Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Apartment 703 wasn’t large-just two bedrooms and a living room-but it was so packed with belongings it felt like thirty years of life had been crammed inside.

An old family portrait of three hung on the living room wall. The man was long gone, leaving only mother and daughter behind the glass. In the photo, Lin Wan was still alive, wearing a school uniform and grinning wide enough to show her teeth. Below the coffee table sat a pile of medicine boxes, old yarn, and a stack of utility bills. On the dining table were two bowls; one had been washed clean, while the other still held half a spoonful of leftover millet porridge from the night before.

“My mom was just nagging yesterday about the damp weather. She was worried it would be too cold in your room.”

Lin Wan knelt in front of a cabinet, sorting through documents. Her voice was so soft it was as if she were afraid of waking someone.

I didn’t respond.

I had always known that Granny Wu could see me.

Every time she offered me a bowl of soup, I was able to pick it up. Occasionally, she would open her door in the evening and speak to the empty hallway: “Xiao Cheng, it’s windy today. Don’t spend all your time standing at the end of the corridor.” The elderly neighbors returning from their walks would hear her and assume she had simply gone senile, but as I leaned against the door of 704, her words would bring a strange sense of peace to my heart.

“ID card, medical insurance card, bankbook… they’re all here.”

Lin Wan placed a stack of documents into a cardboard box and then reached under the bed to pull out a storage bin. Her movements were a bit hurried, her sleeve brushing against the bedframe and kicking up a layer of dust. I bent down to help her, and my hand brushed against a hardcover book beneath the bed.

It was an old diary with a blue cloth cover, its corners frayed and worn.

I brushed off the dust and reflexively flipped to the first page.

The first line was written in large characters, as if the author were afraid she wouldn’t be able to see them clearly later on.

“My daughter died three years ago. The one living next door to me is a ghost.”

My hand froze as I gripped the book.

The vintage lamp on the nightstand wasn’t on; the only light in the room was the cold, white glow spilling in from the kitchen. It fell across the pages like a thin layer of ice. I could almost hear my own knuckles creak.

From behind me, Lin Wan asked, “What did you find?”

I didn’t turn around.

In that moment, a chill ran through me-not because the fact that her daughter was a ghost had been confirmed, but because Granny Wu had written me into it as well.

She had known from the very beginning.

I slowly closed the diary and turned around, only to find Lin Wan’s gaze still fixed near my feet.

Her voice grew even softer.

“Did my mom… finally write you in, too?”