Fang Tian decided this ghost had some real plays in it.
First it used the fallen vent panel to lure him out of the dorm, then slipped inside while he was out investigating.
He'd let his guard down. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that, these days, even ghosts knew tactics.
The blood-red "Thank you" on the screen soon vanished, leaving the dorm so quiet there was only the sound of his own breathing. He gripped the gel pen a few degrees tighter; even with the light still on, his heart was far from at ease.
Fang Tian looked all around. Dozens of ways a ghost might appear surfaced in his mind — maybe through the mirror, maybe the TV screen. Right, the computer screen behind him couldn't be taken lightly either; this ghost had come out of a game, after all.
These ceaselessly multiplying thoughts made him feel ghosts were everywhere.
After freezing in place a long while, Fang Tian finally screwed up his courage and said, "Hey, buddy. Good evening."
After all, the quest the system had given him was to greet his new roommate.
Sadly, no one answered. The quest didn't complete, and the dorm stayed dead silent.
His Sanity held at 5, yet the crawling-scalp sensation refused to fade. So Fang Tian made a snap decision — he slapped the computer screen off, kicked off his shoes, climbed onto the bed, and buried himself whole under the covers.
The ostrich tactic.
It looked rather like self-deception, but the instant the blanket came over him, a faint sense of safety finally settled in his heart.
As he buried his head under the covers, Fang Tian put his back to the wall and shifted into a two-handed grip on the pen, glaring fixedly ahead —— the ostrich tactic was only a feint. If the ghost mistook it for him throwing in the towel and carelessly lifted the blanket, the pen in his hand was nothing to sniff at.
Since a ghost could appear from anywhere, better to fall back to the wall and hold one fixed point to the death.
Fang Tian held his breath and waited quietly for a good while. Hearing nothing amiss outside the covers, he sneakily picked up his phone and quickly composed a text to Hao Xue and sent it.
The text was one character long, but it said it all.
——"Help!"
And then came the long wait.
Fang Tian kept his eyes wide, glaring straight ahead. He felt as if he could no longer sense time passing — until a heavier and heavier drowsiness made it almost impossible to keep his eyes open, and his long-taut nerves finally slackened.
The dark welled up.
He slept poorly. Fang Tian dreamed he was standing in the corridor outside the student dorm. Just as he meant to go back in, the door opened, and a female ghost in a long white dress, hair hanging loose over a face he couldn't make out, came to meet him.
Then, somehow, he ducked into a ventilation pipe. The female ghost gave chase, the flesh wall and the strands of hair creeping after him bit by bit. In the nightmare's final moment, he felt someone seize his ankle, and at the same time a human face grew out of the flesh wall before him — a lovely countenance set against the sickening, festering buds in sharp contrast, except the right eye was missing, that black, hollow socket all but pressed to his face.
"Holy shit!"
Fang Tian woke. The blanket that had wrapped him was thrown off at some unknown point, and the dazzling sunlight pouring through the window fell on his eyes. He squinted for a good while before he could make out the person sitting at his bedside.
Black hair down to the shoulders, exquisite features, and eyes that commanded awe without anger.
This cool, aloof beauty stood in stark contrast to the one-eyed face in the ventilation pipe, and Fang Tian's mood eased considerably — until he made out the uniform she wore, and his heart clenched all over again.
The cold-faced policewoman spoke. "What's your relationship with Lin Jiu?"
Lin Jiu?
After a moment's thought, Fang Tian asked back, puzzled, "Who's Lin Jiu?"
The officer didn't answer his question. Instead she asked, "How did you come to know Lin Jiu's payment account and password?"
"What password?"
"At 1:27 this morning, Lin Jiu made a payment of 13,421 yuan on your computer."
"Huh?"
At 1:27 this morning, even if he hadn't been asleep, he should have been huddled under his own blanket. How could he possibly have made a 13,421-yuan payment on his computer?
Fang Tian's blank, know-nothing manner made the policewoman frown. She took a photo from her briefcase and set it before him. "Have you seen the person in this photo?"
The photo showed a girl who looked about high-school age, still wearing the uniform of some Qingkong City high school.
"No——"
Fang Tian was about to deny it, but on a closer look something felt off. "She looks familiar...... She's Lin Jiu?"
"Yes."
The officer's firm reply sent his mood plunging to the bottom. Looking at the girl smiling so brightly in the photo, he had a faint idea why the police had come knocking —— the girl in the photo was about eighty percent identical to the ghostly face he'd run into in the ventilation pipe.
"You're a suspect in a disappearance case. Please come with us."
When he was escorted out of the dorm, quite a few people stood in the corridor watching, expressions varied, as Fang Tian got into the elevator with the police. Only after the doors closed did they cluster together in twos and threes to ask one another just what this freshman had done.
Hauled off by the Qingkong City police on his third day of enrollment — that, too, counted as making Qingkong University history.
***
That morning, Fang Tian went to the station for the first time in his life.
To arrest him, the Qingkong City police had rolled out five squad cars. Besides the two officers pressing down on his shoulders, a dozen-odd others tagged along, and plenty more waited for him at the station — a considerable show of force, all told.
He felt the police looked at him the way they'd size up a hardened criminal.
Instinct told Fang Tian this case was anything but small.
The officers gripping his shoulders walked him all the way into the interrogation room, where the cold-faced policewoman he'd met once at the dorm was already waiting.
Once he was seated, she ran through the questions as a matter of routine.
"Name."
"Fang Tian."
"Sex."
"Male."
"Age."
"Nineteen years and three months."
The officer checked the thick file on the table, confirmed each answer, then cut to the heart of it. "When and where did you see Lin Jiu?"
"What should I call you, Officer?"
"Feng Xi."
"Officer Feng, it's a bit complicated. Are you sure you want to hear the truth?"
The grim atmosphere of the interrogation room set Fang Tian fretting. He felt the truth would be the hardest thing to believe right now —— was he really supposed to tell the police he'd gotten a "mysterious link" off the student forum and then played a match with Lin Jiu?
Feng Xi said, "Per regulations, a suspect who turns himself in and truthfully confesses his crime may receive a lighter punishment."
"All right."
After turning it over and over, Fang Tian decided to tell the truth after all.
The truth might not win the police's belief, but at least it wouldn't get him saddled with the label of "obstruction warrants severity."
So he gave a light cough. "Yesterday, I saw Lin Jiu in a dream."