He could not breathe fresh air, nor could he see the light outside. Every one of his cries was muffled. Later, he felt so exhausted that he did not even know how he had fallen asleep in the coffin.
Outside the coffin, when Bo Si heard no more movement from inside, the corners of his pale lips curved slightly. He casually threw a talisman onto the coffin to prevent that brat from suffocating to death inside.
Gu Yi slept in the coffin for the whole night, and Bo Si stood guard outside the coffin for the whole night.
That night, Gu Yi slept very restlessly.
He dreamed of Bai Nuo again.
Bai Nuo was still wearing that red dress, only this time she was not as terrifying as before. She looked like an ordinary person, and her back was turned to him.
The moment she turned her head, she broke into a sweet smile, and her voice was also very pleasant.
She said, I am right here, right by your side.
After saying that, she even playfully blinked.
Gu Yi was startled awake.
By then, the night had already passed.
Bo Si tore off the talisman paper on the coffin, pushed open the coffin lid, and saw that Gu Yi was lying in the coffin and had already woken up, his eyes wide open.
“Brat, you can come out now.” Bo Si called.
After coming out, Gu Yi was still brooding over the fact that Bo Si had shoved him into the coffin.
He lay on the table, silent, his face written all over with unhappiness.
Bo Si poured him a cup of water and teased, “Still angry with the boss? I’ve already comforted you like this.”
Gu Yi said gloomily, “Why did you push me into the coffin?”
Bo Si explained, “I did it for your own good, to get some yin energy on you, and keep those dirty things from coming after you.”
Gu Yi looked at him and asked, “Then the things I saw in the coffin had nothing to do with you?”
Bo Si smiled and said, “What did you see?”
“I…” Gu Yi hesitated. “I saw Bai Nuo. Recently, I keep seeing her. She seems unwilling to leave. She may really have died in great pain. I don’t know what I can do for her.”
“You don’t need to do anything.” Bo Si lit a cigarette. “The wishes of the dead have to be fulfilled by themselves. Only when their resentment is dispelled can their souls be freed to rest in peace. What the living can do is remember them, so that there is still a beautiful memory of them in this world.”
Gu Yi asked him, “Do you know something?”
“I don’t know anything. I only know that we may soon have a customer at the door. Be ready to welcome them at any time.”
Bo Si was smoking. Just as he finished speaking, a somewhat trembling voice came from the doorway.
“Is anyone there?”
“Ah, yes, welcome.”
The first customer had arrived, and Gu Yi immediately gathered his thoughts and got into character.
He took a few steps forward and stopped in front of the person, then suddenly froze.
The person who had come was actually Lin Ming!
That rich second-generation who always bullied him, why had he come here?
And he looked extremely haggard, his whole face deadened, his dark circles so heavy they looked ready to fall off.
In this state, he could almost be described as disheveled, but in Gu Yi’s memory, Lin Ming had never been like this.
He had always been a prominent figure at school, arrogant and overbearing. Because he was rich, many boys were willing to follow him. Wherever he went, there was always a crowd around him, and he did not even need to open the cap himself when drinking a bottle of soda.
Lin Ming also had a decent face. It was said that many girls at school were secretly in love with him.
If Gu Yi had not been bullied so badly by him before, and had not remembered that face so deeply, he might really not have recognized him.
Lin Ming was the same. When he saw Gu Yi, he first froze, and very quickly, his eyes widened in terror.
Gu Yi, who no longer had the birthmark, made Lin Ming take a moment to react at first, but without the birthmark, a person’s outline would never change. Much less when the person standing before him was someone he had once hated so much that he gritted his teeth just thinking of him. Even if he no longer had the birthmark, even if he had been burned to ashes, Lin Ming would still recognize him at a glance!
Clearly, what Lin Ming felt at this moment was not hatred, but fear. He seemed to have been struck by a tremendous shock, like a bird startled by the snap of a bowstring. Every nerve in his body was taut as a string, and a slight touch would make it break.
His pupils dilated. He let out a cry and turned to run. Gu Yi came back to his senses and wanted to call him back, but Lin Ming had already stumbled toward the door.
“You came all this way, why are you leaving?”
Bo Si’s faint voice came from behind Gu Yi.
Bo Si waved his hand, and the glass door snapped shut in an instant!
Lin Ming crashed into the door and bent over in pain.
He slid down the glass door and sat on the floor, looking back. The terror in his eyes deepened, and his body trembled violently.
“I went to the wrong place… I’m not here to buy a coffin!” Lin Ming shouted fearfully, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.
Bo Si stood up and walked toward him step by step, looking down at him. “If you can get here, that means you didn’t come to the wrong place. Your problem lies here. If we don’t help you, then your end will be certain death.”
The moment he heard the word death, Lin Ming’s face went even paler. He shook his head in terror. “I don’t want to die… I accidentally walked here. I wanted to find someone to help me. I saw that the shop said it could help people ward off evil, so I came in… Really? Can you really help me? I really don’t have to die?”
“Whether you live or die, I need to see what happened to you.”
Bo Si flicked ash off his cigarette with his index finger and said, “Gu Yi, make your classmate a cup of tea and let him sit for a while, calm his nerves.”
“Mm.” Gu Yi nodded.
