The apartment above the coffee shop, Room 603, Chen Xiao stood side by side with the young girl at the door.
The girl was named Qiu Mujin, and just as Chen Xiao had guessed, she was a low-profile writer. Her work was actually not bad, but due to her natural lack of a screw in the head, a shortage of common sense, extreme laziness, and a bit of ditziness, her books just wouldn't take off. Still, the fact that such a person could be a writer, and hadn't starved to death, was quite an accomplishment!
"Is this the apartment you just rented a few days ago?" Chen Xiao looked up and down at the apartment door and its surroundings as he asked.
Qiu Mujin glanced at the door number again and nodded with certainty.
Chen Xiao frowned, stuck a finger in his mouth to wet it with saliva, then rubbed it vigorously against the door, saying, "Doesn't seem anything special to me!"
The girl watched Chen Xiao's series of seemingly purposeless actions without paying much attention, but as if fearing he would think she was lying, she emphasized anxiously, "It's really haunted...!"
Chen Xiao nodded thoughtfully.
He then recalled the conversation he had just had with Qiu Mujin in the coffee shop. In that conversation, Chen Xiao learned the simple facts of the case, and with a few words fashioned himself into the "National Ghost-Exorcising Association's" three-time consecutive Employee of the Month.
And most importantly, the girl actually believed it.
A week ago, for all kinds of messy reasons, the girl had to move out of the place she had lived in for a whole year. (Chen Xiao guessed that it was probably because the landlord could no longer endure this lady's daily accidents, like breaking a dish today or forgetting to turn off the gas tomorrow.) It just so happened that her new book was in its early stages of creation, and she was short on cash, so she naturally noticed this well-located but cheap apartment.
Thrilled as if she had found money, she moved in that very day.
As you can probably guess, such an apartment, being so cheap, had to have a catch! Sure enough, strange things happened on the first night she moved in...
First, the girl noticed something odd: the faucet she forgot to turn off somehow turned itself off... This wasn't just the water stopping on its own. Under her gaze, the tap's valve blatantly began to turn.
Despite being a bit of an airhead, the girl definitely didn't believe in ghosts, so she... uh... ignored it, attributing the phenomenon to some kind of leak prevention feature in the room.
But after that, she found that her luggage had been moved when she wasn't paying attention.
Then, more strange things occurred. Cups left on the table disappeared only to be found elsewhere, doors would suddenly open or close by themselves, pages of books turned without any breeze, and, she also heard faint footsteps.
All these bizarre occurrences seemed impatient to tell her that the room was haunted, as if afraid she wouldn't notice.
At this point, the girl started to feel that something was off... (Really, just now you realize something's off?)
She decided then and there... to stay the night and deal with it in the morning!
Indeed, only a fool would be so brazen...
That night, Qiu Mujin didn't sleep well. Hmm~ the fact she dared to stay was already against human nature~. Sounds of someone walking back and forth outside the bedroom door persisted, things would be moved at intervals, and the walls would occasionally emit a "thud" sound as if being hit.
Luckily, these occurrences stopped after midnight and didn't happen again.
"Did you call the police the next day?" Chen Xiao squatted down to examine the gap under the doorframe as he asked.
Qiu Mujin nodded and replied, "Yes, but the police thought I was making harassing calls!"
Chen Xiao gave her a dead-fish stare, "You should have said there was a burglary, not straight up mention a ghost. Only a lunatic would take you seriously!"
Qiu Mujin nodded thoughtfully, "Oh... that does make sense."
Chen Xiao glanced at the girl speechlessly, "And after that, you decided to stay in the café until midnight every day, waiting until the ghost stopped making trouble before returning to sleep?"
Qiu Mujin nodded decisively, as if to say, "See how clever I am!"
Chen Xiao kept a poker face. This woman wasn't just missing a screw; she seemed to be profoundly naive, almost to the point where she could tout to be his psych-ward buddy.
"Alright, let's go in and have a look," he said indifferently, stepping aside to let Mujin open the door.
Chen Xiao had already categorized the girl as one of those near-mentally challenged types with zero self-awareness. See, someone with a "thinking score" of 2 is exactly like her.
...
...
The door opened, and not like in novels or movies, there was no rush of cold air coming out.
The place was roughly 60 square meters, with two bedrooms and a living room, the kitchen, living room, and balcony all connected. It came with a complete set of appliances like a fridge, TV, and cooking pots, and under the light looked quite cosy.
Chen Xiao habitually sniffed the air in the room and then looked down at the white ash on the floor by the door, remnants of burned oiled paper.
"Looks like a ritual was performed here about half a month ago. Seems like the landlord is worried too," he thought, proceeding to slouch into the room with his hands in his pockets.
Since the doors to both bedrooms were open, Chen Xiao was able to see the details within the apartment at a glance, but he didn't sense anything unusual about the place.
"When do these hauntings you mentioned usually happen?" Chen Xiao asked.
Qiu Mujin glanced at her watch, "Right about now~"
No sooner had she finished speaking, as if to substantiate her accuracy, one of the bedroom doors began to close slowly under Chen Xiao's gaze.
