Fortunately, the window proved unexpectedly sturdy. Despite being battered countless times, it refused to give way. The noise gradually faded, and the eerie shadow beyond the curtains slowly sank out of sight and vanished. The bedroom returned to its usual silence.
But by then, Jiang Chenxin no longer had the courage to go outside—or to sleep. She hurriedly turned on every light in the apartment, curled up on the living-room sofa, and turned the television volume all the way up.
At long last, dawn arrived. Soft morning light spilled in through the windows, and if she listened carefully, she could hear car horns from below. Sunlight filled the living room, and through the floor-to-ceiling windows she could see pedestrians hurrying along the streets of the residential complex. The entire neighborhood was brimming with the bustle of ordinary life.
Jiang patted her chest and breathed a little easier. She decided to hurry to the dormitory and see whether Yingying and the others were all right.
On the way back to school, she called Zhou Ziying, but the line remained busy. She tried calling her other two roommates as well, but their lines were busy too.
A sense of foreboding began to rise within her.
In the familiar dormitory building, many girls were yawning and carrying washbasins back and forth between their rooms and the washrooms. Jiang quickly reached the door of Room 414.
To her surprise, all the strange black hair from before had vanished. The outside of the door was spotless, as if it had just been scrubbed clean.
She nervously knocked on the door.
“Yingying? Are you in there?”
No one answered.
After knocking several more times without receiving a response, Jiang finally steeled herself and wrapped her hand around the doorknob.
There were so many people around her. Even if there was a ghost inside, it wouldn’t dare come out and cause trouble… right?
She braced herself and pushed down on the handle, only to find that the door wouldn’t open.
It was locked from the inside.
Of course—the key! She was one of the room’s residents, after all, and her key was in the handbag she carried with her.
Jiang quickly pulled it out and inserted it into the lock, but the door still wouldn’t open.
The interior sliding bolt had been engaged.
Perhaps to make the girls feel safer, the doors in the women’s dormitory had not only ordinary locks but also an interior sliding bolt for extra protection. Even someone outside with a key couldn’t get in, making the rooms much more secure.
But only someone inside could slide the bolt shut. Why hadn’t anyone inside responded to all her knocking?
Fine sweat broke out across Jiang’s forehead. She gritted her teeth, backed up several steps, and then rammed her shoulder into the door.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”
Jiang was a girl, after all, and lacked the brute strength needed to force the door open. She clutched her aching shoulder, tears nearly springing to her eyes.
A classmate named Qu Shuiping noticed the strange scene and came over curiously.
“Xinxin, even if you forgot your key, don’t ram the door! Why not just call out to your roommates?”
Jiang seized on her like a lifeline.
“Pingping, the people inside are in danger! Help me get this door open!”
“Pfft. This building is full of people. What danger could there be? Your roommates are probably just heavy sleepers. Come sit in my room. Once they wake up, the door will open by itself.”
Jiang was in no mood for that now, so she hurried off to find the dorm matron.
As expected, the dorm matron scoffed at this supposed danger.
“Young lady, I was on duty all night. Not a single person came in during the night. What could possibly have happened to your roommates? If you forgot your key, just say so. I’ll open the door for you.”
“No, ma’am. I have my key, but the door has been bolted from the inside.”
“The bolt? Then call them and wake them up. Or wait until they get up.”
“But I can’t get through to them…”
“All right, enough. Why are you making such a fuss? Kids these days… Your heads are always full of wild ideas…”
After saying that, the dorm matron contentedly resumed cracking sunflower seeds while watching her little television, paying no further attention to the girl’s pleas.
Jiang was utterly helpless and clutched her head in anguish. She knew her roommates were in danger, yet she couldn’t do a thing. Worse still, she might have been the one who had unleashed all of it.
At that moment, another classmate passing by, Sun Huilan, called out to her.
“Xinxin? Why are you standing here spacing out? Perfect timing. Let’s have breakfast in the cafeteria, then register for the new semester together.”
As they walked along a campus path, Jiang looked completely distracted. The campus was so peaceful and lively in the morning, yet three girls in a tiny dorm room had fates hanging in the balance, and no one even knew.
Sun Huilan naturally had no idea what was on Jiang’s mind. Smiling brightly, she took Jiang’s hand and chattered on about trivial matters.
“I heard the school just started a painting club. I’m planning to sign up during next week’s club recruitment. I’ve loved drawing ever since I was little, after all. Why don’t we sign up together? We can go as a pair… Hey, Xinxin, are you even listening to me?”
“Huh?”
It took Sun calling her twice before Jiang came back to herself. She smiled apologetically.
“Sorry. I might not have slept well last night.”
“You must have completely messed up your sleep schedule over winter break and haven’t adjusted yet, right? Those dark circles under your eyes gave you away!”
“Yeah, I guess… By the way, Lan, our rooms are separated by just one wall. Did you hear anything unusual in the middle of the night?”
“Anything? What kind of anything? I slept perfectly well last night.”
“Okay…”
Jiang was in no mood to chat and was completely at a loss about what to do. She knew the truth, but if she told anyone, no one would believe her. Instead, they would only take her for a weirdo. For now, all she could do was remain silent.
There was nothing to be done. Ordinary people couldn’t see ghosts, so naturally they didn’t believe in them. If someone had told her a week ago that ghosts existed in this world—and that there were many of them—she wouldn’t have believed it either.
Yet that was the cruel irony: one day, she suddenly became able to see ghosts, and no one believed her.
Still dazed, Jiang ate breakfast in the cafeteria. She then followed her friend like a zombie to the college office, which had just opened, and completed the registration procedures for the new semester. Afterward, they returned to the dormitory building together.
Sun Huilan was a rather scatterbrained girl and a born chatterbox, so she kept talking the entire way.
“The side path we just passed has another name: Graduate School Recommendation Road. Do you know why? I heard from an upperclassman that one night, a girl was passing through there when some bastard dragged her into the bushes beside the path and raped her. The school was afraid the incident would damage its reputation, so it promised everyone in her dorm recommendations for graduate school in exchange for their silence. That’s how the path got its nickname.”
Jiang was weighed down by her worries and merely offered a few distracted murmurs in reply.
Even someone as scatterbrained as Sun Huilan noticed that something was wrong.
“Xinxin, did something happen? I can’t shake the feeling that you’re… um… acting kind of strange.”
If you had gone through what happened to me yesterday, you’d be acting strange too, Jiang thought with a sigh.
Looking gloomy, Jiang glanced around. An older building stood ahead, with the words “General Administration Building” written across it.
Wait. This place looked familiar…
Right—Cao Cenrong! Wasn’t she the former student counselor from the School of Environmental Science who worked here?
A spark of hope returned to Jiang’s eyes, but first she had to get her friend to leave.
“By the way, Lan, I happen to have something to take care of here. It may take quite a while, so why don’t you head back first?”
Sun Huilan, naturally suspecting nothing, returned to the dormitory ahead of her.
