Crack—"
"Crack—"
…
The old bed frame kept shaking with the young man's indistinct sobs.
The biting cold continued to spread in the dark room, covering everyone in the room like a soaked wool blanket.
Qi Wei huddled under the dark bed, his mouth covered, desperately trying to control his breathing. Just now, he'd watched helplessly as the "thing" twisted and crawled out of the closet and onto Gu Hezhi's bed. Not long after, like a radio rustling with poor signal, the breath of a strange man drifted from the bed, a breath so sweet it made him sick.
Qi Wei was so frightened that he dared not move.
That thing...
Have you noticed yourself before?
Was it already there before he entered the room? When he dragged the box out from under the bed, cluelessly trying to plunder something, was it peering at him coldly from the narrow, dark gap in the closet?
No, no, no, it's okay. When I entered the room, the closet door was clearly closed.
That must be something that Gu Hezhi provoked himself. No wonder that guy always looks so nervous and weird.
Besides, I'm just a small fry. If I really provoke something, it's impossible for that thing to just fuck me in bed without caring about anything...
So, just wait a while.
Once the monster is done, I will leave the house and never come back.
Countless thoughts flashed through Qi Wei's mind.
At this moment, time seemed to be slowed down by an invisible hand, stretching out very long.
It was so long that Qi Wei's nerves were almost broken.
The skin exposed outside his clothes gradually became cold, and after maintaining the same posture for too long, a tingling sensation began to seep out from the cracks in his bones.
Qi Wei really wanted to change his position. After staying under the cold and narrow bed for so long, he felt like his neck was about to break.
…
Finally, after an unknown amount of time, a scream of "Someone jumped off the building" came from outside the window, and there was suddenly no movement on the bed.
After about a few minutes, he heard the sound of Gu Hezhi suddenly turning over and getting up.
Qi Wei didn't know whether Gu Hezhi noticed that something was wrong with him. He only knew that not long after, Gu Hezhi left the room with unsteady steps, just as he wished.
The room fell silent again.
Qi Wei's heart was beating fast as he was waiting.
monster...
Was the monster still in the room after Gu Hezhi left?
Or has it already possessed Gu Hezhi and left?
Can I get out from under the bed now?
While thinking, Qi Wei stared at the wardrobe door in the corner of the room. Obviously, Gu Hezhi didn't notice that the narrow gap in the wardrobe was like the monster's slightly open lips, and it didn't close.
After waiting for a long time, Qi Wei finally saw with great relief that the wardrobe door closed by itself.
Qi Wei kept chanting the names of various gods and Buddhas in his mind, trembling and squirming his body, which had become extremely stiff from maintaining the same posture for a long time, as he prepared to crawl out from under the bed.
"Crack—"
Just at this moment, the bed frame suddenly made another noise.
Qi Wei froze, subconsciously thinking that he had moved too much and hit the damn old bed.
However, at the moment when he was motionless and stiff, he clearly heard the bed frame make another sound.
"Crack—"
Qi Wei slowly, slowly raised his head.
He met the head that was slowly coming down from the edge of the bed.
The shattered face was also aimed at him at the same moment.
*
"Bang--"
Gu Hezhi wandered around the 14th floor in a daze, but still couldn't find any trace of Dong Ruiming.
He returned to Room 1401 with a pale face. The moment he pushed the door open, he faintly heard someone scream.
Gu Hezhi's shoulders trembled slightly. He stood straight in place, like an animal in the middle of the road that was suddenly illuminated by headlights and lost all ability to move. He was unable to move for a long time.
"Bang--"
Until he heard that subtle sound again.
It seemed that the sound came from his own room.
Gu Hezhi's eyes moved slowly.
Then he struggled to regain the strength to move, held his breath, moved the arrangements bit by bit, and pushed open the door of his room.
Everything looked just as it had been when he had left it.
But there was a faint smell in the air that made Gu Hezhi's heart hang high in the air and could not calm down. The curtains that he had closed tightly had opened a narrow gap at some point. In the dim light, his room was as dark and cold as a broken refrigerator.
Gu Hezhi walked into the room and shuddered unconsciously.
When he saw the wooden wardrobe in the corner of the room, his expression froze slightly. The wardrobe door was open a crack, and the dark cabinet was silent. But Gu Hezhi had a strange illusion, as if someone was curled up, hiding motionlessly in the wardrobe, staring at him through the hanging clothes.
Gu Hezhi admitted that this had become his inner demon. He would never forget the pair of eyes he saw through the gap in the closet when he accidentally turned around in college.
