Chapter 33 Total Confusion

The three of us sat there in silence for more than ten minutes. Fatty kept looking at me, but no one said a word.

A Ning had paused the video, leaving that extremely familiar face frozen on the black-and-white screen. Even though the person’s appearance was unkempt, it was a face that I saw every day—my own face. For the first time, the strangeness of the whole thing left me feeling so horrified that I didn’t dare look at it any longer.

A long time passed before A Ning’s quiet voice finally broke the silence, “That’s why I had to come and see you.”

I didn’t respond—my mind was completely blank at this time, and I didn’t know what to say or how to react at all.

Fatty opened his mouth and made a few incomprehensible noises before finally managing to spit out, “Young Wu, is that you?”

I shook my head, suddenly feeling so dizzy that I couldn’t think at all. I pinched my brow hard and waved my hand at them, silently telling them not to ask me any questions—I needed to calm down first.

Thankfully, they both fell silent. After taking a few deep breaths and trying to calm my racing heart, I asked A Ning, “Where was this sent from?”

“According to the receipt, it was sent from Golmud in Qinghai Province.”

I took a deep breath. Sure enough, it was sent from the same place. Looking at the age of the tapes, they seemed to have been recorded around the same time as the two with Huo Ling, meaning that they weren’t recorded recently. So, these two tapes must be connected to the two I received. No matter how much I thought about it, there was no way they were unrelated.

But I had no memory of ever crawling on the floor of an old house wearing clothes like that. The whole thing was so bizarre that I found it hard to believe that the person on the screen was actually me. My first instinct was to say that this was some kind of conspiracy.

“Other than this, are there any other clues?” I asked her. She shook her head and said, “The only clue is you. That’s why I came to see you.”

I picked up the remote, rewound the tape, and watched the whole thing again. Although I was mentally prepared this time, when I saw the close-up of that face, my heart immediately sank and the remote control in my hand made a creaking sound as I unconsciously squeezed it.

The black-and-white image was fuzzy, but there was no doubt that the person on the screen was me.

Fatty wanted to keep asking questions, but A Ning stopped him. Then she went out, exchanged a few words with Wang Meng, and soon returned with a bottle of wine. A Ning poured out the tea in my cup and replaced it with the wine.

I gave her a wry smile of gratitude and took a big gulp, immediately coughing as the spicy-hot flavor hit my throat. Next to me, Fatty said softly, “Calm down first. There’s no need to worry. This isn’t difficult to explain, but first we have to be sure—are you certain this person isn’t you?”

I shook my head, “This person definitely isn’t me.”

“Then do you have any brothers who look like you?” Fatty asked, a grin suddenly appearing on his face. “Maybe your dad had someone on the side—”

I suddenly found it funny—was this the plot of a wuxia⁽¹⁾ novel or something? How could such a thing happen in real life? I shook my head with a wry smile and took another big gulp of wine.

A Ning looked at me for a long time before saying, “If it’s not you, then can you explain what’s going on?”

How should I know? I thought to myself. I was so confused that I didn’t want to answer any more of her questions. The whole thing was far beyond the scope of my understanding, and I couldn’t think rationally at all, but there was a strange feeling in my heart. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t seem to grasp this thread. It was enough to drive me crazy.

Fatty spoke up at this time, “Since it’s not you, then this person must be wearing a mask with your face on it… It seems that someone out there really likes your appearance. You should feel flattered. Do you think someone made this tape to mess with you?”

I cursed to myself. A human skin mask was a good explanation since it made it easy to disguise yourself as another person, but it was actually quite difficult to pretend to be a specific person. In fact, it was almost impossible. If someone wanted to make a human skin mask of my face, then they had to be very familiar with my facial structure and various expressions. Otherwise, even if a mask was made, the wearer would immediately expose themselves as soon as they smiled or opened their mouth.

There must be something more to this video. Even if someone really was wearing a mask of my likeness, it still left a lot of questions. For example, who was this person? How did they know what I looked like? What did they do while wearing my “face”? How did they end up in this video? Where was the place in the video? When was it filmed? How was it connected with Huo Ling’s video?

As it turned out, things weren’t all that simple.

I even had a ridiculous thought that maybe this person wasn’t wearing a human skin mask, but I was.

I touched my face, wanting to see if I really was Wu Xie, but it hurt when I pinched it—obviously, my face was real. I couldn’t help but laugh at myself.

