Chapter 11 - Singing

After Lin Yiri finished speaking, he found himself in a strange quiet.

Su Min broke the silence first, “Find out which dorm she is in.”

Their ascent to the fourth floor must have a purpose; they had to search for a specific dorm room.

The closer they got to the singing voice, the clearer it became. However, the lyrics themselves grew more muddled, as if the singer started to hum instead.

“Midway here,” Lin Xiao Yan began, “I called her name, but just like Zhang Yuan, she didn’t answer me.”

It was as if her whole body had been controlled.

“If she dies, the next victim will be you,” Su Min said.

Listening to his words, Lin Xiao Yan’s back became drenched in a layer of cold sweat. When she recalled past events, her whole person started to become despondent.

She couldn’t imagine what she would look like when her time comes.

Lin Yiri said, “Don’t worry, we’ll soon uncover the identity of that ghost and save you in time.”

The singing continued as they walked.

Lin Xiao Yan listened and said, “It should be this room.”

She pointed to the fourth to last room that had its door covered up. A mysterious singing could be heard from inside.

The door was marked with the number 414.

The fourteenth room on the fourth floor.

Using the number ‘4’ two times in a row was common in horror movies1.

So, perhaps this dorm room would give him the key information necessary to solve this mystery.

As the female lead, Lin Xiao Yan had been completely unaffected by past matters. Today, the director arranged for her to take the stage and follow Chen Ke, so it must result in her collecting heavyweight clues.

Heavyweight = The case was about to be solved.

In this kind of horror movie, once the final secret is uncovered, the ending usually follows shortly after.

Unlike every dorm room around it, this room didn’t have the piece of red paper covering its lock. Instead, the red paper was laying on the ground, as if it had been torn off.

Su Min’s sight fell on the red paper and said, “Wait.”

“What’s wrong?” Lin Yiri asked curiously.

Su Min picked up the paper then placed it inside his pocket. “Okay, now let’s go in.”

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Taking the lead, he pushed the door open.

Instantly, the singing halted. The scene inside the dorm frightened the three people.

A long figure hung high inside the room, dangling about.

Outside the balcony, the moonlight illuminated through the glass and casted a dark shadow on one side of the figure. As it swayed, it resembled clothes that drifted about in the carefree winds.

Hanging from the ceiling fan with her head drooping low was Chen Ke.

Su Min was only stunned for a moment before he quickly recovered. “Get her down, maybe she’s still alive.”

He went up to hold her legs and, with the help of Lin Yiri, managed to get Chen Ke down. Holding a finger below her nose, he didn’t feel a breath.

Another person had died.

Liu Lili and Zhang Yuan died because water, but Chen Ke died by hanging.

Her death was completely different from the other two. If counting the singing beforehand, it wasn’t at all like the previous patterns.

Lin Yiri was shocked, “…So, how did she sing the song?”

Only Chen Ke’s corpse was here when they came in and the singing stopped. Could it be that it was the corpse who sung?

Corpses nowadays were that powerful?

The wind blew in from the balcony and closed the door. Due to its old age, the door let out creaks and groans, echoing clearly in the darkness of nighttime.

Su Min silently thought, ‘Maybe an inner force was singing.’

In this kind of situation, who would think about how someone was singing? The important thing to pay attention to what was being sung and why.

Chen Ke’s body was placed on the ground. Nobody dared to touch it again.

This room had been voided of everything except for a bed and the things on it. Not even a piece of paper could be seen; it looked unusually empty.

Students couldn’t have done this. It must’ve been the school.

Unexpectedly, Lin Yiri discovered something on the bedplate. “Come here, the bedplate looks rotten.”

Su Min walked over.

There was a black lump on the bedplate. It didn’t look like the bedplate originally came that way. Rather, it was as if some kind of liquid dropped there and solidified overtime.

Furthermore, it had a faint, fishy odor.

Su Min frowned. What are the chances that it’s blood?

He reached out and felt it with his hand. Touching the small crack in the middle, he discovered the problem.

“The bedplate is cracked here.”

The school’s bedplate was tens of centimeters wide. If there was a gap in the middle, something could’ve slipped inside.

Su Min said, “Lin Yiri, come help me dismantle this.”

The strength of two men was enough to lift the bedplate directly from the upper layer. From the middle, a piece of paper suddenly floated down.

Su Min quickly picked it up.

“What is it?” Lin Yiri asked, curious.

To be hidden below the bedplate, it must really be special.

Su Min flipped it over and examined it. “It’s a greeting card card.”

It seemed to be a birthday card. Maybe it was because too much time had passed, but the handwriting looked faded.

However, time wouldn’t make the letters fuzz like water had been spilled on it.

This was a birthday card found in an empty girl’s dorm room. It clearly wasn’t simple.

Lin Yiri looked over and said, “Looking at what’s written here, ‘Teacher Chen’, Teacher Chen should be the teacher of the girl who lived here. Maybe that teacher was popular among students, or maybe she was secretly in love with him.”

There were many university students who had crushes on teachers.

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It was very quiet in the dorm room. The two people were too absorbed in looking at the birthday card to notice the black shadow plastered on the wall.

A hand touched Su Min’s shoulders.

The piercing cold penetrated through his clothes and into his skin, causing him to quiver with fright. Turning around, he saw Lin Xiao Yan standing behind him.

Her eyes were completely white.

Perfectly ignorant to this, Lin Yiri said, “Lin Xiao Yan, you standing behind us on your tiptoes at night is very scary, okay?”