"come out--"
Unconsciously, Gu Hezhi let out a hoarse scream at the wardrobe.
"Get out!"
The closet was still so quiet.
No, it should be said that the entire room 1401 was unusually quiet.
Gu Hezhi bit his lip, faintly catching a slight taste of blood from the tip of his tongue. Then he rushed to the closet and pulled open the door.
Empty.
Just like I confirmed countless times every day, there was nothing in the closet.
Except for a small dark red ring box.
Gu Hezhi's body shook a little, he slammed the wardrobe door shut, and then dragged a chair over to block the front of the wardrobe.
It wasn't until he had done this that he realized he had been holding his breath.
Now he could finally breathe.
Just as he was thinking this, when he turned around, Gu Hezhi caught a glimpse of a faint red color out of the corner of his eye.
It's the sleeves.
From the shadow under Gu Hezhi's bed, a corner of his blood-stained sleeve was hanging down.
*
The clothes belong to Qi Wei.
Gu Hezhi knelt beside the bed, staring blankly at the clothes he took out from under his bed.
The clothes were covered in blood. If Gu Hezhi had not just met Qi Wei today, he might not have been able to recognize who the original owner of the clothes was.
But why were Qi Wei's clothes under his bed?
Gu Hezhi picked up the phone in a daze, and subconsciously pressed the alarm number on his finger.
However, after pausing for a long time, Gu Hezhi stared at the three numbers on the screen, and the image of the neatly arranged black plastic bags in the refrigerator kept flashing in his mind.
A painful sob came from Gu Hezhi's throat.
In the end, he failed to call the police. Holding on to the last glimmer of hope, Gu Hezhi finally dialed Qi Wei's number.
What surprised him greatly was that not long after, Qi Wei's call was actually connected.
"Gu Hezhi..."
A familiar voice came from the other side of the microphone, sounding a little hoarse and dull.
But at this time, Gu Hezhi didn't notice anything unusual about Qi Wei at all. When he heard Qi Wei answering the phone, he collapsed to the ground completely exhausted.
"Great, Qi Wei, are you okay? I found some of your-"
"sorry."
Qi Wei suddenly interrupted Gu Hezhi's incoherent words.
"I did that because I was possessed by a ghost. I never thought of harming you. Gu Hezhi, please spare us..."
"Qi Wei?"
Gu Hezhi was stunned when he heard Qi Wei's plea for mercy.
"Please spare me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Gu Hezhi, please spare us, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Just like a broken phonograph, Qi Wei suddenly started wailing on the phone.
Gu Hezhi shuddered and his phone slipped from his hand and fell to the ground.
It was at this moment that Gu Hezhi realized that the wailing sound coming from his ears was not just coming from the mobile phone.
There is a subtle time difference between the real voice and the apology on the phone.
But it was indeed the same wail.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... Gu Hezhi... I really didn't expect things to turn out like that..."
"I don't understand, Qi Wei. What are you talking about?"
"sorry..."
"Qi Wei, tell me clearly, what happened? You stole the things I threw in the trash can, right?"
"I was wrong, I was really wrong, please forgive me...it hurts...it hurts so much..."
Gu Hezhi stood up with the help of the wall, then followed the sound and came to Qi Wei's room.
The man's wailing came from the room.
Gu Hezhi lowered his eyes and stared at the door that had opened a crack at some point for a moment. Then he put his hand on the door handle, mustered up the courage to push the door open and walked in.
"Gu Hezhi... I didn't mean it..."
"Bang--"
"Bang, bang—"
Qi Wei's room is a mess.
When I walked in, the floor was already slightly sticky because it had not been cleaned for a long time.
There was thick dust everywhere, and the air was filled with a frowning, strong smell of grease.
But these were not the reasons why Gu Hezhi suddenly stiffened.
What made him completely unable to move at that moment was the figure hanging outside the room.
The swollen corpse's gray face met Gu Hezhi's gaze through the dusty window.
His head was badly tilted and his abdomen was swollen, as if it would burst if poked at all.
The eyeballs had fallen out, wrinkled, and kept swinging near the tip of the nose as the body swayed.
"Bang--"
The forehead of the corpse was already a mess of blood and flesh.
"Bang--"
The skull seemed to have been broken long ago, and Gu Hezhi could almost see the rotten brain inside his head through the large pool of blood.
"Bang--"
Blown by the wind, Qi Wei's body was hitting the window again and again. It looked like he had been hanged outside the window for a long time.
However, in the phone in Gu Hezhi's hand, the man was making the same painful sounds as before.
