Xin Huohuo shrieked, and her phone clattered to the ground.
There was still nothing in front of her.
No desiccated corpse, no ghost, but she could feel "him" all around her, just out of sight.
For some reason, the words she'd said earlier echoed in her ears: "There are no such things as ghosts in this world, but if you keep talking about them, one might just pop out of nowhere!"
"What's wrong? What's wrong?" Zhang asked, walking out of the cold storage with pork chops in hand.
Xin Huohuo jumped again, nearly letting out another scream.
Once she recognized him, she stammered, unable to speak for a long moment. Only when she felt the blood start to flow through her veins again did she slowly crouch down and pick up her phone.
As expected, the screen was dead.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, you're so pale," Zhang said with a chuckle. Seeing Xin Huohuo's startled expression, he explained, "I overheard the story you were telling to scare those little punks. It was pretty spooky."
"I was just making it up," Xin Huohuo said, her throat feeling a little dry.
"Maybe it's real. There was a case like that back in my hometown. A son got married, but his wife didn't want to live with his elderly mother, and they didn't have a spare room. That ungrateful son pressured his mother every day, even cursing his own mom and telling her to go die. The old lady felt she had no choice. She didn't want her son to be unable to marry, but she was in despair, so she jumped from a building and killed herself. The pool of blood on the ground was blindingly red, and they could never wash it out. It looked like the shape of a dog. You know the saying, 'A son never thinks his mother ugly, and a dog never thinks its home poor.' That bastard was worse than any animal. Well, not two days later, the son went mad. He'd kneel and call anyone he saw 'Mom.' And his eyes... TSK TSK... they were terrifying. They were the eyes of an old woman." Zhang casually recounted the story, but when he turned and saw Xin Huohuo's face had grown even paler, he quickly started preparing the pork chop rice. "You don't look so good today. You're probably just hungry. All this physical labor tonight is no joke."
Xin Huohuo nodded vaguely, but the chill on her skin wouldn't subside. Instead, it washed over her in waves.
She hugged her arms and glanced at the flames on the gas stove. "Anyway, we're in the kitchen. No evil spirits can get in here, right?" She tried to comfort herself. 'The kitchen has so much fire energy. Those... those things wouldn't dare come in.'
"Who told you that? The kitchen is a place of yin!" Zhang corrected her earnestly. "The back kitchen is always situated at the very back, on the shady side that never sees sunlight. And even though there's fire, there's also a lot of water, which suppresses the fire. Water is yin-aligned, not to mention all these pipes that are who-knows-how-old. And think about it, our back kitchen is right next to a small alley that no one uses and has no streetlights..."
"It's getting stuffy in here. I'm going out front for some air!" Xin Huohuo couldn't listen anymore. She didn't know if it was just in her head, but she felt the back kitchen getting colder and colder, as if the air conditioning was on full blast.
She ran straight out the front door and stood outside.
The restaurant faced the street, a bustling one at that. So even though it was the middle of the night, the streetlights were bright, and neon signs flashed continuously. Cars of all kinds passed by from time to time, the roar of their engines mixing with the sound of the wind. The thick presence of human life seemed to surge in from all directions, enveloping her.
A metropolis is a city that never sleeps.
'But now that it's so late, are humans heading home the only ones still wandering the streets?'
Regardless, she walked a little further away, until the restaurant's entrance was far behind her. Only then did the chill on her body finally begin to fade. Soon after, Zhang came out with the pork chop rice, and the two of them sat on the curb, eating in silence.
"Is it not good?" Zhang asked, looking at Xin Huohuo.
"Why would you say that?" Xin Huohuo asked, stunned, looking at her empty food container.
"Because you don't look happy," Zhang said. "Do you know why I like to cook you special meals?"
"Because I'm poor?"
"Because you look so happy when you eat. As a chef, that brings me a lot of joy."
"Well... I was just thinking that I'm going to get fat from this. A horse doesn't get fat without a midnight snack..."
Zhang laughed and patted Xin Huohuo's head. He was about to say something when a massive explosion suddenly erupted nearby. The resulting shockwave threw them both to the ground. Luckily, they were some distance away, so they didn't fall too hard.
They turned to see the restaurant's front door had been blown off its hinges and was hanging precariously. Glass littered the ground. Across the street, the alarms of parked cars blared from the shock. From their vantage point, they could see the glow of a fire coming from the back.
"What happened?" Zhang and Xin Huohuo ran over.
"Looks like a gas explosion in the back kitchen," Xin Huohuo said, pulling Zhang further away in case of a secondary explosion. The strange smell filling the air supported her guess.
"I'm absolutely certain I turned off the open flame, and I didn't notice any gas leak before," Zhang explained, looking dazed.
"The restaurant's pipelines are severely outdated. We've brought it up so many times..."
"It's a good thing we came out, otherwise... we'd be dead or seriously injured." After a moment of shock, Zhang finally came to his senses. "Huohuo," he said, still shaken, "I knew you were a lucky charm. Even your unintentional actions can help people avoid disaster..."
"But how? How?" Standing at a distance, Xin Huohuo could only repeat those two words.
The face of the desiccated corpse that had appeared in her camera flashed through her mind. For some reason, she felt that this inexplicable explosion might be connected to that strange phenomenon.
"Quick, call the police! No, the fire department! No, call both!" Zhang ordered frantically. "I'll call the boss!"
At this moment, Xin Huohuo couldn't think at all. She just passively took out her phone. Before she could even trace her unlock pattern, her fingertip seemed to accidentally touch a crack on the screen, and the screen suddenly lit up.
And it opened directly to the photo album she could never find!
Inside the album were the six consecutive selfies she had taken in that building. When the hallway lights had dimmed, the photos only captured the silhouette of her shadow. When the hallway lights had brightened, they were photos of her with a certain "person." Right beside her head, resting on her shoulder, was the face of a desiccated corpse.
Gleaming white teeth, and tear-filled eyes...
And her own smile was bizarre, so unfamiliar she looked like a different person, with heavy, dark circles under her eyes.
'It followed her! It followed her to the restaurant!'
"What are you spacing out for? Hurry up and call the police!" Just as Xin Huohuo felt an icy chill run through her, a sudden slap landed on her back with a crisp SMACK.
It snapped her back to reality. She almost subconsciously followed the order, hastily closing the album and dialing the emergency number. After speaking with the police and hanging up, she suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. Zhang was standing in front of her; he couldn't have been the one to slap her on the back. Besides, the voice had clearly been a woman's.
'The mother's ghost! Was it real? I was just making things up... did my big mouth actually make it come true?'
She looked toward Zhang, and at that exact moment, he turned to face her.
The growing, flickering light from the fire reflected on his face, illuminating the strange, smiling lines around his lips.
He beckoned for her to come over, but she couldn't even move her feet.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Only then did Xin Huohuo start to feel a little better, as if the whole thing had been a nightmare—one that had arrived in full force and vanished just as suddenly.