I twisted the doorknob and pushed the front door open.
The lights flooded the room, revealing opulent interior decor the moment I stepped inside. The place spanned over a hundred square meters, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little envious. The layout was flawless—square and spacious, quiet as a tomb day and night, with barely a hint of outside noise seeping in.
The only downside was the poor natural lighting. That was precisely why the apartments in this building were priced a notch lower than those in the other blocks.
I slipped on a pair of disposable slippers and got to work installing the cameras, placing one in every single room. Once I'd finished calibrating them, live feeds from each corner of the house popped up on my laptop screen.
With all the prep work done, there was nothing left for me to do.
Bored out of my mind, I pulled up a browser and searched for "why do I keep feeling like someone's watching me at home".
To my surprise, the search yielded quite a few results.
Some people claimed that the "watched feeling" wasn't just a figment of the imagination—it was proof that something was indeed spying on you. But this something existed in a different dimension, which meant you couldn't see it, yet it could see you clear as day.
They also said that people with a strong sixth sense were more prone to this sensation, and that it only happened in houses where someone had met a violent, unnatural death.
Therefore, the old saying went—never step outside or open your door after midnight, or you'd be asking for trouble.
I scoffed and closed the browser. I might've bought into this hokum as a kid, even added a bunch of extra details to spook Meng Yifan with it. But I was an adult now; I had zero patience for this kind of superstitious nonsense.
I shut down the webpage and killed some time playing a few rounds of video games. By the time I called it quits, it was nearly eleven o'clock, so I decided to head to the master bedroom and turn in for the night.
I was a heavy sleeper with no trouble adapting to new beds, so I drifted off within minutes of hitting the mattress.
I had no idea how long I'd been asleep when a persistent knocking jolted me out of my slumber.
For someone who slept like the dead, I never bothered stirring at the sound of anything once I was out cold. I still remembered the time when I was little—my dad had worked the night shift and forgotten his keys. He'd banged on the door for hours, but I hadn't woken up to let him in. The next morning, he'd given me a good thrashing before dragging me off to school.
But tonight's knocking was different—it was loud, insistent, relentless, like the person on the other side would keep pounding until dawn if I didn't answer.
Reluctantly, I dragged myself out of bed and trundled over to the door, irritation oozing out of every pore.
"Who's there? It's the middle of the night—did you forget your keys?" I called out without thinking.
But the words died in my throat the second they left my mouth.
I froze. This wasn't my tiny one-bedroom rental apartment—it was someone else's house. And unlike my own place, which I occupied alone, I had no business answering the door for strangers here.
Who the hell could be knocking at this hour?
When no one responded, I leaned in and peered through the peephole.
Standing outside was a young girl, dressed head to toe in black, her feet shod in a pair of bright red high heels. She was stunningly beautiful.
I was about to unlock the door and ask who she was looking for when a random thought popped into my head—something I'd read on that ridiculous website earlier: never open the door after midnight.
Midnight, also known as the witching hour in old folklore, fell between eleven o'clock at night and one o'clock in the morning. I distinctly remembered heading to the master bedroom around eleven, which meant it was well past midnight now.
My hand was already on the doorknob, but I froze, suddenly too nervous to twist it.
It wasn't that I believed in that superstitious garbage, of course. It was just common sense—guys needed to watch their backs too when they were out alone, right?
I cleared my throat and called out again, louder this time: "Who are you? Who are you looking for?"
This time, the girl outside answered, her voice cold and flat, devoid of even a hint of apology for waking me up.
"I'm looking for Li Xiumei. Is Li Xiumei home?"
Li Xiumei? Who the hell was Li Xiumei?
The current homeowner didn't have the last name Li, neither did his wife. I even remembered the surnames of the couple who'd bought the house from us—and Li wasn't one of them either.
If Li Xiumei was some distant relative or friend of the homeowner's, there was no way I was going to call him up in the middle of the night to check.
Annoyed and eager to get back to bed, I shouted through the door: "You've got the wrong place. There's no one named Li Xiumei here."
Silence descended again.
I pressed my eye to the peephole once more. The girl was still standing there, in the exact same spot, her gaze fixed unblinkingly on the door.
A chill ran down my spine. She had to be out of her mind—why wouldn't she leave after being told she had the wrong address?
I retreated to the master bedroom, grabbed my phone and a pack of cigarettes, then holed up in the bathroom for the next ten minutes.
When I finally emerged, I checked the peephole again. The girl was gone.
"Freaking nutcase," I muttered under my breath, letting out a long sigh of relief. I headed back to the master bedroom, ready to pick up where I'd left off and go back to sleep.
Even though I'd been woken up and thoroughly spooked, I still managed to drift off soon after lying down. The rest of the night passed without a hitch—no more knocks, no more weird noises, nothing.
I slept like a log until the urge to pee finally roused me. But as I lay there half-asleep, I heard another sound—a faint murmur, like the noise coming from a television.
But there was no TV in the master bedroom. The only television was in the living room. How could I hear it so clearly from here?
What's more, the bed beneath me felt unusually soft—nothing like the hard mattress in the master bedroom. It felt more like the living room sofa.
My eyes flew open and I sat bolt upright, wide awake in an instant.
I wasn't in the master bedroom. I was on the living room sofa. And the TV was on, casting flickering light across the room.
My heart hammered against my ribs as confusion and terror washed over me in equal measure. I clearly remembered falling asleep in the master bedroom, and I definitely hadn't turned on the TV before going to bed. So who had?
And how the hell had I ended up on the sofa?
By the glow of the TV screen, I noticed several damp puddles of cement on the floor. They looked like shoe prints—strange shoe prints, with a small dot at the back and a sharp point at the front, exactly like the marks left by high heels.
My eyes followed the trail of prints. They led straight from the front door to the master bedroom—and stopped dead at the doorway.
Staring at those eerie footprints, my scalp went numb and my hair stood on end. Without a second thought, I grabbed my phone, not even bothering to put on my shoes, and bolted for the front door. I wrenched it open and ran, sprinting down the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me, not stopping until I'd burst out of Building 3 and stumbled into the middle of the residential complex.
I collapsed onto the ground, gasping for air, my chest heaving.
What the hell were those footprints?
I'd been sound asleep in the master bedroom—who had moved me to the sofa?
A thought flashed through my mind, sending another wave of cold terror coursing through my veins—the girl in black with the red high heels who'd knocked at my door last night.
Had she snuck into the house while I was asleep? Had she turned on the TV? Had she left those cement footprints?
But even if all of that was true, how could she have moved me from the master bedroom to the sofa without waking me up?
The string of bizarre events left me shaken to the core.
Whether it was ghosts or psychos, there was no way I was going back into that house alone.
Fumbling with my trembling hands, I pulled out my phone and dialed Meng Yifan's number, desperate for help.