Li Xiu stared at the scratches on Fang Qianan's body, his face turning pale and blue.
His lips moved, but no sound came out.
In fact, until this morning, when he woke up from the hard bed, Li Xiu was still holding on to the illusion that "everything was just a nightmare."
However, when he sat up in a cold sweat and raised his hand, the pain made this fantasy shatter like a bubble in an instant.
He stared at the fresh teeth marks on the edge of his palm for a long time.
When changing clothes, Li Xiu was not surprised to see the almost blue marks on her ribs.
As they fell, the tall boy had held onto him tightly, squeezing him so tightly that it seemed as if he wanted to squeeze Li Xiu completely into his body. Because of the marks, even now, if Li Xiu breathed even slightly harder, he could feel a dull pain in his ribs.
Li Xiu didn't want to admit that he had encountered a ghost.
However, everything that happened in the past two days made it impossible for him to continue to escape.
"I don't understand... What the hell is going on..." After an unknown amount of time, the pale, shaky boy finally huddled on the sofa, holding his head in his hands, and uttered a panicked whisper. "This kind of thing is totally unscientific!"
"But we met."
Fang Qianan unknowingly sat next to Li Xiu.
Secretly absorbing Li Xiu's body temperature, which was slightly lower than that of ordinary people, Fang Qianan's heart, which had been in turmoil since last night, finally calmed down a little.
"There are ghosts in this world."
He murmured.
"I knew it a long time ago."
*
Fang Qianan's mother is a lunatic.
It was obvious that when Fang Qianan was a child, the woman was a gentle and sweet lady from a noble family, but she became abnormal at some point.
At first, she would just talk to herself inexplicably, then she would see something she didn't see, and then she would go berserk and hurt people. This kind of violence was especially severe when she saw Fang Qianan. Every time Fang Qianan met his mother, he would only get the woman's screams and abuse, or extreme fear.
So since he could remember, Fang Qianan had hardly ever seen his mother.
"...Kids that age usually cry out for their moms, but I never do."
Fang Qianan lowered his head, looked at his toes, and spoke in a low voice.
After a long pause, he glanced at Li Xiu beside him.
"Don't you ask why?"
Li Xiu was stunned for a moment, and then spoke calmly after a moment's delay: "Oh, why?"
Fang Qianan's mouth twitched as he listened to the other party's question without any curiosity.
He took a deep breath.
"Because at that time, I felt that my mother would actually come to my room to see me every night... I would just lie in bed with my eyes closed, feeling her arrival in a state of half-awakeness. Her hair would just rest on my face..."
The young child lay motionless on the bed with his eyes tightly closed.
He could feel his mother's breath and her soft fingertips stroking his cheek. It was a very gentle and careful touch.
Countless times Fang Qianan wanted to open his eyes and throw himself into his mother's arms, but in the end, he held back.
Because of the few times he had contact with his mother during the day, he deeply realized that his mother didn't like him when he opened his eyes.
"Eyes... there's something in his eyes, wuwuwu, didn't you see it? There's something behind his eyes!"
"No, I have to dig it out, otherwise it will run away… Qian'an, don't be afraid, it will only hurt for a moment, Mommy will be fine soon…"
"Don't call me crazy! You just don't know! That thing is there! It's looking at me, it's smiling at me! I saw—"
…
Once, if Aunt Su hadn't arrived in time and stopped the woman, the ignorant Fang Qianan would have had his eyes gouged out by his mother with a spoon. So, even though his mother was by his side countless nights, he didn't dare open his eyes, fearing that the woman's tenderness would leave him in an instant like the daytime.
But he knew that his mother still loved him.
"I've always thought so."
In the lounge, Fang Qianan's face gradually lost all expression.
The boy narrated in an oddly calm tone, "Until one day, I couldn't pretend to be asleep anymore. That day, that woman almost strangled me to death. Because of this, the old man couldn't tolerate having such a crazy person in his house anymore, so he called the mental hospital, tied her up, and sent her away."
"I was so scared. I thought I would never see her again, but she came back in the evening."
"So I opened my eyes that day, and..."
Then, Fang Qianan discovered that the person sitting at the head of his bed every night was not his mother at all.
The "thing" was hunched over, with its back arched high and its neck weak, with only its head hanging down.
Her messy hair hung down, almost covering her entire face.
It was a bloody and shattered face.
Its cheeks had fallen off, and its rotten tongue fell directly from between its white teeth. Smelly blood dripped from the tip of its tongue. And every day, it used this tongue to carefully lick the child's face.
"It has no muscles in its face to move its teeth for chewing or gnawing, so it can only lick."
Recalling the past, Fang Qianan's face became increasingly pale.
Li Xiu: "...It sounds like you were under tremendous stress from the attacks from your biological mother during the day, and your brain automatically transformed your anxiety and fear into nightmares or hallucinations during sleep."
The boy said dryly.
Fang Qianan: "That's what the psychiatrist said."
Everyone told Fang Qianan that it was an illusion or a nightmare.
However, Fang Qianan knew that was not the case, because long after that incident, he would still feel that something was peeping at him in the shadows of the room when he closed his eyes at night.
"Well, if that's the case, haven't you gone to see a master?"
"I did," Fang Qianan answered decisively, "and then I was scammed out of a lot of money."
The lounge fell into silence again.
Li Xiu was silent for a long time, and finally, after a long sigh, he faced the reality with a bleak face.
"Considering that many theories have demonstrated the connection between ghosts and quantum entanglement, let's assume that ghosts really do exist in this world, and we are really unlucky enough to be haunted by them."
Once he began to think about the existence of ghosts in terms of quantum energy, the remaining tremor in Li Xiu's tone gradually dissipated. The boy's face was still very bad, but he seemed much calmer.
