That night, after sweeping up the last of the hair clippings, I bent down to grab the dustpan. The pile of hair inside looked wrong somehow. I leaned closer, and a chill ran down my neck. Those clippings were ash-gray—like burnt paper ash—crumbing at the touch of my fingers, leaving a fine powder on the bottom of the pan.
I squatted there, frozen. Only three customers all day: one getting a dye job, one a haircut, one just trimming bangs. None were over forty. This handful of gray hair didn't belong to any of them.
Whose was it?
My name is Zhou Ping, twenty-six, working at a barbershop called "Top Skill" on Yulin Road. Small place, two chairs. The boss is Wu, in his forties—I call him Brother Wu. Been here almost two years, life's been pretty uneventful. I never believed in ghosts or anything supernatural.
Until that day. March 14th, Tuesday.
Brother Wu left at five to celebrate his daughter's birthday, telling me to clean up and close early. I sat alone until nearly nine, a few regulars came and went. At 9:30 I checked the clock, figuring I'd wait another ten minutes before shutting down.
Five minutes to ten, the door opened.
There's a small bell on the door that usually jingles when pushed. That night it didn't. Just a cold wind rushing in, making me shiver. March nights are chilly, but this was different—it went straight to the bone.
I looked up. A man stood in the doorway.
Black trench coat, collar turned up hiding half his face. Black pants, black shoes—head to toe in black, standing there perfectly still.
I can't explain why, but I didn't want to take him as a customer. It was a strange intuition. I'd been cleaning tools, but the moment I saw him, my fingers just stopped moving.
"Sorry, we're closed," I said, putting down the broom and forcing a smile. "Come back tomorrow."
He didn't move. Didn't say a word. After a few seconds of silence, he reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a wallet, and laid several bills on the counter. I glanced at them—bright red, at least five or six hundred yuan. Enough for twenty or thirty haircuts.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. I only make four or five thousand a month. But still, I didn't reach for it. "Really, it's too late. Please come tomorrow," I said, smiling again.
He didn't speak, just pulled out a few more bills. Now it was definitely over a thousand.
I stared at that money for a few seconds. Then I thought—how bad could a haircut be? Maybe he's just a rich guy who doesn't talk much. There's all kinds of people in the world. A thousand yuan for a haircut—might as well take it.
"Fine," I said, leaning the broom against the wall and walking to the chair. "Have a seat."
He walked over and sat down. Not a sound the whole time. The shop has tile floors—leather shoes should make noise—but he made none.
I unfurled the cape and draped it over him from behind. The moment it settled, his body stiffened—just for an instant—then relaxed. I tied the strap at the back and glanced up at the mirror.
Something was wrong in the reflection.
The chair back, the cape color, my own face—all clear. But his face... I couldn't make it out.
The features were there, but blurred—like looking through frosted glass, or a TV with no signal showing static. I could feel him staring at me through the mirror, but no matter how hard I tried, his face wouldn't come into focus.
I blinked. Blinked again. Still blurry.
"What style do you want?" I asked, my voice unnaturally loud.
"Whatever," he said. His first words.
That voice... hard to describe. Just a regular man's voice, but it made my skin crawl. It sounded like he was speaking from far away, yet also right next to my ear. The two sensations warring together made my shoulders hunch up involuntarily.
I swallowed and picked up the clippers. I'd had them for half a year—they always hummed when I turned them on. That night I pressed the switch three times. Nothing. I checked the cord, thinking it was unplugged. The socket was fine, the switch was fine—but no power.
Brother Wu used to ramble about how in this line of work, scissors and clippers are always touching people's heads, absorbing human energy, so sometimes they malfunction for no mechanical reason. I'd thought it was just a story. But as I knelt there fiddling with the clippers, every word came flooding back.
Fourth press—it started. I stood up, took a breath, and began cutting.
His hair was impossibly dry. Running the clippers through it felt nothing like human hair. More like cutting a bundle of dried grass—brittle and coarse, muffling the clippers' sound. The clippings fell onto the cape, onto my hand. I glanced down—the hair on my hand wasn't black. It was gray-white, pale and washed out.
I grew more uneasy. But halfway through a haircut, you can't just throw someone out. I forced myself to continue—sides, back, around the ears, then the nape. I switched to scissors for details. His head stayed perfectly still the whole time—not tilting, not nodding, not lifting. Like a mannequin in front of me.
