Chapter – 3: Grudge ghost kids and white buns

"Nee-san?"

"Nee-san!"

"Nee-san?!"

"Nee-san!"

Li Jing abruptly opened her eyes and sat up straight, earning a gasp from the soft voice beside her.

But the voice didn't gain her interest; instead the dark brown wooden wall in front of her gained her blank gaze.

Her joints felt stiff and her body felt so sore as if ten people had beaten her up with wooden sticks and left her lying in the snow. Her mouth and throat felt extremely dry, to the point that her throat burned when she tried to make a sound. Her body was extremely sweaty, her long tangled hair matted with sweat. Li Jing was a mess; she knew it without even needing to look at a mirror.

But what the actual fuck happened to her?! She was just taking a peaceful nap while dreaming of white buns with soy milk! She wasn't sick back then!

"Nee- nee-san?" A soft voice whispered uncertainly from beside her, but to Li Jing it felt like her head was underwater and the voice was speaking from above water.

She winced as she shook her head, blinking furiously as she tried to focus on her sight and get her brain back to working. Did she transmigrate already, ah? Does transmigration hurts this much? Ugh!

Numbly she tried to move her neck and look at the owner of the voice, the familiar voice that started all this supernatural shit.

And then she felt her heart freeze and her brain go numb. A blood curdling scream got stuck in her dry throat.

There was the ghost from grudge movie standing on her bedside! A fucking ghost looking like the grudge girl was standing beside her bed!

Li Jing had imagined many different scenerio's of her first impression of her transmigration world. But never had she even in her wildest imaginations ever thought that she would transmigrate into a fucking HORROR movie of all things!

She must've made an extremely horrified expression as even the ghost-human-whatever-scary-thing-it-is flinched and stumbled away a few steps. Its wide slanted golden (?!) eyes were looking at her with utmost worry and even some fear.

"Nee-san, are you ok?" The grudge ghost asked worriedly in a high pitched childish voice. Concern evident on its face, distress even. But at this moment, Li Jing couldn't focus on any of the emotions it displayed except for the fact that it looked like the ghost girl from grudge! The movie that had terrorised her childhood nights!

Skin paler than chalk with a light greyish tone to it, long black hair in a dirty tangled mess fell in chunks around its face. It was small, tiny like a toddler and skinny to the point that the faded grey robes it wore barely hung from its bony frame.

'Otouto.' A word formed in her mind. 'Little brother.'

Huh- What? Little brother? Li Jing blinked. There were words forming in her mind, without even her knowing. Before she could register what was happening, her mouth opened automatically and a childish but rough voice choked out some words.

"I-I'm... fine, Oro."

That's her voice? No, wait. That's her- her predecessor's voice? Did she transmigrate into a child? Wonderful! Disposed in the middle of a post-apocalyptic warring world in the body of a child! Can it get any worse?

The grudge kid exhaled in relief. But in the next moment he was looking at her with such watery puppy eyes that even Li Jing felt distressed.

"I was worried for you! You- you came back late last night, you were burning up so much! And then you suddenly passed out on the bed and wouldn't wake up no matter how many times I called! I thought- I, I thought you were gone! Like- like Haha and-and Chichi and-and I-..."

Fat tears rolled down his golden eyes as he spoke, hands flailing wildly while stuttering and yelling in a hysteric manner. As if there were a thousand words that he wanted to say but all he could make were garbled words that rushed out of his mouth.

Li Jing, who was in her world-hopping-fear-frozen state felt the fear-stricken tension leave her as a sudden relaxation spread throughout her body. Hesitantly, she reached out to him with a slightly trembling hand and gently rubbed his head.

The pale child looked up at her with wide teary eyes for a few seconds, and before she knew it, flung himself into her chest. With small bony hands tightly wrapped around her now equally small torso and his face buried in her chest, he sobbed. His entire fragile frame trembled and Li Jing was sure that whatever cloth she was wearing was soon to be stained equally with tears and snot.

Instinctively she wrapped her arms around his small frame, gently drawing circles with her palm on his back while her other hand awkwardly patted his head. No matter how ghostly he looked, this was still a child. A small child who has recently lost his sister – if she's right about it, then the original host has already passed with only remnants of her memories left in this body.

Li Jing isn't very good with comforting distressed people, but comforting a child is easy in her opinion. As long as you're patient and loving enough, it shouldn't take long before the child calms down.

