Drops of fresh blood trickled down the exquisite school uniform, the fabric clinging tight to the body. Hair draped over the face, and the exposed skin was white to the point of being terrifying.
"
The girl seemed to hear Chen Ge's voice. Her lowered head slowly rose, black hair sliding to either side, revealing features so flawless they were beyond reproach.
But just as her head had lifted halfway, a mist seemed to form across the mirror's surface. She took a single step forward and vanished entirely from the glass.
"Where'd she go?"
Chen Ge stared fixedly at the mirror. Then something even more unsettling happened.
Under the glow of the phone's light, his shadow slowly rose to its feet and came to a stop directly behind him.
From the mirror, Chen Ge could see the dark silhouette — about five-foot-seven, accompanied by a steady drip, drip, the sound of blood sliding down. Gradually, that figure took on color.
A blood-soaked school uniform clung to its body. At a glance, it was nothing but crimson.
Chen Ge stood rooted in place, not daring to move a muscle. The chill at his back had already surged up his spine and into his brain. And right at that moment, the blood-red figure took half a step back — and pressed directly against his back.
Back to back. Chen Ge's body felt as though it had been flash-frozen. He sucked in air desperately, but it did nothing to ease the suffocating pressure closing around him.
"A vengeful ghost is leaning against my back?" Standing back to back was a deeply unnerving thing under certain circumstances, because most of the time, there was no way to confirm who — or what — was behind you.
*Snap!*
Something cold settled between his fingers. He didn't dare look. His stiff hand slowly loosened, and the phone slipped free, falling to the floor.
The light flickered several times, then went out without warning.
Enveloped in darkness, the cold at his back kept spreading. Chen Ge refused to let his imagination fill in the details of what he was experiencing.
Two in the morning, alone in the pitch-black, empty dance studio of an abandoned school, facing a six-meter-long mirror, standing back to back with a vengeful ghost in red — perhaps that could even be called a kind of romance.
A storm of thoughts churned through his mind. His palm felt as though something had seized it, growing colder by the second. Behind his head, the girl's black hair swayed and stirred, the ghost's hair and Chen Ge's hair intertwining together.
"What is she planning to do? My mission here is to find the red dancing shoes. If I can't find them, the affection mission won't count as a success."
His body locked rigid, Chen Ge could only watch the mirror helplessly. At first, he paid it no mind, but after a few seconds, he suddenly noticed a hazy figure appearing in the glass.
He widened his eyes. His pupils darkened, and the figure in the mirror gradually came into focus.
"Weren't those the girls who were trapped in the chairs earlier?"
Inside the mirror, five girls wearing clean, neatly pressed school uniforms filed into the dance studio. Their attire was entirely different from before. This scene recorded by the mirror appeared to have taken place long, long ago.