This silence was worse than anything. Barbers know—customers not talking is normal. But not moving at all? Rare. Everyone has small movements: blinking, licking lips, adjusting posture, at least a slight rise and fall with breathing. Not him. Nothing.
When I got to the back, I don't know what came over me, but I glanced at the mirror again. His face was still blurred. But this time I noticed something else—the eyes.
My eyes in the mirror: black pupils, normal. But on his blurred face, where the eye sockets should be—empty. No pupils, just white. Two blurry white lights staring at me through that frosted mirror surface, unblinking.
My hand shook. The scissors nearly slipped from my grasp.
"What's wrong?" he asked. The voice came from the mirror, but I could clearly see his mouth hadn't moved.
I stepped back, clutching the scissors to my chest, blades facing him. I didn't know what good it would do—I just needed something in my hand. Scissors are my livelihood, sharp. Holding them gave me courage.
"Nothing," I said, my voice thick like I'd swallowed a stone. "Just checking the angle."
He said nothing more. The only sound in the shop was the clock on the wall—tick, tick, tick. It had never seemed so loud.
I steadied myself, moved to his right, and finished the last few strands. I put down the scissors and picked up the hand mirror—standard procedure, showing the customer the back.
I stood behind him, holding the mirror at the back of his head, adjusting the angle.
The mirror showed nothing.
Not even blur. Just complete emptiness. It should have reflected the back of his head, but instead there was a black void—like someone had poured ink over it. Yet through that blackness, I could clearly see my own fingers gripping the handle, every knuckle distinct. The mirror wasn't broken. The problem was with what it was reflecting.
"Done," he said.
I lowered the mirror, walked around to the front, and undid the cape. As I shook it out, the clippings floated up into the lamplight—and that's when I saw them clearly: every last one was gray-white. Not a single black hair.
He'd never had black hair. So what was that blackness I saw when he walked in?
...I didn't want to think about it.
He stood up. His movements were stiff, lifting himself section by section. No brushing off hair, no checking the mirror—nothing. Just stood there, facing me directly.
"How much?"
"The money on the counter is enough," I said.
He turned toward the door. His steps were light, almost floating—like walking on cotton. The door opened. The bell still didn't ring.
I clutched the cape, watching him leave. That's when I noticed the cape felt wrong. I looked down—thick gray ash covered it, not hair clippings. I shook it, and the ash fell in a small pile onto the tiles.
The money was still on the counter. I went over and picked it up—twelve bright red hundred-yuan notes. I examined them repeatedly: watermark, gold thread, texture—all there. Real money.
Holding that stack made me even more uneasy than before.
I rushed to the door and pulled it open. The street was empty. Streetlights cast a sickly yellow glow. A taxi drove slowly past in the distance, its taillights painting a red streak before disappearing around the corner. He was gone. Seconds had passed. A straight road—where could he have gone?
I locked the door, leaned against it, and gasped for breath. My heart thundered, pounding in my temples.
When I calmed down, I swept the floor, folded the cape, cleaned the counter. Then I went back, pocketed those twelve bills. Money's money, after all.
At home I took a long hot shower, but the chill in my bones lingered. I tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. That man's image kept looping in my mind. The more I thought, the wronger it felt. I'd cut his hair, yet I couldn't remember what his hair looked like. Long or short? Round face or long? Nothing. His appearance had slipped from my memory, erased like someone had taken an eraser to it—leaving only a blurry black shadow.
The next morning I arrived half an hour early. Brother Wu was already there, smoking at the door. I told him everything that happened the night before. He held his cigarette motionless for so long the ash grew thick, then fell and broke on the ground.
He looked at me with that "you messed up" expression.
"You cut his hair?" Brother Wu asked.
"I did."
"The whole thing? Shampoo, cut, trim, mirror check—all of it?"
"No shampoo. He sat down, I cut right away."
Brother Wu crushed the cigarette under his foot and lit another. His hand shook as he struck the lighter—I saw it clearly.
"Wait here," he said, pulling out his phone. "Old Zhou? You free? Come to the shop, something's up."
Old Zhou was the oldest barber in the Yulin Road circle—been in the business most his life, seen everything. Sixty-five, tall and thin, hunchbacked, his face a map of deep wrinkles.