Huo Ling’s video and the video “I” was in had been sent to me and A Ning using the names Zhang Qiling and Wu Xie. There must be some reason for it. As the allure of the mystery suddenly enveloped me once more, my obsession with finding out the truth behind Uncle Three’s lies—which I had finally gotten rid of—suddenly re-emerged.

In the evening, I invited Fatty out to dinner at the same restaurant we took A Ning to. Funnily enough, we were taken to the same table we had eaten lunch at.

I had been silent the whole afternoon. A Ning didn’t feel like waiting around, so she left a phone number and address where we could reach her and then headed back to her hotel. Before she left, she told me to let her know if I came up with any ideas, and said that she would stop by again tomorrow.

I figured I wouldn’t come up with anything after just one night, so I just made a noncommittal noise and then sent her on her way. Fatty had originally planned to head back to Beijing that night, but after this incident, he also became interested and said that he was going to stay for a few more days to see how things developed. I arranged a place for him to stay, but since he didn’t eat much at lunch, he wanted to hang around and get a free meal out of me.

The waitress saw that it was just me and Fatty this time and kept giving us strange looks, probably thinking that we really did sell A Ning off. I normally would have played a joke on her, but I just wasn’t in the mood this time.

With A Ning no longer hovering around, Fatty said to me, “Young Wu, now that that woman’s gone, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

I gave him a wry smile and said that I really didn’t know. I wasn’t pretending to be confused just because A Ning was there.

Fatty’s face was full of disbelief. From his point of view, my Uncle Three was a huge liar, so I would naturally be a little wily myself. He thought that the person in the video was definitely me, and I was keeping quiet because I was in some kind of trouble.

I really didn’t feel like explaining anything to him, so I swore a serious oath that I was telling the truth. Only then did he seem to reluctantly believe me. We were momentarily distracted when our food was brought out, but then Fatty took a sip of wine and said, “You know, Young Wu, I don’t think this matter is so simple. You haven’t spoken all afternoon—did you really think of something? If you did, you shouldn’t hide it from me.”

I shook my head and frowned, “I really didn’t think of anything. How could I when I don’t even know where to start? All I can think about now is who sent these fucking tapes.”

I thought about it all afternoon, and the main thing that concerned me was that the “me” in the tape knew of the camera’s existence and obviously didn’t care about it, just like Huo Ling.

Secondly, Huo Ling’s tape had obviously been recorded a long time ago, most likely sometime during the ‘90s. If the two tapes were shot around the same time, then the “me” in A Ning’s tape must have lived in the ‘90s. At that time, I clearly remember still being in middle school, and I had no memory of ever recording something like this. There was also the fact that my appearance back then was very different compared to how I looked today. I was a conspiracy theorist at heart, but if my childhood was fake, how could I possibly explain all the family photos showing me growing up? And what about all my classmates and friends? How could that be explained?

Right now, I was more focused on the question of who sent these videotapes to A Ning, and why. Were they just trying to scare me? It seemed unlikely.

Fatty gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder and then muttered to himself, “Maybe Little Brother was pretending to be you when he sent this package to A Ning?”

I sighed, who knows? But then I suddenly remembered what A Ning said about the sender’s name on the package and felt doubts in my heart. If the person who sent the package to A Ning used a fake name, did that mean that the person who sent the two tapes to me did the same? Did they use Zhang Qiling’s name to ensure that the tapes would end up in my hands? So, the one who sent the tapes wasn’t him but someone else?

Realistically speaking, there wasn’t a reason for him to send me this kind of thing. Plus, he didn’t seem like the type to mess around with videotapes.

But if it wasn’t him, who could it be? The contents of the tapes were connected to the missing Xisha archeological team, so maybe it was one of them? But what was their purpose?

I turned to Fatty, “Hey, your brain works different from others. Why don’t you help me out here? What does your intuition say about this matter?”

“Intuition?” Fatty scratched his head. “Are you fucking serious right now? I’ve never experienced anything like this before, so what kind of intuition would I have?”

I thought about it and realized that he was right—any conclusions he came up with would be unreliable since he didn’t know Poker-Face very well, nor did he know much about Xisha (well, he at least didn’t know as much as I did).

Speaking of Poker-Face, could I really say that I knew him well? I took a sip of wine and pondered over it.

