Chapter Text
Until relatively recently, Elimination and Suppression were the only methods available to Hunters. This past year marks the first official government recognition of Liberation as the primary, recommended method of resolving Hauntings, a revolutionary shift that many credit to normalisation of ghost-sense enhancers such as Eye-Bright, and the Age Reforms that followed.
- The Cloud Recesses Rulebook for Ghost-Hunters in Aotearoa (Illustrated), Twenty-sixth Edition, 2027
In crackling, fuzzy colour, a recorded television interview plays. It is obviously not from this era – everything is at once a little too bright but also faded, like the pixels were too overcome with nostalgia to bring themselves to capture a true impression.
The interviewer is a woman with a turtleneck and a pixie cut.
She talks confidently to the camera. “1976. A year of change for New Zealand. The All Blacks toured South Africa, the Moyle Affair got tongues wagging, and the infamous Kohukohu Schoolhouse was put on the map. Going back to where it all began – Wei Wuxian, the question on everyone’s lips – how did you do it?”
The interviewee smiles. He is a handsome man, maybe in his mid-thirties, wearing a bit too much flannel. “Well, really, Kohukohu was where things properly came together, but actually, if you want to go back to where it began, it was Carlile House.”
“No!” says the interviewer, hand to her heart. It only looks a little bit rehearsed.
The man shrugs. “I lost friends at Carlile. It got me thinking – not even trying to raise the Age of Recruitment, you kind of don’t realise you’re still a kid at that age – but just thinking about what if more people had been there, what if we could do things differently, what if?”
The interviewer crosses her legs. “So, you started trying to figure out the key to Eye-Bright Spectacles after Carlile, but it wasn’t patented until about seven years later. What happened in the middle that made it click?”
“Like you said, Kohukohu. My partner and I were in a really tight spot, and it was the first time I’d brought someone else into my…process. I’d previously tinkered with enhancements for hunters before – most hunters try to pad out their own kit – but having another person made new things possible. I know it still took us seven years to patent it, but honestly, Eye-Bright, the powder version, was an unofficial staple in all the major Agencies less than six months from Kohukohu. It was the bureaucracy that stopped it from becoming mainstream. The rest just followed after that hit the market.” The affable-seeming interviewee’s voice takes an iron edge. “Raising the Age was hard. Hunting is hard. Making people stay on, to keep doing something as an adult that they were lucky to survive as children is hard. Of course, now, it’s sixteen and up, just like the Army, and you can have a career into your thirties. It’s been ten years since the Age Act, and it’s baffling how quickly people have forgotten what things were like before it, how young we were. It’s all ghost stories now, to the kids. In a way, it’s how it should have been all along.”
The interviewer visibly tries to wrestle back control of the program and tone down the borderline sedition. “And your partner from Kohukohu? Are you still as close as you were when you were hunting together?”
For the first time, the man’s smile seems genuine. He looks mischievous, almost boyish. “Even closer.”
“I wish I’d said your name,” says Wei Ying, switching off the late-night news and its dated replay of the Anniversary Special of the discovery of Eye-Bright Spectacles. “Thirty years later, and I still wish I’d said your name.”
The Auckland broadcasters enjoy rolling it out every so often, and the latest reprinting of An Illustrated Guide to Ghost Hunting in Aotearoa is apparently prime time for rolling. In his dressing gown, Wei Ying pouts and flops down onto the couch. He snuggles into Lan Zhan, whose hair has long gone white, like their old fencing jackets.
“Say my name now,” says Lan Zhan, and he kisses him.