The chair was placed right in the middle of the hallway. To reach the second floor, there was no avoiding passing by it.
His encounter at the entrance to the female dormitory was still fresh in
He hid at the stairwell corner, feeling hesitant.
"It has a backrest. This chair is completely different from the ones in the activity center classroom. It must have been deliberately brought from somewhere else, but why would they dump it here in the activity center?"
Judging by the style, the chairs on the second floor of the activity center were the same as those in the female dormitory building—likely standard dormitory chairs issued by the school to each student.
Chen Ge shone his phone light on the doorplate of the room opposite. It bore characters related to vocal music. "The dance studio isn't on the second floor. Maybe I should just go straight to the third floor? But what if there's another chair in the middle of the third-floor corridor? If I get chased by it into the stairwell corner, and then get blocked by the chair from the second floor when I try to go downstairs..."
The somewhat chilling image flashed through his mind. After a moment's thought, Chen Ge decided not to avoid it. He gripped his tool hammer and stepped into the second-floor corridor.
The pitch-black hallway stretched endlessly, the doors to the rooms on either side all tightly shut. The windows on the doors were covered in thick dust, their surfaces blurry, making it impossible to see what might be hidden inside the classrooms.
Chen Ge moved slowly. He didn't let the chair being right in front of him distract him from everything else.
In fact, in Chen Ge's view, those unused classrooms on either side were actually a bit more frightening.
"Who knows how long it's been since anyone set foot in this place. The floor tiles are covered in dust, and footprints can't be hidden. If the person following me also enters the activity center, he'll definitely discover me." Even in such a bizarre environment, Chen Ge didn't forget to stay vigilant for a possible third party while multitasking. "I need to speed up and end this quickly!"
The phone's light swayed with the movement of Chen Ge's arm as he drew closer and closer to the chair.
"It doesn't seem all that scary? A chair can't exactly kill me, can it?" Chen Ge circled the chair once. To him, it just felt like a very ordinary chair.
"Should I take it apart and have a look?" The thought crossed Chen Ge's mind, and his actions followed suit. He raised the tool hammer and knocked the chair over. Suddenly, he saw something written underneath.
"Qian Yujiao? Looks like a girl's name."
The appearance of this name further confirmed Chen Ge's earlier guess. The chair was indeed not an original fixture of the activity center, but belonged to someone.
When schools held large events, they would often have students bring their own chairs. To prevent mix-ups, many would write their names on the underside of their chairs.
"Does the chair in the female dormitory also have a name written underneath?" Chen Ge committed the name to memory. After some consideration, he didn't smash the chair, but instead placed it in a nearby classroom. "The longer I stay here, the more uncomfortable it feels. I'd better hurry to the third floor."
He retraced his steps and went up the stairs to the third floor.
The empty corridor was completely bare. Chen Ge pushed open the doors to several classrooms. The desks and chairs inside were piled up against the back walls, and portions of the walls had been repainted, clearly showing two different colors.
"The school is about to be shut down. Why bother repainting now? Who is the renovation for?" His experience at the Peace Apartment instantly sparked a thought in Chen Ge's mind. "The fresh paint is probably meant to cover up something."
He used the tool hammer to scrape at the wall's surface. What he found strange was that the wall behind the new paint was perfectly normal. There were none of the imagined bloodstains or strands of women's hair.