"Two orders of kebab, one without seasoning," Luo Yang ordered smoothly at a street cart they passed during their walk — jog, technically, though at this point it had slowed into something closer to a walk with a dog attached.
Ding Jia knelt to offer Arthur water from a small bottle while the vendor handed over the food, then fell into step beside the pair once Luo Yang took the leash back, adjusting his lowered cap before picking the pace back up.
They passed enough people that she silently thanked whatever luck kept her unrecognized. Lin Lin would absolutely murder her if a photo surfaced of her casually jogging with an unknown man this soon after her "miraculous recovery" press cycle.
Why did I agree to this again? she wondered, glancing sideways at Arthur's smug, satisfied expression. Right. The puppy eyes. It was always the puppy eyes.
After half an hour, they slowed to a stop a few meters from a children's playground, where kids swung and shrieked happily while their parents traded gossip on nearby benches. Ding Jia wiped sweat from her forehead and resettled her cap, letting her breathing even out as she took in the scene.
Luo Yang knelt to give Arthur water and a few treats, drawing a handful of curious glances from passing women despite his deliberately unapproachable energy. She kept a polite distance, just far enough that no one would assume they were together — which, technically, they weren't. Not really.
She was midway through enjoying the rare normalcy of the moment when the sound returned.
—shutter.
—shutter.
Her hand pressed instinctively over one ear, a useless gesture against a sound that lived somewhere inside her skull rather than the air around her. She glanced toward Luo Yang, half-hoping, half-dreading that he might react too.
He didn't. Whatever this was, it was hers alone to hear.
Frustration simmered under her calm exterior. Ever since waking from that coma, the strange things had only piled up and she had a fairly solid, deeply unwelcome theory about what they all had in common.
—shutter.
—shutter.
"Luo Yang."
He glanced over. "Hm?"
"Do you believe in ghosts?"
His hand stilled briefly against Arthur's fur.
"No," he said, without a trace of hesitation.
She turned fully toward him now, genuinely thrown. "Really?"
"Mm."
A horror author who didn't believe in ghosts. Something about that felt deeply, almost comically contradictory, and she turned the thought over twice before her curiosity won out.
"Then how do you even write your stories?"
He returned his attention to Arthur, answering as though the question barely warranted thought. "Research. Imagination."
—shutter.
—shutter.
She narrowed her eyes at him, equal parts amused and suspicious.
"...You're joking with me. Aren't you?"
Maybe… she should get her ears and brain checked instead? If this is not ghosts, then it's definitely something inside her head.