“You’re walking pretty well right now,” Lin Zixi said.
“It feels like there’s no problem at all. I’m even thinking about whether I should just take the cast off directly.” Lan Yu showed off smugly, lightly tapping his casted leg, still hanging in the air, against the ground. There wasn’t the slightest trace of pain.
After taking out the trash and coming back, Lan Yu couldn’t wait to squeeze into the crowd. Where there were more people, there was stronger yang energy. He even deliberately stopped Yang Gang and insisted on walking back together.
“When you changed your cast last time, didn’t you check how the recovery was going?” Yang Gang, his dormmate, asked from beside him.
Lan Yu’s expression stalled for a moment.
Seeing him suddenly fall silent, Lin Zixi asked, “Don’t tell me you didn’t go change the cast?”
“Does it really matter if I don’t?” Lan Yu remembered clearly but deliberately pretended to forget. He didn’t want to go to the hospital. He hated the smell of disinfectant and those expanses of white.
“You do whatever the doctor says. Is it good or not something you get to decide?” Lin Zixi immediately said.
“I know, I know. I’ve got it under control.” Although this was Lan Yu’s first fracture, after staying in the hospital for so long, he knew he should follow medical advice. He had originally wanted to delay it a bit longer but this time he couldn’t put it off anymore. “I’ll apply for an early shift tomorrow, then go change it in the afternoon.”
“I’m on an early shift tomorrow too. I’ll go with you,” Lin Zixi said.
“I can go by myself.”
“What’s with you? You’re working so hard, even going to the hospital alone. I ran into you and you got injured. It’s only right that I go with you,” Lin Zixi said.
Lan Yu lifted the hand that wasn’t holding the crutch and scratched his cheek, a little embarrassed. “I just don’t want to trouble you.”
“How is that trouble?” Lin Zixi replied.
“He ran into you and you’re worried about troubling him? If it were me, I’d have him running errands for me these past few days and you’re calling that trouble?” Yang Gang mocked him from the side.
Lin Zixi reached over Lan Yu’s shoulder and punched Yang Gang lightly. “Don’t teach the kid bad habits.”
Lan Yu blinked, looking at Lin Zixi on his left, then at Yang Gang on his right and suddenly broke into a smile.
“What are you grinning like an idiot for?” Yang Gang said, seeing Lan Yu’s silly smile and somehow ended up smiling too.
“Nothing,” Lan Yu said.
This lively, relaxed atmosphere was probably what a friendship felt like. If he worked a little harder, he could fool around with others just like this. As long as his leg healed, he’d be able to join in too.
When they reached the dormitory door, Lan Yu discovered that the mirror he had stuck on the door was gone.
After entering the dorm, not only was the mirror gone but the other things were gone as well. Everything had returned to normal, except for the circle of red string Lan Yu had tied around his bed.
Lan Yu blinked. It seemed that even without those things, the dorm wouldn’t be haunted. The only one who would be haunted was him. At least it wouldn’t drag other people down. That made him feel a little relieved.
To be honest, he had also thought that arranging those strange items like that was pretty stupid.
Standing by his bed, Lan Yu hesitated. Could he really stay in this dorm now?
Although he believed that his encounters with ghosts were cyclical, the two smokers who appeared today were clearly abnormal. They had obviously seen something through the camera, frightened enough to flee immediately.
So what if seeing ghosts was cyclical for him but in reality the ghosts had never left his side at all?
At the thought of that possibility, goosebumps sprang up all over Lan Yu’s body, a chill running down his spine.
Shouldn’t he be staying here?
Sitting on his dorm bed, Lan Yu began to think about how much it would cost to take a taxi back right now. The distance wasn’t especially far; it should be fine, right?
But he was scared.
Even if it was haunted, he hoped there could be someone with him to encounter it together. With another person, you could at least cling to each other and cry. Facing a ghost alone was just too overwhelming.
“I’m going to the bathroom for a bit,” Lan Yu said, clutching his phone as he went into the bathroom and closed the thin bathroom door.
Lan Yu took a deep breath.
Even the hand holding his phone was trembling.
He opened the camera, tapped to switch to the front facing lens. At the moment it flipped, Lan Yu suddenly shut his eyes and leaned back, not daring to look.
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to open his eyes. Yet before he could look at the phone, his gaze landed first on the mirror right in front of him. The reflection startled him so badly that he jolted, the cast slamming heavily against the floor. Lan Yu pressed himself against the narrow bathroom wall.
