The Night Tiger(43)

“And what about you? You think that being serious will change Ming’s mind?”

That was a low blow. Shin narrowed his eyes and turned a page. “Did Fong Lan ask you to talk to me?”

“No.”

“Then don’t meddle with what you don’t understand.” His face flamed, as though someone had pressed a burning brand across his cheekbones. “And stop talking about names! I have been faithful. As much as I can!”

Furious, he slammed his textbook shut and left.



* * *



After lunch at the canteen, we went back to the storeroom and started on the files. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared; most of them were quite straightforward. But sorting out the pathology samples was a headache since they were in no semblance of order at all.

The collection was highly eccentric; I supposed that in this far-flung corner of the Empire, whoever was running the pathology department probably felt like God. We didn’t find the preserved head or blood-drinking grasshopper that Koh Beng had mentioned, but there was a two-headed rat, its naked tail a drifting worm in amber liquid. Dr. Rawlings’s predecessor, a Dr. Merton, had apparently promised a number of patients that they could have their body parts back after he’d studied them. These were denoted by a little red X in the corner of his crabbed records.

“Who’d want to come back for a gallbladder?” I said.

“Some people want to be buried whole,” Shin said seriously.

I shivered, remembering what the salesman, Chan Yew Cheung, had said when I’d danced with him—about witchcraft, and how a body must be buried in its original form to rest in peace.

“Here we go,” said Shin, reading from a file. “Finger, left ring, Indian male laborer infected with parasite. Preserved in formaldehyde.”

I combed through the shelves of specimens. Almost everything had been unpacked, and I still hadn’t seen any actual jars of severed fingers.

“Another one—right forefinger from a double-jointed female contortionist.”

“Not here, either,” I announced.

In fact, despite records indicating at least twelve amputated digits in the hospital collection, we could not locate a single one.

“How’s that possible?” I pored over the ledger again. People made jokes about doctors’ handwriting but in this case it was no laughing matter. Dr. Merton’s scrawl was a conga line of ants, the hasty loops of someone who didn’t care if it never got transcribed.

“Anything else missing besides fingers?”

“I checked. So far nothing else is missing.” I waved the ledger triumphantly at him from where I perched on a cardboard box, amid a sea of papers.

“Still so competitive,” he complained. “I thought of it first.”

“No, you didn’t.” I turned back to the file.

“Spider. On your hair.”

I froze, eyes closed while Shin removed it. In the past, he’d have flicked it off, stinging my forehead smartly. Now, he handled it delicately and impersonally, like a stranger.

“It’s really disappointing how you don’t scream about things like this,” he murmured.

“Why should I?” I opened my eyes.

Shin’s face, that familiar set of planes that made up his nose and cheekbones, was so close that I could reach out and touch it. What made someone good-looking? Was it the symmetry of features, or the sharp shadows of his brows and lashes, the mobile curl of his mouth? In the very center of his eyes, so much darker than mine, I could see a tiny light, a gleam that sparked. Then it winked out and I was falling, drawn into a tunnel. Images flickered. Railway tracks submerged underwater. A ticket to nowhere. Fish swimming in a mirror. Somewhere, a midnight shape stirred, shadow rising from the depths of a river. The air thickened, a clot in my lungs. I gasped. Toppled forward.

“What’s wrong?”

Shin caught me as I fell, my thoughts tangled like riverweed, slippery and coiling. Dizzy, I steadied myself, pushing back. Sliding my hands along the width of his shoulders, the hard muscles that were those of a man and not a boy. My heart was racing like a horse on treacherous ground. If I weren’t careful, I’d make a fatal stumble.

He watched me with concern, dark brows frowning. Whatever it was I’d seen in his eyes—reflected shadows, a looking glass linked to another realm—was gone. There was only Shin and even then he was half a stranger to me.

“Do you often have spells like this?”

Spells. That was the right word. Dizzy spells, magic spells. The crooked twitch of a severed finger that had led us somewhere strange. I couldn’t speak, could only nod.

Shin’s hands gripped my shoulders. The pressure made me feel better. Then he was loosening my collar, working the top buttons quickly and deftly. Dazed, I wondered how many women he’d undressed. But he was careful, touching only the material of the dress. Careful not to touch me.

“Have you been tested for anemia? Lots of girls your age have it.”

Practical as always. I inhaled. Sunlight flooded back into the room, and the spell, whatever it was, lifted.

“Shin, have you ever dreamed about a little boy and a railway station?”

“No.” He sat down with a sigh, ignoring the dust.

“Well, I do. And it’s very odd because he talks to me. I feel as though I’ve met him before.”