"I've never seen such a non-scary haunted house before."
"The props are way too fake. I walked through the whole thing and not only was I not scared, I kind of wanted to laugh."
"Materialists fear nothing!"
"I told you guys it was boring. Should've just stayed in the dorm and played games. My Kun is already level eighty."
At the entrance of the haunted house on the western outskirts of Jiujiang City, a handful of students mounted their shared bikes and pedaled away without a backward glance.
Watching them go, Chen Ge held the haunted house flyer in his hand and let out a helpless sigh.
Being scary was a skill, but modern people had been through the baptism of countless horror films. Their psychological resilience was ironclad — walking through a haunted house was no different from strolling through their own backyard.
"Boss!"
A clear, bright female voice came from behind. Chen Ge turned to look and saw a petite "zombie" nurse with a remarkably generous chest bursting out of her uniform, charging out of the haunted house in a fury.
"What's wrong, Xiao Wan?" The girl's name was Xu Wan, one of the haunted house's temporary actors.
"Those little punks just now tried to get handsy with me!" She gritted her little tiger teeth and clenched her delicate fists.
So she was here to file a complaint…
"That's way over the line. They wouldn't even spare a zombie." As the boss, Chen Ge naturally sided with Xiao Wan. "I'll go talk to the park management and pull up the surveillance footage."
"No need to go through all that trouble. When I sensed what they were planning, I struck first and beat the crap out of him." Xu Wan flicked the hem of her nurse uniform, showing off the bloodstains. "And this isn't stage makeup."
"Uh… fair enough. A girl should learn to protect herself." Chen Ge wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and glanced at the setting sun. "Let's call it a day then. I doubt any more visitors are coming. Let the others know — we're closing early."
After he spoke, the girl in zombie makeup didn't budge.
"Something else?"
"Boss…" Xu Wan hesitated, then slowly pulled a letter from her pocket. "This is the resignation letter from Tao Ming and Xiao Wei. You treated them well, and they were too embarrassed to tell you in person, so they asked me to pass it along."
"They're leaving?" Chen Ge froze for a moment, then accepted the envelope. "Everyone has their own path. You should head off too."
"Okay, okay. I'll go remove my makeup."
He watched the adorable little "zombie" shuffle away, then silently lit a cigarette.
Half a year ago, his parents had vanished under bizarre circumstances, leaving behind only this haunted house.
To keep the memory alive, Chen Ge had quit his job and poured everything into running the haunted house, trying to make it work.
But the times changed too fast. The haunted house business faced brutal competition, was a niche market to begin with, and was riddled with limitations. The same horror scenes, once seen, became boring on a second visit — and constantly renovating required massive funding.
For the past few weeks, the haunted house had been hemorrhaging money. A single day's ticket sales didn't even cover a fraction of the utility bills.
"I don't know how much longer I can hold on."
He crushed the cigarette and was about to head back inside when a middle-aged man in a New Century Amusement Park uniform approached.
Spotting him, Chen Ge reacted like a mouse seeing a cat, quickening his pace immediately.
"Pretending you don't see me?" The middle-aged man grabbed Chen Ge by the shoulder. "Let's settle this today. You're two months behind on utilities and venue rent. Upper management has been on my case nonstop — do you have any idea how much pressure I'm under?"
"Uncle Xu, it's not that I don't want to pay. Funds have just been really tight lately. Give me one more month."
"You said the same thing last month."
"I swear to you, this is absolutely the last month!" Chen Ge slapped his chest, his face a picture of sincerity.
"The haunted house business is in the dumps right now. You can't pull in visitors. If you ask me, you should just give it up." The man called Uncle Xu glanced at the envelope in Chen Ge's hand and gradually loosened his grip. "You're so young — why not do something else? Why make life so hard on yourself?"
"Uncle Xu, I know you mean well, but this haunted house means something different to me. It's a keepsake my parents left behind." Chen Ge's voice dropped low, as if he didn't want anyone else to overhear.
The middle-aged man, as a park manager, knew all about Chen Ge's parents. He didn't respond. After a few seconds, he let out a soft sigh and relented. "I can more or less understand where you're coming from. Fine — I'll try to buy you a few more weeks."
"Thank you, Uncle Xu!"
"Don't thank me. Just put in more effort and sell some more tickets."
After seeing the park manager off, Chen Ge went straight back into the haunted house and fell into his daily routine — checking equipment wear and tear, maintaining props, and cleaning up.
"The artificial blood plasma in the repair room is almost out. I need to order another batch. This corridor should tilt inward a bit — it might better exploit the visitors' blind spots. The mannequin got torn, needs patching. Damn it — where's my decorative lighting? Who stole it?!"
From the outside, he was the haunted house owner, an ambitious young man carving out his own path. But behind all that, only he knew the bitterness he carried.
A haunted house was a form of "fear" consumption. In a terrifying environment, a person's muscles and mental state would tense up intensely. Once released, it was like a massage — this experience could produce a rush of satisfaction in a short time.
At the same time, haunted houses were a one-time purchase. Many haunted houses on the market operated by rotating between cities, constantly drawing in new visitors. For a fixed-location haunted house like Chen Ge's, unless it had a big enough reputation to attract people from far and wide, it simply couldn't last long.