I started, quickly turning my head around - as expected, it was Xi yong'an. Looking at my expression, he smirked and replied:
-"What's so urgent that you rushed to text and call me down here?"
I breathed a sigh of relief, then recounted every single detail of the strange things I had just experienced to him. After listening, Xi yong'an clicked his tongue:
-"Just now upstairs, I also saw that old man leave. And he was running at an astonishing speed too. This is the first time I've ever seen him willing to leave this place. Perhaps, just as you thought, he has completed his 'mission' of handing the necklace over to you?"
-"I think so too." - I replied in a low voice - "But if that's really the case, things are gradually getting more complicated."
-"Maybe that old man foresaw that you would come to my company, which is why no matter how hard we tried to kick him out before, he refused to leave." - Xi yong'an clicked his tongue again, looking at me scrutinizingly - "Do you really not know him from before?"
-"In my memory up until now, I have truly never met someone like that." - I thought it over carefully and replied.
Xi yong'an patted my shoulder, speaking in a comforting tone:
-"This can be considered important information, but it leans more toward your personal secret, so I don't really know what to advise. Don't worry, I will keep this a secret and won't tell anyone else."
-"Thank you." - I nodded slightly.
My shift today finally came to an end. Although this job was heavy, it actually didn't require much thinking; I did it as if by an unconscious instinct.
Afterward, Xi yong'an led us to the staff rest area:
-"This is your place."
He pointed toward two rooms, numbered 204 and 205, with wooden doors that still looked quite new.
Yashu and I nodded in thanks. Yashu looked quite exhausted after a long day, so she went straight into her room right away. At this moment, only Xi yong'an and I were left standing in the middle of the hallway.
Xi yong'an suddenly patted my shoulder, lowering his voice to ask:
-"Hey, do you really trust me that much? Aren't you afraid I'll steal that precious necklace? Come to think of it, we've only known each other for less than four days."
I looked thoughtfully toward the brightly lit hallway, slowly replying:
-"Do you believe in intuition? I trust you completely unconsciously. It's like... we used to know each other before. I don't know how to explain it either."
Hearing this, Xi yong'an stared at me with wide eyes:
-"Damn, that sounds so spiritual?"
After that, I returned to my new room. This room was much spacious than I thought, far more decent than my old coffee shop place. In the room, there was a quite spacious bed with white sheets, two wardrobes, a small round table, a clothes hanger, and a small-sized toilet-cum-bathroom. There was also a large window with curtains attached. The standard was truly no inferior to a motel.
The first thing I did was put the Sapphire teddy bear under the bed. To be more precise, I hung it on a nail on the frame beneath the mattress. By doing this, even if anyone bent down to look, they wouldn't be able to see it unless they completely flipped the mattress up.
I placed my phone on the round table and plugged it into the power outlet to charge. It had been several days since I last took a bath. Before, at the coffee shop, there was no bathroom, so I could only change my clothes without any scrubbing or washing; thinking back, I was terribly dirty.
But the hitch was that I didn't have any spare clothes right now, only the single set I was wearing on my body. I walked into the bathroom, took off all my clothes to hand-wash them, then hung them up in front of the window frame so they would dry quickly. Once everything was done, I finally started bathing.
Since my clothes weren't dry yet, I had to walk around the room shirtless, wrapping only a blanket around myself. I carefully locked the room door tight, secretly hoping that Yashu wouldn't come looking for me at this moment.
I suddenly remembered, just now while washing clothes, I saw the stack of wages that Manager Ming gave me. Looking at the unusually large amount of ghost currency in my hand, I thought to myself: ( Tomorrow, I must find a way to spend quite a lot of it. ) Keeping this pile of money with me for too long only made me feel a bit uneasy; if it happened to be some kind of hidden tracking device of the ghosts, my life would be over.
And since I happened to have money, tomorrow I would use it to buy a brand new set of clothes. Otherwise, if I keep wearing this same outfit forever, the audience watching probably will get sick and tired of me too.