He arrived in twenty minutes. Brother Wu pulled down the rolling shutter halfway, and we sat together in the shop. I told the story again—gray hair clippings, silent footsteps, blurry face in mirror, empty eye sockets, nothing in the hand mirror, ash on the cape.
Old Zhou listened without interrupting. When I finished, he was quiet for a long time, then slowly nodded—like he'd expected it.
"Little brother," his voice was like smoke cured for decades, "what you met—we have a name for that in this trade. They're called 'Replacement Guests.'"
Replacement Guest. The words barely left his mouth when the shop lights flickered. Just for an instant, gone before I could blink. Neither Wu nor Old Zhou reacted—maybe I'd imagined it.
"These guests don't come for haircuts. They come looking for replacements. When you cut their hair, you take on their burden. The hair you cut isn't just hair—it's your life. You're not losing anything else—you're losing your lifespan."
My mouth went dry. I couldn't speak.
"This isn't a scare," Old Zhou said calmly, like talking about the weather. "My master's generation saw it. Back in the state-run barbershop days, my master's senior brother had one come in before closing—same thing. After cutting, the man vanished, the cape was covered in ash. That old master didn't live past that winter. Three months short of fifty."
Silence fell. Brother Wu's cigarette burned down to the filter, burning his fingers before he dropped it. I sat in the chair—the same one that man had sat in—and felt a cold wind brushing down my spine.
"How do we fix this?" Brother Wu asked first. "Is there a way?"
Old Zhou glanced at me, that knowing look of someone who's seen too much: "Every case I've heard of ended badly. But it's not completely hopeless."
"What do you mean?"
"My master said these Replacement Guests don't pick people at random. They're drawn to something specific—same street, same zodiac sign, even same hometown. You need to figure out why it picked you. Once you know that, there's a slim chance."
Old Zhou stood up, saying he had a client waiting. Before leaving, he patted my shoulder—his hand dry and bony, but surprisingly strong, making my shoulder sink.
After he left, Brother Wu lit another cigarette.
"Why don't you take a few days off? Don't worry about pay."
I shook my head. It wasn't that I didn't want to rest—I was scared to be alone. That image of him sitting in my chair kept replaying in my head, endless.
"Wait," Brother Wu suddenly stood up and walked to my station, crouching to examine the floor. Some gray powder still clung to the tile grout. He scraped a bit with his finger and sniffed it.
"What does it smell like?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just ash. Like burnt paper ash."
I didn't know what burnt paper smelled like, but I could imagine. When I was little, we'd burn paper money for ancestors during Chinese New Year. The leftover ash was that same gray-white powder—fine, easily scattered, no scent. If those hair clippings were really that stuff... what had been sitting in front of me that night?
The thought made goosebumps rise on my arms.
Brother Wu pulled up the shutter, letting sunlight flood in. It warmed my skin, but the chill in my bones remained—sunlight couldn't reach it.
"Don't be alone these days," Brother Wu said. "Don't work late—close on time. And no new customers. If someone you don't know comes in, say you're booked. I'll ask around."
Business went on as usual. Around three, an older woman came in for a perm—Brother Wu's regular. As he wrapped her hair in rollers, she mentioned Yulin Road had been strange lately: a month ago, someone on an electric bike got hit by a truck at the intersection; then the elevator in the old building next door broke, trapping a man inside all night—when security finally pried it open the next day, he was babbling that he wasn't alone in there.
I listened, not really paying attention. Street gossip happens every day. But Brother Wu's expression changed after hearing it, and he changed the subject.
After the woman left, Brother Wu turned to me: "Remember that guy who died in the building across the street last month?"
I thought about it—yeah. One morning I'd seen an ambulance and police car parked there, a crowd gathered. Later, Old Wang from the convenience store next door said a tenant had died at home, discovered days later.
"That tenant," Brother Wu lowered his voice, "was in his thirties, lived alone. No one knows how he died. But neighbors said before he died, they'd see him wandering downstairs late at night—all in black."
I looked at Brother Wu. He looked back at me.
"Probably just a coincidence," he said, cutting it off himself.
That night Brother Wu insisted on walking me home. My place was only ten minutes away, but he walked me to the building entrance and watched me go in before leaving.
I washed my face first—cold water jolted me awake. In the mirror, I looked terrible: yellowed eyes, pale lips, like I'd just recovered from a fever. I leaned closer—there was a patch of discolored skin behind my left ear, gray like smudged dirt. I scrubbed hard with a towel—it wouldn't come off. I touched it—it felt rough, like a callus.
