Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Peng Ming's ears were ringing, convinced he must have misheard.

A call from a ghost?

"It said you were calling me, and when I answered, it wasn't you talking on the other end," Xing Jun said. "Something's off here. I've been looking for an exit, but I just keep going around in circles. I can't get out at all."

"Me too." A chill ran down Peng Ming's spine, his mind racing up to the sky and then crashing back down.

"I don't know where I am. I can't find the exit. Min Xin's gone too—you seen him? And Geng Weijun, I heard you calling him earlier."

"I was following him down, and then he just vanished in the blink of an eye. After that, I had no clue where I was. Then I tried calling you, but it wouldn't go through, and then I got that ghost call."

Peng Ming stopped walking. He'd been walking since the call connected, yet he still hadn't found the door.

But at least he had somebody to talk to. He gave up on finding an exit and crouched down, asking Xing Jun what the voice on the other end had said.

"It told me to go find him," Xing Jun said, trembling. "It kept telling me to go find him. It wasn't a sound a person could make. I got too scared and hung up."

"Did you call me back on the second floor?" Peng Ming asked, recounting the whole story from the beginning.

"It wasn't me," Xing Jun said quietly. "I've been stuck here the whole time. I never got out."

The call went through, but the phone still had no signal. Peng Ming tried calling the police on his streaming phone—it wouldn't connect.

He felt a wave of despair. He turned to the livestream and begged viewers again to call the police for him.

Then a comment stood out from the rest: "Why is the streamer just walking in circles and talking to himself?"

Peng Ming froze, looked around wildly, and said in disbelief, "Me? Spinning in place?"

The commenter said: "Yeah, you're right by the door. Why are you pacing back and forth, and why do you keep saying 'call the police'?"

Peng Ming was dumbfounded. Frantically trying to explain, he turned his phone screen around and said, "No, no—there's no door here. Can't you guys see that? On your end, I look normal? That can't be right..."

The commenter turned out to be Lu Lu.

In the livestream, the guy had been holding up his phone and pacing in circles for an hour, mumbling something nobody could make out the whole time. After giving up trying to figure out what he was saying, Lu Lu typed a comment.

To her surprise, the streamer got even more panicked, insisting he couldn't find the door.

She stared at the screen, thought it over, then dialed the police and gave them the location.

The dispatcher said they'd already sent someone over. Lu Lu typed a message telling the streamer to hang tight.

"Thank you," Peng Ming said, almost in tears when he saw the comment. "Then I'll just wait right here."

The phone camera wobbled. The entrance to the office building was clearly right there next to Peng Ming, yet every time he rushed past it, it was like he couldn't see it at all.

Lu Lu thought it over. Peng Ming's panic was real, but could this really be a haunting?

"Um, are the cops here yet?" Peng Ming got even more scared, staring at the camera with desperate hope.

Lu Lu typed for him to be patient, while also wondering—by all logic, someone in the livestream should've called the cops way before now. Why was she the only one?

Earlier, Peng Ming had also said his phone had no signal. If that was true, how was the livestream even broadcasting?

Everything was too weird. Goosebumps spread across Lu Lu's skin, and she couldn't help rubbing her arms.

"I heard something." The phone shook, and Peng Ming's face came into view. He tilted his head, listening hard for a few seconds, then burst out with joy. "I think the cops are here. Awesome."

The livestream was dead silent.

Watching Peng Ming stagger back into the building, Lu Lu immediately typed out a warning: "Don't move! You're going back inside. Just stay put and wait for them to come to you."

Peng Ming didn't see it at all. Like a madman, he sprinted up the stairs with wild excitement, seemingly feeling no fatigue as he made it to the eighteenth floor in one go.

His panting echoed endlessly. The guy in the livestream laughed as he walked into the hallway.

In the frame, the two white candles that had been on the floor were now completely burnt out, leaving only puddles of hardened wax.

Peng Ming sat down next to them, muttering to himself: "Oh, right, I'm Peng Ming. I came here for a livestream adventure to make money, but I got lost and couldn't find my way out."

