It was as if someone had suddenly smacked the back of her head while she was watching a movie. Her vision blurred, and the scene she had just been watching had already changed.
Yang Chaoyu’s body instinctively pitched forward. She abruptly stopped herself, barely avoiding a fall.
At that moment, what lay before her was no longer the corridor, but the main gate of the residential complex.
But unlike before she had entered, the retractable main gate was tightly shut. In the distance, the property management lights were blazing, while the buildings behind the property management lobby had only sparse lights glowing in their windows. In the Guard Room by the entrance, an elderly man lifted a teacup and took a sip.
With Yang Chaoyu’s eyesight, she could see goji berries and tea leaves bobbing in the transparent cup. The elderly man seemed to notice her and gave her a baffled look.
The air carried the distinctive scent of the city at night. When the breeze brushed past her hair, it also brought a faint chill.
It was as though… she had returned to the mortal world.
“Are you here for the interview too?” a voice sounded beside her.
Yang Chaoyu turned her head and saw a young, handsome face with a faint smile playing at the corners of its mouth.
Only then did she fully come to herself. “The interview is already over.”
“Ah, this early?” The man hurriedly raised his wristwatch, then held it out for Yang Chaoyu to see. “It’s only… only been a minute.”
Yang Chaoyu was stunned.
She had clearly spent three hours with the other four people and a monster. How could…
“Little girl, have you run into trouble?”
The taxi driver lowered the window and leaned against the frame, watching the young man warily.
He had been a little far away and had not heard their conversation clearly, but when the girl’s face suddenly turned deathly pale, the taxi driver sensed that something was wrong.
Yang Chaoyu asked incredulously, “master driver, didn’t you just leave?”
“Leave? You came here alone in the middle of the night. How could I not keep an eye on you? What if you ran into some bad guy?”
He glanced at the young man, the implication unmistakable.
The man hurriedly waved his hands and said he was an interview candidate. The taxi driver did not believe him, saying that nobody held interviews in the middle of the night. As he spoke, the taxi driver began getting out of the car, and the man grew even more flustered as he started explaining.
Yang Chaoyu, however, was somewhat bewildered.
She remembered… she had not noticed whether the taxi driver had left, but after she got out of the car, everything seemed to have grown very quiet, as though she were the only person in the world.
She also remembered receiving a notification from MN Corporation!
When she checked her phone, however, she found that aside from the interview notification, all her other text messages had vanished inexplicably, as though everything she had experienced before had merely been her own hallucination. The MN Corporation’s message could disappear, but surely Qi Yang’s messages would still be there, right? She opened Penguin Messenger, but could not find Qi Yang’s chat window…
So, had it all been fake?
Her heart began pounding violently. For some inexplicable reason, she felt a wave of disappointment, followed by happiness.
If it had all been fake, then the world was still as it had always been, and she would not…
“Little girl!”
“Hiss.”
The taxi driver’s shout and the pain in her face struck her at the same time.
Yang Chaoyu’s heart instantly felt as though cold water had been poured over it.
The taxi driver looked at her and pointed at the young man. “Is he really here for the interview, just like you?”
Feeling somewhat uneasy, she nodded. Before the taxi driver could say anything, she asked him to take her home. She touched her cheek. It was perfectly smooth, but she knew that she had been injured during the mission, and the wound was in the very spot that now throbbed faintly with pain.
The taxi driver muttered, “Who holds interviews in the middle of the night? Better not to take it, anyway. It wouldn’t be good if some girl got tricked…”
Yang Chaoyu opened the car door, while the man was still standing there in a daze.
After hesitating for a moment, she still told him, “You’d better gather one hundred thousand yuan as soon as possible and deposit it into MN’s backstage.”
The man froze, then laughed.
“Is it really necessary?”
He did not believe they could directly deduct money from him. He had merely been late for the interview; what company would be so petty?
Yang Chaoyu insisted, “You’d better save enough.”
The man was becoming impatient. “You weren’t accepted, were you? Are you constantly speaking up for them? You haven’t even officially joined yet, and you already feel such a sense of belonging?”
Seeing that he would not listen, Yang Chaoyu said no more.
On the way back, the taxi driver asked her, “Were you really there for an interview?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t believe you when I heard you earlier. I thought you had just made up an excuse. That’s an upscale residential complex with strict requirements. How could they let people run an office in a residential building?”
Yang Chaoyu listened absentmindedly, then asked, “How many entrances does this residential complex have?”
“Three, I think. The one I took you to counts as the back door.”
That explained why, despite leaving at the same time, she had been the only one standing at that entrance.
But…
She asked, “master driver, do you know anything else about the little girl who fell from the building?”
“The little girl who fell from the building?” The taxi driver glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “I never said it was a girl. Why did you assume it was a girl?”
“What?” Yang Chaoyu stared blankly. “The person who fell wasn’t a girl? It wasn’t Wen Shaoqiao?”
The taxi driver was even more surprised. “You know about Wen Shaoqiao too? I thought young people nowadays didn’t know the classics anymore. But do you mean she also lived in Liutang? She also fell from a building?”
Yang Chaoyu hurriedly took out her phone and began searching for news about Wen Shaoqiao.
Seeing her deathly pale face, the taxi driver could not help taking a few more glances.
It was similar to what Ke Xingyun had found. Wen Shaoqiao had become famous at a young age; there had been indecent photos, borderline livestreams, and the parents’ tearful complaints mentioned by Zou Qing. The media photos were exceptionally clear. The couple, whose combined ages approached a hundred, were crying like children.
But not a single news report had revealed Wen Shaoqiao’s address.
How, then, had Ke Xingyun followed this lead and found out?
Or could it be that, in the end, Ke Xingyun still had not told the truth?
“Master driver, do you know anything else?”
“About Wen Shaoqiao, or the boy who fell from the building?”
Yang Chaoyu paused, then said, “Either one.”
“Wen Shaoqiao… I watched her movies when I was young. She was quite good at acting as a child, but later, I don’t know what happened—she suddenly stopped appearing in any productions. It was a pity. But isn’t that how the entertainment industry is?” The taxi driver sighed.
“What about that boy?”
“That boy is hard to say. Don’t news recommendations use some kind of algorithm nowadays? I like watching current affairs, but I don’t have a habit of following stories to the end. I usually watch them, make a couple of remarks, and forget them. I only know that something like this happened. I don’t remember exactly when or where.”
So she had basically obtained no information at all. Yang Chaoyu was helpless.
When they reached the residential complex where she rented a place, Yang Chaoyu paid and got out of the car.
She walked to the entrance of the residential complex, but the taxi driver still did not leave.
“Master driver, you…”
“I’ll watch you go inside. It isn’t safe for a little girl to be out alone at night.” The taxi driver smiled.
Yang Chaoyu had initially felt awkward, but when she entered the residential complex and grew somewhat frightened as the streetlamps were obscured by the tree shadows, she felt a little more at ease knowing that the taxi driver was watching from not far away.
After returning home and turning on the light, she subconsciously looked toward the entrance of the residential complex from the window.
Amid the shifting shadows of the trees, the taxi driver seemed not to have left yet.
She guessed that the taxi driver was probably smoking, so she went to take a shower. Perhaps because the shower relaxed her, the pain in her face disappeared. When she looked toward the entrance of the residential complex again, the taxi had vanished.
She collapsed onto the soft bed, and an irresistible drowsiness quickly swept over her.
She forced herself to get up. Just as she was about to turn off the light, her phone vibrated once.
Then, someone knocked on the door.