“Lan Yu?” Lin Zixi’s voice came from outside.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, just slipped a bit, it’s nothing,” Lan Yu immediately said, not wanting to make the others worry. After the initial fright passed, however, he calmed down.
Because he had been too focused on his phone when entering the bathroom, he hadn’t looked at the mirror right away. Who would’ve thought that a single mirror was enough to reveal the truth? So this was what the two smokers had seen. Lan Yu let out a breath of relief.
It was a black shadow!
That was fine. A black shadow was okay.
Lan Yu never imagined that someone as afraid of ghosts as he was would one day get used to the presence of a ghostly shadow. Sure enough, no matter what it was, as long as you sat at the same table and properly ate a meal together, you could become familiar. Zhou Hesheng and that drinking guy’s drinking sessions were truly the pinnacle of interpersonal wisdom.
A huge, indistinct black shadow crouched behind him. One hand lay across his neck, the other locked around his waist. The shadow covered almost half of him; in the mirror, only his chin was visible. It was the first time Lan Yu realized that even just his chin looked pretty good.
Although it was also a ghost, this shadow clearly possessed a “negotiable” quality. It was much better than the other ghosts who talked to themselves and completely ignored whether he lived or died.
“Hello, let’s talk,” Lan Yu said in the softest whisper, trying to negotiate with the shadow. “Can you not mess with my roommates?”
The massive shadow enveloped Lan Yu, seemingly uninterested in anything other than him.
“If you agree, just give me some kind of response. I’ll treat you to something tasty next time,” Lan Yu cautiously proposed an exchange.
A layer of mist rose over the mirror in front of him. Through the fog, Lan Yu saw familiar symbols appear.
A checkmark and a hollow heart.
This shadow… really liked hearts. Was that its nature?
The deal concluded, Lan Yu let out a sigh of relief. He turned to glance at the toilet and twitched his mouth.
With him injured these past few days, no one had really cleaned the bathroom. Just look at all that grime…
Resigned, Lan Yu grabbed the toilet brush. Then he suddenly thought that the shadow seemed to have some kind of cleaning function but as soon as the idea surfaced, he shook his head.
No, no, no, absolutely not. That thing was still cleaning his cast. Who knew what kind of cleaning principle it used? If it brought toilet stains to clean his cast, just imagining it was enough to drive Lan Yu insane.
“You… you haven’t eaten anything weird or dirty, have you?” Lan Yu reached up and grabbed at the air above his head, uneasy.
Mm. No reply. As expected.
The shadow wasn’t always around. When Lan Yu woke up in the morning, he couldn’t find it anywhere.
Lan Yu couldn’t quite explain why he’d managed to fall asleep despite the fear, wrapped and entangled by the shadow but it seemed that as long as he closed his eyes and didn’t think about it, he could sleep.
Human adaptability was truly astonishing. The feeling was like picking up a human faced dog and bringing it home, terrifying the more you looked at it but as long as you closed the bedroom door and locked the human faced dog outside, you could still sleep just fine.
Lan Yu brushed his teeth while secretly praying that ghosts couldn’t read minds.
The early shift passed without incident.
Too calm.
Unnaturally calm.
“Hm…” Duan Gaozhi sat off to the side, his expression grave.
“What’s wrong, Manager Duan?” Lan Yu still remembered that at work, he was supposed to address Duan Gaozhi by his title.
“It’s too strange. Even though the lunch rush is over, how come no one’s coming looking for trouble?” Duan Gaozhi said.
Lan Yu: “……”
So that was it. No wonder something had felt missing, there was no one causing trouble!
The words rolled around on the tip of his tongue before Lan Yu swallowed them back down. You couldn’t just say something that tempting fate out loud.
After finishing his early shift, Lan Yu went to the hospital with Lin Zixi. Watching the cast on his leg being removed, Lan Yu stared at his smooth, pale leg beneath, there wasn’t a single trace of injury.
“It looks really good… Do I really need to get another cast?” Lan Yu asked cautiously.
The doctor reapplied the cast while speaking earnestly. “It does look like it’s recovering well. Young people heal fast but bones don’t heal just because you want them to. You think you’re healed but you’re not. If you don’t want lingering aftereffects later on, don’t take it lightly.”
Lan Yu stared skeptically at his perfectly intact leg.
He didn’t even feel pain. It felt amazingly good.
Still, the doctor’s words made him feel oddly novel.
In the past, nothing a doctor said to him had ever sounded this light. The future, aftereffects, those were things he had never needed to consider in his previous life. Just being alive had already been remarkable enough.
He was so healthy now.
And recovering incredibly fast.
Aside from running into ghosts, everything was great.
