"It's my fault? If you hadn't insisted on making me carry it, my hand wouldn't have gotten like this."
Li Xu grumbled at Wei Ge, rubbing his hand hard against his clothes, but it didn't help — the red rash not only hadn't faded, it had gotten worse.
"Quit yapping. Get over here, finish the job, and let's get out. Why the hell is it so freezing down here?" Wei Ge walked ahead, carrying the bucket and following the route from memory deeper and deeper along the corridor.
Every few meters down the white-painted hallway, they passed a morgue door, each labeled with its assigned number.
They walked past Storage Room No. 6, then up to Storage Room No. 7. Just as Wei Ge was about to continue onward, Li Xu suddenly grabbed his arm.
"What now?" Wei Ge shot him an irritated glare.
Li Xu stood rooted to the spot, shining his flashlight toward the area beside Room No. 7. His expression had turned strange. "When we came in before, wasn't there just a wall next to Room No. 7?"
"Don't remember. Why?" Wei Ge's voice came through his mask, muffled.
"Look for yourself — how come there's another room next to Room No. 7? Was it built recently?" Li Xu didn't dare move forward. "There's a thick layer of dust on the door, so it must have been built a while ago, but I have absolutely no memory of it."
"Oh, such a big deal. Is that all?" Wei Ge walked past the front of Room No. 7 and stopped beside the extra room.
Its door was identical to the others, except the number on it was badly faded — blurry and indistinct, as if someone had scraped it away bit by bit with their fingernails.
"Should we go in and take a look?" Wei Ge thought it over carefully. When they'd been here before, there really hadn't been a room next to No. 7.
"You go in if you want. I'm not going." Li Xu shook his head, holding the flashlight behind Wei Ge to light the way.
"Look at you. We handle way more corpses at the crematorium than these students. Scared of this?" Wei Ge said it, but there was a trace of fear in his heart too. He skipped past the subject and quickened his pace, rushing by the door of that room.
"Wait for me!" Li Xu hurried forward with the flashlight, and then something nobody expected happened.
A gap had opened between Wei Ge and Li Xu, and just as Li Xu was about to pass the door of that room, the iron door outside swung open on its own.
Completely sudden — as if someone inside had given it a hard shove.
Li Xu was already not the bravest to begin with, and the door flying open startled him so badly he let out a scream.
Hearing Li Xu, Wei Ge stopped and glanced back. When he saw the iron door standing open, his face went pale.
"What the hell did you open that door for? Instead of getting nosy, you should be getting over here and helping!"
Wei Ge chewed out Li Xu, but Li Xu was wrongfully accused. "It opened by itself! I didn't even touch it."
He glanced into the room — just one look — and his body went rigid, as if frozen solid. Even his gaze locked onto a single spot.
"What's wrong?" Wei Ge had worked with Li Xu for years and knew the man's temperament. He wasn't the type to pull pranks.
He set down the bucket, walked to Li Xu's side, and looked into the storage room.
A few feet from the door, a corpse floated inside a glass container. What made it terrifying was that the corpse's eyes were open.
"Wei Ge… I feel like it's looking at us," Li Xu whispered. Every time he opened his mouth now, he could feel icy air creeping in.