Chapter 8: Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8: The Song She Shouldn't Know

The headmaster's office smelled of ink and dried plum blossoms, a scent so thick it coated the back of Bai Su's throat. She sat in the chair across from Old Xu's desk, her hands folded in her lap, her nails digging crescents into her palms.

Old Xu did not look up from the scroll he was reading. His brush moved in steady strokes, characters flowing like water from its tip. The silence stretched long enough that Bai Su began to count her heartbeats.

Twenty-seven.

He set down the brush.

"Miss Bai," he said, his voice carrying no warmth, "do you know why I called you here?"

"No, Headmaster."

He slid a piece of paper across the desk. It was her entrance examination. She recognized the handwriting, the looping curves of characters she had labored over for three days. But there was something wrong with it. The ink was smudged in places, blurring words she distinctly remembered writing clearly.

"Do you see anything unusual?"

Bai Su leaned closer. The smudges weren't random. They formed patterns, deliberate shapes that looked almost like—

Characters she had not written.

*I saw him fall.*

*I did not push him.*

Her blood turned to ice.

"I didn't write this," she said.

"No?" Old Xu's eyes were sharp, cutting. "Then who did?"

"Someone is trying to frame me."

"Frame you?" He laughed, a dry, brittle sound. "Miss Bai, have you considered that perhaps you wrote it and simply don't remember?"

"I would remember writing a confession."

"Would you?" He leaned back, steepling his fingers. "I've been teaching at Wutong Academy for forty years. Do you know how many students I've seen who didn't remember things? Ghosts who walked in their sleep, living students who woke up with blood on their hands and no memory of how it got there. The boundary between the living and the dead is thin here, Miss Bai. Thinner than you realize."

Bai Su's throat tightened. She could still feel the phantom warmth of dried blood on her palms, still hear the echo of that folk song in her ears.

"I'm not a ghost," she said.

"Are you certain?"

The question hit her like a physical blow. She opened her mouth to answer, to insist, to scream if she had to—but the words died in her throat.

She had no memory of her life before Wutong Academy.

She had assumed it was the stress of the entrance examination, the overwhelming nature of starting at a new school. But now, sitting in Old Xu's office, the realization pressed down on her like a tombstone.

"What is my family name?" she whispered.

Old Xu's expression flickered. Something that might have been concern. Something that might have been recognition.

"Your enrollment records say you are from the Bai family of Luoyang. But I have sent three letters of inquiry to the Bai family of Luoyang, and all three have been returned unopened."

He pushed another paper toward her. It was a letter, sealed with wax that had been cracked open. She recognized the family crest—a phoenix rising from flames, wings spread wide.

"The Bai family seal," she breathed.

"Yes. But look at the address."

She looked. The characters were wrong. The strokes were slightly off, the angles too sharp, the curves too flat. It was a forgery—a good one, but not perfect.

"Someone is impersonating the Bai family," Old Xu said. "Or the Bai family does not want to acknowledge you. Which is it, Miss Bai?"

She didn't know. She didn't know anything. Her past was a blank wall, and every time she tried to climb it, she found herself back on the ground, gasping for breath.

"I don't know," she said.

Old Xu studied her for a long moment. Then he sighed, and some of the hardness left his face.

"Chen Feng's body was found this morning," he said. "The coroner determined he died of a fall. But there were scratches on his wrists, Miss Bai. Scratches that suggest someone was holding him before he fell."

"I didn't—"

"I'm not accusing you." He held up a hand. "I'm telling you what the evidence says. And the evidence points at you. Your examination scroll is covered in a confession. Your shoe prints were found in the bell chamber. And you have no alibi for the time of his death."

Bai Su's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs, willing them to still.

"What happens now?"

"Now?" Old Xu stood, walking to the window. The sun was setting, painting the courtyard in shades of amber and blood. "Now you find the real killer. Before the school board convenes in three days. If you don't have proof of your innocence by then, I cannot protect you."

"Protect me from what?"

He turned. His eyes were ancient, carrying the weight of secrets he would never share.

"From the consequences of being a living student accused of murder in a school half-filled with ghosts. The living will fear you. The dead will hunt you. And somewhere in between, the truth will bury you alive."

---

Bai Su left the headmaster's office in a daze. The hallways were empty, the other students having retreated to their dormitories for the evening meal. She walked without direction, her feet carrying her through corridors she had never seen before, past doors that creaked open to reveal rooms that hadn't existed moments ago.

The academy was changing around her.

She stopped in front of a door that was different from the others. It was made of black wood, polished to a mirror shine, with no handle or lock. Just a smooth surface that reflected her face back at her.

She raised her hand to touch it.

The reflection moved.

