Faint light seeped through the gaps in the curtains, casting shadows on the wall. The black silhouettes seemed almost alive — as though if you stopped watching them for even a moment, they would slip off the wall and vanish somewhere else.
"Something just moved under the blanket."
This dormitory was definitely not as safe as it appeared on the surface. Chen Ge's heart shot up into his throat in an instant.
He didn't flip the blanket open to check. If there was a ghost crouching underneath, whether he lifted the blanket or not, the ghost would still be there. It wouldn't leave just because it had been seen — instead, he would only be exposing himself to danger prematurely.
The knocking at the door slowly faded. Something brushed past his ankle like an insect crawling by, and that sense of foreboding grew ever stronger.
Goosebumps erupted across Chen Ge's skin. He could feel with perfect clarity something creeping up his leg.
Beads of cold sweat formed on his cheeks. The atmosphere inside the dormitory grew more and more eerie. After roughly ten seconds, the knocking at the door abruptly stopped!
Chen Ge turned to look. The door was still shut, but all five black silhouettes on the dormitory wall had disappeared.
His gaze swept to the other direction. Chen Ge noticed that on the remaining five beds, the tattered blankets had all risen into humps — as if someone were lying under every single one.
"They came back?"
The strange sensation in his foot had already spread to his calf. Chen Ge was now certain that something had crawled into his blanket!
Even though an image of a human head lying inside his covers flashed through his mind, Chen Ge maintained an astonishing composure.
Fear solved nothing. If the knocking had truly come from inside the room, then all the other party wanted was simply to leave.
His legs were going numb. Chen Ge felt that if he delayed any longer, his body would lose control step by step, and eventually he wouldn't even have a chance to fight back.
He hesitated no longer and did something wildly reckless.
He arched his body slightly, then kicked both legs upward with explosive force and kipped to his feet in one fluid motion!
He didn't bother checking what was inside the blanket. He grabbed his backpack and scissors, vaulted off the top bunk, and sprinted straight to the dormitory door, yanking it open.
The entire sequence flowed like water — as though he had rehearsed it in his mind a hundred times over.
After throwing open the door, Chen Ge didn't linger inside. He dashed into the hallway in a single breath.
Kicking the bed, slamming the door, sprinting away — Chen Ge made quite a racket. The noise carried far.
"I've opened the door, so it's not going to chase me, is it?" Chen Ge had no desire to provoke those things. Right now, all he wanted was to figure out who Lin Sisi really was and determine exactly where he was.
Scissors in his left hand, backpack in his right, Chen Ge stood at the mouth of the hallway and waited for several minutes. Everything around him was deathly quiet. There was nothing unusual in the corridor.
"It didn't chase after me?" Chen Ge let out a breath of relief and rubbed his hands together. "Let's assume the news in the notebook took place in Room 413, and that what was just knocking at the door was the student who died a horrible death in that room. It wanted to get out, and I opened the door to help. It didn't come after me to kill me, which means it's reasonably sensible. I did it a favor, and it retained enough basic rationality for us to establish a foundation for communication. There's potential for us to get to know each other on a deeper level."