Su Min took a step back, “She’s possessed!”

People possessed by ghosts would have completely white eyes, and they would stand on their tip-toes because the ghost’s feet were cushioned underneath them.

A Lin Xiao Yan with her eyes rolled up was quite a scary sight.

“What can we do? She looks like she’s going to eat you.” Lin Yiri was afraid.

Su Min, “…”

It must be really hard observing such subtle details2.

Lin Xiao Yan parted her mouth and leaned in for a bite.

Recalling the red paper he had put in his pocket, Su Min quickly pulled it out and shoved it into Lin Xiao Yan’s open mouth.

She froze in place.

A beat later, her whole body jolted like she was being electrocuted. After a few seconds, she weakly fell to the floor.

A shadow emerged and then disappeared.

When Su Min poked her acupuncture point, Lin Xiao Yan woke up.

“What happened to me just now?” she weakly asked.

“You were possessed,” Lin Yiri whispered.

As Lin Xiao Yan was about to talk, a melodious voice sung, startling the three of them.

The cabinet by the door suddenly slammed open, the impact equivalent to a gunshot in this quiet dormitory.

Lin Xiao Yan and Lin Yiri didn’t dare check it out.

With no other choice, Su Min walked to the cabinet.

The cabinet was squared shaped. Altogether, there were four lattices, each half a meter long. At this moment, the bottom lattice’s door was half opened.

The inside was painted black.

Su Min hesitantly reached out, afraid that a human head or something would jump out and scare his soul away.

Fortunately, everything was normal. There wasn’t even anything inside.

Su Min thought it was impossible for it to be this simple. Using the light from his cellphone, he saw that there was a photo attached to the back of the door.

Unexpectedly, there was a photo in this dormitory.

It wasn’t surprising that nobody had found the hidden greeting card. What was surprising, however, is the unnoticed photo plastered on the cabinet.

Su Min took the photo and examined it.

On the back of the photograph were the words: “Best Friends, Su Ya and Jiang Hui”

In the photo were two girls, both smiling like flowers. Because it had been a long time, the pigments faded and the two faces looked paler.

Just as he was about to pocket the photo, the two people posed for the picture suddenly blinked.

Su Min nearly tore the photograph.

He looked at it carefully, but the two people in the picture looked exactly as before; the curves of their smiles hadn’t changed at all.

One of the schoolgirls was the girl Su Min saw on the stairs in the office building.

“Are they so good looking?”

A voice suddenly spoke by Su Min’s ears.

Su Min had been scared countless of times tonight, but after hearing a familiar voice, his stiff body finally relaxed. He didn’t expect Jing Xian to follow him here.

He turned his head and looked around but couldn’t see the other man.

Before long, ice-cold fingertips trailed from his hands to his wrists. They travelled up his arms and settled on his shoulders.

Su Min subconsciously reached out to stop the other’s fingers.

He didn’t expect that his hand would be held instead. “There’s nothing good to look at3.”

Su Min said, “I just saw them blink.” He didn’t think that it was an illusion.

“Just mere ghosts.” Jing Xian’s voice was cold.

Su Min, “…You, too.”

They’re all ghosts, but why is there so much dislike?

“Su Min, who are you talking to?” Lin Yiri suddenly walked over tensely. “Are you…”

He didn’t dare go further.

“I’m talking to myself,” Su Min quickly replied.

Simultaneously, Jin Xian said, “I want to kiss you.”

Su Min pushed at the air, whispering, “What nonsense are you spouting?”

“You called me here.”

Su Min, “…” He clearly did not.

Although he didn’t say anything, the ghost still took the opportunity to kiss him. Only this time, it wasn’t just a slight peck; his upper lip was sucked.

Shocked, Su Min jumped, his back pressed against an ice-cold wall.

Lin Yiri came over and asked, “What are you holding in your hand?”

When he didn’t hear an answer, he walked closer to take a look, but he accidentally tripped and almost fell down.

Lin Yiri cried out, “Shit, there are ghosts in this room!”

He tripped on plain air, something more terrifying than falling on the ground.

Su Min held out his hands and pushed.

His roommate was wailing on one side, but here he was doing this kind of shameful thing with a ghost.

After a minute, Su Min finally regained his freedom. Covering his mouth, he turned around and said, “You should’ve known that.”

Lin Yiri put a hand on his forehead. “If you didn’t speak, I would’ve thought you were possessed.”

He looked at the photo in Su Min’s hand and saw the two schoolgirls. They were beautiful, but he never saw them before.

“Who are the people in the picture?” Lin Yiri asked.

Su Min thought for a moment and decided to tell him the truth. “One of them should be the girl who committed suicide by jumping down the office building, the one I found in the graduation file.”

Lin Yiri, “What about the other one?”

Su Min, “She might be the one who died here.”

As soon as his voice fell, he saw a shadow appear from under the worn-out fan, swaying from side to side.

It lifted its head and looked at him.

Translator’s Notes:

1. From Wiki: “The number 4 (四, pinyin: sì; Cantonese Yale: sei) is considered an unlucky number in Chinese because it is nearly homophonous to the word “death” (死 pinyin: sǐ; Cantonese Yale: séi).”↩

2. 还能观察这么细微，真是辛苦了。Not really sure about this sentence.↩

3. In case you’re confused, Jing Xian said that. He’s following up to his earlier question(“Are they so good looking?”)↩