"Is that so? Thank you so much—if it weren't for you guys, I don't know what would've happened to me."

"Oh, okay. I'll leave with you now."

The camera only showed so much. Lu Lu heard no voices and saw no one, yet Peng Ming seemed to see someone, and he stood up and staggered forward.

Watching him walk toward the end of the hallway, to the window with the shattered glass, Lu Lu frantically typed warnings for him to stop, that it was too dangerous.

"Livestream? Oh, right, I'm still on. Okay, okay, I'll turn it off now." Peng Ming muttered, and before Lu Lu could send her comment, the livestream suddenly cut out.

She froze, staring blankly at her phone screen, not knowing what to do.

The guy was clearly possessed. What should she do?

Lu Lu rubbed her eyes, making sure the livestream she'd seen wasn't a hallucination, then pinched her leg.

It hurt. It wasn't some crazy, nonsensical dream—someone really was trapped in Bei Wang Office Building.

The call log showed her call to the police. Lu Lu breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the cops would handle it once they got there. But recalling the weird stuff she'd seen in the livestream, she couldn't help worrying.

She was actually really close to Bei Wang Office Building—just a five-minute ride on her electric scooter.

But it was already 8 p.m.

Lu Lu glanced at the darkness outside her window. After going back and forth about it, she grabbed her keys and headed for Bei Wang Office Building.

When she got there, she spotted the police car and the four people standing dazed next to the officers.

Everyone's safe. Thank God.

Lu Lu let out a relieved breath and turned to go. But just as she'd turned her handlebars halfway around, Peng Ming, who had been standing there talking to the officers, suddenly looked up and stared right at her.

In that instant, Lu Lu felt a chill like being locked onto by a venomous snake, making her tremble uncontrollably.

Peng Ming broke into a big smile and raised his hand to wave.

His movements were stiff, his smile forced, his whole vibe deeply unsettling—like his body was just an empty shell, a puppet controlled by strings.

He kept repeating the waving motion over and over.

Lu Lu shuddered, quickly looked away, and rode off on her scooter.

"What are you staring at? Did you hear what I said?" The officer noticed Peng Ming's weird behavior, frowned, and waved a hand in front of his face. "You four are not allowed back here again, got it?"

Peng Ming didn't say anything, just kept staring in the direction Lu Lu had gone.

Min Xin and Xing Jun clung to each other, shivering uncontrollably, mumbling nonsense under their breath.

Geng Weijun looked relatively normal, except his face was pale as a corpse. Every time, he'd open his mouth in a panic like he was about to say something, then shut it again.

After he did this a few times, everyone got annoyed.

"You four, come with me to the police station." He'd been about to just give them a talking-to and send them off, but seeing their strange state, the officer waved for the others to load them into the squad car. "We'll contact your parents to come pick you up."

Once they got to the station, all four of them shuddered and suddenly snapped out of it.

Peng Ming had no clue what was going on. He looked at the other three and suddenly got pissed: "What the hell happened? Where the hell did you three go?"

"I don't know." Xing Jun shook his head, looking dazed. He'd been all tensed up, but relaxed once he realized he was at the station, sharing his last memory: "After I made that last call to you, everything went black."

Geng Weijun: "I don't know either. I heard noise downstairs and thought someone was in the house. But the second I went downstairs, I blacked out. I wanna ask the same thing—how the hell did I end up here?"

"Teleport, my ass." The cop tapped the table, signaling them to sit down. "The security camera across from the office building shows you three went in and came out shortly after, pacing back and forth at the entrance like a couple of lookouts. And you—what the hell were you doing inside?"

Peng Ming, who got pointed at, was completely dumbfounded: "What do you mean? They were at the entrance? I was the only one inside?"

He started spilling everything in a panic, but nobody believed him.

The cop asked all four of them for their parents' numbers and told them to sit and wait.

Peng Ming couldn't let it go. He pulled out his phone to check his stream history and found nothing.

After the first stream got cut off on purpose, he apparently never started another one.

Peng Ming was totally freaked out. He suddenly stood up, pointing at his phone: "Where's my second stream? What happened to it?"

