The Plating Master's Bride

That night, halfway home, Andy realized he had left his phone in the workshop. He turned back and, from a distance, saw that the light over Tank No. 3 was still on. He pushed the door open and froze where he stood. Lily was standing in the tank, the water up to her waist. A silvery-white light rose from beneath the surface, climbing in coils up her wrists, like the layers of metal deposited during electroplating. Her hair was not wet, yet her skin was so transparent that the light beneath it showed through. The keys in Andy's hand fell to the floor. Lily turned her head. Her expression was calm, as if she had finally been waiting for this moment. "You saw," she said. Andy took a step back, then stopped. He heard his own voice, dry: "What are you?" "Tank No. 3." Lily lowered her head and looked at her reflection on the water. The reflection was scattered, like a film that had not been plated on properly. "Thirty years ago, a bride passed by here wearing a ring. She had quarreled with her husband and threw the ring into the tank. The ring dissolved, and the tank remembered her. Later, your father came every night to talk to this tank. He talked about your mother, about you, about this workshop. After listening for so long, I took on a shape." Andy thought of his father. In the last six months before his death, his father had indeed often sat alone by Tank No. 3, wiping the rim with an old cloth and talking as he wiped. Andy had assumed the old man was just confused. "You have no heartbeat," Andy said. "No," Lily said. "I also have no ID card, no household registration, no past. I have only one name, and you just called it." The workshop was so quiet that the current hum of the rectifier could be heard. Andy looked at her and suddenly remembered the day she first arrived, standing in the rain, asking whether they took on apprentices here. She had not come looking for work. She had come looking for someone who could call out her name. He walked over, took the jacket hanging on the wall, and draped it over her shoulders. "Get out first," he said. "The water's cold."