story is about a dying child’s hopes and dreams. More info here

(3) “Ji Huang Ji Fu” is a poem by Song Dynasty writer Huang Tingjian. There’s no way in hell I would’ve gotten this, so credit goes to this website lol

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Hooray!!! Little Brother’s out of the door!!! And the first words out of his mouth are to call Wu Xie old. What a dick lol. There are 3 more postcript kind of chapters so I’m just going to keep the chapter #s rolling. Also, I can’t remember how I found it, but somebody else did translate this chapter (but only this chapter as far as I can tell, I didn’t look that hard though) so if you want to see their version, it’s here

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