The other three shook their heads.

Before Peng Ming could keep asking, someone asked if he remembered anything after leaving the building.

Peng Ming shook his head: "I only remember being in the building, and then the next thing I knew, I was at the station."

"Stay away from places like that when you get home, alright?" the officer advised. "It's pitch black in there—what's there even to do?"

Peng Ming had gone there to hustle some cash, but he didn't have the guts to say it. He scratched his nose, still not able to believe that stream never happened.

Had it all been in his head from the start?

It was too strange.

The four of them quietly compared notes and realized all the weirdness started when they lit those white candles.

First, Geng Weijun heard noise, went downstairs, and blacked out.

Then Xing Jun went to find Geng Weijun, couldn't find him, got lost just like Peng Ming, and after their call, he blacked out too.

Then Min Xin—he remembered heading to the second floor with Peng Ming, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up at the station.

But what happened to Peng Ming was the creepiest of all.

Their parents showed up fast and, after hearing the whole story, chewed all four of them out.

Peng Ming wanted to say he'd seen a ghost, but with the cop badge right there, he kept his mouth shut.

The second he got home, he couldn't wait to tell his parents something was seriously wrong with him, that the building was really haunted, and he needed to find some kind of exorcist or master to check it out.

"I think you've lost your damn mind," his father said with a dismissive eye roll. "What's so great about that place? Forget the master—tomorrow you're coming with me to the hospital to get your brain scanned."

Peng Ming tried his hardest to prove something supernatural had gone down, but his parents wouldn't even let him get a word in, and even scheduled him for a psych eval right in front of him.

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and a wave of helplessness hit him.

Ghosts were real, after all.

*

Lu Lu wanted to see how things played out, so she clicked on Redhair's page, but there was no follow-up video.

She tried to rewatch the stream, but when she opened the live page, only the first one was there.

She froze, thinking her Wi-Fi was acting up. She logged out and refreshed over and over, and finally realized with a creepy certainty: there was no second stream.

What exactly had she watched?

No wonder she was the only one who called the cops—everyone else in the stream couldn't have cared less.

There was no normal explanation for any of it. Lu Lu rubbed her temples, her head pounding, thinking this was way too weird. Beiwang Office Building was seriously cursed—no way she was going back there.

Something was seriously off.

She didn't sleep well that night, tossing and turning, dreaming of showing up at the scene, Redhair looking up at her with that creepy, terrifying stare and a smile stretched across his face like a dead man's.

At the crack of dawn, Lu Lu was jolted awake by the nightmare, feeling for the first time what it was like to wake up soaked in a cold sweat from fear.

Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like there was a speaker hooked up between it and her ears. She pressed her hand to her chest, trying to calm down, and when that didn't work, got up and took a hot shower until she finally settled.

The weather outside was gorgeous, and the fear from the nightmare slowly faded. Lu Lu let out a sigh, got dressed, and headed to work.

...

At the end of the day, when Lu Lu got home, she realized how weird the location of Beiwang Office Building was.

If it hadn't been for that delivery order last time, she never would've passed that building no matter where she was delivering.

The map always routed her around it, which was why she didn't even know the building existed in the first place.

Work kept her too busy to think about it, but now that she had free time, Lu Lu pulled out her phone to look for updates on yesterday's adventure stream.

The account was gone, but she could still find clips from the first stream. The comments all said it was a staged bit, with a bunch of people hiding inside.

As for the second stream, nobody mentioned it at all. Lu Lu even commented, and someone told her she was crazy—there was no second stream.

With no other option, Lu Lu tried to reach Redhair, but his account was deactivated and she couldn't get ahold of him. All she could do was sit alone on the couch, totally baffled.

If it was all a hallucination, then how did she actually see the stream and call the cops for that guy?

The next day, while out delivering, Lu Lu made a point to ride past Beiwang Office Building, hoping to run into Redhair and confirm her theory.

Unfortunately, she was out of luck. She rode past it over a dozen times, and there wasn't a single person around, let alone Redhair.

