Chapter 134: Makeup
“It was probably last week... I felt like someone was calling me.”
“I wanted to answer her, but I didn’t know how…”
“You happened to be out for a few days, so I followed the voice and found her.”
Xiao Jing sat on the sofa at home, head down, looking like she had done something wrong. She was telling her side of the story with a pitiful expression.
Li Mu stood nearby with his arms crossed, looking angry. He wanted to yell at her but held back and tried to listen patiently.
Yu Fan sat with one leg crossed over the other and asked, “Who is she?”
“I don’t know. She’s a girl, around twenty years old. She rented a place near the foreign language and trade college. I think she’s a student.” Xiao Jing carefully glanced at Li Mu, but when he glared at her, she quickly lowered her head again.
“Li Mu, don’t scare her.” Yu Fan joked with a grin. “But seriously, you look even more attractive when you’re mad.”
“You know how worried I’ve been the past two days?” Li Mu ignored Yu Fan and shouted at Xiao Jing, “Yu Fan and I have been looking for you since Saturday night! In three days, we only slept four hours!”
Xiao Jing turned her head to the side. She did feel guilty and knew she was wrong, but she still stubbornly replied, “Who even are you? Why were you looking for me so hard?”
“I’m your brother!”
“No, you’re not. You’re a girl,” Xiao Jing mumbled awkwardly. “Besides, I don’t remember...”
Li Mu froze for a second, then got even angrier. His cheeks puffed up with frustration.
Yu Fan quickly tried to calm them down, “Alright, alright, let’s figure out what happened to Xiao Jing first.”
Hearing that, Li Mu looked closely at Xiao Jing again.
Xiao Jing was supposed to be a ghost, but now she had a physical body.
Her body looked almost exactly like she did when she was alive. Same height, same flat chest, and the same face. But the problem was the blood on her forehead and the bluish-purple skin. It was clear to both of them, she looked like a zombie.
Or maybe… someone who had come back from the dead?
“That woman called me over and then put me into this body,” Xiao Jing said, still looking sad. “She didn’t explain anything. She just put some clothes on me.”
“When I went there, I could follow her call. But after I left, I didn’t remember how to get back. At first, I tried to follow a bus, but I couldn’t keep up. I wanted to ask for help, but I look scary, don't I? I’m afraid I’d scare people…”
“During the day, I sneaked into a hotel to hide. At night, I tried to go out and find my way home, but I scared the guests... Hey, sister, do you think if a cop saw me, they’d shoot me on sight? That’s what happens in zombie movies! Good thing I’m smart. I slipped out with the guests and escaped.”
Li Mu’s face darkened. “I’m your brother... just call me Li Mu.”
“I couldn’t remember the way home, and I was too scared to ask anyone. There were no buses at night to follow, so I just went to the old after-school care center to wait. That’s when I ran into you two.”
The room went quiet for a moment.
Then Yu Fan suddenly remembered something. “Wait, didn’t someone say you were holding your head at the hotel?”
“Ah… that. Yeah, someone surprised me. I hit my head on the door and it fell off.” Xiao Jing grabbed her cheeks with both hands and pushed, her head popped off. She even sounded excited, “I can just plug in and out!”
She put her head down and pulled off one of her arms too. “Look! Look!”
If this were an anime or a manga, Li Mu and Yu Fan might’ve been okay with it.
Too bad this was real life.
Li Mu covered his face and turned away. Yu Fan looked disgusted too. It was just too weird. They couldn’t handle it.
“Well, anyway… having a body isn’t all bad,” Li Mu sighed. He picked up her head and pushed it back on, then froze for a second and mumbled, “It really is something you can just plug in and out…”
“Right? Super fun!”
“Who was that woman?”
“She said my parents asked her to help me make a body, so now I can move around like a normal person!” Xiao Jing finished putting her body parts back in place, jumped up, and cheered, “I can finally go out and have fun!”
“She also said that with this body, other evil ghosts won’t come after me anymore!”
Xiao Jing then pulled a note out of her long dress pocket and handed it to Li Mu. “But it needs maintenance. That woman said in winter I have to take a bath once a week, and in summer, every three days.”
A bath?
Yu Fan leaned in, curious, and looked at the note in Li Mu’s hand. His tone was weird. “Formalin?”
Li Mu glanced at the note. It actually answered a lot of his questions.
Xiao Jing’s body was actually the corpse from the car accident back then. Later, at her parents’ request, that mysterious woman started working on it and turned it into the body she has now.
On the outside, the note said she could use things like wall putty for makeup. No need to worry about skin care, just use whatever works, but be careful not to get it wet.
For maintenance, she had to take formalin baths and put oil on the joints regularly so they wouldn’t make noise when she walks.
To put it simply, she was... a zombie.
Yu Fan suddenly remembered a rumor. “A corpse-walker from Xiangxi?”
“What’s that?” Li Mu turned to look at him.
“It’s like a legend. I’ll call Chen Yi. He might know more about it.”
Li Mu nodded, then crouched down to look more closely at Xiao Jing’s not-so-great face. At the same time, the makeup memories Lin Xi had shown him returned to his mind.
But... this wasn’t really “makeup,” right?
This was more like something a mortician does.
Still, there should be similarities.
So Li Mu went online to look up what kind of makeup morticians use. There was no way he was going to use stuff like wall putty on her. That stuff smells terrible.
“Big sister, don’t stare at me so close, it’s embarrassing~” Xiao Jing turned her head away awkwardly. She knew she didn’t look great right now.
Li Mu didn’t bother arguing with her. After a bit of research, he looked up and shouted to Yu Fan, who was on the phone with Chen Yi.
“Tell Chen Yi to bring a set of mortician makeup supplies.”
“What?”
“He deals with ghosts, right? So he should know people who work in funeral homes?”
“......”
“I’ll check out some tutorials. It should be similar to regular makeup.”
As he said that, some terrible scenes started playing in his mind. His sister dragging him to go shopping, begging to sleep in his bed, pressing the computer’s power button while he was gaming...
These memories were so strong, even after all these years, he remembered them clearly.
No wonder he didn’t get along with his sister when she was alive.
Ghost Xiao Jing didn’t cause nearly as much trouble, and honestly, getting along with her had been much easier since she became a ghost.
……………………………………………
A few hours later, Chen Yi and Yu Fan were chatting in the living room.
“That woman is probably really a descendant of the Xiangxi corpse-walkers,” Chen Yi nodded. “I met one before. That guy made bodies for ghosts to attract them and get their help. But the body Xiao Jing has now is surprisingly well made.”
Yu Fan was curious. “How does that work?”
“Well... maybe a ghost’s soul works like a battery?” Chen Yi scratched his head. “Actually, a lot of evil ghosts use dead bodies to hide among people. But the bodies made by corpse-walkers are more detailed and lifelike.”
At that moment, the bedroom door opened. Both of them looked up.
Li Mu walked out with a sour expression. He still couldn’t accept doing makeup on a corpse, even if it was his own sister.
Right behind him, Xiao Jing peeked her head out from behind him and asked carefully. “How do I look?”
“Amazing!”