Fang Qianan's consciousness went blank for a moment.
What was that? Flesh? When had he ever eaten something like that?
The boy stared at the contents of the toilet and blinked. When he looked again, he found that the contents had turned into something else.
It was the bite of burger he barely chewed, and...
Some small white particles?
It looks like undigested raw rice. What the hell is this?!
Before Fang Qianan could figure out what he had vomited, the toilet suddenly made a "sizzling" sound, and the automatic flushing device suddenly flushed away all of Fang Qianan's vomit.
The moment the sound of water was heard, Fang Qianan's nerves tensed up reflexively. He took a big step back uncontrollably and hit his back heavily against the door.
Soon, the vortex in the toilet disappeared, leaving only a pool of clear water.
In the toilet, for a moment, the only sounds were the boy's heavy breathing and the sound of the toilet tank being flushed when it was filled.
The white light above the toilet flickered.
A moment later, the compartment door was roughly opened, and Fang Qianan walked out stiffly with a tense face.
Turning on the faucet, Fang Qianan repeatedly splashed cold water on his face, and it took him a long time to calm down. After doing all this, the boy leaned his hands on the sink, took a deep breath, and stared at himself in the mirror.
The mirror reflected a boy with a sullen face and empty eyes. Even Fang Qianan himself had to admit that the guy looked like he was about to die.
Fang Qianan suddenly felt an uncontrollable rage.
"Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron... it's just an illusion, what are you afraid of?!"
He cursed himself in the mirror fiercely, as if this way he could ignore the fear that remained in his body.
The reflection in the mirror still had a gloomy look on its face, like an animal caught in a trap, so powerless and embarrassed. And for some reason, when Fang Qianan looked at "himself", he actually felt that the face looked a little unfamiliar.
Is my expression usually this gloomy?
Fang Qianan unconsciously leaned forward slightly, as if this would allow him to see the reflection in the mirror more clearly.
It was at this moment that he suddenly saw the scene behind him in the mirror - behind him, the door of a compartment opened silently.
Through the crack in the door, Fang Qianan met a pair of prying eyes.
Fang Qianan's heart almost jumped out of his throat.
"Who?! Who's playing tricks?! Get out!"
The boy's voice was hoarse, and an angry scolding came out of his mouth.
"Mr. Fang... yes, it's me."
Behind Fang Qianan, the toilet cubicle door was slowly pushed open. Accompanied by a timid and uneasy mutter, a face slowly emerged from behind the door of another toilet cubicle.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Fang. I saw that you didn't look well, so I didn't dare to come out and disturb you."
"Song Cheng, why is it you?"
Fang Qianan couldn't believe that his luck was so good, because the person who slowly walked out of the cubicle at this moment was exactly the one he was looking for.
Song Cheng, who had just been taken away by an ambulance yesterday, was now in front of Fang Qianan.
In just one day, the boy who had been so aggressive and aggressive yesterday morning was now as weak as a chain-smoker from the old world. His lips had blended into his face, and his eyes were bloodshot. His pupils were dilated, making them appear dark and empty. He looked like a walking corpse wrapped in his school uniform, looking unsettlingly gaunt.
"When were you discharged from the hospital? Why did you suddenly come to school?"
Even Fang Qianan, who didn't care about the little people around him, was shocked when he saw Song Cheng's weak appearance and couldn't help asking.
Song Cheng stood there, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke dryly.
"I, I don't dare stay in the hospital. Apart from school, I... I don't dare stay anywhere else." His throat rolled and his words sounded particularly vague.
As soon as he saw his expression, Fang Qianan immediately understood.
The school bully crossed his arms over his chest and unconsciously lowered his voice.
"You haven't encountered it too, have you?"
He asked.
Sure enough, even though Fang Qianan didn't say anything explicitly, Song Cheng started shaking all over.
"Mr. Fang..." The boy's breathing became rapid, and fear gradually seeped into his voice. "How do you know...how do you know that I..."
[Do you know that I met a ghost? ]
*
In fact, Song Cheng's memory of yesterday morning is very vague.
Thinking about it carefully, he seemed to have gone to trouble the lame man in the morning, but the lame man ran away, and he...
He doesn't remember much after that.
When he regained consciousness, Song Cheng was already in the hospital.
