Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Maybe because she was already on the verge of collapse, Jiang Shuang needed someone she could pour her heart out to.

Invoking my daughter’s name, I slowly approached her.

She was sitting right at the edge of the rooftop, bleeding as she told me what had happened to her.

This girl had never been weak.

She had grown up in an orphanage without parents, and for the past two and a half years, she had worked while studying, finally managing to get into a pretty good university. She had always worked hard to make a life for herself.

But ever since a nightmare three months ago, Jiang Shuang’s life had completely changed.

Jiang Shuang told me that at noon that day, she suddenly heard firecrackers going off outside.

The rapid crackle was loud, but strangely off, as if it was moving the whole time, getting closer and closer to her.

Jiang Shuang covered her ears, her consciousness went fuzzy, and the next second she found herself in an extremely dark space.

That space was so cramped that she could only lie there, unable even to stretch out her arms.

She reached out to feel around and found nothing but hard wood.

Then the entire space started to shake. She could vaguely hear people talking outside, and she even thought she heard her roommate’s voice.

But the broken fragments of conversation made her hair stand on end.

She heard someone say, “Seal the mouth.” “Use wax.” “She can hear us…”

In that instant, Jiang Shuang’s fear surged to its peak. She started slamming desperately against the wood sealing her in.

But gradually, she felt the space around her growing hot, and scalding, sticky liquid began seeping in through the crack at the top.

It was wax. She was going to suffocate!

Jiang Shuang started screaming and kicking wildly, and just then, someone pushed her from behind.

It felt as if she had suddenly broken free of that tiny space.

The moment she was about to get out, she turned back, wanting to see who had saved her.

But when she turned her head, what she saw was still her own face!

After waking from that nightmare, Jiang Shuang developed an inexplicable fear of her roommates and friends.

And after that day, she had those dreams almost every night.

In the dreams, the time she spent trapped kept getting longer, and that suffocating feeling of being on the brink of death grew heavier and heavier.

Every time, it seemed like another version of herself was the one rescuing her.

But that other self seemed to be left behind in that space forever.

That was why Jiang Shuang often wondered whether she had never actually escaped at all.

Maybe the dreams at night were real, and everything that happened during the day was the dream.

Her mind was growing weaker by the day, and the classmates around her had become strangely eerie too, as if someone were always watching her from the shadows.

Gradually, Jiang Shuang no longer dared to approach anyone, and she no longer dared to ask anyone for help.

She thought she might be sick, and she was afraid her own nervous, jumpy behavior would trouble others.

She had also been seeing doctors and taking a lot of medicine. At first, it had helped a little.

But later, her condition only got worse.

She began seeing bizarre and terrifying scenes in broad daylight.

Sometimes, she would see a group of people carrying a coffin across campus, while everyone else around them failed to notice.

Once, she even saw one of her roommates giving birth in the dorm.

Bright red blood covered the bed, and her roommate’s belly was swollen high, absurdly huge.

But in reality, that roommate hadn’t returned to the dorm that day at all, and she definitely wasn’t pregnant.

Tormented like this for nearly three months, Jiang Shuang really could not hold on any longer.

She couldn’t find a way out, and she had no one to rely on.

Sitting on the rooftop, she cried as she looked at me and said, “Uncle, stop worrying about me. This is just my fate. I know if I die, everything will be over.”

I said, “You saved my daughter. Your life is my responsibility now. Just think of this as your final closure, and trust me one more time.”