"Please call again later?"
Gao Ruxue thought she must have misheard. That automated voice hadn't said that—though if it hadn't, what else could it have said?
She hung up and stared at the phone screen, at her own pale face reflected back. It was clearly her face, yet it was making an expression completely different from the one she was wearing.
"Is she… smiling?"
She tossed the phone onto the sofa and stood in the middle of the empty room, hands clasped tightly together.
Time crept by, second after agonizing second. Gao Ruxue kept her position by the window, not daring to go anywhere. Whether it was the bedroom or the bathroom, both gave her an awful feeling.
"The ghost already knows where I am. Will my two roommates—who have become ghosts—come for me soon?"
Outside, dark clouds pressed down on the sky, not letting a single sliver of light through. Rain was coming any moment now.
"At this hour, my dad should've been home long ago."
Clutching the fruit knife, Gao Ruxue pulled the curtain aside just enough to peer out. She looked again toward the apartment on the upper right.
The face with the gouged-out eyes was gone. There was nothing on that balcony but a row of laundry.
The prolonged tension had drained her completely. She leaned her body against the windowsill and stared out at the pitch-black residential complex below, her heart filling with sudden, nameless panic.
The entire Qixia Lake complex was steeped in darkness. Only her room blazed with light—she'd turned on every single lamp out of fear.
It felt like walking through a perilous forest holding a torch. The light might bring a sense of security, but it also gave away her exact position.
"Too conspicuous!"
Just as Gao Ruxue was debating whether to turn off the lights, something suddenly flashed past the complex's entrance.
She fixed her gaze on that spot, and her heart shot up into her throat.
A blurry figure of a woman stood at the entrance. It looked like one of her roommates.
"How did she get here?"
Gao Ruxue was staring so intently at the entrance that she nearly jumped when her phone on the sofa buzzed.
The screen emitted a faint, cold glow, and the buzzing made her teeth chatter.
She rushed over and grabbed the phone. The caller ID showed her roommate.
"Should I answer?"
She hesitated, then picked up. "Liu Xian?"
"It's past ten already—why aren't you back in the dorm?" Liu Xianxian's voice came through the speaker. "Where did you go?"
"I'm out. I'm not coming back tonight."
"Be careful on your own! Things have been really sketchy around here lately. There's some psycho killer on the loose who gouges people's eyes out." Liu Xianxian's voice sounded a little unsettling.
"Okay, that's enough. I know all of that already. If there's nothing else, I'm hanging up." Gao Ruxue ended the call and ran back to the window with the phone in hand.
She peered toward the entrance. The blurry figure was gone.
"Was that just another hallucination?"
Her gaze shifted downward—toward the area beneath her building—and every drop of blood drained from her face.
That figure had somehow appeared directly below her apartment.
"Was the light what drew it here?"
Gao Ruxue ducked behind the curtain, her entire body going ice-cold. Just as she was wrestling with whether to turn off the lights, her phone buzzed yet again.
She looked down. It was Liu Xianxian calling once more.
Two figures stood right below the building. This time, there was no way Gao Ruxue was answering the phone.
She threw it onto the sofa and covered the screen with a cushion, but the vibrating still made her heart pound.
It rang for about ten seconds before finally stopping. Immediately after, Liu Xian sent a text message.
"The dorm supervisor is asking where you are. The school administration has been doing strict checks lately. You'd better come back to the dorm."
Gao Ruxue didn't reply. She switched the phone to silent mode the moment she had it set, a second message from Liu Xian popped up.
"Xiao Xue, are you in some kind of trouble? Do you want me to come find you? Where are you right now?"
The texts on the screen looked perfectly ordinary—just a friend worried about Gao Ruxue's safety, seemingly nothing more. But considering Gao Ruxue's current situation, the meaning was entirely different.
Right now, right beneath her building, a ghost was standing there.