chapter 3
Meng Yifan was fast asleep when he got my call, completely dead to the world.
“Second-in-Command, do you even know what time it is? Aren’t you sleeping…?”
“Come over right now, something happened!”
As soon as I finished speaking, I heard the sound of Meng Yifan springing out of bed.
“What’s going on…”
Soon after, a woman’s lazy voice came through the phone-it was Meng Yifan’s girlfriend.
“You go back to sleep, my buddy’s in trouble, I have to go right now.”
Not long after, I heard the sound of Meng Yifan rushing downstairs.
It sounded like he didn’t even have time to change his slippers.
“Boss Meng, don’t hang up, I’m a little scared…”
“Alright, just wait, I’ll be there soon!”
Keeping the call connected with Meng Yifan made me feel a bit safer.
To be honest, I’m not exactly a coward, but that was before last night…
The main thing is, everything about this incident feels inexplicably strange.
If I had just moved from the master bedroom to the living room, and the TV turned on by itself, maybe I could explain it as sleepwalking, even though I’ve never sleepwalked before.
But the Concrete Shoe Print on the floor… how do you explain that?
I really don’t think there’s any way to explain it.
About twenty minutes later, Meng Yifan arrived by car.
“So what’s going on, how did you end up seeing ghosts?”
He looked worried, slammed the car door shut, and ran over to me.
I hurriedly told him everything that had happened.
After listening, he was stunned, leaning against a tree in a daze for a long time.
“Bro, you’re not messing with me, are you…”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“I ran out here without even putting on shoes, I didn’t even bring my laptop!”
Meng Yifan could see how shaken I was.
Clearly, I was scared out of my wits.
But he was still half-skeptical, looking at me and saying, “I can believe someone knocking on your door in the middle of the night, and I can even believe you sleepwalked to the living room and turned on the TV, but Concrete Shoe Prints on the floor… are you sure you weren’t seeing things…”
I told him I definitely wasn’t seeing things.
Even though the living room lights were off at the time, the TV was on-how blind would I have to be to mistake that?
“Then let’s go back and check again.” He locked the car and dragged me back into the apartment complex.
Honestly, I didn’t dare go back at all, especially since it was still dark outside.
But Meng Yifan didn’t believe me, so I had to prove it to him.
Soon enough,
We were back upstairs.
Standing in the living room of that apartment again, I was dumbfounded.
The smooth, spotless floor showed no sign of any Concrete Shoe Print-not even a trace of cement.
Meng Yifan looked at me, speechless: “Where’s the shoe print you were talking about? Where?”
I pointed to where the Concrete Shoe Print had been, explaining excitedly, “Right there, there were so many shoe prints before, I saw them clearly-how could they just disappear…”
Could someone have come in and cleaned up while I was downstairs?
After all, I hadn’t even closed the door when I ran out.
“I really fell for your nonsense, dragging me out here at the crack of dawn-are you nuts?” Meng Yifan was convinced I was messing with him.
I swore to him, “If I’m messing with you, may I never have children or grandchildren, alright!”
Meng Yifan saw that I didn’t look like I was lying. He thought for a moment and said, “Let’s just check the security footage.”
The surveillance would prove everything and would have caught anything that happened in the apartment.
I didn’t bother explaining further. I opened my laptop and rewound the footage to 11 p.m. last night.
I’d gone back to the master bedroom to sleep at 11, and the girl who came looking for Li Xiumei knocked on the door exactly at midnight.
The footage confirmed this-no doubt about it.
And just looking at that, there was nothing particularly strange.
Then, I fast-forwarded the video to twenty times speed.
Very quickly, something appeared on the screen that made my skin crawl.