"Qiumei! Come out and play!"
The girl downstairs waved vigorously, a smile plastered across her face. She looked genuinely excited, as if something wonderful had happened to her.
The protagonist didn't respond. The camera held for a full second in a hollow, almost indifferent frame before the protagonist closed the window.
That bone-deep chill didn't dissipate with the closing of the window. Instead, it coiled around the protagonist's body like a living thing. No one knew how the director had achieved it, but that oppressive atmosphere alone surpassed the vast majority of horror films on the market.
The cramped room felt like a cage. Once the window shut, it was as though freezing seawater surged in from all sides, swallowing the protagonist whole.
The camera drifted aimlessly around the room. Then, from behind, that girl's voice came again.
"Qiumei! Qiumei!"
The camera slowly turned around. A girl's face was pressed flat against the window, her features grotesquely distorted from the sheer force, as if she were trying to crush the glass with her own face.
"Qiumei! Come out and play!"
Her bright red outfit was strikingly vivid, forming a stark contrast against the overcast, cloud-heavy sky while simultaneously complementing it.
The protagonist lived on the fourth floor. Just moments ago when she had looked outside, that girl had clearly been standing on the ground floor.
Such a bizarre scene appearing without warning — and yet the protagonist showed no sign of alarm, as though she were long used to it.
The camera rotated calmly toward another direction. Because it was shot from a first-person perspective, the camera effectively represented the female lead's line of sight.
It swept past the cluttered desk, past the pile of dirty clothes on the floor, and finally settled on the bedroom door.
"Qiumei! Come out and play!"
A girl's face was pressed against the glass of the bedroom door's window, her red clothing casting the glass in a deep crimson hue.
Her breathing grew ragged. The protagonist suddenly snatched up a pair of scissors from the desk and raised them overhead.
Because it was first-person, the scene made the audience feel as though those scissors were being thrust directly at them.
It was too fast — the shift from stillness to motion was so abrupt that no one could react in time.
"Bang!"
The bedroom door was kicked open. A middle-aged man rushed in, seized the protagonist's wrist, and wrenched the scissors away.
"What are you trying to do again?!"
The camera shook violently, the world spinning as the female lead was shoved against the desk.
"Your mother and I have already been through enough! Please, just stop torturing us — is that really so much to ask?!"
The audience couldn't see the female lead's expression or demeanor, but they could read everything from the middle-aged man's face. People were such remarkable creatures — that kind of empathy seemed to have been carved into the deepest layers of the collective bloodline.
"What's going on?" Hurried footsteps echoed as a middle-aged woman rushed into the room. She looked haggard and worn, and the moment she laid eyes on the female lead, her own eyes reddened almost instantly.
Without another word, the middle-aged woman squeezed past her husband and wrapped the female lead in her arms.