"'Come find me'? Are they out of their minds?" The crooked, lopsided writing on the medical record made Scissors deeply uncomfortable. He stopped on the first floor of the hospital, standing in the middle of the corridor.
The half-open ward door creaked open and shut on its own, with no breeze to move it. Dust rained down endlessly from the dilapidated ceiling, and the sound of paper scraping against the floor drifted to his ears from time to time.
Standing alone in a scene like this past midnight — saying he wasn't afraid would be an outright lie.
Scissors gripped the scissors in his hand, struggling to put on a calm front. "When did this piece of paper get stuck behind me?"
He turned to look back at the wards he had just passed through. "The one who stuck this on me should be hiding in one of the rooms I just walked by."
He was scared, but not to the point of losing his senses. He kept reminding himself that right now he was playing the role of a cold-blooded, deranged killer — he had to stay composed at all times.
"The weaker you are, the more the ghosts will bully you. You can't be afraid — or at least you can't show it."
He folded the medical record, stuffed it into his pocket, and carefully pushed open the half-open ward door beside him.
The bedsheets were torn to shreds, the hospital bed overturned, as if something ferocious had once been strapped to it.
"Is this a hospital or the intensive ward of an asylum?" Scissors didn't rush inside. He stood in the doorway and looked around.
The bed wasn't large. Only the space underneath it and the wardrobe could barely conceal a person.
"The one playing tricks on me isn't here." He could see under the bed at a glance, and the wardrobe doors were open too — completely empty inside, nothing at all. "It should be in one of the other wards."
His heart was in a panic, but his expression barely changed. He forced his stiff legs to move and headed toward the other wards.
"This one's empty, this one too…" Scissors moved faster and faster, until finally he arrived at the ward closest to the hospital exit.
"After I entered the hospital, I went straight into the corridor, and the only wards I passed were these. All the others were empty, so it has to be in this last room." His palms gripping the scissors were slick with sweat. He slowly pushed open the door to this ward.
A pungent smell wafted from inside — a mix of disinfectant and blood.
"Someone died in this room?"
The scene inside the ward was shocking. Blood-stained bedsheets had been shoved haphazardly under the bed. A hospital gown, torn to ribbons, hung from the security grille on the window. A long wig was draped over the wardrobe. Most terrifying of all, a sentence had been written in blood on the snow-white wall — Guess where I'm hiding?
Comparing the handwriting, it was clear the blood writing on the wall and the blood writing on the medical record had been penned by two different hands. This discovery made Scissors even more uneasy. "There's more than one 'person' playing hide-and-seek in this hospital?"
He wanted to retreat. He ran out of the ward, planning to leave the hospital for the time being. "The most dangerous place is the safest place — that's the logic, sure, but in practice, it's still a bit difficult."
When Scissors reached the hospital entrance, his expression changed completely. The big iron gate had been closed at some point — he had no idea by whom.
"What do I do?"
Scissors felt helpless. He bit his lip, and the wound on his face pulled tight — the pain brought him back to clarity. "Let me see if there are any windows."
All the first-floor ward windows had security grilles installed. He had already checked. Now he was placing all his hopes on the second floor.
"I've been training for this day for a long time. Jumping from the second floor shouldn't hurt me, but from the third floor — that's another story." Clutching his bag, Scissors ran toward the stairs.
By now he had completely abandoned the idea of playing the hide-and-seek game. He had never actually intended to play along with the ghost.
His feet pounded the stairs, taking three steps at a time. When he reached the landing, something caught the corner of his eye — a pair of grey feet.
The feet were hovering not far above his head. He looked up and saw a pair of deathly grey calves. When he looked higher still, the thing was gone.
"What the—?"
Completely caught off guard, Scissors' legs went weak. He never imagined the thing could be so close — just a few steps away, separated by nothing but a handful of stairs.
"It's right around me — maybe even watching me from somewhere!"
Frozen at the stair landing, Scissors didn't know whether to keep going up. He had seen it clearly enough. Those things were on the floor above.
"All the first-floor windows have security grilles — there's no way out. The only chance to escape this nightmare is through a second-floor window."
There was no choice. Scissors steeled himself and headed upstairs.
"Please don't appear again out of nowhere," he muttered under his breath, and ran to the first ward on the left side of the second floor.
He threw open the ward door and looked at the window. Beyond the glass pane was a security grille, festooned with shreds of clothing.
"The second-floor windows have security grilles too?"
His lips were dry. A sense of despair crept into his heart.
He walked to the window and grabbed the grille with both hands, shaking it hard several times.
The wire cut his fingers. The pain felt so real. But outside the window, the city shrouded in blood mist looked so unreal.
"I really wish this were a nightmare I could wake up from." The grille was solid — no way to open it. Scissors released his grip and turned to leave.
But just as he reached the ward door, footsteps echoed from the emergency stairwell on the other side of the second-floor corridor. Something was running.
"It's heading this way — and there are a lot of them!"