I took off my shirt and turned to look at my back in the mirror. My breath caught.
Down the center of my back, along my spine, was a palm-sized patch of gray. Not dirt, not a bruise. The skin itself had changed color, like faded fabric. When I touched it, it felt stiff, dull—I could barely feel my fingertips, like there was something between us, numbing the sensation.
I stood there staring at the mirror for a long time. A buzzing filled my ears, like a fly trapped inside. Old Zhou's words suddenly felt real—sticking to my back, embedded in my skin, impossible to scrub away.
The next morning Brother Wu called Old Zhou again. After hearing about the gray patch on my back, Old Zhou was quiet for a moment, then said: "I'll take you to see someone."
That "someone" was Liu—later I called her Sister Liu. In her forties, living on the top floor of an old building in the suburbs. Her place smelled of sandalwood, and the walls were covered in things I didn't understand—paintings of human spines and seven dots on top of heads, connected by red lines. Later I learned those were the seven chakras, tools of her trade.
Sister Liu had me take off my shirt and stand with my back to her. She didn't touch me at first—just stood there for several minutes. I could feel her eyes scanning my back, then a cold finger gently pressed the center of the gray patch.
"Feel anything here?"
"A little... not much."
Her finger moved down two inches: "Here?"
"More numb."
Two inches lower, to my waist. When her finger pressed, I barely felt anything—just a faint pressure.
"Here?"
"Almost nothing."
Sister Liu withdrew her hand, walked around to face me, and sat down. Her expression was calm, like she'd confirmed something she already knew.
"Do you know how many vertebrae are in the human body?" she asked, out of the blue.
I shook my head.
"From the top of the head to the base of the spine, there are fifteen major joints," she traced a line from her own head down with her finger. "Seven cervical, five thoracic, three lumbar—you don't need to remember. Just know this: that gray on your back is moving. Starting from the back of your neck, down along the spine. Each vertebra it passes, the gray deepens. When it finishes all fifteen..."
She didn't need to finish.
Sister Liu rested her hands on her knees, thumb rubbing her knuckles slowly: "Old Zhou told me about the Replacement Guest. My master's generation had a saying: 'Replacement takes life, vertebrae mark the way. Fifteen days complete, the lamp goes out.' The speed, direction, and spread of that gray patch on your back matches exactly."
I heard my own breathing—ragged and heavy.
"What day is it now? Since you cut his hair."
"Day... three."
"The gray on your back has already covered the third vertebra. Exactly as I calculated."
Brother Wu cut in: "Then how do we break this?"
Sister Liu turned to me: "First, you need to find out who he was. Replacement Guests don't appear out of nowhere. He probably lived on this street, or nearby, or had some connection to you. Find out his story—what he was doing before he died, his link to the barbershop."
"Once we find out, can we fix it?"
She looked at me, something unspoken in her eyes: "Finding out gives you a chance. If you don't... count the fifteen days yourself."
On the way back from Sister Liu's, Brother Wu and I stood on the sidewalk, both grim. Brother Wu lit a cigarette, took two puffs, then said: "That building across the street. The tenant."
I nodded.
It was an old six-story walkup, no elevator. The stairwell was cluttered with junk and dusty bikes. The apartment in question was on the fourth floor—402. The door still had faded Spring Festival couplets, their edges curled.
Brother Wu knocked on 401 next door. An elderly man in his sixties opened the door—bald, wearing a faded blue undershirt. Brother Wu handed him a cigarette, explained we were from the barbershop across the street, asking about something. The old man took the cigarette and started talking.
The tenant in 402 was Chen, lived alone. The old man said he kept to himself, never spoke even when they passed in the hallway—always looking down. The strongest impression was how black he wore. No matter when you saw him, head to toe black. How he died—the old man wasn't sure, heard it was a heart attack, gone in his sleep. Discovered days later when the neighbor across the hall smelled something.
Then the old man leaned in, voice dropping like it was a secret: "That apartment hasn't been rented since. The landlord had someone clean it, but they quit halfway through—said something felt wrong, made their heart race."
Brother Wu handed him another cigarette, asked if he could contact the landlord. The old man waved him off—no phone number, told us to call the rental ad on the door.