For the next few minutes, there were two children – one none-child but whatever – hugging each other sitting on the bed, while one of them sobbed and the other trying her best to soothe him.

"There, there." Li Jing tried to sound as gentle as possible, which was hard since her throat felt as dry as a desert. "I'm fine see? I just, well I had a fever. But I'm fine now! Stop crying silly, I'm not going away haha!"

The pale kid – Oro is it? – finally pulled away and sniffled. Li Jing grimaced at the tear and snot stains on her robe. Oh well it's an ugly grey robe, she wouldn't mid dirtying it. With a corner of her robe she gently wiped his snotty nose and tears.

Grrrrrrh.

Both Li Jing and Oro froze for a moment. But then Oro gave her a sheepish smile as he ducked his head, his cheeks reddening.

Li Jing blinked. "Was that your stomach?"

"Uhm, I'm hungry nee-san so..." He ducked his head again without finishing the sentence.

Li Jing was astonished. Heh, a child's short attention span indeed. One moment he was crying hysterically while being scared that his sister was dead, and now he's embarrassed because of his stomach growling. How cute.

Quickly Li Jing went through the recent memories of the original owner. Hmm, there's no food in the house it seems. The original owner (who was 6 years old mind you) went out yesterday to look for food and came back home with a large bag full of the scrapes she found from the back of a teahouse. But it rained last night and she was drenched in it. She must've caught a high fever and passed away after one night of suffering, her already starving weak body was unable to save her.

Li Jing sighed. These kids ah. They've had such a sad childhood. Their parents went missing in the war five months ago and just two months ago the village head sent them two scrolls saying that they were found dead in a mission site. These two children have been living off of something called ration bars stored in their house.

And when they ran out of ration bars, the original owner – Kashikoi, such a... peculiar name – started going out in the village begging/working for food. There's a mini famine going on in this part of the village, with supplies being tight for the civilian population. No help was provided to them from the village authorities.

But then again, they were just two of the many kids that this damned war has orphaned. They were all forgettable, all blurred together into a hungry and distressed mass of children who lost their parents too early. They were children who would also be stripped off of their lives and happiness by being sacrificed to this war.

Li Jing knew that this was a post-apocalyptic warring world. She thought she was prepared for it. But one can only imagine from a distance. The actual gravity of this world is deeper than she had imagined. Starving, being poor and being an orphan isn't new to her. What's new is this war. War has always been dangerous in all times. But just how much worse is it in this ancient-modern world?

"Nee-san?" Oro asked carefully.

Li Jing snapped out of her thoughts. "Hmm? Oh you're hungry right?"

"Yeah... But it's fine! Nee-san doesn't need to worry about me! I've drank a lot of water so I'm not hungry anymore."

Li Jing felt her heart clench at the sight of this kid. War and poverty seems to have forced him to grow faster than usual. He's just three, and yet he's comforting his older sister to not to worry about him being hungry. He most likely knows that they will have to make do with scrapes again.

'But not today.' Li Jing decided. Maybe it's just the remnants of Kashikoi's spirit and her love for her brother compelling her, but Li Jing was starting to feel this strange sense of fondness towards Oro. That also made her want to mentally slap herself for addressing him as 'it' and comparing him to that grudge ghost earlier. But hey, she was scared witless, ok? Or else why would she judge a poor three year old for the way he looked?

Now that she thinks about it, it seems like she has seen him somewhere before. Li Jing felt surprised. She has seen this boy from this new world before? Her heart knows she has. But her brain doesn't seem to be able to pinpoint as to where and how exactly she knows him. And that's just... Just so strange! Why didn't she notice this fact earlier?

Puzzled, Li Jing shook off these thought off of her head. Eh, maybe it's just Kashikoi's memories getting jumbled up with hers? Or whatever, she'll get more time to think about this later.

But for now, it's just her human heart sympathizing with a starving orphan child and refused to let him experience this pain anymore.

Either way, they aren't going to starve today. She didn't spend so much money in her world and bought all those supplies for nothing.

"Hey Oro."

"Hmm?" The pale-somewhat-familiar-boy tilted his head up.

Li Jing smiled.

"Wanna eat white buns?"

XX—XX

Author's Rambling: I wonder how exactly is Li Jing going to react once she figures out as to who exactly she's sister to hehehe. ^w^

Short chapter, I know. But I'll try to spread it out more in the future. I'm no good writer mind you. Until next time!

~Try not to die~

~MysticTofu~