“Did you offend him?” Huang Jinchen heard the door and walked over to the window to question Kou Tong. 

“I only suddenly remembered something.” Kou Tong shrugged, looking out the window, speaking in an extremely quiet voice as though he didn’t want to startle the other people in the house. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit one for himself, and gave another to Huang Jinchen. They listened to the whispers of Kou Tong’s mom and He Xiaozhi coming from the living room. After a while, he finally said, “Sometimes living is tiring for a person because the harness he has put on himself is too tight.” 

“Oh?”

“Yao Shuo, for example. Do you think he doesn’t love his wife and child? That’s impossible. Seeing how he called them when we first got here, it was obvious that he didn’t get those phone numbers out of his address book…but he still couldn’t avoid wishing from the heart that they didn’t exist.” 

Huang Jinchen was a bachelor who absolutely didn’t understand the sweet burden of a wife, a child, and a warm home. He thought about it, could issue no commentary, and only listened. 

“Lao Yao’s wife is a full time lady of the house. There are some women who didn’t receive high education when they were young and don’t have a profession of their own. When they get older, there’s no place in society for them to work—if the woman herself has a fairly dependent, comparatively weak nature, she naturally becomes a housewife.” Kou Tong spoke amid a cloud of smoke in a very quiet voice, as relaxed as though he were chatting; it seemed to scratch at his listener’s ear.

—Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist gently scratching his own ear, feeling that listening to that voice made his heart itch a great deal. 

“Then, the pressure of the whole household falls on the husband alone. And as time goes on, in his eyes, she becomes someone who needs to be protected and taken care of. If the husband happens to be like Lao Yao, a man with very high self-respect who always occupies a position or guidance or giving orders, when he encounters some difficulty or unfavorable circumstance, he certainly won’t communicate it to his wife.” 

Huang Jinchen nodded. “If I had a wife like that old man, I also wouldn’t say anything to her.” 

Then he furtively looked Kou Tong up and down, thinking, But what if I had a wife like this? Two seconds later, Huang Jinchen came up with a conclusion: If he had a wife like this, he certainly wouldn’t have Yao Shuo’s stress, though he would have the stress of worrying that he might be cuckolded at any moment.

“When a person passes middle age, his physiological condition slowly begins to go downhill, and his potential to rise in his career isn’t as expansive as a young man’s anymore. Reasonably speaking, this should be a time when a person’s career reaches its summit, but this society has a pyramid structure. The closer to the tip, the harder it gets. The majority of middle-aged men come to this age and suffer setbacks in their careers, but for both their wives and their children just reaching young adulthood, it’s hard to understand this kind of stress,” Kou Tong said. “This is the so-called ‘male menopause.’ A feeling of loss, frustration, confusion, confinement, and intense unwillingness to be reconciled. If he is unable all along to accept his own powerlessness, unable all along to find a way to release his stress, he’ll become the way Yao Shuo is.

“A father…isn’t all-powerful.” At this point, Kou Tong suddenly gave a quiet laugh. This laugh was brief, too brief for Huang jinchen to analyze it. But after hearing that term, he suddenly remembered that family portrait in the living with its uneven composition. 

Why wasn’t Kou Tong’s dad in it? 

Why was it that his forms of address were different for his parents, one the causally intimate “mom,” the other the cold and detached “father?” 

Huang Jinchen resisted for a long time, but at last he couldn’t resist asking, “Oh, right, I’ve actually meant to ask all along, why isn’t your dad around?”

Huang Jinchen was very sensitive to people’s movements. For a moment, he noticed that all of Kou Tong’s movements stopped—including his breathing. The man’s head was slightly lowered, his eyes deeply cast down, making it hard even for someone very close to him to see his expression clearly. After a long time, Kou Tong at last tapped his cigarette ash into an ashtray and lightly said, “He’s dead.” 

Then, before Huang Jinchen could ask a second question, he pointed to the crows outside the window and said, “We need to think of a way to get rid of these things. They’ll attack people without distinction, and it seems they won’t disperse even when day breaks. Qin Qin has entered into a dispute with us. If this goes on, there will be no way to repair the city’s power grid. The laptop’s battery life is limited. I can’t analyze the signal.” 

Then he turned and went into the living room. Huang Jinchen followed him. He said, “The crows are made by the Magician. Wouldn’t it work to get rid of him?” 

He took a silver bullet from his pocket, tossed it, then caught it again. “Like I shot the damn monster.” 

“That wasn’t a monster, that was the Devil card,” corrected Manman, sitting next to Kou Tong’s mom.

Huang Jinchen didn’t dare to offend this little ancestor. He could only obligingly say, “Fine, it’s the Devil card, all right?”

“Silver bullets can kill the Devil, but they can’t kill the Magician,” Manman said confidently. 

“Why?” asked Huang Jinchen, who lacked imagination and 2D common sense. 

