Chapter Nine: Another Bride
The next day, A Yin arrived at exactly this time.
She wore a silver-gray trench coat, her hair cut very short. Standing at the workshop entrance, she first glanced at Slot No. 3, then looked toward Lili. Her face was very pale, so pale there was not a trace of blood, yet her lips were red as if freshly dipped in acid.
"You have the smell of Slot No. 3 on you," A Yin said. "Very faint now. You're about to become human."
Ajie thought she was a customer and hurried to bring a chair. A Yin did not sit; she only walked slowly around Slot No. 3, as if sizing up a relative she had not seen in years.
"Who are you?" Andy stepped in front of Lili.
"A Yin." She smiled slightly. "From the chrome slot at Factory Two. People in your line should have heard of Factory Two, right?"
Of course Andy had heard of it. Nangang Hardware Factory Two had gone bankrupt twenty years ago; the waste liquid from the chrome slot had leaked all over the ground, and later the area was filled in and a warehouse built on top. His father had never mentioned that place in his life.
"What are you here for?" Lili asked.
A Yin took a small silver thing from her pocket and placed it on her fingertip. It looked like a fish scale, yet shimmered with a faint blue light.
"I've come to take back my share," she said. "Slot No. 3 could nurture a you because it swallowed Lin Xiu's ring. But back then, more than one ring was swallowed."
Lili's breathing grew uneven.
A Yin stepped closer, her voice pressed very low: "Your father didn't only make Slot No. 3. He also made me. It's just that I had bad luck and was left at Factory Two. Now that slot is about to be demolished, and I have nowhere to go back to."
"So what do you want?" Andy asked.
"That little bit of slot-heart inside her body." A Yin looked at Lili. "Just a tiny bit. Give it to me, and I can stand firm, no longer relying on a slot that's about to be filled in."
Lili did not retreat. She looked at A Yin and suddenly said, "Your hands have no temperature."
A Yin looked down at her own hands and smiled a little uglily: "You didn't either, before."
That night, when Lili drank water, a silver fingerprint was left on the glass. She wiped at it with a cloth for a long time, but it would not come off.