Poker-Face had an air about him that made you think he wasn’t really human. If anything, he was more like a very simple statue come to life. Except for the few times that he saved me, all I could remember him doing was sleeping. Even I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what his character was like.

If he were an ordinary person, it would be possible to determine his character based on his manner of speech or any habitual gestures he made, but unfortunately, he hardly spoke and he didn’t have any habitual gestures—he was simply a person who didn’t do anything superfluous. But when he did make a move, something always happened, which was why everyone started sweating as soon as they noticed his expression change.

After thinking about it, I said to Fatty, “Then don’t use your intuition. Just tell me what you think about this whole thing. What seems off to you? Come on, help me out a little here.”

Fatty sighed, “Damn it, you’re a disgrace to the proletariat. I don’t really have any thoughts on this matter, but I did notice a small detail when you were talking just now that was a bit odd. I’m not sure if you noticed it.”

“What detail?” I asked him.

“Didn’t you say that Little Brother sent you two videotapes? One of them has a woman combing her hair, and the other is blank, with nothing on it.”

I nodded.

“That’s what’s fucking weird,” Fatty said. “If it’s blank, then why did he bother sending it to you? It doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t he just send the first tape instead? Why bother sending two tapes?”

I sighed. I also thought about this in the beginning, but because the whole thing was so bizarre, I didn’t have the energy to think about such a small, illogical detail. At that time, I thought that the other party had an ulterior motive, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Hearing this, Fatty shook his head and said that I was wrong, “If you think about it this way, then it’ll obviously be too confusing. We live in the real world, not a mystery novel—illogical things like that don’t happen. I think we may be making things a little too complicated. Maybe the other party sent this videotape for a very simple reason.”

I was a little resistant at first, not wanting to believe him, but then I asked him to explain his idea.

“It’s not really an idea,” Fatty said. “I just think you’re looking at this the wrong way. That’s why everything is so confusing. Let’s think about it more directly. This person sent you two tapes, one with a recording on it and the other completely blank. In other words, one of them didn’t need to be sent at all, but the person sent it anyway. Right?”

I nodded, and Fatty continued, “That’s the problem. It seems normal in this case, because the person who sent the tapes seems so mysterious, which makes you think that everything they do may have a deeper meaning. But damn it, what if the guy who sent these things is just an ordinary person? Do you think someone ordinary would do such a thing? I don’t. If I wanted to send you a tape, why would I send a blank one with it? It doesn’t make any sense. There’s got to be some special reason for it. Don’t you agree?”

I nodded. I honestly didn’t expect him to take the question so seriously, but he always had a way of surprising me. I leaned back in my chair and thought about what he just said.

Under what circumstances would an ordinary person send something like this? Why send a tape with a recording on it and one that was blank?

Don’t complicate the problem, I told myself. Use your intuition. Think about when you used to borrow videotapes when you were younger. Under what circumstances would you do this kind of thing?

As soon as I started thinking about it, I felt my heart thump—there was a vague feeling that I had done something similar before.

Fatty had busied himself with the Dongpo pork⁽²⁾ while I was lost in my thoughts, but when he saw my expression, he asked, “What? Did you think of something?”

I tilted my head and asked him to be quiet as I tried to latch onto that train of thought. As I continued thinking about it, more memories started to appear, and I suddenly realized what was going on. I stood up abruptly and said to Fatty, “Fuck, it’s so simple! Stop eating! We have to head back right now!” Then I started running for the exit.

Fatty, who had only eaten half of his food, almost spat out the slice of meat he had just put in his mouth. “Stop eating? But I didn’t eat lunch!” He shouted. “What kind of fucking hospitality is this?”

I was anxious to go back and verify my idea, so I turned and said to him, “Then come back after you finish eating.”

Fatty fidgeted in place, but there was nothing he could do to stop me, so he moved to follow while shouting to the waitress, “Don’t clear this table! I’ll finish eating when I come back. And so help me God, if I come back and find a single green onion missing, I will destroy your signboard outside!” Then he followed me out the door.

<Chapter 32><Table of Contents><Chapter 34>

****

TN Notes:

(1) Wuxia is a genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China.

(2) Dongpo pork, also known as Dongpo meat, is a Hangzhou dish that is made by pan-frying and then red-cooking pork belly.