Qiao Liang felt a sharp pain deep in his cochlea.
The pain pierced his already scarred eyes, and even his brain began to surge with a tingling sensation as if it were catching a high fever. He had almost lost the ability to think, and could only stare blankly at the bathroom mirror, which was covered in dried toothpaste and water stains. And then there was the face in the mirror. It was clearly his own face, but in his vision, it was constantly distorting like a funhouse mirror.
[Go to hell——]
[Why don't you just die——]
…
The strange and hideous face let out an increasingly shrill and tragic scream.
Then, Qiao Liang discovered that the face was actually closer to him, so close that he could clearly see the bloodshot eyes and the dark blue blood vessels bulging like earthworms under the skin.
Of course, there were also the faint bluish bruises on his face and body.
It's corpse spots.
A foul smell accompanied by a bone-chilling chill hit Qiao Liang's face. Qiao Liang then discovered that the "self" in the mirror was actually trying to break free from the shackles of the mirror and reaching towards him.
"Hmm…"
After noticing this, Qiao Liang covered his eyes, screamed and backed away, but his movements were too slow.
The ghost in the mirror had stretched out its cold hand and grabbed him tightly.
The moment his skin touched "his own", a picture seemed to flash through Qiao Liang's mind, but what followed was a coldness as if he was stabbed by countless steel needles.
Tears of fear instantly burst out of Qiao Liang's eyes, mixed with blood and flowing all over his face.
He had a strong feeling that he was about to be dragged away... dragged into a dark and hopeless world with only death and cold.
No.
No, no, no.
He doesn't want to—
The instinct of survival made Qiao Liang subconsciously grab a hard object at hand and smash it hard against the mirror.
The mirror then made a crisp sound.
With a "bang", the mirror fragments fell from the wall and landed on the sink.
…
The vicious scream and the strange, pale ghost disappeared in an instant.
Only Qiao Liang stood there blankly, gasping for breath, with a shrill sound coming from his chest like a broken bellows.
As if he had just woken up from an extremely realistic nightmare, Qiao Liang shuddered and rolled his eyes to look around him - the ventilation fan was still buzzing, and the mirror on the wall was shattered into pieces, with only a few pieces still stuck in place.
Qiao Liang's porcelain mouthwash cup had already been shattered into pieces, and was scattered on the sink counter along with the broken pieces of the mirror.
Then, Qiao Liang's gaze fixed on the area directly in front of him: when the mirror, originally attached to the wall, shattered, the thin wall behind it was exposed. Perhaps due to the partition, the back of the mirror in this bathroom, converted from a balcony, was not made of solid tiles, but a thin backboard, as if made of thin wood.
The impact of Qiao Liang's mouthwash cup had now created a long, dark crack on the back panel. A musty, eerie air blew slowly in from behind the crack.
"Ka--"
"Crack—"
Then, there was the sound of something small moving.
The noise sounded like countless mice gnawing at something with their sharp, yellow teeth, or like human nails scratching wooden boards frantically.
Qiao Liang panted and squinted his eyes as he looked at the crack. He swallowed and felt his throat dry and astringent.
Involuntarily, he slowly moved closer to the gap.
The blood oozing from the wound on his eyelid blurred his eyeball, making his vision very blurry.
So no matter how hard he tried, he could only see some shadowy, wriggling dark red creatures moving behind the back plate.
Is it a mouse?
No, those things... don't seem to have hair at all...
Could it really be a mouse?
Just as he was thinking this in surprise and doubt, there was a "click" sound, and the gap on the thin wooden backboard was opened.
The "rats" gushed out and covered Qiao Liang's thin body.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh—"
Qiao Liang could no longer control himself and let out an unprecedented shrill scream.
Those "rats" attacked him like crazy. Ears, nose, toes... every part of Qiao Liang's body was engulfed in pain.
Some of the "rats" even crawled directly onto Qiao Liang's face. They crawled directly into Qiao Liang's eye sockets without any scruples. The wet blood stimulated them to become very ferocious. The human eyeballs blocked the way for the rats. Those "rats" immediately raised their thin and sharp claws and began to dig hard at the wet, soft, small white ball.
"Ahhh, it hurts, it hurts so much… mmm… mmm…"
As Qiao Liang screamed, countless "rats" mercilessly drilled into the newly opened "tunnel".
Qiao Liang's screams didn't last long before they turned into vague, painful, and thin whimpers.
My eyes hurt.
My tongue hurts too.
My whole body aches...
Wait, are these "rats" trying to burrow into his body and gnaw at his internal organs? This image suddenly appeared in his mind, which was almost blank with fear. Qiao Liang could no longer care about anything else. He grabbed a sharp piece of mirror shard from the sink and stabbed it hard at the "rats" lying on his face, constantly shaking and trying to get into his eye sockets.
"Puff—"
A wet, cold, and slightly sticky liquid flowed out from deep in the eye sockets.
After a few seconds, a sharp pain suddenly exploded in the brain, making all thoughts completely blank.
Qiao Liang opened his mouth in despair, wanting to burst into tears, but what came out from the depths of his throat was an extremely cold and vicious sneer.
