My heart sank as I followed Song Nanshi’s gesture, but I only saw an ordinary bathroom door frame with nothing there.
My first reaction was that this girl was teasing me, so I said helplessly: “I’m really scared of this stuff, don’t frighten me. If you scare me sick, you won’t get your wages.”
However, Song Nanshi’s expression was very serious, and my heart gradually grew cold too. After all, this girl was as straightforward as steel and concrete—if a beauty would lie, how could she end up working at my place?
He Jian also didn’t see any problem and said strangely: “Sister Song, what did you see? Isn’t there nothing there?”
Song Nanshi shook her head: “That’s because you haven’t paid attention. Originally there was a gap above the second-floor bathroom door. It was there this morning, but now…”
I suddenly realized what she was talking about. Manager Hu had told me that after someone died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the second-floor bathroom, the landlord had made the bathroom door smaller, leaving a gap above it for ventilation to prevent accidents from happening again.
I jerked my head up. I don’t know when it started, but that thin crack above the bathroom door was no longer letting light through, as if something was hanging from the ceiling inside the door, blocking all the light.
We three big men indeed hadn’t been conscious of this. After all, even with a crack, no one would take advantage of it, but Song Nanshi, no matter how straightforward, was still a girl. She probably noticed the existence of that crack from the moment she moved in.
Thinking of this, my spine felt cold, and I asked tremblingly: “When did you discover this?”
“Just now. I was so busy today I hadn’t come upstairs. I only noticed when He Jian went in.”
Song Nanshi’s expression showed no fear. She originally seemed to think that thing inside the door could be dispelled by Han Sha. Now she was puzzled that the “obstruction” hadn’t left, which is why she grabbed me.
I couldn’t help but look at He Jian and Han Sha. People can be blind, but not this blind. If there really was something crawling on the bathroom ceiling, it couldn’t be that neither of them noticed when they went in.
He Jian, emboldened by his youth and thick-headedness, rushed into the bathroom before Han Sha could speak. He looked up and observed, then jumped up. Suddenly, the thing stuffed in the crack was knocked out by him and fluttered down to the hallway.
I walked over to pick it up and found it was several sheets of newspaper folded very thinly. When unfolded, it turned out to be the Yu Jiang Evening News from three months ago. Opening to the second page, there was writing about the accident that occurred at No. 29 Guan Yinli.
My heart turned cold. Never mind that it was 2022 and people still read newspapers, but what was left was precisely the content from three months ago about someone committing suicide by slashing their wrists at No. 29. Wasn’t this a naked warning?
Perhaps my expression was too ugly. He Jian took the newspaper from my hands, looked at it, and said gravely: “Boss, it’s safer for me to hold this. Don’t stack more buffs on yourself… Let me share some of the burden.”
Han Sha stood to the side with his arms crossed, not showing much surprise, only saying in a deep voice: “The strange incidents in this house have always been a kind of warning. Boss, if you want to continue doing business, you need to be mentally prepared for this… And it’s not just you—everyone here needs to be mentally prepared.”
His gaze swept over He Jian and Song Nanshi, the meaning self-evident, while I just wanted to curse inwardly.
Damn it, I finally made some money, so why don’t other people’s investments encounter these damn problems? By logic, as a Yu Jiang person who hasn’t even eaten spicy rabbit head in the first half of my life, compared to my sister who’s a rabbit-eating killing demon, shouldn’t I have accumulated enough virtue and good deeds?
However, no matter how wronged I felt, legs grew on other people’s bodies. I looked wordlessly at the other three people in the house. Han Sha was the first to shrug and calmly express his position: “Given my Daoist training, I cannot ignore such evil spirits, moreover, taking people’s money means eliminating disasters for them. Boss, you needn’t worry about me. Just pay my monthly salary.”
It’s 2022—who would have thought you could recruit a Bodhisattva on 58.com.
I wanted to say thank you, Master Daoist, when He Jian also chimed in: “Boss, you don’t know how fierce the competition is outside. Those classmates of mine who got into big companies work 996 every day. By this logic, don’t those big companies have two employees die of overwork every few days? Wouldn’t that make them giant haunted houses? Since we’re all gambling with our lives anyway, comparatively speaking, your place is better—we even get cake to eat.”
The young man looked at me very sincerely. Combined with that pure, unpretentious face, this appearance-obsessed person was moved to a complete mess without any dignity.
When a person becomes unlucky to a certain extent, even getting thirty cents from scanning an Alipay red envelope feels like heaven’s blessing, let alone having someone willing to work under you despite the risk of being killed by a haunted house.
Moved, I patted his shoulder: “Next time you want to eat something, you can order directly from me. I’ll make it at cost price for you to take home.”
Now only Song Nanshi remained. The girl had been silent since earlier. For some reason, she looked neither afraid nor like she wanted to leave, but was simply thinking.
I asked carefully: “Xiao Song, do you have any thoughts?”
Song Nanshi came back to her senses. Seeing my worried expression, she suddenly realized and said frantically: “Boss, I’m not leaving! It’s just… the reason I noticed that crack was actually because something strange happened two nights ago, and I never dared to mention it.”
“Something strange?”
I now instinctively felt my heart jump when hearing these two words.
Song Nanshi nodded, and her face suddenly turned bright red. Under our three men’s gazes, she stammered about what happened two nights ago.