The ad was taped to 402's door with clear tape—A4 paper, edges curling, handwriting messy, a phone number scrawled at the bottom. I took a photo, and we left.
Back at the shop, I dialed the number. It rang for a long time before a middle-aged man answered, loud voice.
"Hello?"
"Hi, I saw your rental ad for the place on Yulin Road—"
"Not renting anymore," he cut me off.
"I'm not here to rent. I wanted to ask about the previous tenant."
Silence on the line. I called "Hello?" twice. Then he spoke, voice lowered: "Who are you to him?"
I thought quickly: "I'm a friend. Haven't heard from him in a while, heard what happened, wanted to know."
"Friend?" The landlord's tone was odd, like he found it funny. "That Chen guy? He had no friends. Lived here two years, never had anyone visit—ever. No calls during festivals, no packages. What kind of friend are you?"
My mouth opened, but I had no reply. Brother Wu took the phone from me.
"Hello sir, I'm Wu, owner of the barbershop across the street." His voice was steadier. "A man in black came to my shop the other night for a haircut. I'm wondering if it was your tenant Mr. Chen. If so, he left something here, and I'd like to return it to his family."
Another silence—longer this time. I could hear him lighting a cigarette, the snap of the lighter, then a long inhale.
"He has no family. Police checked—parents dead long ago, no siblings, never married. After he died, the community disposed of all his things—burned what could be burned, threw out the rest. Phone, wallet, clothes—all gone."
"Is there anything left?" Brother Wu pressed. "A photo, anything? We just want to confirm if it's the same person."
The landlord hesitated, then said reluctantly: "There was a wooden box in the nightstand. The cleaners found it—seemed to have photos or something inside. I didn't look, told the community to take it. Ask them, don't call me again."
He hung up. Brother Wu handed the phone back, his brow furrowed.
"Community office," he said, chewing the words. "We'll go tomorrow."
That night I refused to sleep alone. Brother Wu took me to his place, and I crashed on the living room sofa. I woke up in the middle of the night—not from a nightmare, but from the cold. Brother Wu's heating was on full blast, but the chill came from inside me, seeping out. Throwing on a blanket didn't help. I lifted my shirt to check my stomach—the gray had spread to my chest, snaking from my spine across my front, like something was oozing out from within.
Early next morning we went to the community office—a short building at the end of Yulin Road, its glass door covered in notices and posters. A woman in her thirties greeted us. She was friendly enough, but her smile faded when we mentioned the deceased tenant Chen.
"Who are you to him?"
Brother Wu used the "friend" story again. She looked us over, skeptical, but went to the filing cabinets in the back and returned with a plastic bag.
"This is all that's left of his things. Police took his phone, the rest is here."
Inside the bag: a small wooden box, a key labeled "402", an empty wallet, and a photo.
My hands shook as I picked up the photo.
It showed a man in profile, all in black, standing in a stairwell. The lighting was dim, his face unclear. But that outline, that build—I knew it instantly. Him. The man who'd walked into the shop that night.
I flipped it over. On the back, written in faint ballpoint pen, like the writer had pressed hard: "If you find this, you're clever enough."
I didn't know who he'd written it for. But in that moment, I knew he hadn't picked me randomly. He'd been waiting for me.
The woman said the wooden box was from the nightstand—she hadn't opened it. I shook it—something inside clinked, not paper, more like plastic and metal.
We thanked her and left. Standing on the sidewalk, I opened the box.
Inside: an ID card, a hotel keycard, and a small bundle of hair.
The ID was his. Name: Chen Mo. Age: thirty-three. Address was a county I'd never heard of, valid for three more years. The keycard was from a nearby chain hotel—room 508. The check-in date was worn off, unreadable.
Most striking was the hair: black, tied with red thread, lying quietly at the bottom. Dry, dull, but definitely black.
Brother Wu examined the keycard and ID: "We need to go to this hotel."
"Why?"
"He rented an apartment here for two years, but still got a hotel room? Why would a single man do that? Who with?"
Brother Wu stared at me, saying something that made my blood run cold: "He might not have just been a Replacement Guest. He was doing this while he was alive."
We rushed to the hotel. The front desk checked room 508's records—checked in March 12th, stayed two days, checked out March 14th. March 14th—the same night.
