Short Story

Do you know about the Uncanny Valley Effect?

This sense of dread originates from ancient times.

Back then, our ancestors had already seen these things! They appear similar to humans, yet are distinctly different.

Today, they hide within modern society.

They might even be our family and friends.

The question is, how do we tell them apart…?

When I first started driving freight trucks, I once asked Master out of curiosity: Why did truckers need to perform Chongsha, while bus drivers didn’t?

Master said it was because trucks carried cargo, not people, so what they feared most was running into trouble on the road.

Buses, on the other hand, were always picking people up and dropping them off, so their greatest taboo was disaster striking onboard.

That was why buses didn’t pay much attention to warding off the road itself.

What they cared about was ballasting the vehicle.

Most bus drivers I’d met used stones for it.

Some used stone statues.

Whenever the passenger count hit four or seven, the driver would bring out the Vehicle-Ballasting Stone, treating it as one extra passenger onboard to keep misfortune away.

But recently, I took on a strange job.

A bus driver came to me and asked me to ballast his bus as a living person.

He said that before me, three Vehicle-Ballasting Stones had already shattered on his bus.

After starting high school, I was taken in by the Xu Family.

The Xu family had a golden boy, Xu Ge, whom I secretly admired for three whole years.

But in Xu Ge’s heart, there was a perfect white moonlight.

The day his white moonlight went abroad, he sat red-eyed in a dim bar corridor for an entire night.

That night, the rain was pouring.

I left my only umbrella at the corner, then quietly slipped away.

Many years later, Xu Ge and I crossed paths again at a gathering.

I was there to pick up a friend who was dead drunk.

Through the smoky haze, a man in a gray hoodie nonchalantly pushed open the door, still surrounded by a flock of girls.

I watched for a moment, pretended not to recognize him, lowered my gaze, and left. Outside, the rain was pouring, and I stood at the door fretting.

Just then, an umbrella was handed to me from behind.

The hand holding it had a pale, strong wrist.

The man in the hoodie spoke softly: “Ruan He. “This umbrella of yours-you left it with me all those years ago.”

On the day of my hairpin ceremony, my brother-in-law, tipsy from wine, barged into my room.

That same night, my mouth was gagged and I was taken to the Marquis’s Mansion.

My legitimate elder sister told me she could not bear children and needed to borrow my womb.

A year later, I gave birth to a son.

My legitimate elder sister brought me to the Bamboo Garden, where four old maids covered my mouth and buried me in a pit they had dug long before.

Before I died, I kept wondering what the point had been of someone like me coming into this world.

But I never imagined that I would be dug up again.

The person who found me was small and thin, yet he staggered along with me on his back for ten miles.

He covered me with the only clothing he had and gave me a chance to live.

An old man took me in. From that day on, I changed my name and became someone else.

Five years later, my wonton shop opened in Capital City, and I happened to run into my legitimate elder sister and her family being sold off.

She begged me to save her son.

But I pointed to the young man kneeling off to the side and said, “I’ll only save him.”

I was the founding Imperial Tutor of a dynasty.

I came here burdened with a mission from the System: to save a collapsing, chaotic realm.

In the end, all I earned was the hatred of countless people.

The young chief minister I had known since our youth became a stranger to me, standing against me at every turn.

The Guardian General I had personally promoted despised me for monopolizing power and ruling the court as a dictator.

And the Young Emperor, the boy I had raised with my own hands… He hated me most of all for tearing him away from the one he loved.

So they laid a trap for me and forced me to drink poisoned wine, driving me to take my own life.

Then, after my death… They summoned a shaman to call forth my memories.

They wanted to expose every evil deed I had ever committed to the world.

But later, after each of them had seen my memories… Every last one of them went mad.

In the third month after our wedding, Shao Zhi took me back to Luoyang to pay respects to his clansmen. Along the way, he carefully explained the web of interests within his clan.

When he mentioned his eldest brother, his face filled with pride.

“My eldest brother is a very good man. He taught me riding and archery himself! ”

Now he serves in Luoyang as the Central Army Commander.

He is the one we are going to meet today.

” I hated Luoyang. There, someone had once forced me to drink a ladle of water from the Luo River and swear an oath: from then on, we would each marry another and never disturb each other again. Clutching the konghou in my arms, I only lowered my head and tried to refuse. ”

Ah Zhi, I was once a music courtesan.

I fear I might sully your honored brother’s eyes and ears.

It would be better if I did not meet him…

” Shao Zhi gathered me into his arms with pity and held my hand, telling me not to worry. ”

He won’t mind. I’ll secretly tell you a bit of gossip about my brother.

Before he married my sister-in-law, he once turned the whole world upside down over a music courtesan who played the konghou.

Later, afraid my sister-in-law would grow jealous, he forced that courtesan to drink from the Luo River and swear that they would each marry another and never disturb each other again.

“Besides, you are my wife now, and you play a fine twenty-three-string konghou. For my sake, my brother is sure to like you.”

After I was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I bought three necklaces and hid them in three different places.

“Honey, this is my favorite necklace. Make sure you burn one for me every year on the anniversary of my death, okay?”

With that one sentence, I put a leash on that mad dog Shen Ci.

It made him give up on jumping off a building and throw away the sleeping pills.

Clinging to that promise, he endured year after year.

Until a young girl appeared by Shen Ci’s side. She was innocent and kind, like a warm little sun.

Shen Ci moved out of our marital home and sent away the puppy I had raised.

By the third anniversary of my death, Shen Ci didn’t come.

I slipped into his dream and put on my cutest act.

“Honey, you’re such a dummy. You still haven’t found this year’s necklace.”

Shen Ci, who had always chattered endlessly at me, was strangely silent now.

After a long time, he finally said, “Qingqing, it’s been three years. I need to start a new life too.”

At midnight, I woke up in a strange place.

Someone knocked on my truck window and said they were holding a celebration tonight, and asked me to join them.

Still groggy, I got out of the truck.

The village before me was decked out in lanterns and colored streamers.

“Is it a wedding?” I asked the villager. The villager didn’t answer.

Instead, a hazy thought came to me: I seemed to have come here to escort the bride.

I turned back to look at the heavy truck I’d driven here.

It was empty. But why did I remember it being packed full of things when I arrived?

What had I been carrying? For a moment, I couldn’t recall.

When I turned back again, the villager who had come to call me was gone.

I was about to hide my boyfriend’s body in the refrigerator.

Then Siri on his phone suddenly spoke.

“The refrigerator is not the optimal location for concealing a corpse.”

I stared at the phone on the floor in terror, a chill running through my entire body.

“A better location for corpse concealment has been detected. Would you like to proceed?”

Siri continued. As if possessed, I asked, “Where?” “The basement. The entrance is inside the wardrobe in the master bedroom.”

Half-doubting it, I followed Siri’s instructions and actually found the basement.

It really was the perfect place to hide a body. Because inside, I found several more corpses…

While I was at work, a line of comments drifted over my head: [Huh? Is this player pouring tea for the boss?]

[No way! This is a super SS-rank horror instance!]

The blood-red words swept past overhead, radiating an eerie, ominous air. Not far away, my boss sat with his gold-rimmed glasses on, head lowered as he read the newspaper, just like always.

I stopped looking at the “comments” and, bracing myself, picked up the cup of hot tea. “B-Boss, your tea is ready.”

The man in front of me didn’t take it.

Instead, he stared at me with an unreadable expression.

“Why are you so nervous?”

“Did you see something I can’t?”