He helped the terrified Lin Ming sit down in the chair, and Gu Yi brought over steaming tea.
The fragrance of tea filled the air, and steam curled upward. Lin Ming took a sip of the hot tea, and his mood finally calmed down quite a bit.
He looked at Gu Yi and voiced his question, “You work here?”
“Yes.”
“That birthmark on your face…”
“I was fine after sleeping for one night.”
Gu Yi did not want to talk too much with him about that subject.
He only wanted to know what Lin Ming had encountered, and why he had come here.
His intuition told him that this had something to do with Bai Nuo.
Maybe because he had only dreamed of her last night.
“Sorry, Gu Yi. In the past, I always bullied you, but that was because I was young and didn’t understand things. I know you’re a good person, so you probably won’t hold it against me, right?”
This came out of Lin Ming’s mouth, and it really shocked Gu Yi.
For so many years, he had never thought that one day Lin Ming would apologize to him.
That rich second-generation who always looked down on people, to be able to say to him now that he had been young and ignorant back then, it seemed he really had encountered a very troublesome problem, or else he was forced by Bo Si’s powerful aura and pressure to bow his head before him.
But at this point, Gu Yi did not want to dwell on it anymore. Anyway, he could never go back to school. From now on, he would have to stay in this coffin shop and work.
“What exactly happened to you?” Gu Yi asked.
Lin Ming’s expression instantly became grave and pained, as if he did not even want to think about it. He scratched at his scalp, and after a long while, he finally gritted his teeth and said with difficulty, “She came back…”
Gu Yi frowned. “She?”
Lin Ming closed his eyes and went for broke. “Bai Nuo.”
“…”
Gu Yi suddenly stood up from his seat.
He moved too abruptly, even knocking over the teacup.
Tea flowed across the tabletop, and before long it dripped down to the floor drop by drop.
Bo Si held a cigarette in his mouth, his gaze falling faintly on Gu Yi.
Lin Ming had completely not noticed Gu Yi’s reaction. He only held the teacup and said heavily, “They’re all dead, the people who saw her, Zhang Qiang, Wang Hao, and Du Ran. They’re all dead. The next one, the next one will be me…”
Bo Si said, “Explain it clearly, or we won’t be able to help you.”
Zhang Qiang, Wang Hao, Du Ran, Gu Yi knew them. They were classmates from the same class. Back then, the boys Lin Ming got along best with were these few, and they were also the ones who bullied him the hardest. When they snatched his jade pendant back then, he had even secretly cursed them to disappear sooner. But now that he heard they were dead, Gu Yi could not quite tell what he was feeling.
Lin Ming took a sip of tea, pretending to be calm, but his whole body was shaking. “The day before yesterday, we were originally doing evening self-study in the classroom as usual. It was then that I saw Bai Nuo walking in from outside the classroom!”
“The day before yesterday?”
Gu Yi frowned.
That was the night he had killed himself. That night he had also been in the classroom, but he had not seen Bai Nuo.
Lin Ming clenched both fists and said excitedly, “It wasn’t just me. Zhang Qiang, Wang Hao, Du Ran, they all saw her! They all looked at me in terror, but I also didn’t know what was going on! Bai Nuo was already dead, how could a dead person come back! And she walked into the classroom just like that, very calmly, as if she were still alive, as if she had only asked for leave and gone out to use the bathroom! She walked into the classroom without calling out, and no one noticed her. She went back to her old seat. I kept watching her. I thought she was a ghost, but she did not seem abnormal at all. She just sat there, quietly reading and doing homework, just like she usually did. I didn’t dare speak, and I didn’t dare go up to confirm it. I could only wait until self-study was over, then secretly follow behind her. I had to see where she was going!”
“You’re pretty bold. Not even knowing whether it was a person or a ghost, and you still dared to secretly follow her.” Bo Si let out a mocking laugh.
“I had no choice!” Lin Ming hugged his head in pain and shouted, “That night, I kept following her. Everything about her was perfectly normal. After finishing her homework, she left the school, and she also took the direction she usually took when going home. I followed her for a long time. She was wearing a red dress, so she was very easy to recognize in the night. I originally thought she was going home, but later she changed direction again. I followed her over, and only then did I discover that she had come to the graveyard. And that was when I finally saw clearly that beneath her long dress, there were no feet at all! She floated all the way to the graveyard!”
“Did you see her enter the grave?” Bo Si asked.
Lin Ming shook his head and said in near collapse, “No! I screamed when I saw that she had no feet. She heard me, turned around, and smiled at me. Her face was very white, the kind of white that dead people have. I was terrified and did not dare look again to see whether she went into the grave. I turned and ran, took a taxi home, and as soon as I got home I hid in my room. I thought that if I fell asleep, everything would be fine, but after getting into bed, I found that there was still a pair of white high heels in front of my bed…”
“I had clearly closed my bedroom door, but she was in my room! On my bed!” Lin Ming suddenly shouted in despair. “When I turned around, she was right in front of me! She was lying on the bed, looking at me like that. That face I had once longed for day and night was so close to me! She smiled and spoke to me. Her voice was very ethereal, as if an echo kept circling by my ear. She said, I did not go home, I am right here, right by your side…”