Chapter 4

Chapter 4

8:43 p.m.

The woman’s phone screen lit up.

It was a delivery notification.

She immediately unlocked her phone and opened the camera feed for her front door.

A live view of the hallway appeared on the screen.

The dim corridor was empty.

Only the takeout hung from the door handle.

The walls of the hallway were mottled and peeling, and the voice-activated light flickered on and off.

It gave off the cold, damp chill unique to old apartment complexes.

The woman zoomed in on the surveillance footage.

Then she dragged through it frame by frame.

She didn’t even overlook the shadows around the hallway corner.

Only after watching for a full three minutes did she exit the camera feed.

Her phone screen went dark right after.

…

Seeing this, my heart skipped a beat.

She didn’t even dare open the door to get her takeout?

And she’d installed a camera at the front door?

Was she really that cautious?

The way she was tiptoeing around everything made me seem reckless by comparison.

8:45 p.m.

The woman’s phone screen lit up again.

After unlocking it, she opened the camera app.

She aimed the lens at the takeout on the table and snapped a carefully staged photo.

Then she switched the camera to selfie mode.

In the shifting background, the woman’s delicate, gentle face came into view.

She tilted her head slightly, leaned her face close to the takeout, adjusted the angle, and smiled softly.

Just then, I suddenly noticed a detail.

On the camera interface, two facial recognition boxes were clearly displayed.

One framed the woman’s face.

The other was locked onto a blurry area behind her.

…

My breath caught sharply, and I instinctively lowered my head.

I wanted to look more closely, but the woman had already pressed the shutter with a smile.

Then she sent the photo to Ah Zhe:

“I’m about to enjoy my feast. Too bad you can’t make it.”

Ah Zhe replied after a short while:

“Just finished the work I had on hand. It looks delicious. Now I’m starving.”

…

I stared fixedly at the selfie in the chat window, enlarging it and checking it over and over.

There was only the woman and the takeout in the photo. The background was tidy and clean, with nothing unusual in sight.

I quietly let out a breath.

But that facial recognition box from that instant just now was like an icy needle lodged in my heart, impossible to shake off.

At least it had been a false alarm!

…

Soon, the woman switched to a short-video app.

The homepage recommended a cute pet video.

She swiped through several in a row.

Then she stopped on a video of a cat trashing its owner’s home.

After watching for half a minute, she kept scrolling.

When she came across a video about self-defense tips for women living alone,

she tapped Save, took a screenshot, and sent it to Ah Zhe:

“This is useful. You should watch it too.”

Ah Zhe replied quickly:

“Got it. I saved it.”

9:10 p.m.

The woman opened a streaming app.

She selected an old horror movie, The Bedside Wraith.

The progress bar on the screen slowly moved forward.

Every now and then, she paused the video

and took screenshots of the intense scenes to send to Ah Zhe:

“This part is so scary!”

Ah Zhe didn’t reply right away.

The “typing…” indicator above the chat box flashed several times,

then silently disappeared.

…

Seeing the footage from The Bedside Wraith,

I felt a wave of speechlessness.

That movie had traumatized me as a child.

I remembered watching it when I was little, then not daring to go to the bathroom alone for days afterward.

I hadn’t expected a woman like her to watch such an old horror movie.

She really was different from most people.

Sure enough, she wasn’t the meek, harmless little lamb she appeared to be.

9:25 p.m.

The streaming app was still playing The Bedside Wraith.

The woman suddenly hit pause and switched straight back to her phone’s home screen.

Then she opened the front-door camera feed again.

In the image, the hallway was still dim and empty. The voice-activated light had gone out, and there wasn’t a soul in sight.

…

I stared at the screen, muttering inwardly.

This person was way too guarded.

In just a few dozen minutes, she’d already checked the camera feed several times.

Even for a woman living alone and trying to protect herself, there was no need to be this neurotic, right?

Looks like choosing her as my target this time really was going to be something of a challenge.