"What we need to know now is, what exactly does this ghost want to do?"
Li Xiu gently placed her finger on her lips and unconsciously began to think in the same way as when she was reviewing questions in advance before doing a test paper.
"Let's list the known conditions first... We both fell into a nightmare together. The first incident we both experienced was yesterday when we encountered a ghost wall on the third floor below ground in the complex. No, that's not right. The first abnormality was..."
"It's in the Xiao family haunted house!"
"The wall in the Xiao family haunted house!"
Fang Qianan and Li Xiu blurted out at the same time.
The two of them subconsciously looked up and glanced at each other, and they saw their nervous faces in each other's eyes.
In last night's nightmare, both of them saw the wall covered with talisman paper, and of course, the little red door.
"...Lao Wang's friends accidentally discovered that door in the haunted house, so they thought of taking you there and locking you up as a joke."
But later, when a group of people forcibly took Li Xiu over, they did not find the door in the room.
Then there was the bullying incident, when the wallpaper on that wall fell off, revealing a wall covered in strange talisman paper.
It was from that day on that everything went wrong.
"That thing, it was me...I was wrong. I, I'm sorry."
"oh."
When talking about bullying, the air in the lounge suddenly became stagnant.
The two parties sat upright on the sofa. Li Xiu, the victim, did not show any change in expression, except that her lips were slightly pursed. On the contrary, Fang Qianan looked extremely uncomfortable.
The tall boy scratched his hair vigorously, grunted for a long time, and then looked at Li Xiu awkwardly, his tone sounding extremely weak.
"I know that apologizing is useless, but, but at that time I really was like a ghost possessed."
"…"
"Okay, I didn't like you that much at the time, but the things that happened afterwards, I, I would never have done that before."
He didn't realize that something was wrong before, but now that Fang Qianan recalled it carefully, he realized that his behavior at that time was indeed very strange.
He is not the kind of person who is sensitive to violent behavior. After all, he grew up immersed in violence.
However, he ordered people to hold down the frail boy, took photos, and actively reached out to touch him, and was thrilled to see him unable to struggle but resist...
This is all too complicated and troublesome, and it is not something Fang Qianan would like.
However, it is undeniable that at that time, that kind of thing did trigger a dark and burning heat in my body.
What on earth is wrong with me?
Fang Qianan suddenly hugged his head, and in the moment of self-loathing, his heart suddenly started pounding.
By the way, at that time...
Who was the first to suggest taking Li Xiu to the haunted house?
Those two friends of Wang Rongfa? Wait, who are those two people?
In the midst of the chaos, Fang Qianan heard Li Xiu speak almost indifferently beside him.
"Songcheng, and A-Mazi."
"What?"
"These two people were also in the haunted house at the time, and they were admitted to the hospital the next day." Li Xiu frowned and glanced at Fang Qianan. "Have you forgotten that the dean of studies later came to me about this matter? Considering what happened to the two of us, I can now reasonably suspect that the reason these two scumbags were taken away by ambulance may also be related to the haunted house."
In fact, Li Xiu was not at all happy about Fang Qianan's apology, but now was not the time to continue dwelling on the harm caused by the school bullying.
"Fang Qianan, what happened to the other people who went to the haunted house?"
Li Xiu asked word by word.
*
At the same moment——
Qiming Middle School
Comprehensive Building
Floor: B3
"This damn place, the power is out again..."
"Alas, there's nothing we can do. I heard the foundation wasn't laid properly back then, and now it's leaking water every day. It would be a disaster if there wasn't a problem with the circuit."
With two flashlight beams flickering, two school workers were chatting idly while patrolling on the underground third floor of the comprehensive building.
"It's pitch black, and I can't see clearly. There's just some garbage here, and I don't know what we're here to check."
One of the school workers looked at the tightly closed office doors and the messy piles of cardboard boxes in the corridor and complained continuously.
"We still have to check it out. After all, it's locked until next year. I heard yesterday that the elevator broke down and two students came in. What if they lock people in here?"
Another janitor responded.
Because there was a real problem with the electrical circuit on this floor, and a lot of things had happened in the past two days, the school leaders had no other choice. After a request was made to strengthen the elimination of hidden dangers on campus, the logistics department simply blocked all the seldom-used areas in the school.
The same is true here.
If nothing unexpected happens, this place will probably not be reopened until the next school year when the teaching aids are replaced.
The janitor walked back and forth in the corridor twice and saw that the elevator door had been locked by the iron gate. He did not see anything unusual elsewhere. Then he rubbed his neck and patted his partner's shoulder.
"It's done. I saw something. Let's go. I feel uncomfortable staying here."
The partner didn't want to waste any time in the first place, and when he saw that his responsible and honest partner said so, he was unwilling to delay any longer and hurriedly dragged the person towards the only exit on the third floor below ground.
…
It's gone.
Great, they left and he won again this time, hahahaha, he wasn't fooled...
The school workers had no idea that after they left, in the dark and silent corridor on the third floor below ground, a boy was huddled up in a shivering ball in a seemingly harmless cardboard box.
He listened to the conversation and footsteps leaving with satisfaction, a twisted smile appearing on his face.
I knew it...
Wang Rongfa kept encouraging himself in his heart.
As long as he hides here, those things won't be able to find him.
Therefore, they could only resort to this method, desperately trying to seduce him and make him come out of his hiding place.
What a joke.
He would fall for this kind of trick.
He'll hide well.
Fine.
Never, never let it find out.
Just hide.
Just hide.
He is safe.
Just hide...
hide...
*
With a "click".
The door was locked.
The author has something to say:
Li Xiu: How could there be ghosts in this world! (Fear, trembling, terror)
Li Xiu: Oh, so ghosts are actually just quantum forms of the human spirit? That's fine. (Calm down)