Bai Su jerked her hand back. The reflection—her reflection—was smiling. A slow, knowing smile that stretched too wide, showing teeth that were too sharp.

"Hello, Bai Su."

The voice came from inside the door. From behind the reflection. From everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Who are you?" Bai Su whispered.

"Don't you recognize me?" The reflection tilted its head, the motion fluid and wrong. "I'm you. The you that remembers. The you that knows what happened in the bell tower."

"I didn't do anything."

"Didn't you?" The reflection laughed, and the sound was the same folk song she had heard before, the sweet melody curling around her like smoke. "You don't remember, Bai Su. That's the problem. You don't remember the night you died."

"I'm not dead."

"Aren't you?" The reflection pressed against the door, its face flattening against the wood, distorting into something monstrous. "Then why can't you remember your past? Why does no one claim you? Why does the blood on your hands appear and disappear like a ghost?"

"Stop it."

"Why did you push him, Bai Su?"

"I didn't push anyone!"

"Liar."

The door burst open.

Bai Su stumbled backward, her heart slamming against her ribs. The room beyond was dark, filled with a cold that seeped into her bones. She could see shapes moving in the shadows—vague, formless things that whispered her name.

She turned to run.

The hallway was gone.

She stood in the bell chamber. The window was shattered. The rope hung still. And on the floor, arranged in neat rows, were examination scrolls. Hundreds of them. Each one stained with blood.

She walked forward, unable to stop herself. Her feet carried her to the nearest scroll, and she knelt, her hands reaching out to touch the bloodstained paper.

The characters were hers.

Every single one.

*I am sorry, Chen Feng. I did not mean to push you. But you saw what I am. You saw the truth I have been hiding. And the truth cannot be allowed to speak.*

Bai Su's vision swam. The words blurred, reformed, blurred again.

*I am not Bai Su. I am something else. Something that wears her face. Something that killed her first.*

"No."

She scrambled backward, away from the scrolls, away from the words that burned into her mind. She hit the wall and kept scrambling, her fingers scraping against the stone.

The door to the bell chamber swung open.

A figure stood in the doorway. Tall. Thin. Dressed in robes that seemed to absorb the light.

"I see you found my collection."

The voice was familiar. Bai Su looked up, her heart freezing in her chest.

It was the ghost scholar. The one who had warned her. The one who had told her to find the killer.

But his eyes were different now. They glowed with a light that was not of this world, a cold, hungry fire that devoured the shadows around him.

"You," she breathed.

"Me." He smiled, and it was the same smile she had seen in the reflection. "I've been waiting for you to catch up, Bai Su. Or should I call you by your real name?"

"I don't have a real name."

"No." He stepped closer, and she saw that his feet did not touch the ground. He floated above the stone, leaving no footprints. "You don't. Because you're not real, Bai Su. You never were."

"What are you talking about?"

He reached into his robes and pulled out a scroll. It was old, the paper yellowed and cracked, the ink faded to brown.

"This is the original enrollment record for the Bai family of Luoyang," he said. "It lists every child born to that house for the past three hundred years."

He unrolled it. The names stretched down in neat columns, each one followed by a date of birth and a date of death.

"There is no Bai Su."

He held the scroll up, letting her see the final entry. The line ended with a name she recognized.

*Bai Yan. Born 1582. Died 1601.*

"Bai Yan," she repeated. The name felt familiar on her tongue, like a song she had once known.

"Your sister," the ghost scholar said. "She died nineteen years ago. And you—" He paused, his eyes boring into hers. "You were never born."

"That's impossible."

"Is it?" He rolled the scroll back up, tucking it into his robes. "I've been dead for two hundred years, Bai Su. I've had time to learn the secrets of this academy. And the greatest secret of all is that some students are not students at all."

"What are they?"

He leaned in, his breath cold against her ear.

"They are memories. Ghosts of the living, so strong in their grief that they take form. They walk, they talk, they study. But they are not real. They are echoes of people who never existed, created by the desperate dreams of those who wish they had."

Bai Su's hands were shaking. She looked down at them, at the fingers that felt so solid, so real.

"I'm not a memory."

"You are the memory of a girl who should have been born. A sister who never existed. A daughter who was never mourned." He straightened, his voice softening. "Bai Yan's spirit created you. She was so lonely after her death, so desperate for a sibling to share her fate, that she willed you into existence. And for nineteen years, you have lived as her ghost."

"Where is she now?"

"I don't know." He gestured at the scrolls on the floor. "But I know that she is the one who wrote these. She is the one who killed Chen Feng. She is the one who has been killing the living students, taking their qi, trying to become real enough to bring you to life."

"To bring me to life?"

He nodded. "She wants you to be