"It's my fault... I was wrong..."
"Please put me down, Gu Hezhi... It hurts so much hanging here... I feel so uncomfortable..."
"I'm sorry, wuwuwu, I'm really sorry..."
…
*
"I'm sorry, wuwuwu, Gu Shen... I, I've caused you trouble again."
Qiao Liang knew he was dreaming.
In the dream, I was curled up in the corner of a public restroom, apologizing and crying.
"Why are you apologizing? It's not your fault."
Gu Hezhi lifted the water from the faucet and wiped away the dust and blood from the corners of his mouth.
"Wuwuwuwu...if it weren't for me..."
Listening to the boy's timid crying beside him, Gu Hezhi sighed helplessly as if he had a migraine.
"If it weren't you, I would have taken action if anyone else had been bullied by those idiots. Come on, stop crying. I'm not saying anything, but those guys are just like that. The more you appear to be afraid of them, the more excited they are. You see, I'm not good at fighting either, but as long as I confront them a few times, they will naturally leave me alone...hiss, it hurts..."
At some point, Qiao Liang involuntarily stopped his cowardly sobbing.
He stared blankly at Gu Hezhi who was not far away. In the dim light of the bathroom, the handsome young man's fair face was like a white orchid swaying slightly among the green grass in the depths of the forest, making it impossible to take your eyes off it.
That person is really good looking...
It is simply unimaginable that someone like Gu Hezhi could be so generous and gentle, protecting me, who is weak and incompetent like a rat in the gutter, time and time again.
…
Even now, when Qiao Liang thinks back on the past, he still feels that if it weren't for Gu Hezhi, he might have died long ago.
Born into a poor family and naturally timid, Qiao Liang grew up surrounded by bullying and humiliation. He thought everything would be fine once he went to college, but unexpectedly, the bullying from his classmates intensified. Qiao Liang nearly committed suicide several times, but as luck would have it, whenever he felt he was on the verge of death, Gu Hezhi would appear and forcibly pull him out of his desperate situation.
For Qiao Liang, Gu Hedu is more than just his god.
However, Qiao Liang did not become a better person as Gu Hezhi expected.
In fact, by the time he realized what was happening, Qiao Liang realized that he had become a despicable voyeur. Every day, after finishing a tiring day at work, Qiao Liang would involuntarily come to the opposite side of Gu Hezhi's rental house and carefully peek at Gu Hezhi through a telescope.
Even if he just saw a blurry figure swaying in the room through the curtains, Qiao Liang would feel great satisfaction.
Therefore, Qiao Liang discovered earlier than anyone else that someone had sneaked into the room without Gu Hezhi noticing at all.
When Gu Hezhi was sleeping unaware of anything, the man would sneak out from the closet or under the bed , and snuggle up to the young man contentedly, spending night after night together.
When Gu Hezhi was taking a shower in the bathroom, the man would hold his clothes against his chest as if they were treasures and breathe deeply.
Even when Gu Hezhi was sitting cross-legged in his room playing games with headphones on, there was always a stagnant black shadow standing outside his door.
…
Qiao Liang watched everything that happened in the room in horror.
He knew that he should rush to Gu Hezhi immediately and inform him of the dangerous existence.
But every time, when the words came to his lips, Qiao Liang would become speechless - no matter how much light Gu Hezhi brought him, he was always just a rat in the gutter.
He didn't know what to say, nor did he dare to say it. After all, as soon as he said it, his act of spying on the other person would be exposed.
And if that were the case... he would probably completely lose Gu Shen's care, right?
Without Gu Hezhi, Qiao Liang didn't even feel that he had successfully graduated from college.
*
"Let me introduce you, this is my friend Que Bai."
Suddenly one day, at an ordinary classmate dinner, Gu Hezhi brought a familiar man with a bright smile.
Qiao Liang, sitting at the dining table, stared in horror at the face that had appeared through the telescope countless times, his eyes wide open.
"What's wrong?"
Gu Hezhi's strange question came to my ears.
Qiao Liang knew that he should immediately warn Gu Hezhi how dangerous the seemingly well-behaved and docile guy next to him was, but he couldn't say a word.
*
While Gu Hezhi was being pulled away by his classmates to exchange pleasantries, Qiao Liang saw Que Bai walking straight up to him.
"Qiao Liang, um, so this is your name."
"Ah…ah?"
"I never had the chance before, it's great to meet you here."
The boy who always appeared docile and cute in front of Gu Hezhi leaned forward slightly and looked at Qiao Liang with a gentle smile on his face.
