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“I can’t picture you as a teacher. I think the whole dead shtick would scare the children.”
She sticks her tongue out at me. “You’re so funny.”
“Do you want to go inside?”
She looks back to the gallery as if it could eat her. Maybe foolishly, I try to reach a hand for her shoulder; considering I’m only spirit right now, it might not… I breathe a sigh of relief when the touch does indeed not hurt me. “Why don’t we just take a peek? We can leave anytime.”
Her eyes dart from the shop to our small point of contact, but she finally seems to find enough courage to nod.
Inside, the gallery is very minimal; just a few walls arranged like a half-played game of Tetris, some white and some bright crimson red. On them, abstract paintings that seem to draw a lot of inspiration from traditional Chinese shapes and colors, but also incorporate some Western aesthetic, especially Parisian sensibility. Overall, I find myself very drawn to the art. It’s clean, beautiful.
Next to me, Mei groans like a dying animal.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, but she’s already scampering off toward a set of paintings. They depict a red dragon and a hare moving together through multiple canvases, exploring things like the Eiffel Tower, or more abstract concepts like a set of clocks, or others I can’t quite place.
“That’s us,” Mei whispers. “The dragon and the hare. Me and Huiling.”
I look down at the tag on the paintings; ”âmes sœurs, ongoing series.”
Soulmates.
And now Mei is bawling in that ghost way of her.
“Can you tell me why the paintings make you feel this way?” I try to ask.
“It’s not the paintings, per se. It’s just the fact that she thinks we’re soulmates, still.”
“But that’s what you said you were, right? The whole reason you were willing to risk your life for her.”
“Of course. But that was over thirty years ago.”
I repeat to her the same mantra I’ve come to live by myself. “Love is a force more powerful than death, Mei.”
She looks from me, to the paintings. “I think I see that, now.”
Reaching for her shoulder again, I pat it. “One day, Huiling’s time will come, too. And if you’re stuck on this plane, you won’t get to live your next life together. But if you’re in the Beyond, your souls will be reconnected. You can be together again.”
“I think… I feared she might have moved on.” Mei looks down to her hands as if the admission pains her. “I was afraid of waiting for her in the Beyond, and then meeting her there, and she’d be waiting for someone else. Or she’d already have someone else there.”
I point to the wall of paintings. “Well, now you know that’s not the case.”
Mei smiles that half-grimace of hers. “No, I guess not.”
“So how do you feel about moving on now, knowing once Huiling joins you, you two can be together again?”
She releases a long breath, as if she’d been holding it for the past thirty-some years. “A whole lot better.”
I smile. “Do you want to try the door again?”
Mei chews on her lips aggressively. “But you and Tei still need to break the curse.”
“I know. You don’t need to pass through it right this moment. But we should see if we can at least open it.”
She looks past my shoulder in the distance, I’m assuming in the direction of the door. Finally, she nods. Walking with conviction, she stops some twenty paces behind me and reaches for something. Her fingers make contact and wrap around a circular object, then twist.
Light encircles her figure, making her look ethereal. She turns to me and giggles. “It works! It’s open!”
I can’t help but laugh, feeling like a piece of the puzzle fit into place. “Congrats, Mei. Now you’ve got the rest of your afterlife to finally look forward to.”
