"Nothing more?" He glanced at the date scrawled on the last page by the artist's own hand, then reached for the notebook nearby.
He pulled out the yellowed newspaper clipping and compared the dates.
The day after he finished this painting, the artist had his accident. The newspaper must have been slipped in by the old lady or one of the other tenants.
"His dream stopped on that day."
Sitting on the edge of the bed with the handcrafted comic album in his lap, Chen Ge gained a new understanding of the ghosts he had encountered tonight.
The five stories told the pasts of five people who had lived in Room 304. None of them had been bad people in life.
Chen Ge's initial assumption had been that the ghosts inside the comic book were affecting reality, but after reading the artist's own story, he finally understood — the truth was that the ghosts in reality had been hiding inside his drawings.
"Taken care of by several vengeful spirits in a rental apartment all at once — this uncle was something else." Chen Ge flipped the album to the fifth story. He addressed the dejected, middle-aged man depicted there: "I know you're unwilling to let it end like this. You long for your comics to be seen by more people, to be loved by more people. I can help you make that happen."
The middle-aged man in the comic — hugging his knees, curled up in the corner of the wall — pricked up his ears at Chen Ge's words, as though he wanted to turn his head around.
"So this comic really does have a special quality. It seems capable of letting ghosts anchor themselves to it."
Vengeful spirits and lingering wills beneath the Red Coat could only persist for a long time if they anchored themselves to a specific object. The artist's album had over thirty blank pages at the back. If this thing could serve as an anchor for ghosts, then Chen Ge would never have to lug that huge backpack around again. He could even take the twenty-four students from Muyang High School out for a stroll.
At that thought, Chen Ge's heart stirred. "Uncle, you and the characters you drew both have wishes that were never fulfilled. Why not tell me what they are? I can help you make up for the regrets you carried from your life."
To bolster his persuasion, Chen Ge rattled off example after example — publishing every comic the artist had ever drawn, helping the salesperson destroy the ghost that had brought him misfortune, finding the gambler's lost left hand, paying a visit to the English teacher's family she had not seen in years.
Chen Ge appealed to emotion and reason in equal measure, and finally the middle-aged man in the album turned his body around.
On that face — the textbook portrait of a middle-aged man worn down by failure — sat a smile of utter resignation. He regarded Chen Ge with an expression caught somewhere between belief and doubt.
A full few minutes passed before a string of characters materialized beneath that panel of the comic.
"Please take care of me."
At the same moment, the Black Phone vibrated softly. Chen Ge didn't hesitate — right in front of the middle-aged man, he tapped open the notification message.
"Lucky Vengeful Spirit Patron! Congratulations — you have obtained the most powerful ghost beneath the Red Coat!"
"
"Ability One: Ghost Affinity (He looks so dejected that no one has the heart to bully him)."
"Ability Two: Soul Drawing (After witnessing a vengeful spirit, there is a certain probability of dragging it into a painting. Red-Coat spirits are excluded.)"
"Ability Three: ???"