Spending the night in an abandoned temple, I found a thin gauze handkerchief wreathed in fragrance. After nightfall, someone murmured beneath the window:
“My lady, have you perchance seen the handkerchief this humble scholar left behind?”
Through the crack in the door, the figure outside looked so ethereal that it seemed he might drift away on the wind at any moment.
At his words, I couldn’t help recalling the rumors about this place.
They said this temple had been abandoned for ages, and that seductive ghosts haunted the area. Any traveler who got entangled with them would either have their essence sucked dry or be dragged into another world, vanishing without a trace.
With that in mind, I hurriedly cracked open the window and tossed out the piece of cloth I had used to wipe the floor, the windowsill, and my stinky feet.
The other party caught it with lightning-fast reflexes.
Then he stared down at the gauze scarf in his hand, now crumpled and ruined like dried pickled greens, and fell into deep contemplation.