The front desk said no one had stayed in that room since. When housekeeping cleaned after checkout, they found a strange smell—hard to describe, made people dizzy. The manager got worried, locked 508, and had someone check the vents and AC—nothing wrong.
Brother Wu talked the front desk into giving us the key, saying we'd left something there. The girl hesitated before handing it over, whispering: "That room's weird. Don't be scared when you open the door."
Room 508 was at the end of the hall. The corridor was long, with dark carpet, all doors closed, lights dim. The light at the end was broken, so the room number was hidden in shadow—had to get close to see it.
Brother Wu unlocked the door.
Standard room, not big. Double bed, nightstand, desk, chair. The curtains were drawn tight, the room dark. Brother Wu felt for the light switch by the door—pressed it a few times, nothing. The AC panel was also dark, like the power was cut.
We turned on our phone flashlights. The bed was made perfectly, pillows fluffed—like no one had slept there. The nightstand was empty except for the hotel phone. The desk was bare, chair pushed neatly under it.
Everything was normal. Too normal. Normal enough to make your skin crawl.
Brother Wu walked straight to the window and pulled back the curtains. Sunlight flooded in, and the first thing it illuminated was the wall opposite the bed. That's when we saw what was wrong.
A mirror.
A full-length mirror stood in the corner, facing the bed. Its surface was covered—layer upon layer—almost completely obscured. I stepped closer, and my chest tightened.
Hair! Strands and strands of hair, taped to the mirror with clear tape. Different lengths, different colors: black, brown, dyed chestnut, a few streaks of gray. Each bundle was tied with a rubber band, neat and orderly—like samples collected from a barbershop.
The hair covered the entire mirror, dense and thick.
Brother Wu stood beside me, staring at the mirror, his Adam's apple bobbing: "He was collecting hair."
I wasn't the only one. He'd found many people. What happened to them? He stuck their hair to this mirror one by one, like keeping score.
I took out the wooden box and opened it, pulling out the ID. The flashlight beam hit the photo—Chen Mo's blurred face looked even stranger under the light. I stared at it for a long time, then noticed something I'd missed before: on the right side of his neck, there was a small gray patch. Exactly like the one behind my ear.
My fingers went numb holding the ID. He hadn't come to me for no reason. He'd been marked too. The gray patch on his neck, the hair covering this mirror, and him continuing to look for replacements after death—they were all connected.
"Brother Wu," my throat felt like sandpaper, "He had a bundle of black hair in his box. Did he find a way to turn hair black again? To make the gray fade? He was collecting other people's hair, strand by strand..."
Brother Wu said nothing. His silence was answer enough.
I packed everything up, locked the door, and returned the key. As we left, I passed the mirror on the front desk wall and glanced at my reflection. On the left side of my face, from the brow down, a large gray patch spread across my skin. I touched it—it felt like waterlogged cardboard, nothing like living flesh.
That night Brother Wu called Old Zhou, who called Sister Liu. After hearing about the hotel room, Sister Liu was silent for a long time on the phone.
"Get over here now," she said urgently. "Right now."
Forty minutes later, I was sitting in Sister Liu's living room. Shirt off, she ran her hands over my back, from neck to waist. At each vertebra, she pressed gently and asked how it felt. Except for the top few, I could barely feel anything below my waist.
Sister Liu withdrew her hand, sat down, her face grimmer than before.
"The gray has covered the seventh vertebra. Today is the seventh day since you cut his hair."
"But you said fifteen days—"
"The pattern holds," Sister Liu interrupted. "But there's a complication. That mirror in the hotel—doesn't it strike you as odd? Why a mirror? Why tape hair to it?"
I couldn't answer.
"Replacement Guests don't wander randomly," Sister Liu said softly, but each word cut. "They see through mirrors. That night you couldn't see his face in the mirror—it wasn't that you couldn't see, it was that he didn't let himself be reflected. Mirrors are his tools. He watches you through them, finds the next target through them."
"The hair taped to it—"
"Each strand represents a person," her fingers tightened on her knees. "In that hotel room, he stuck one strand for each person he marked. He was helping that thing while he was alive. After he died, the replacement turned on him, and he became the next Replacement Guest. Then he found you."
My hands clenched on my knees, knuckles white.
"Your situation is worse than his was," Sister Liu said. "He wasn't just a victim after being replaced—he was an accomplice while alive. When you cut his hair, you got caught between both sides. That fifteen days? You might not make it."