At that time, Huangliang Yimeng was still in preparation, but everyone had already moved in. The four empty rooms on the second floor were suddenly packed full. Song Nanshi and I lived in the two rooms near the stairs, while Han Sha and He Jian lived on the side near the bathroom.
Around nine o’clock that evening, Song Nanshi saw the bathroom was free and planned to bathe early. I had previously established an unwritten rule about this with Han Sha and He Jian. Since there was a lady in the house, to give the girl a more comfortable living environment, we let her use the bathroom first every night, so we big men wouldn’t mess it up first and make the girl disgusted.
That night was the same. Song Nanshi was the first to enter the bathroom as usual. She had noticed early on that there was a crack in the bathroom door, but as a famous blockhead in Yu Jiang City, she really didn’t think this crack would become any problem, until that day when she felt somewhat cold while bathing.
In her years of working at the funeral home, this vague coldness was commonplace for Song Nanshi.
Whether it was suddenly opening a freezer in the morgue or ice coffins being wheeled down the corridor, they would all bring a subtle cool breeze. But strangely, this cool wind had a wide range. Sometimes even when Song Nanshi stood ten meters away, her skin would slightly shiver because of it.
At that time, standing in the bathtub, Song Nanshi felt exactly this kind of subtle cold. She found it strange but only thought it was cool air leaking from the exhaust fan, so she quickly finished bathing.
However, she didn’t know that the really strange thing was yet to come.
After getting dressed, out of gratitude to the other people in the house for letting her bathe first every day, Song Nanshi planned to tidy up the bathroom a bit.
As a mortician, Song Nanshi had a visceral aversion to stains. She had long been bothered by two water stains on the upper part of the mirror. Without a word, she took a cloth to reach them. As the fog on the mirror was wiped away in one stroke, Song Nanshi caught a glimpse from the corner of her eye and suddenly saw in the mirror’s reflection a pair of staring eyes, looking straight at her.
“What the…”
Even Song Nanshi couldn’t help being startled by suddenly seeing such a thing. The fog on the mirror immediately condensed back, and Song Nanshi jerked her head around. She looked toward that crack, but those eyes pressed against the crack had already disappeared.
Another gust of cold wind.
Song Nanshi shivered. She came to her senses, hastily put on her coat, and chased out, but there was no second person visible in the unlit hallway. The mixer on the first floor was still running, and Han Sha and He Jian’s room doors were tightly closed with sounds of short videos and gaming coming from inside.
Those lifeless eyes had just vanished into thin air.
After Song Nanshi finished speaking, my back was covered in goosebumps. Although I was scared to the point of trembling legs, but before that—
I suddenly looked up and glared at He Jian and Han Sha: “That night I was on the first floor testing cake flavors, I wasn’t upstairs at all. When she was bathing, the only people on the second floor were…”
He Jian heard the implication in my words, his face reddened, and he waved his hands repeatedly: “Boss, don’t make wild guesses! I was in King’s Canyon all night! If you’re worried, I can find several teammates to vouch for me!”
Han Sha stood with crossed arms and said flatly: “Do I look like someone who has such worldly desires?”
…Indeed not.
I calmed down. One noob, one Daoist—after these few days together, these two looked at Song Nanshi with completely brotherly eyes, clean as if washed with bleach. They really didn’t seem capable of doing such things, but if it wasn’t them…
I couldn’t help asking: “Xiao Song, why didn’t you mention such a big thing earlier? Weren’t you scared?”
Song Nanshi was obviously a bit guilty and said: “I originally wanted to say something, but I also felt it couldn’t possibly be Brother Han or Xiao He, because those eyes didn’t look like they belonged to a living person… I was afraid that if I said it, boss, you would misunderstand them, so I didn’t mention it. After all, if it’s not human, I don’t lose anything from it watching me bathe. It won’t rush in or record videos.”
“…”
The point of feeling guilty was actually this. I was speechless for a moment.
After holding it in for a long time, I managed: “Then why didn’t you block up that crack?”
Song Nanshi thought for a moment: “Because I was still a bit curious about what that thing actually was. I wanted to see if it would appear again, but I didn’t expect that today this crack would suddenly get blocked up.”
With this explanation, the reason only Song Nanshi discovered the anomaly was easy to understand. It turned out that even during the days I thought were peaceful, this damn place hadn’t been quiet. It’s just that even Sadako couldn’t out-stubborn a blockhead—trying to haunt Song Nanshi was really asking for humiliation.
No wonder I now have the most suitable team for living in a haunted house. Having recruited such a team, it would be a loss not to continue living in this place.
I asked Song Nanshi: “So even though this place is haunted, you can still work here?”
Song Nanshi said matter-of-factly: “Of course. Ghosts aren’t as scary as people. I worked at the funeral home for so long—no one gets killed by ghosts. Only people kill people.”
Having reached this point, obviously it wouldn’t be appropriate for me as the boss to retreat. After all, it now seemed this shop could make money—even big money if we could maintain this momentum.
Damn it, fortune favors the bold!
I sighed and confirmed with Han Sha: “So the most dangerous person in this house is actually me, right? No Daoist skills, no moral integrity, not a hard enough fate. The opponent can’t handle you tough nuts, so in the end it still has to come trouble me?”
Han Sha nodded and said calmly: “Your self-awareness is very accurate.”
“So if I want to continue running the shop, I still need to preserve my dog life first.”
I nodded, finally making up my mind, and looked at He Jian hopefully: “So Xiao He… let me discuss something with you. At night, could I sleep on the floor in your room?”