The young man standing behind Ning Shao saw that she was lost in thought. He stopped with one leg raised, his gaze drifting involuntarily to her profile—
Though she looked haggard and frail, it did nothing to diminish her astonishing beauty: cool, pale skin, light brows, thick, long, dark lashes, and light brown eyes… Before he could get a closer look, he suddenly felt a vicious, sinister stare fixed on him. He followed it—and saw a blood-red eyeball on the woman’s shoulder.
It looked as if the eye had grown right out of her shoulder. Its black pupil twisted madly in the shadows of the corridor, like a venomous snake poised to strike. If he said another word or even looked again, the consequences would be horrific.
“Ah—!”
The young man let out a short cry, startling Ning Shao out of her daze. She turned and saw that the person who had been perfectly fine moments ago was now slumped on the floor, head bowed, his whole body trembling as if he’d encountered something terrifying.
Ning Shao wasn’t one to meddle, but she couldn’t help asking,
“What’s wrong?”
As she stepped closer, the young man scrambled backward, then clambered to his feet and fled from her sight in a panic.
Ning Shao frowned slightly.
The interruption soon slipped from her mind. Dragging her heavy-headed, unsteady body upstairs, she found some cold medicine and took two pills, despite having no appetite at all. Then she lay down in the soft, slightly damp bedding and fell asleep.
After two or three hours, Ning Shao woke with a stomachache. She already had gastric problems, and taking medicine on an empty stomach had been too much for her. Wave after wave of cramps seized her.
As a doctor, she knew perfectly well that taking medicine on an empty stomach was bad for her stomach. She’d simply been too exhausted to move even a finger and had wanted nothing but to lie in bed and sleep.
Worse still, only her consciousness had woken; her body remained asleep. In her current state, it was like sleep paralysis—no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t move.
Knock. Knock, knock.
She heard footsteps approaching from somewhere nearby. Ning Shao clearly remembered locking the door when she came home. Besides, there was no one else in the house.
But the footsteps were so distinct that she couldn’t ignore them.
When they stopped beside her bed, Ning Shao strained to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt weighed down by a thousand-pound boulder. She couldn’t lift them.
It brought back those dark memories from when Lin Yan was still alive.
…
Ning Shao’s excellent grades had earned her an offer from a public Grade A tertiary hospital[1]In China’s hospital classification system, a Grade A tertiary hospital is in the highest commonly recognized rating category, often called a “3A hospital.” jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3733354_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3733354_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. At the time, she hadn’t immediately turned it down.
As a woman, she’d already faced tremendous obstacles on this path. To get this far, she’d had to work thousands of times harder than a man. It was the kind of place countless medical students dreamed of working, and she wasn’t about to give it up either.
Ning Shao changed her phone number and cut off contact with Lin Yan. She thought she’d finally escaped him and could return to a normal life. She was busy every day, and even when she had to work overtime, she was content.
Then she began noticing signs that someone else had been in her rented apartment.
For instance, her toothbrush, which dried in a day, would still be wet at night.
The clothes she’d left unwashed after coming home late from work would be clean and hanging out on the balcony by morning.
And whenever she woke up the next morning, her head would feel groggy… As a doctor, she immediately thought of ether, an inhaled general anesthetic.
No matter how cautious she was, people still had to sleep. Every day, she woke up dizzy.
The demands of work, combined with the strange things she kept finding at home, left her utterly drained.
Ning Shao tried changing the locks, but it made no difference. With no other choice, she found another apartment, moved, and installed cameras.
It still didn’t help. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but she began to suspect she was being haunted. The feeling that she was being watched everywhere, like a poison-laced vine wrapping tightly around her, followed her wherever she went.
Until one night.
While she slept, her consciousness abruptly woke. Like someone pinned down by a ghost[2]This evokes the Chinese folk expression “gui ya chuang,” or “ghost pressing the bed,” traditionally used to describe the sensation of sleep paralysis. It does not establish that a ghost … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3733354_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3733354_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, she heard a faint sound coming from beneath the bed.
Her eyelids were too heavy to lift, and darkness swallowed her. Her hearing grew unnaturally sharp. She heard someone’s breath, quick with barely restrained excitement, accompanied by a low, gurgling swallow from the throat. It was as clear as a thunderclap.
“Yinyin[3]“Yinyin” is the personal nickname Lin Yan uses for Ning Shao. Its precise origin is not explained here. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3733354_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3733354_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });…”
Ning Shao understood almost at once.
There were no ghosts. It had been Lin Yan all along, obsessively clinging to her and refusing to let go.
She’d thought she had escaped him for good. It turned out it had all been wishful thinking.
**
Back in the present, Ning Shao listened to breathing just like the breathing in her memory. The only difference was the breath against the front of her neck. In her memory, it had been as hot as magma; now it was the complete opposite, chillingly cold, as if it would seep through her skin and into her bones.
The breath was both strange and familiar. It traced the skin of her neck, slowly drifting toward her cheek… Ning Shao felt trapped in a nightmare. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her brows drawn tight. Resistance and revulsion showed on her pale face as her eyes trembled beneath her lids.
‘He’s dead! This has to be a dream. It’s a dream!’
She screamed silently inside.
Despair pricked her heart like countless needles. Cold spread through her body, along with a fierce, impossible-to-ignore terror.
As the breath drew closer, a tear slid from the corner of Ning Shao’s eye. Before it could soak into her hair, a damp sensation gently licked it away. The touch was so familiar that she knew almost at once what it was.
A tongue.
The nightmare was so real, so suffocatingly long. Under the weight of her terror and revulsion, Ning Shao’s mind gradually went numb. She felt as if she were sinking into a cold, black sea, its waters swallowing her as death would.
She was so tired. Ever since she’d met Lin Yan, his sick, relentless obsession had worn her down, body and soul, day after day.
Perhaps this wasn’t a dream. Perhaps it was real. Even dead, Lin Yan wouldn’t leave her alone.
She should have known.
…
Ning Shao’s consciousness slowly blurred. The icy breath fell beside her ear, and she curled unconsciously into the bedding, shivering. She hated the cold; her dislike of it was tied to the hardships she’d endured as a poor child.
“Kh… Yinyin… kh…”
“You… can’t… escape… me… again… kh…”
His voice was hoarse to the extreme. The strange sounds he made seemed more like a stiff jaw being forced open, clacking like gears without oil.
If she’d been able to think clearly, Ning Shao might have guessed that the speaker was a corpse. A corpse stiffened by rigor mortis would make just such a sound.
But by then, her consciousness had sunk into a deep pool. She couldn’t think at all.
Just before she lost consciousness, her lips were gently pried apart. Warm rice porridge flowed down her throat. Dehydrated from her high fever, Ning Shao swallowed, and the cramps in her stomach slowly eased—
*
Ning Shao slept for nearly ten hours.
References[+]