"How much time do I have?"
Sister Liu didn't answer. She stood and walked to the window, back to me, for a long time. The sandalwood scent suddenly felt suffocating, my throat tight.
"Do you still have a single black hair on you?" she suddenly asked, turning around.
I froze. I touched my head—my hair had always been black.
"Not your hair," Sister Liu said. "The bundle in Chen Mo's box."
I quickly pulled out the box and opened it, pouring the black hair into my palm, counting one by one.
Fourteen.
Sister Liu looked at my palm, then at my face. Her expression shifted, complex—like she saw something there.
"Fourteen black hairs. When he was alive, he collected fourteen replacements for it. You're the fifteenth."
She picked up one black hair from my palm, holding it up to the light. Under the lamp, it had an unnatural sheen, like it had been soaked in something.
"How many vertebrae has the gray covered? Seven. But it's not about vertebrae—it's about hair. He left as many hairs in that box as vertebrae he took from you. Fourteen hairs, fourteen people. You're the fifteenth target."
"But the gray's already at seven vertebrae—"
"You're helping him speed things up," Sister Liu's voice turned cold. "The more you fear it, the faster it spreads. Not sleeping, staring at your back in the mirror, touching that gray every day—each day of fear makes it spread further. Seventh day, seven vertebrae. At this rate, you won't make it to fifteen. Ten days, twelve days—maybe less. The gray will finish the rest."
The fourteen black hairs in my palm suddenly felt hot, like they were alive.
"How do I stop it?" The words came out through gritted teeth.
"You can't stop it," Sister Liu said. "But you can slow it. Don't think about it, don't look in mirrors, don't touch that gray. Less fear means slower spread. If you could stop thinking about it entirely..." She paused. "One more day alive is one more day of hope."
When we left Sister Liu's, it was completely dark. Brother Wu waited for me in the car. He didn't say anything when I got in, just turned the key and drove.
Back at my apartment, I closed the door and stood in the dark hallway. Brother Wu's footsteps faded down the stairs. Suddenly, my neck itched—not on the surface, but deep in the bone.
I turned on the light and rushed to the bathroom mirror, twisting to see the back of my neck.
A thin crack had split the gray skin. Starting from the base of my neck, running along my spine—about three or four centimeters. The line was impossibly thin, like a hair embedded in my skin. I touched it—it was hard, sharp.
A hair.
A white hair.
I froze, staring at the fluorescent light washing over my back. Beside that crack, another one slowly emerged, even thinner. Two white, hair-thin lines pushing out from under my skin, like something was trying to break through.
My phone rang suddenly. Sister Liu.
"Boy," her voice was urgent, more than ever. "Tell me—you counted Chen Mo's hair as fourteen, right?"
"Yes."
"That night at the shop, when you swept—did you find any uncut hair in the corners or tile grout? Whole clippings, not crushed into powder?"
My mind went blank.
I dropped to my knees, turned on my phone flashlight, and trembling fingers reached for the wall by the tile grout.
There, caught in the crack, was a small tuft of gray-white hair clippings—not ash, but actual hair. I'd missed it when sweeping, left behind in the corner.
Carefully, I picked it up, placing it in my palm, counting one by one. Thin, short, light—would blow away with a breath.
Seven.
Seven hairs.
"Fourteen black hairs are the replacements he collected," Sister Liu said over the phone, each word deliberate. "Seven gray clippings are the seven vertebrae already taken from you. Your back has exactly seven covered—matches the hairs in your hand. Eight vertebrae left."
She paused.
"But those seven clippings in your hand? That's bad. Touch one, the gray creeps another inch down. Eight left to cover, but these seven are already accelerating the process. Seven days—at most seven days left. If you don't find a way to break this in seven days, when the gray finishes the fifteenth vertebra..."
The call cut off.
I clutched those seven gray hairs, gently placed them in Chen Mo's wooden box, closed the lid, and hugged it to my chest. All I could see was that mirror in the hotel room—covered in hair, strand upon strand, dense and endless. Each strand, a person.
On my coffee table, the wooden box sat quietly. Inside, fourteen black hairs and seven gray clippings huddled together.
Then—a sound.
Very soft. Very thin. Like nails scraping across a chalkboard.
It came from the coffee table. From the closed wooden box.
The box was moving. Trembling slightly, like something inside was pushing against the lid, trying to get out.