Everyone avoided the building like the plague, taking detours from way far out.

By the end of the day, Lu Lu was so wiped out she could barely walk. When she finally got to her door, her hands were shaking so bad she fumbled with the key a few times before getting it in the lock.

Something was definitely off with her body.

No matter how much she rested, this deep exhaustion clung to her, she felt drained, and even her breathing was heavy and labored, like someone who'd been sick for a long time.

After her shower, Lu Lu stood in front of the full-length mirror, sizing herself up. Her face was pale, her eyes hollow and vacant, and her dead-eyed expression made her look totally wrecked.

She messed up her hair, pulled the corners of her mouth up, and tried to force a smile. It looked forced as hell—worse than crying.

Lu Lu pursed her lips, blow-dried her hair, and as she got ready for bed, thought back to the argument she'd heard earlier.

Her routine was fine, her body was fine—so the only problem had to be where she was living now...

Plus, the apartment had had some issues before, but she'd never actually looked into them.

With that in mind, Lu Lu pulled out her phone and searched for how to tell if a house was haunted.

The results were all over the place, most of them looking like total scams, and she accidentally tapped into an ad chat.

Lu Lu instinctively wanted to back out, but a message from the other person caught her eye.

"Hi there, been feeling tired lately, no energy, in a bad mood, always thinking about bad stuff, and super unlucky?"

Lu Lu paused, then hesitantly typed back: "It's not that bad."

She just felt low on energy; she hadn't been unlucky, and her mood was still fine.

The other person replied instantly: "Sweetie, we've got a deal right now—solutions for your problems starting at 50% off."

Lu Lu hesitated for a second, then snapped a few photos of the apartment: "Can you check if there's anything wrong with this place?"

"Yep." The other person replied instantly.

Lu Lu: "???"

Were people in this line of work really that good? They could tell the place was off just by looking at a photo?

She figured the person was a scammer and was already swiping to leave when the other person suddenly sent a few more messages.

"Been feeling weak and useless lately, with random aches and pains all over?"

"And have you been seeing or hearing things that aren't there?"

"Your life has changed a ton compared to before, right? I'm sure you can feel it yourself—you're not in a good place right now."

Lu Lu didn't beat around the bush and messaged back: "Just tell me, how much?"

"Fifty-eight thousand." The other person replied.

Lu Lu: "..."

Wow, they really had some nerve.

She bailed on the chat and kept searching for other "masters," but didn't find anything useful, and somehow it was already midnight.

Lu Lu put down her phone and had just closed her eyes when the familiar sound of arguing rang in her ears.

Her mind had buried the memory, so it took her a minute to figure out why the voice sounded familiar.

It was the argument she'd heard outside her door not too long ago.

Her relaxed nerves suddenly snapped tight, and the reaction was so intense that goosebumps broke out across her skin in waves.

Lu Lu shuddered, threw off the covers, and scrambled out of bed.

She didn't dare run, afraid the noise would alert something, so she crept to the door, pressed her ear against it, and held her breath.

Silence filled her ears, then her pounding heartbeat seemed to sync with the door, thumping against her eardrum.

"Thump, thump, thump." Each beat was heavy and hard, like it was trying to punch through her eardrum.

The sound outside had stopped.

Lu Lu pulled back, then pressed close again after a moment.

"Huff, huff, huff." Fast, heavy breathing echoed in her ears.

Lu Lu thought it was her own breathing, so she steadied her breath and kept listening.

She suddenly froze, eyes wide, body slowly arching up, tense like a bamboo pole pulled back to its limit—the second it was let go, it would whip around, leaving a blur of afterimages.

That wasn't her breath.

Someone—no, something—was outside the door, breathing that heavy, weird breath in the exact same position as her.

Standing behind the door, Lu Lu was terrified, chills racing up her back in wave after wave, making her heart drop and her mind go blank.

Just as she managed to move her feet, which felt like lead, the breathing suddenly stopped.

Then, a weird voice, mixed with all kinds of muffled laughter, sounded right by her ear.

"I'm right behind you, watching you."

Author's note: N/A