Crooked, lopsided bodies. School uniforms stained with grime. Pale faces. And mouths that seemed to be trying to say something.
The three girls wore expressions of terror and pleading, their bodies seemingly fused to the chairs they sat in.
Chen Ge's gaze flickered between the mirror and the entrance to the women's changing room. A chill crept through him — just a short while ago, he'd tipped one of these chairs over and examined it from up close.
*This is my first intimate encounter with a female ghost?*
He shuddered and headed for the door, his pace quickening with every step.
As he drew closer, the three chairs blocking the entrance seemed to inch forward almost imperceptibly. Every locker door inside the women's changing room began to emit faint creaking sounds.
After he'd spoken the name Zhang Ya aloud, something had shifted throughout the entire dance studio — as if that name was a taboo that must never be uttered here.
*The mirror can only show the entrance to the changing room. There could be something far more terrifying hidden inside. I need to get out!*
His reasoning wasn't without merit. The metal locker doors were rattling on their own, as though something was about to burst out from within.
Gripping the claw hammer, Chen Ge sprinted to the door and kicked the center chair over. He was about to rush out when his shoulder felt as though something had seized it.
He glanced back at the mirror. Reflected on the glass surface, two slender, pale arms were draped over his shoulders.
Without a moment's hesitation, Chen Ge spun around and swung the hammer.
*Crack!*
The claw hammer smashed into the backrest of the chair, splitting a crack clean through it.
A faint woman's scream rang in his ears. In the mirror, he could see the female student sitting in that chair — her eyes burning with venom as she glared at the back of his head, her arms locked around his shoulder, clearly trying to force him down into her seat.
*What's the point of this? Does sitting in her chair mean I'd replace her — become the new soul trapped inside?*
The force pressing on his back grew stronger. Pair after pair of pale hands clawed at him, trying to shove him into the women's changing room. To make matters worse, strange thudding sounds echoed from the corridor outside. A few seconds later, yet another chair appeared in the doorway of the dance studio.
"I feel like I've been burning all my luck on the weirdest things. I never thought I had such a way with women!" Chen Ge couldn't hold on any longer. He stopped running, spun around of his own accord, pressed one hand against the chair's backrest, and with the other, brought the claw hammer crashing down on it over and over.
He'd noticed something earlier — the moment he'd cracked that first fissure in the chair, the female student's expression had changed drastically. She'd dropped all pretense, her pleading face twisting into naked malice.
Judging from that shift, Chen Ge concluded that the chair must serve as a vessel for the spirit's essence — the same principle by which Little Little's entire family inhabited their dolls.
*Destroy the vessel, and even if it doesn't kill her outright, it should at least severely wound her.*
A force in the surroundings was trying to compel him to sit down. If this were a complete novice who'd never experienced anything like this, they'd probably have collapsed to the floor in terror, helpless to resist.
Unfortunately for them, they'd run into Chen Ge — a haunted house owner who'd spent the night in a murder house alongside a killer just days ago. It wasn't that he couldn't feel fear. It was that through one harrowing encounter after another, his capacity to endure it had grown steadily. Even when shaken, he could still make the right call, and his hands never lost their steadiness.
*Crack!*