For the sake of the future, he decided to keep the cast on for the full recommended time!
When he left the consultation room, he saw Lin Zixi sitting in the waiting area, completely absorbed in his phone.
“What’s wrong?” Lan Yu asked, noticing how serious Lin Zixi looked.
“I scrolled onto something about our restaurant,” Lin Zixi said, turning the phone toward Lan Yu. “Isn’t this the alley next to our place where we dump the trash?”
Lan Yu’s heart jumped. “Uh, yeah. Why?”
“Someone says it’s haunted. They caught paranormal photos. They’re saying a restaurant employee got entangled with a ghost.” Lin Zixi dragged the progress bar back to the beginning so Lan Yu could see. It was a blurry video.
When the pitch black shadow enveloping a human figure appeared in the footage, the camera paused briefly before dissolving into frantic shaking as the two people filming ran away.
Lin Zixi opened the photos in the comments and compared them repeatedly with Lan Yu. “This build, these hands, doesn’t this look exactly like you?”
“Mm… kind of?” Lan Yu squinted.
It was him. Definitely him. Him from last night when he’d been confronted!
“There’s a location tag,” Lin Zixi said, pulling up the pinned comment from the uploader. The coordinates were clearly marked with bold characters: ‘Fulin Grand Restaurant.’
“Send it to me.” Lan Yu sat down beside Lin Zixi.
The video itself was very blurry but the photos were taken extremely well. Lan Yu could tell at a glance that this one had been snapped right at the beginning by someone nearby. The entire image was almost swallowed by darkness, faintly revealing part of his chin, his pale hand and bits of a waiter’s uniform.
Their restaurant’s uniform was gray black, so against the darkness, the faintly visible fabric looked almost like a tailored suit, high end and textured. Standing beside the pitch black trash bins, his exposed chin, neck and hands appeared deathly pale against the darkness. The photo pulled the atmosphere to its absolute limit, terror mixed with an indescribable eeriness.
There weren’t many comments yet but people’s attitudes toward the uploaded photo were already clear.
Everyone thought it was a well done Photoshop job.
No one believed it was a real paranormal photo.
“Are they switching tactics to mess with us?” Lin Zixi said.
“It should be fine… right?” Lan Yu asked nervously, staring at the mere two or three thousand views.
“T… this, I don’t really know either,” Lin Zixi admitted, equally lost.
“It looks pretty handsome, though,” Lin Zixi added.
“It just doesn’t really look like me,” Lan Yu said.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cresvynia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
Thank you for reading — and thank you if you choose to support the translator. ♡
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · Who wants to go back to be a minor plot device?Chapter 2 · StartChapter 3 · I’m terrified of ghostsChapter 4 · Do ghosts exist in this world?Chapter 5 · ShadowChapter 6 · There’s something wrong with how this book is dressedChapter 7 · The ghost drew a heart for himChapter 8 · Make troubleChapter 9 · Don’t scare me!Chapter 10 · I’d rather be scared to death than go backChapter 11 · Want to eat together?Chapter 12 · A cleaning ghostChapter 13 · Regret it now?Chapter 14 · ParentsChapter 15 · Find FaultChapter 16 · Ghostly photos?Chapter 17 · Nickname: White ShadowChapter 18 · A haunted taxi?Chapter 19 · Extreme fear turns to angerChapter 20 · I used to be a messChapter 21 · Best friendChapter 22 · Turning pointChapter 23 · The threat of ghostsChapter 24 · It’s not a ghost, it’s eerinessChapter 25 Part 1 · First time entering the eerie houseChapter 25 Part 2 · First time entering the eerie houseChapter 26 · Borrow moneyChapter 27 · He’s jealousChapter 28 · RetributionChapter 29 · Revenge from a Strange SourceChapter 30 Part 1 · How could you be so carelessChapter 30 Part 2 · How could you be so carelessChapter 31 Part 1 · What would happen if I ran away from home again?Chapter 31 Part 2 · What would happen if I ran away from home again?Chapter 32 Part 1 · Firmly uphold the right to privacyChapter 32 Part 2 · Firmly uphold the right to privacyChapter 33 Part 1 · The brother who brought down death to protect his belovedChapter 33 Part 2 · The brother who brought down death to protect his belovedChapter 34 Part 1 · Being secretly massaged by a shadowy figure in publicChapter 34 Part 2 · Being secretly massaged by a shadowy figure in publicChapter 35 Part 1 · Go to my dear older brother and sister’s bedroomChapter 35 Part 2 · Go to my dear older brother and sister’s bedroomChapter 36 Part 1 · Being favored by everyone