On the screen, the female protagonist's parents were not really listening to the "doctor's" words. There was undisguised disappointment in their eyes.
"Trust me, your daughter really isn't sick. Her eye condition was just an accident. If possible, I'd like to take her to Xinhai City — I'll give her a much more thorough examination." The man didn't seem like a fraud. His tone was genuinely sincere. Unfortunately, the female protagonist's parents didn't buy a word of what he was saying.
"Maybe I'll send her over when there's a chance. Right now, Wenyu still needs to go to school." The girl's mother politely declined.
The doctor sighed softly, handed the mother a business card, and got up to leave.
Throughout the entire exchange, the doctor had his back to the female protagonist the whole time — his face was never shown.
The door closed. After the doctor left, the mother whispered with a complaint, "I was wondering why he was willing to treat Wenyu for free. Turns out he's just a con man. Once we got to Xinhai, he'd probably come up with all sorts of excuses to charge us."
"I don't think this doctor is reliable either. He's probably someone impersonating a real doctor. But there has to be some reason behind an illness — Wenyu never had anything like this before. How did she just suddenly get sick?"
"Yeah, this kid was perfectly fine a few months ago. It started from that evening — no, that afternoon, after school let out. That's when she started acting weird."
The parents' faces were heavy with worry, their voices carrying a note of heartache.
The camera recorded everything with cold detachment, giving the impression that the female protagonist herself was watching the scene before her with icy indifference.
The open eyes slowly closed. That eerie music started playing again.
Unlike watching a horror movie at home, in a cinema the soundtrack came from all directions, even creating the sensation of footsteps approaching from the distance, or something circling around you on either side.
This suspense-horror short film had been produced with tremendous care — the sound design alone made that clear.
The background music was interspersed with heartbeats and ragged breathing, like someone caught in a nightmare while sleeping.
Sinking into darkness, struggling desperately, yet unable to touch anything.
Just as the audience was involuntarily drawn in, holding their breath, a crisp bell rang through the soundtrack.
The eyelids fluttered. The female protagonist seemed to have been startled awake by the bell. She opened her eyes in a daze.
Images reappeared on the screen, but the camera was no longer filming a bedroom — it was a rather rundown cram school.
Blinding sunlight streamed through the window and fell on the female protagonist. The camera caught her shadow on the floor.
She was slumped over a desk in the last row of the cram school classroom, half-asleep.
"A third of the way through the film and I'm only just seeing the protagonist's shadow. This director is a genius."
Chen Ge had seen many shadows. From a professional standpoint, the shadow in this movie was about as ordinary as it possibly could be.
The sun made her head swim. Around her came the whir of an electric fan, the rustle of turning pages, and tinny music leaking from some classmate's cheap earbuds.
A single long take captured everything in the classroom. The director, the cameraman, and the actor worked together in perfect sync.
"Bang!"
Just as the audience was fully immersed in the atmosphere the director had built, the calm was shattered.
The door was shoved open, and a girl with an exaggerated hairstyle walked in.
"He Qiumei! You'd better behave yourself — don't disturb the other students!" A bespectacled man with a buzz cut followed right behind her, holding a phone in one hand and a textbook in the other.
This man had to be the cram school teacher. He seemed to already be familiar with the new arrival.
"Got it." The red-haired girl was still chewing gum, her words slightly muffled.
The teacher had long since known the girl's temperament. He scratched his head in irritation, wiped the sweat from his face, and clapped his hands lightly. "Let me interrupt for a moment. This new student joining our cram school is He Qiumei. She had to take a year off from school due to a family situation, and she's here to catch up on the material. I hope everyone can give her a hand."
The teacher gave a brief introduction of the girl, then gestured for her to sit in the last row.
Quite coincidentally, she ended up sitting right next to the female protagonist, becoming her desk-mate.
The camera settled on He Qiumei in a close-up. The girl had dyed light-red hair. She leaned against the back wall and casually tossed her schoolbag onto the desk.