“Hey, do I know you?” while Jianmen was buying some Dim Sum from a roadside stand in a small shop located somewhere in the Greater Los Angeles area, the old woman behind the stand asked Jianmen while handing him a box: “I felt like I saw you before.”
“Maybe.” Jianmen smiled: “I lived here many years ago, until I ran into some trouble and had to leave for the pris - I mean somewhere up North.”
“Oh, do they have authentic Dim Sums like this in the north?” the owner of the shop, an old man wearing a white tank top and with some scars on his arms came out from the kitchen and asked with a smile.
“They do, but it’s hard to find.” Jianmen smiled and split his wood chopsticks with a light cracking sound: “How long have you been here?”
“Oh, at least fifteen years.” the owner laughed out loud and said: “My wife and I moved here when we saved up enough from working in our old place. When I was young I was in a lot of trouble, but later decided and said: ‘this is not the life for me’, so I just worked super hard and got out of there with my granddad’s cookbook. You know?”
“Nice, and this does taste like family.” Jianmen smiled.
“Wait, are you sure we’ve never met before?” the old woman asked again then looked at her husband beside her: “Yewei, have we met this gentleman before? I feel like we’ve met before.”
“Yeah, I think I remember you.” the old man stared at Jianmen for a while, then nodded: “You used to buy a lot of dumplings from us, didn't you? I haven’t seen you for a long time, where have you been?”
“That must be it.” Jianmen nodded and decided not to bring up the past: “Thank you again, I’ll come back after dealing with some business.”
“Alright, come again!” the old woman waved Jianmen goodbye, even though she was still not convinced of the answer given by Jianmen: “Honey, you’re sure you don’t remember him? I feel like I know him?”
“Why does it matter Angie? As long as he buys a lot of food, I’m happy.” the old man gave his wife a kiss on the head and went back into the kitchen.
It took Jianmen about ten minutes to reach his next destination - it was the ruins of a brick house near the road of an almost completely deserted town. There was almost no traffic on the road here, which made him feel that his camouflage spell that made it look like he was riding on a single-person electric car was a bit of a waste.
But when he reached the ruin of the brick house, surrounded by metal fences that were more than an adult’s height, he found that there were four people around that ruin, taking pictures and recording videos from outside of the fences.
“What’s happening here?” Jianmen went over and asked a young man with dyed blonde hair on the top of his head holding an actual film camera.
“Hello, we’re not doing anything.” the young man seemed surprised that there would be others here: “We’re just here to uh - here to check out an urban legend.”
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“Urban legend? What urban legend?”
“Wait, you didn’t know, and yet you came here?” a young man with long hair hanging over his shoulder came over, and said to Jianmen: “This is the house that can never be fixed.”
“I am just new here and I am checking out the neighborhood.” Jianmen asked: “What’s the house that can never be fixed?”
“Well, shit. You shouldn’t have.” the young man holding the camera said: “This part of town is basically a ghost town, almost everyone left.”
“Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but people have tried and failed to rebuild this house three times.” the young man with the long hair said: “And what’s freaky about this place, is that everytime it fall due to whatever reason, it always looks the same.”
“Huh? Can you elaborate?”
“Check this out, it’s hard to explain.” a third young man came over and showed Jianmen his phone. On his phone screen, there were four pictures of the ruins, all taken from roughly the roughly the same angle. And it was quite easy to tell that they were taken at different times, one before the rebuild attempts and each of the three after each rebuild, yet the ruins all looked eerily similar, even though it was quite obvious different materials were used to rebuild the house at each time: “Creepy, huh? Doesn’t matter if it’s brick, wood or concrete, it always falls down the same way with the same look.”
“Yeah - and concerningly so.” Jianmen frowned: “How long are you going to be here? I want to go in and take a look.”
“Woah, sir, you won’t want to do that...” a young man tried to stop Jianmen, but all of their phones started ringing at the same time.
“Hello, mom? What? He did WHAT to my model? Alright I’m coming back.”
“Hey, I’m here at the house. What? How could he eat my homework? He’s a dog!”
All four of the young men near the house were called away by some seemingly important business, leaving Jianmen in front of the house.
Jianmen tapped at the lock on the fence, and it just clicked open. Jianmen carefully rolled his wooden wheelchair down a short slope to the ruins of the house. This house was the same way he remembered, when he crawled out from underneath with a hand missing.
“Okay, let’s have another chat, whatever your name is.” Jianmen took a deep breath before lowering his body and lifted some of the debris around him to make way to the basement.