Slowly withdrawing his arm, Chen Ge remained standing in place. The surroundings were utterly silent—no sounds, no unusual smells.
"The couple fighting on the second floor lost their child. The child's name is Dabao. The missing person notice outside the hallway was probably posted by them."
"The second-floor couple is searching for their lost child, but I just felt that child's face on the corridor wall. Did the child become a ghost and return to this building? Or was he killed right inside it? Could the killer be one of the residents?"
The more Chen Ge thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. The husband went out late at night, the pregnant wife chased after him without locking the door. Under normal circumstances, the child left alone inside shouldn't wander out on his own—unless he saw something, or someone he knew called to him from outside.
"Could the killer be a neighbor?"
The word "neighbor" was ordinary enough, but for Chen Ge it carried a different weight entirely, because the nightmare-level daily task he was currently undertaking was called—Neighbor.
He took a step forward. Chen Ge felt it would be more reassuring to brace himself against the wall, but his palm froze just before making contact. The earlier incident had left him with a psychological aversion; he was terrified of touching something else ungodly.
Finger by finger, his hand came down. Once his fingertips met the cold, hard wall plaster, he exhaled in relief. Unless absolutely necessary, he had no desire to touch any of the "people" he passed along the way.
"I'm just here to complete a task. There's no need to dig into whatever happened in this place. All I have to do is walk to the rooftop with my eyes closed, and everything else is none of my concern." As he spoke, Chen Ge took another step forward—but the moment his body moved, he suddenly felt something tug at the hem of his jacket.
"Is it that child?" Chen Ge froze on the staircase. His eyes were shut tight; he couldn't see a thing, and could only wait for the other to let go.
After roughly five seconds, Chen Ge took another step forward. He could distinctly feel a force pulling him from behind.
The other party had no intention of releasing him. Chen Ge didn't dare force it. He tried stepping back, and the pull noticeably weakened.
"Something doesn't want me to leave."
A terrifying thought surfaced in his mind. Chen Ge slowly crouched down and whispered over his shoulder: "Dabao?"
The pull vanished for an instant, then quickly resumed.
"Is it really you?" Chen Ge deliberately slowed his speech. "Your parents are looking for you. Go home quickly."
Whether it was something he said that provoked the other, Chen Ge felt the pull behind him surge violently, as though trying to drag him straight into the wall.
"Wait—if you don't like your parents and don't want to go home, I can stay with you!" Chen Ge immediately changed his tune.
"My own childhood wasn't exactly wonderful either. My parents were always arguing over trivial things. When I saw them looking so terrifying, I could only hide in a corner by myself. Other families had lively dinners, but mine was always cold and empty. On the rare occasions the three of us were together, it always ended in discord."
It seemed no one had ever said anything like this to the child before. Chen Ge felt the pull from behind lessen.
"They'd fight, smash things around the house, and sometimes their anger got taken out on me. The inexplicable beatings and scoldings made me live with constant caution—I didn't even dare to cry too loudly." Chen Ge let out a soft sigh. "Even now that I've grown up, I'll never forget what happened back then. The scars weren't erased by time; instead, as the years passed, I slowly learned to live with the pain."
Chen Ge settled onto the staircase steps, turned toward the surrounding darkness, and murmured, "Isn't that pathetic? I was just a child who couldn't even get his parents' love, yet I had to force myself to be a sensible adult."
The pull weakened further. Chen Ge's words seemed to resonate with the other.
"I've experienced what it feels like to be alone, and it made me sensitive—suspicious of everything. I know how unbearable that feels. So if you don't mind, I can be your friend. I don't want you to go through the kind of pain I once did." The force behind him disappeared entirely, but Chen Ge remained perfectly still. An adult's response to a child was like a mirror: a good response let the child see the best version of himself, while a poor one was a funhouse mirror that distorted his perception.
Although Chen Ge had no children of his own, he had interacted with children many times. He understood precisely how to respond to one.
Dabao's family was already deeply unfortunate. Within his power, Chen Ge was willing to help.
The surroundings held no sound, and his clothes were no longer being tugged. The child seemed to have left.
Chen Ge could see nothing. He pressed his hand against the wall and didn't touch anything else strange. "Don't worry about me leaving. I just need to make a trip to the rooftop. Once I've taken care of things, I'll come back."
Having spoken those words into the darkness, Chen Ge slowly rose. He braced himself against the wall and was about to climb higher when the hand closer to the railing felt a sudden chill—as though someone had pressed a block of ice into his palm.
His fingertips trembled. Chen Ge clenched his fingers, confirming that his hand was being held by another.
Goosebumps instinctively erupted across his neck. Chen Ge held his position for two seconds, then gripped the small hand firmly. "You can come along with me, but remember one thing—if there's danger, run. Don't worry about me. Got it?"
Holding that hand, Chen Ge continued upward. He made it smoothly from the seventh floor to the eleventh without encountering a single incident.
But the moment he reached the eleventh floor, the elevator in the hallway chimed. The doors slid open—as if someone had taken the elevator late at night and gotten off on the eleventh floor.
Whether the other was human or ghost, and to avoid any misunderstanding, Chen Ge stopped walking and held his position.
Footsteps echoed down the eleventh-floor corridor, followed by the sound of keys jingling together. Then a key slid into a lock, the tumbler clicked, and a security door swung open.
Just when Chen Ge thought the other was about to step inside, a tremendous force surged from the hallway—someone seized his left arm and tried with desperate strength to drag him into the room that had just been opened!
His balance lost, the blindfolded Chen Ge nearly fell. At the same moment, another force pulled on his right hand, straining with all its might to keep him from being taken away.