At that time, he had no idea what he had vomited at school. He only knew he was lying in the rest area of the hospital's emergency room, his whole body limp. There was an indescribable smell of plastic in his throat. It was only when the nurse came to change the IV dressing that Song Cheng realized he had just had his stomach washed.
Accompanying him was his mother's personal assistant—his mother had recently become interested in spiritual practice and was currently studying so-called cosmic theories on a small island abroad. The well-maintained woman sighed into her phone screen. First, she asked Song Cheng what he had done. Song Cheng was still confused and couldn't answer, so his mother's face changed, and she muttered a few curse words, which made Song Cheng so annoyed that he hung up the phone.
Song Cheng's father took some time out of his busy schedule to glance at his son. After all, the hospital Song Cheng was sent to was managed by his father. It was a pity that the director of the central hospital was very busy these days. He had very important dinners at noon and in the afternoon.
After learning from the doctor that Song Cheng had food poisoning and was now fine, Song's father did not investigate the matter in detail. He simply left his son to his subordinates and hurried to a dinner party.
Of course, even though his parents are not around, Song Cheng doesn't have to worry about being left unattended.
Even though the director's son only needed some fluids to balance electrolytes and protect his stomach, he didn't have to squeeze into the infusion hall like ordinary people. Someone took care of him and squeezed out a room in the inpatient department for Song Cheng to stay in. That room was previously the veterans' ward, located at the end of a special floor.
It was a single room, very quiet, and comfortably decorated. It felt more like a suite in a luxury resort hotel than a ward.
Lying in the comfortable hospital bed, Song Cheng could vaguely sense that the nurses looked at him strangely every time they came in to change his dressings. But if he really wanted to put his finger on what was wrong, he couldn't put his finger on it.
He could only prick up his ears to listen to the occasional conversations of the nurses outside the door, and all he heard were some incomprehensible words.
"Wow, you said he vomited really..."
"A plate full of maggots, many of them with wings... I don't know what the kids are thinking these days, probably some kind of bizarre challenge..."
"I heard that the nurses over there vomited."
"That's crazy..."
"There's nothing strange about that. Didn't some people stuff eels into their stomachs before? These people now, tsk tsk."
…
What are these nurses talking about?
Song Cheng couldn't figure it out, and the more he thought about it, the more confused his mind became. As he thought about it, he fell asleep in bed.
What woke him up again was the pain in his abdomen.
The pain was bearable at first, but not long after, it became completely unbearable.
[it hurts...]
Song Cheng was groaning in pain on the hospital bed.
He drowsily propped himself up with his arms and tried to press the call bell.
However, my body was so heavy that I couldn't get up.
Was the blanket the nurse covered him with too heavy? Why…why was it so heavy?
Song Cheng endured the pain and opened his eyes.
A dark shadow appeared before my eyes.
Song Cheng's eyes widened in shock. He looked in front of him in disbelief and finally understood why his body was so heavy - an old man in a hospital gown was curled up and squatting steadily on his stomach.
The old man was so old that his age and gender could not be seen, and there was only a sparse layer of white hair on his head.
The skin on his face was loose and squeezed together, and his facial features were deeply sunken in the wrinkles. The only thing Song Cheng could see was the old man's grinning mouth.
Deep red gums were revealed between the shriveled lips, and a few yellow teeth were stuck on the gums, with a few pieces of sticky, dark red flesh hanging on them.
Further down, what Song Cheng saw was the old man's hand.
The old man's nails were so long that they had bent on their own. At this moment, the old man was carefully scratching Song Cheng's belly with his yellow-nailed hands.
Song Cheng saw that there was a long knife wound on his belly.
And the old man... was dragging something soft and red out of the knife wound.
That's Songcheng's intestines.
"Hehe, delicious, this is delicious."
As if noticing Song Cheng's gaze, the old man suddenly turned his head and muttered incoherently to Song Cheng.
"The noodles are delicious."
"Hoo…Hoo…Help…Help…"
Song Cheng wanted to call for help, but the severe pain and fear made his vocal cords completely blocked, and he couldn't shout a word.
He could feel his warm blood flowing out.
The blood soaked through the bedding and even seeped through the mattress.
It dripped onto the ground, forming a small pool of blood on the floor.
