chapter 3

Cheng Miao made a point of memorizing the girl’s name: Liu Xue. She lived in Apartment 402. From the thick stack of missing-person notices, Cheng Miao could sense the desperation her parents had felt while searching for her.

Once she was sure there were no other clues in the stairwell, Cheng Miao tucked the stack of notices away and headed upstairs.

In an old apartment building like this one, the ground floor consisted only of the entrance and stairwell. The actual apartments began on the second floor.

Each floor held two units. Some residents had moved out in such a hurry that they had not even locked their doors.

The second floor housed a private clinic. A sign that would never light again read: Minsheng Clinic.

Cheng Miao gently pushed open the door, which had been left ajar. The line of children behind her filed in one after another.

The clinic was much brighter than the stairwell. Cheng Miao pulled back the curtains and let in the light, revealing the room’s layout through the swirling dust.

It was an old-fashioned private practice. In the front room, an unsteady desk and chair formed a simple consultation area. A treatment bed stood beside a massive medicine cabinet.

On the small metal cabinet next to the bed lay acupuncture supplies, packets of medicine, and similar items. Discarded medical forms and a patient log were scattered across the desk.

The walls displayed numerous certificates and photographs. From the many silk banners patients had presented to him, Cheng Miao learned that the clinic’s physician was surnamed Xu and had apparently enjoyed some local renown.

She raised her head and strained to make out the print on a framed, yellowing newspaper clipping. Doctor Xu had been a renowned physician in the area, as well as a rare university graduate for his time.

He might not have been equipped to treat emergencies or severe illnesses, but ordinary colds and coughs were supposedly cured as soon as he prescribed medicine. Doctor Xu also seemed highly skilled with folk remedies and had considerable success treating unusual, difficult ailments.

In the era when this instance was set, doctors were already scarce. A private physician who had spent most of his life caring for the neighborhood was naturally held in even higher esteem. Silk banners were piled high inside his cabinets.

Cheng Miao leafed through the patient log. Judging by the home addresses, practically every household had visited Doctor Xu at some point.

As expected, she found a record for Liu Xue from Apartment 402. It had been nothing serious, merely a stomachache from eating something bad.

In the patient’s signature field, Liu Xue had written her name in a childish scrawl and drawn a little heart beside it.

While Cheng Miao searched for clues, Er Gou and Niuniu suddenly screamed from the back room.

Her head snapped up. At some point, the three children had slipped inside.

Cheng Miao grabbed an old folding stool propped against the wall and cautiously approached.

She had barely reached the doorway when Er Gou and Niuniu came running out in tears and flung themselves into her arms.

Cheng Miao fell silent. Being hugged by children was far more frightening than the instance itself.

Hu Zi emerged with a grim expression. He was a little older, so although he was frightened, he had not been reduced to a snotty mess like Er Gou.

“What happened?” To the children, Cheng Miao’s expressionless face was the unique composure of an adult. As for the hand trembling slightly around the folding stool? Well, the stool must have been too heavy for Sister Miaomiao to lift.

“There’s… there’s a person’s corpse in there…” Er Gou could barely speak through his sobs. He kept trying to burrow closer to Cheng Miao.

“…Don’t wipe your snot on me!” Cheng Miao snapped. She had Er Gou to thank: he had disgusted her so thoroughly that she had no time to panic over the mention of a corpse.

After crying for a while, Niuniu seemed to grow embarrassed. Red-faced, she retreated behind Hu Zi again. Since the children could tell her nothing useful, Cheng Miao picked Er Gou up by the collar, deposited him to one side, and entered the room herself.

It was dim inside. Cheng Miao felt along the wall beside the doorframe and, sure enough, found a pull cord. When she tugged it gently, a faulty lightbulb flickered twice before reluctantly trembling to life.

As soon as the light came on, Cheng Miao saw the supposed corpses.

They were two medical skeleton models, one large and one small. Meridians and acupuncture points had been marked across them in permanent ink, and they stood just inside the doorway.

Information had not traveled as freely in that era, and people had been somewhat more closed-minded. It was only natural for children who had never seen such things to be startled.

Cheng Miao patiently explained the models to them. Only then did their complexions improve.

She breathed a sigh of relief and looked around. This appeared to be the room where Doctor Xu usually rested.

A single bed stood against the wall, its covers neatly folded, attesting to its owner’s tidiness.

A book wrapped in newspaper lay beside the pillow. Cheng Miao flipped through it and found that it was a medical text.

There was little else in the room. An old desk lamp that no longer worked sat on a table, along with a freestanding red plastic mirror covered in dust.

It was an utterly ordinary room.

Cheng Miao’s nostrils twitched. Why could she smell something like scorched herbal medicine?

Her nose was fairly sharp, but even it struggled in a room saturated with so many stale odors.

She searched carefully but found no kitchen or similar space. In the end, Cheng Miao could only attribute the strange smell to the building having stood empty for too long.

Ignoring the children sitting in a row on the treatment bed, still sniffling, Cheng Miao headed for the remaining room: the bathroom.

Bathrooms were disaster zones in horror movies. As someone who had always loved and feared the genre in equal measure, Cheng Miao could list twenty classic bathroom scares without even thinking.

After thoroughly terrifying herself with the scenes in her own head, she opened the bathroom door with trembling hands.

It was ancient and crude, containing only a brick sink and a bare-bones shower stall.

Brooms, mops, and other cleaning supplies had been piled in the sink. The faucet had fallen into disrepair and was leaking.

Drip… drip…

The sound set Cheng Miao’s nerves on edge. She twisted the tap hard until the dreadful background music finally stopped.

Something fell inside the shower stall with a soft thump. The quiet noise detonated beside Cheng Miao’s ear like a thunderclap.

Apartment buildings of this era rarely had private toilets. The bathroom walls had only been given a coating of cement, with a pipe suspended overhead and a hole cut near the base of the wall as a makeshift drain.

A rag lay crumpled on the floor. It appeared to have been made from an old piece of clothing, and years of use had faded its original color.

Judging by the marks in the dust on the pipe, the rag must previously have been draped over it. Something had caused it to fall.

Cheng Miao did not believe in coincidences inside an instance. She conducted a meticulous, full-circle inspection. There was definitely no female ghost with long hair hanging over her face, nor were pale, slender fingers reaching from the drain.

Knowing that Games usually required certain conditions to trigger events, Cheng Miao had no choice but to remain patient. She was still in the clue-gathering phase.

The bathroom was so crude that it did not even contain a mirror. The only reflective object in the entire clinic was the little red plastic mirror in the bedroom.

That was good. It reduced the chance of seeing something in a mirror that should not be there.

Since the clinic held nothing else of interest, Cheng Miao decided to search the rooms on the other floors. So far, she had made no progress whatsoever on interpreting the hint.

Just then, a hoarse, mournful song drifted in from outside.

Every hair on Cheng Miao’s back stood on end.