More than an hour later, the middle-aged man helped the young man from 302 back to Haiming Apartments.
The young man had gauze wrapped around the top of his head, his eyes still a little dazed.
"You're finally back."
The young man's gaze darted around nervously, but he had no choice but to open the door to his room. "Come in, both of you."
A thick stench hung inside 302. Even the disheveled middle-aged man pinched his nose. "How long has it been since you cleaned this place? Did something rot in here?"
Chen Ge found it odd, too. The room looked quite tidy, and the young man himself was neatly dressed—not the type to be especially slovenly.
"My last two months have felt like one long dream." The young man clutched his head and walked to the bed, pulling out several black plastic bags from underneath. Inside were the carcasses of small animals. "Really, it's been a nightmare I couldn't wake up from."
Chen Ge glanced into the bags, then shifted his gaze back to the young man. "The nightmare is over now. You can tell me everything without worry."
The young man tossed the bags aside, a look of apology on his face. "Three months ago, when I first moved into this room, the landlord told me that if I couldn't get used to the place, or if anything strange happened, I could break the lease. Sure enough, the very first night, I had a nightmare—the window wouldn't close no matter what. In the dream, when I went to shut it, I saw a man standing in the room next door."
"At first I didn't think much of it. After several consecutive nights of the same dream, one day I suddenly realized that the man who was supposed to be standing in the neighboring room had made his way into my apartment."
"I wanted to fight back in the dream, but I couldn't do anything. The man didn't hurt me, though. He just told me he wanted me to do him a favor."
"After waking up, I was dazed and absent-minded the entire day. In the end, I decided to crash at a friend's place for the night. But who would have thought—the man seemed to have latched onto me. Not only did I dream of him again, this time he appeared right beside my bed."
"The man told me I couldn't escape. He said as long as I helped him, he would never bother me again. I believed him, and followed his instructions—tying up small live animals and throwing them into the Room 303."
"The animals were still alive when I tossed them in, but after one night, when I went to check the next day, every single one of them was dead."
"There were no wounds on their bodies. I have no idea how they died." The young man grew more and more frightened as he spoke. "I wanted to shake off the man from my dreams, but his appetite only grew. At first, one sparrow or mouse per night was enough. After just a week, he started having me catch stray dogs. Eventually, he even wanted me to lure a living person into Room 303 after midnight."
"When I refused, he threatened me—said he'd kill me in my dreams. I was about to break down." The young man's eyes were bloodshot. He lowered his head. "That day I told my friends, and a few of us worked up the courage to enter Room 303 at night. But nothing happened that evening, and after that, nobody believed me anymore. They all thought there was something wrong with my head."
"I was desperate. The man was insatiable. Day and night, I could always feel him standing beside me." He spoke with increasing anguish, his hands clutching at the gauze on his head. "All I could think about was getting rid of him. Even if I really could trick someone into Room 303, that would have been enough—but the difficulty was too great."
After a long pause, he composed himself and continued. "After dragging on like that for a few days, I stumbled across a roommate-wanted ad on the university's online forum. The rest you already know.
"So Men Nan ended up in Room 303 because of you?" Chen Ge hadn't expected such a bonus revelation.
"I did drop him a hint at the time, but he didn't take it any more seriously than I had." Having gotten everything off his chest, he did seem to feel somewhat better.
"That's all in the past. Whether anything comes of it will depend on whether Men Nan wants to press the issue after he wakes up." Chen Ge pulled the rusty key from his pocket. "Now, I'm going to ask you a few more questions. Answer honestly. If you know, say so. If you don't, don't make things up."
"Go ahead."
"Did you ever see the man's face in your dreams?"
"I saw it once." The young man hesitated for a long time before speaking. "He had two faces, like two people fused together, and the two of them would talk to each other—argue, even."
"Apart from making you do all sorts of things, did they ever say anything else?" This was a rare opportunity to learn about the other world, and Chen Ge wasn't about to let it slip.
"The most they ever did was curse at each other. Once, one of the faces was furious—it said that if it weren't afraid of being discovered by a Red Clothes, it would rather die than coexist with trash."
"Red Clothes?" Chen Ge caught a familiar term in the young man's words.
He took out the Black Phone and opened the affinity page. Behind Xiaoxiao's name, it read "Fierce Ghost." But behind
Those two extra characters made a world of difference. Zhang Ya had her very own dedicated page in the Black Phone.
Chen Ge fell into deep thought. The monster Wang Haiming had brought out of the Third Ward knew about the existence of Red Clothes—meaning there was very likely a Red Clothes fierce ghost somewhere inside the Third Ward.
"A fierce ghost on the same level as Zhang Ya."
Just the thought gave him a headache. The first mirror ghost he'd ever encountered had been toyed to death by Zhang Ya. That told him everything he needed to know about how hopelessly outmatched ordinary ghost remnants were against a Red Clothes.
He let out a soft sigh and gestured for the young man to continue.
"Other than the Red Clothes, I also figured out a few of their weaknesses. I was saving them for when things got desperate enough to go down swinging." The young man sat on the edge of the bed, no longer minding the stench from the black plastic bags beside him. "Those monsters rarely appear before midnight. They're afraid of bright light, they don't like noisy environments, and most importantly, they seem to be afraid of cats."
"Afraid of cats?" Chen Ge perked up immediately.
"That's right. The man in my dreams had me prepare all sorts of living creatures, but never a stray cat. So I think it's possible they're scared of cats." It was a reasonable enough deduction, but it was only speculation—nobody had ever verified it.
If possible, Chen Ge didn't want to be the first one to find out. "Maybe I should go back to my haunted house and test it?"
Seeing that Chen Ge had gone quiet, the young man didn't dare speak either. The middle-aged man, for his part, wore a look of bewildered awe, eyes wide as he listened to their conversation.