At this moment, the old man suddenly moved closer to Song Cheng's face.
Saliva kept dripping from the corners of his mouth.
"Tangyuan." The old man's cloudy eyes stared straight into Song Cheng's. "Tangyuan is delicious too... They don't allow me to eat it...Tangyuan..."
"I want to eat glutinous rice balls!"
With a childishness that was totally inconsistent with his age, the old man shouted and rushed over.
It was not until this time that Song Cheng suddenly remembered that in the wards on this floor, there were actually many elderly people who had completely lost the ability to take care of themselves, and some even had severely deteriorated IQs due to severe Alzheimer's disease.
…
"Ah, so you dreamed that your intestines were eaten as noodles, and your eyeballs were eaten as glutinous rice balls? Damn, your dream is too disgusting."
In the boys' restroom, Fang Qianan was getting a little impatient as he listened to Song Cheng recounting his nightmare in detail.
After confirming that the other party also started having nightmares because of the haunted house, Fang Qianan wanted to ask about "that thing" they experienced together in the haunted house.
"How much do you remember about that day in the haunted house, when we...we bullied Li Xiu together?" Fang Qian'an frowned, his face very unpleasant. "Oh, right, your phone. You did have the camera on at the time recording, right? Give me your phone."
Fang Qianan stretched out his hand towards Song Cheng.
After all the events of the past few days, Fang Qianan was nearly driven insane by hallucinations and nightmares. He no longer trusted his own memory, so the only thing he could trust was the video footage Song Cheng had taken at the time. Fang Qianan desperately wanted to determine how many people, or rather, what, were in the haunted house that day.
"Mobile phone, yes, I took a picture, I took a video."
Hearing Fang Qianan's urging, Song Cheng finally came back to his senses. He lowered his head and began to search his pockets.
"I remember my phone was right here."
After a moment, Song Cheng's tone began to become panic.
"That's weird. Why can't I find my phone? I've always kept it in my pocket."
"Why, why can't I find it?"
While desperately searching for his cell phone, Song Cheng lowered his head and spoke to Fang Qianan in a crying voice.
"Mr. Fang, please turn up the light a little, I can't see clearly..."
Fang Qianan raised his head silently and looked at the bright light in the toilet.
His nerves began to tense.
The temperature in the bathroom seemed to drop suddenly, and the chill, along with the dampness, seeped into Fang Qianan's skin bit by bit. He stared stiffly at the boy in front of him, whose head was lowering and whose movements were becoming more and more strange.
"What, what can't you see?"
Fang Qianan heard himself ask in an extremely dry voice.
"Click, click."
It was the damp, muffled sound of bones rubbing against flesh.
As soon as Fang Qianan finished speaking, he saw Song Cheng raised his head straight up in a very strange way.
He stared at Fang Qianan, and his voice became strange and empty.
"Mr. Fang, it's so strange, why can't I see anything——"
On the boy's face, where his eyes used to be, there were now only two bloody holes oozing out of them.
*
At the same time, the A City Police Department
"Here, Boss, this is something the medical examiner sent. Take a look."
A stack of pictures was placed on the desk.
"The case of Qiming?"
The young policeman in charge of the case was eating while he picked up the photo and flipped it open without any precautions. The next second, he could hardly swallow the takeaway in his mouth.
"What the hell, what is this... a perverted murderer?"
The policeman was considered a man who had experienced many ups and downs, but now, his tone was a little unsteady.
The picture above was a photo report of the student's body they found in the abandoned house in Xiao's Garden. In the photo, the boy from a wealthy family had hollow eye sockets, his eyeballs long gone. There was a very rough incision on his abdomen, and the skin had collapsed downward, because the internal organs that should have filled the abdominal cavity were now gone.
"Don't mention it. I'd rather be a psychopathic murderer."
The policeman standing by turned pale and spoke in a low voice unconsciously.
"This case is incredibly bizarre. The boy had food poisoning and was sent to the hospital. Isn't his father that Song Yidao? So the boy was sent to the elderly ward. And guess what? An old man who had been in a vegetative state for over a decade suddenly regained consciousness. No one knew how he got into the boy's ward... Anyway, by the time they found him, the old man had already dug out the boy's eyes and eaten them."