At the stairwell on the fourth floor of the dormitory building, Jiang Chenxin was panting. She gave her best friend a thoughtful pat on the shoulder.
“Yingying, thanks for going to the airport to pick me up. Dinner’s on me tonight—I’ll treat you to a feast!”
“Hmph. You promised!”
Zhou Ziying dragged her large suitcase into the dorm room first and opened the door. Jiang Chenxin, who was in poorer shape, followed several steps behind. But as soon as she reached the doorway and looked inside, she let out an uncontrollable scream.
A woman in red, drenched in blood, hung dead in the exact center of the dorm room.
Room 414 in Southwest Dormitory Building Three had a fairly traditional four-person layout: a single window and four beds, each raised above an integrated desk and cabinet. An old ceiling fan hung at the center of the ceiling to cool the room in summer.
At that moment, the upper end of a black noose was fastened to the ceiling fan’s support bracket, and a woman in red hung below it.
Her hair was long and loose, spilling over her face and hiding it completely. What was most bizarre was her neck. The noose had stretched it to nearly half a meter, making it as long and thin as an arm. Her body swung beneath it like a pendulum, swaying back and forth with the elongated neck.
Blood continually seeped from every pore in her body, ran down to the tips of her toes, and dripped off. Yet the dormitory floor was spotlessly clean—unnervingly so.
Hearing the scream, Zhou turned around curiously.
“Xiaoxin, what’s wrong? You gave me such a fright.”
Wait. Yingying couldn’t see something this enormous in the dorm? That meant the thing in front of Jiang must be a ghost… probably. Still, the sight of a ghost in such a gruesome state was enough to give Jiang Chenxin a tremendous shock.
Unfortunately, the hanged ghost seemed to have been awakened by Jiang’s earlier scream. The face hidden beneath its long hair twisted unnaturally through a full 180 degrees in place. After twitching grotesquely and awkwardly, it slowly raised its head.
“Bang!”
Jiang Chenxin slammed the door shut and leaned against the wall, gulping down air.
Good heavens, she had lived with such a terrifying ghost for an entire semester! How horrifying was that? Whenever she thought of all those nights when she had slept soundly in bed while the thing swayed right in front of her, every hair on her body stood on end. Even now, she was filled with lingering fear.
Before long, the door was pushed open from inside, and Zhou Ziying glared at her, annoyed.
“Xiaoxin, what are you doing? Why are you acting so jumpy? Tell me, what in the dorm scared you so badly?”
Although Zhou’s body blocked most of the doorway, Jiang could still look over her head and see the hanged ghost. It was facing Jiang head-on too, and beneath the curtain of long hair, its face seemed to be grinning viciously.
Jiang couldn’t bear the sight any longer. She grabbed her roommate and pulled her into the corridor, her expression solemn.
“Yingying, be honest. You really can’t see it?”
Zhou looked baffled.
“See what? We’ve lived here for an entire semester. What could there be in the dorm that we haven’t seen?”
“If I told you there was… something unclean in the dorm, would you believe me?”
Zhou stared at Jiang for a long moment, then doubled over and burst into thoroughly unladylike laughter.
“Hahaha, Xiaoxin, that ghost story is way too fake! There are no ghosts in this world. You’re just scaring yourself. And if there really were a ghost in the dorm, why didn’t anything happen to us last semester?”
Jiang had no answer to that. In truth, she wasn’t even sure whether the thing only she could see was the legendary ghost. Regardless, the woman in red gave her a deeply ominous feeling. At the very least, she didn’t dare move back into the dorm, and she wanted to convince her roommates to move out as well.
As Jiang tried to come up with what to say, a strand of black hair appeared from nowhere. Like a venomous snake, it silently climbed up Zhou’s neck and coiled around it several times. Then its tip began inching toward Jiang.
Jiang could no longer contain her fear and bolted. Zhou merely watched her retreating back.
“What a weirdo.”
Then she returned to the dorm.
Jiang did not stop until she reached the area outside the dormitory building. Panting heavily, she looked toward the fourth floor, still shaken.
Apparently, the strand of hair hadn’t followed her. She had no idea what would happen if it caught her, but she would rather die than ever return to that cursed place.
Just then, two girls came up holding hands and stopped in front of her.
“Hey, Xiaoxin! You’re back already?”
Jiang looked up and saw her other two roommates, Yang Xiaomeng and Xu Fei. Each was dragging a large suitcase behind her, and they looked as though they had only just returned to school.
Jiang’s face was pale from the fright she’d just suffered, and Yang Xiaomeng quickly noticed that something was wrong.
“Xiaoxin, are you sick? You look awful.”
Having learned her lesson, Jiang didn’t dare mention the word ghost and simply played along.
“Maybe I’ve caught a chill lately. By the way, why did you two come back together?”
Xu Fei was a short, slightly plump girl who resembled a teddy bear.
“We’re both from around here, and our homes happen to be close, so we came back together. We only needed one taxi. Looks like you’ve already gotten settled. We’ll go upstairs and put our things away. Tonight, all four of us are going out for seafood together!”
The two roommates went inside one after the other. Jiang Chenxin did not have the courage to follow. After hesitating for a moment, she headed to the university library.
*I need to find a place fast. There’s no way I’m sleeping there tonight.*
Every time she recalled that eerie hanged woman, Jiang couldn’t stop herself from shivering—even in broad daylight.
The library had public computers, so she sat down at one and searched through rental listings in the area. Nanan University was located in the city center, with several residential complexes nearby. There were plenty of available places, but none of them were cheap. Even a modest studio cost at least 3,000 yuan a month—that was Jiang’s entire monthly living budget. On top of that, she would have to pay the utilities and Internet herself. At that rate, she’d really be reduced to eating dirt every day.
She wanted to persuade her best friend, Zhou Ziying, to move out with her, but Zhou didn’t believe in things like unclean spirits. Instead, she kept demanding over the phone to know why Jiang had suddenly decided to move out.
With no other choice, Jiang turned her attention to shared rentals. As luck would have it, a young office worker in Jingwei Residential Complex, very close to the university’s west gate, was due to leave that very evening for a two-week business trip. She was desperate to settle on a suitable tenant, since having someone cover part of that month’s rent would be a risk-free deal.
After talking on the phone, the two women quickly met at the apartment and talked things over. One was eager to find a place, while the other was eager to rent out a room. Since each took the other for a harmless woman, they quickly signed the lease.
Jiang Chenxin finally let out a long sigh of relief. At last, she wouldn’t have to sleep in that dorm tonight. All that remained was to return to school and move her luggage over.
Unfortunately, she had ultimately underestimated the hanged woman.