“No reason,” Manman said. 

Huang Jinchen asked, “How do you know?” 

Manman wrinkled her nose. “I just know.” 

“Tongtong, do you see how annoying she is?!” Huang Jinchen clutched the edge of Kou Tong’s clothes, attempting to gain sympathy by being cute. 

Kou Tong, reaching his limit, shuddered and smoothed the goosebumps on his arm. He said, “Eunuch Huang, that’s enough…” 

Huang Jinchen said, “Just now in the corridor you kissed me and called me darling, how have I changed from a consort to a eunuch? That’s loving and leaving me!” 

After he said this, he deliberately glanced out of the corner of his eye at Kou Tong’s mom, who was always dizzy from this sort of stunning illicit love affair. 

As expected, Kou Tong’s mom laughed dryly, a slightly conflicted expression appearing on her face. 

In a spot hidden by the table, Kou Tong poked Huang Jinchen under the ribs with his elbow. 

Huang Jinchen clasped his bosom, his head drooping like a little lady’s, looking like a lovesick goddess faced with a scumbag. 

Pressured by the censure of morals, Kou Tong’s mom could only glare directly at her son. Kou Tong lowered his head, pretending not to see. “Right, let’s continue talking about this Magician. Manman, do you know what special traits the Magician has? Silver bullets won’t work, so what will?” 

Manman shook her head. 

Huang Jinchen seized his chance: “Tut—”

Just then, a voice cut in: “From the creation of the tarot cards, the earliest version of the Magician represented peddlers and artisans who conflicted with the Christian church, or roadside performers.” 

A very brilliant smile immediately appeared on Kou Tong’s face. He turned his head and saw Yao Shuo holding a laptop relying on its battery, leaning against the door of his room as he spoke. 

His gaze swept over Kou Tong, having no reaction to that smile that made Huang Jinchen’s heart go soft. He flatly continued: “At the same time, he’s the first person the traveling Fool encounters. Due to the conflict between the Magician and the church, this card represents certain crafty, evil things. But apart from that, he also has other meanings—for example, the beginning of everything, natural rights, and creative power. He can also symbolize artists and the alchemists in legend. They aren’t the same as ordinary people. They have powers that others can’t understand.” 

“The first key to open the whole world, representing inexhaustible creative power and hope.” Kou Tong thought about it and said to Huang Jinchen, “Manman is right. You can use a silver bullet to kill an unclean thing, but you can’t use it to kill hope.” 

Huang Jinchen at last thought that they had reached the stage of talking nonsense. He felt that his own logic was a little disordered, caught between 2D and 3D, unable to go up or down. So he earnestly asked Kou Tong, “So, princess, can you tell your stupid and fat knight what kind of bullet can kill an abstract thing like hope?” 

The princess shrugged, indicating that he was only an expert at landing people in trouble. Apart from that, he was powerless. 

Huang Jinchen touched his face, saying with gloom and deep feeling, “Then be good and stop talking philosophy and history. We can get back to the cultural attainments in a while. First let’s resolve the practical question.” 

“Actually, I have an idea,” Yao Shuo said all of a sudden after a pause. “The Magician’s power comes from inexhaustible creativity. He is the ‘beginning,’ and he is endless possibilities. There’s a place that can suppress these things…” 

“Lao Tian’s time crevice?” Kou Tong asked at once. 

Yao Shuo nodded. So the next second, everyone’s gazes immediately focused on He Xiaozhi. He Xiaozhi trembled and looked all around in a panic. “What…what can I do? I can’t do it.” 

“That’s easy to handle. The Magician must have seen us just now. I can go out and act as bait.” Huang Jinchen ignored him completely, continuing, “Then we’ll need a mirror.” 

“And we’ll need a way to lure him into the mirror,” Yao Shuo added. 

Finding that no one paid attention to his protest, He Xiaozhi simply couldn’t sit still. He weakly waved a hand, then said, “I…”

But Kou Tong reached out and grabbed his wrist, spreading out his fingers, which were nervily picking at each other. Dr. Kou’s hand was long and slender and warm, with a strength that strangely made a person calm down. 

He Xiaozhi stared at him blankly, feeling that it was as if there was an ocean in this man’s eyes, but it wasn’t frightening; instead, it made you wallow in it, as if you had found the place where life began.

“I think you can do it,” Kou Tong said. 

He Xiaozhi miraculously calmed down. Kou Tong added, “I believe that you can help us do this.” 

Huang Jinchen looked at his hand holding He Xiaozhi and said nothing. He looked closely in that direction with a profound and hateful gaze, like a cat whose territory had been encroached upon. 

This brat really was an annoying presence… Huang Jinchen narrowed his eyes and silently ground his teeth. 

That’s mine! That’s all mine!—The stupid and fat knight was displeased.