in the eerie houseChapter 36 Part 2 · Being favored by everyone in the eerie houseChapter 37 · We must protect our precious childChapter 38 · It’s too tragic, I can’t bear to watch anymoreChapter 39 · Because of the unique companionshipChapter 40 · The first meeting with the admirer of the protagonistChapter 41 · It’s eerie, but they’re all real family members!Chapter 42 · Using the eerie house to get a cheat codeChapter 43 · The baby’s crying after getting drunk is so cute!Chapter 44 · A traitorChapter 45 · All family members can help the baby.Chapter 46 · When the family is happy, they will hug their waistChapter 47 · Ear piercings were adornedChapter 48 · Treasure are the most precious itemsChapter 49 · Revenge is not an easy thing to doChapter 50 · Because I couldn’t see his faceChapter 51 · One of his brothers is a continuous mountain rangeChapter 52 · How could we possibly run into characters from the original storyChapter 53 · The gems my brother gave me piled up into a small mountainChapter 54 · One can feel an overwhelming sense of superiority.Chapter 55 · Sleeping with a shadowy figure means you won’t be afraid of ghosts at allChapter 56 · The fireworks display to celebrate my baby was absolutely devastating!Chapter 57 · It wasn’t this restaurant that treated us; it was another oneChapter 58 · His super-rich older sister paid for his treat!Chapter 59 · He’s different from beforeChapter 60 · It’s all so weird, isn’t it normal for people to want to disappear?Chapter 61 · Wen JieChapter 62 · Has the identity of this strange child been discovered?Chapter 63 · Those who make their child angry are unforgivableChapter 64 · Being too inquisitive about other people’s private affairs will bring you troubleChapter 65 · A person not to be covetedChapter 66 · Can you bridge the racial divide by staying close to your family?Chapter 67 · What to do if my child doesn’t want to celebrate their birthday?Chapter 68 · The baby is also a second-generation, a bizarre second-generation!Chapter 69 · We are clearly each other’s only friendsChapter 70 · The House of Eeries really did throw a ridiculously huge birthday partyChapter 71 · Why would he feel competitive towards his friend?Chapter 72 · Try to appease the jealous shadow.Chapter 73 · If you’re going to take revenge, you should do it in front of him!Chapter 74 · Now that things have come to thisChapter 75 · My baby’s travel is strange and worryingChapter 76 · One of the older brothers who crawled into the suitcase and followedChapter 77 · He resolutely refused to leave his abandoned brotherChapter 78 · I don’t want my baby to see my terrifying true formChapter 79 · I love hugging you like this.Chapter 80 · It’s a good thing to know you.Chapter 81 · Does my brother also want to go out and have some fun?Chapter 82 · His Older brother?Chapter 83 · Xiao Ming!Chapter 84 · I’m doing great as long as the original text doesn’t go crazyChapter 85 · What’s there to be afraid of when everything’s shrouded in eeriness?Chapter 86 · Let’s have a fight for the sake of the original ownerChapter 87 · How did they know he wasn’t the original owner?Chapter 88 Part 1 · Was the shadowy figure injured?Chapter 88 Part 2 · Was the shadowy figure injured?Chapter 88 Part 3 · Was the shadowy figure injured?Chapter 89 Part 1 · To inflict countless severe emotional blows on someoneChapter 89 Part 2 · To inflict countless severe emotional blows on someoneChapter 91 Part 1 · He was like a human in a supernatural taleChapter 91 Part 2 · He was like a human in a supernatural taleChapter 92 · Someone is secretly using underhanded tacticsChapter 93 · The right people I once followedChapter 94 · Let go of your prejudices against the protagonist.Okay! How come on one complain that we can’t right click the link and open a it in a new webapge??Chapter 95 · Favoritism from his current friendsChapter 96 · The baby is going to marry into our familyChapter 97 · The idea of falling in loveChapter 98 · Want to replace your baby?Chapter 99 · What’s wrong with double happiness?!Chapter 100 · It’s just a matter of raceChapter 101 · I need to balance dating and studying!Chapter 102 · After the shadowy figure gained a physical bodyChapter 103 · Confess your love to the eerie house!Chapter 104 · Even with such pampering, your baby still lacks a sense of security.Chapter 105 · How much help did he receive that he didn’t know about?Chapter 106 · You are not worthy to be the middlemanChapter 107 · Is there anything wrong with me being petty?Chapter 108 · You can have both love and studies!Chapter 109 · Suppressed and restrained desiresChapter 110 · What does an unforgettable yet ordinary date need?