"Huh? It's quite punctual," Chen Xiao didn't show a hint of nervousness, even taking the time to make a sarcastic remark.
In fact, at this moment, Chen Xiao felt that the ghostly occurrences the girl mentioned were most likely just illusions caused by a mix of bizarre factors. For instance, cries coming from the deserted hostel washroom at night could simply be a girl who had just been dumped, hiding under the sink while making a phone call. Or take the street lights in the complex that flicker on and off, causing all the pets that pass by to bark madly—couldn't that just be an electrical leakage? You wouldn't feel it with shoes on, but it must be electrifying enough to make those cats and dogs howl.
So, without any panic, Chen Xiao walked up to the bedroom door that had been closed, confident in what he had seen earlier—that there was no possibility of anyone being inside.
"No airflow, the door hinge isn't skewed, hmm... it really does seem like some external force pushed it," Chen Xiao mused, whispering under his breath, "It's got to be a haunting!"
Suddenly, there was a loud "clang" from the living room table, and Chen Xiao immediately turned around.
"Hmm... it's been moved. By the looks of it, it's as if something collided with the table leg."
At this point, most people would start to panic, the faint-hearted probably gaping with eyes wide in terror, screaming and running out the door, but the two people present, one half-witted, the other completely crazy, showed almost no reaction, simply watching the eerie event unfold quietly.
"Hehehe~~" Chen Xiao laughed sharply, his expression like that of a child who had just found a new toy. He ran and hopped over to a corner of the living room and plopped down on the floor.
Qiu Mujin watched Chen Xiao, utterly clueless about what to do next and asked, "Uh... what about me?"
Chen Xiao immediately gestured "Shush—" then waved his hand, signaling her to step outside so as not to disturb the ghost.
Qiu Mujin, still baffled, nodded and walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind her.
...
Now, in the entire space, Chen Xiao was the only one quietly waiting.
Indeed, it wasn't much later when a chair on the floor started to creak and shift a few times.
Following that, the dishes on the rack began to shake violently, the faucet turned on and off by itself, something banged against the wall, and various sounds mixed together, recreating a scene straight out of a horror movie.
This was how Chen Xiao rapidly observed every bizarre occurrence and its tiniest details—the direction the chair fell over, the speed of the cups moving, the frequency of the utensil collisions, his eyes wide with excitement, his mouth grinning wide, looking as though all he was missing was a bucket of popcorn.
Suddenly, with a "click", the sound of a switch being flicked resounded—that was the light switch. The bulb went out, and sounds abruptly ceased; the whole room plunged into darkness in an instant!
And then!!!!
"Hehehe—" Amidst the darkness, Chen Xiao began to laugh gleefully. Despite his efforts to stifle it, his laughter was still piercingly shrill, sending shivers down one's spine!
"Fantastic! It really is haunted!"
Okay, Chen Xiao was truly delighted now.
At that moment, he faintly heard a series of footsteps.
"Tread... tread... tread..." They were slow, yet growing increasingly distinct, coming closer and closer towards him.
Finally, they stopped right in front of him.
Chen Xiao didn't panic; instead, he excitedly waved and grabbed at the air in front of him, but grabbed nothing.
"No physical presence... but able to exert force on objects? Could this be the legendary telekinesis or something?" Chen Xiao thought.
Suddenly, a piece of paper slid off the nearby table and floated down right in front of Chen Xiao. He understood and picked it up, pulling out his phone.
By the pale light of the phone screen, he could see several characters scrawled awkwardly on the paper.
"Who~ are~ you~"
The handwriting was hard to read, with wide spacing between characters, like a child who had just learned to write.
Just then, the door to the apartment was opened, and Mujin peered inside timidly, asking, "Are you okay?"
Outside the door just before, all the noise from the apartment had suddenly stopped, and she could see from the peephole that the lights inside were no longer on, so she felt a bit scared, worrying, "What if something went wrong?" After pondering for a while, she decided to come in and take a look.
Chen Xiao didn't respond to her; all of his attention was focused on the paper.
"A left-hander, weak strength, can't even hold the pen properly, but not a child—there is a large span between the strokes, fingers long and slender, probably a woman," Chen Xiao concluded. Immediately after, without even lifting his head, he called out, "Turn on the light!"
Mujin was startled but quickly switched on the light.
Chen Xiao held the paper up to the light: "Not written with an ordinary pen or ballpoint, it's some kind of ink, but it's completely dried up, the scent has long since dispersed, it looks as though it's been written many years ago."
He put down the paper and glanced at the girl standing at the door, clueless of the situation, and let out that repulsive, snickering smile. Of course, this naive girl didn't pay any mind to Chen Xiao's expression, which clearly didn't seem like that of a good person,
"Do you have a pen?" Chen Xiao asked excitedly.
The girl looked puzzled but nodded her head: "Uh-huh, I do!" Then she began searching through her bag and asked somewhat worriedly, "What are you going to do?"
Chen Xiao laughed with a "hehe":
"I'm going to... have a chat with this ghost!"
...