"If you dare look at him like that again, I'll have to gouge your eyes out."
However, the whisper that fell into Qiao Liang's ears seemed to come from hell.
Qiao Liang was so horrified that he couldn't move. He looked at Que Bai's dark eyes with great fear, and then he realized that the man in front of him had always known about Qiao Liang's peeping.
"What qualifications do you, a rat like you, have to look at him?"
Que Bai's voice has a unique hoarse texture, and when he mentions Gu Hezhi, his tone always unconsciously has a sweet ending.
But at that moment, what Qiao Liang felt was Que Bai's strong murderous intent towards him.
I'm going to be killed, right? It might sound a bit ridiculous, but that's what Qiao Liang really felt at the time...
So when Qiao Liang faced Que Bai's threat, he could only tremble helplessly.
He didn't dare to make a sound at all. Under Que Bai's stare, the only thing he could do was to shake his head with a pale face.
"I, I can't—"
However, the moment he heard Qiao Liang's words, the expression of the man standing in front of him became even more terrifying.
…
"Ah, a mouse will always be a mouse."
The sounds in my ears began to become eerie and harsh.
"You shouldn't have been allowed to survive."
Que Bai's tone was filled with utmost resentment.
The light in the dream began to dim little by little, and Qiao Liang stared at Que Bai and sniffed hard.
"sorry..."
He said subconsciously.
Wait, why...why do I want to apologize?
Guilt mixed with endless despair continued to surge from the depths of his soul, gradually swallowing Qiao Liang like a dark quagmire.
A familiar smell of blood slowly spread from Que Bai's body. His originally handsome face gradually lost its color, and he stared at Qiao Liang with cloudy eyes, like a corpse that could not be reincarnated because of resentment.
["If I had known… I should have killed you directly."]
Frost-covered fingers pressed against Qiao Liang's eyelids, pressing hard into the depths of his eye sockets.
Puff—
It felt like something was punctured.
*
"Ahhhhhh—"
Qiao Liang covered his eyes and jumped up from the bed
The moment he woke up from the nightmare, Qiao Liang suddenly waved his hand to brush off a soft, fist-sized thing from his cheek.
Qiao Liang couldn't see clearly what that thing was. Severe pain was exploding behind his eye sockets, making his vision blurry.
Qiao Liang instinctively thought it was a mouse, but he was not sure because when his palm touched it, it felt very disgusting, very soft, and very slippery.
Rat...is that what rats feel like?
Without time to consider the details, Qiao Liang jumped out of bed and rushed straight into the bathroom.
After turning on the faucet, he kept flushing his eyes with cold tap water. It took a long time before he could barely open his eyes.
The vision is still blurry.
Slightly cool blood flowed out from the eye sockets.
After looking at the mirror for a long time, Qiao Liang realized that his eyelids were drooping in a strange way.
When he kept moving his eyeballs because of fear, something pink was flashing in the gap between his eyelids. It was actually his severely congested eyeball.
No matter what that thing was, one thing is certain... it almost ate Qiao Liang's eyeballs.
Fortunately, Qiao Liang woke up suddenly because of the pain, so the mouse only had time to gnaw a hole in his eyelid.
Qiao Liang was in so much pain that he couldn't stop crying.
He gasped and found gauze from the drawer. Facing the mirror, he barely managed to cover his injured eye with medical tape and gauze.
"Woo…"
It hurt so much that a cry escaped from Qiao Liang's throat.
He frantically tried to make a phone call to have someone take him to the hospital, but the moment he found his phone, another dark shadow flashed past the corner of his eye.
Shit, it's still a rat!
Qiao Liang jumped up and turned in horror to look in the direction where the mouse disappeared...
What was that just now?
Why, that mouse has no hair on its face?
It looks like a small, expressionless human face.
Was it an illusion caused by the eye injury? Qiao Liang gasped and trembled with fear in the damp and dark bathroom.
After pausing for a few seconds, Qiao Liang suddenly came back to his senses.
He staggered and prepared to leave the bathroom immediately, but when he turned around, he was shocked to find...
My reflection in the mirror didn't move.
The extremely familiar, pale-faced man was staring at him motionlessly at this moment.
["coward."]
"Gutter rat."
"You should have died sooner."
In the small bathroom, there were faint whispers.
The voice sounded so familiar, yet so strange. It was familiar because it was Qiao Liang's own voice, and strange because... the voice was vicious to the extreme, with a strong malice rushing in it that seemed to pierce the mirror.