"Hehe, a mouse should behave like a mouse. How can a cowardly and despicable thing like you be allowed to be around him..."
That wasn't Qiao Liang's own voice at all.
Qiao Liang's body continued to sway, and he slowly turned his head, panting. From this position, he could just see the few remaining mirror fragments on the wall. Perhaps because these were the areas where the nail-free glue was applied, the four corners of the mirror had cracks on them, but they were not completely shattered.
It was through these lenses that Qiao Liang saw his face cut into countless small pieces.
Blood kept gushing out of his eye sockets like a waterfall, and his shoulders and chest were completely dyed red with blood.
The man standing in front of the mirror looked like a blood gourd, hunched over and trembling.
However, there was no trace of "rat" on him at all.
Only a small part of the mirror fragment that he had pierced deeply into his eye socket was still exposed outside the eye socket.
The "Qiao Liang" in the mirror opened his remaining eye and looked at the man outside the mirror with a half-smile.
["Go to hell…you should go to hell…"]
It keeps repeating these words.
The only thing Qiao Liang could do was to hold onto the edge of the sink to steady himself. Then, he groaned timidly at the ghost in the mirror.
"sorry..."
He murmured.
My body is shaking a little.
Let me go, I don't want to die yet, I, I still have a lot of things to do...
I clearly thought so in my mind, but the whispers that came out of my mouth between my lips had a completely different meaning when I heard them.
「Yes, it's all my fault...I'm the one who should be damned...」
Wait, why?
Why do I feel like... I'm the one who deserves to die...
The moment he fell to the ground covered in blood, a memory suddenly emerged in Qiao Liang's mind.
*
The continuous rain in winter seems to freeze the soul when it falls on people.
Qiao Liang had a high fever that day and almost fainted in the company. Eventually, the company leaders, out of concern, sent him home to rest.
Gu Hezhi's condition has been very bad since the beginning of winter. Qiao Liang knew that when he returned home at this time, Gu Hezhi should still be resting in the room. The sound insulation of the partition room was too poor. Worried about disturbing Gu Hezhi, Qiao Liang deliberately slowed down his movements from opening the door to entering the house, trying not to make any noise.
But after entering the door, I unexpectedly saw Qi Wei in the kitchen.
The man who usually never enters the kitchen due to his trivial matters is now wandering around the kitchen. You can feel his extreme concentration just by looking at his back.
Because it was so strange, Qiao Liang couldn't help but take a few more glances. Then, he was shocked to find that Qi Wei was fiddling with nothing else but a wine bottle.
Gu Hezhi's wine bottle.
The fact that Gu Hedu was an alcoholic was no secret in the rental house.
However, since everyone was a man, no one cared too much about this matter - firstly, it was because Gu Hezhi would just sleep quietly after getting drunk and would not get drunk and crazy; secondly, it was because Gu Hezhi himself seemed to be trying to curb this bad habit, so he pushed the box of wine from his room to the corner of the kitchen.
"I'm afraid if I leave it in the room, I'll drink uncontrollably..."
When talking about this, the thin young man smiled vaguely. It was on that day that Qiao Liang was surprised to find that even someone as good-looking as Gu Hezhi could have such an ugly smile.
If you don't want to drink, why not throw it away?
It wasn't like he hadn't felt doubtful, but when the words came to his lips, Qiao Liang felt a little hesitant to ask. As someone who had been secretly observing Gu Hezhi all this time, Qiao Liang was extremely sensitive to the slightest sign of something being amiss with the young man.
Despair, vulnerability, pain...
The aura of decadence on Gu Hezhi's body was so strong that no one was willing to blame him for using alcohol to escape pain.
*
Like all alcoholics, the wine that Gu Shizhi keeps in the kitchen is not too expensive.
So at first Qiao Liang simply thought that Qi Wei was just stealing things as usual. However, when he saw Qi Wei carefully put some unknown powder into the wine bottle and then carefully sealed the bottle, he asked in great surprise.
"Qi Wei, what did you just do..."
After hearing Qiao Liang's voice, Qi Wei's shoulders trembled in fear.
The man suddenly turned around, his face terrified. However, when he saw that the person at the door was Qiao Liang, Qi Wei was obviously relieved.
He coughed lightly and put the bottle of wine that had just been added with ingredients back into the carton as if nothing had happened. Then he rolled his eyes and glanced at Qiao Liang.
"Nothing, I just wanted to see what Gu Hezhi was drinking. I'm planning to have some for the class reunion soon..."
"You just added something to his drink, didn't you?"
Qiao Liang asked through gritted teeth.
He clearly wanted to question the other party, but his instincts over the years took over at this moment. Not only did his questions lack any deterrent power, they also seemed particularly weak, as if the person who did the bad thing was Qiao Liang, not Qi Wei.
"Nothing, you're seeing things."
Sure enough, when Qi Wei faced Qiao Liang, he quickly returned to his original bad behavior, and the look of lying with his eyes open also changed from nervousness to calmness.
"I, I saw it right. What did you put in his wine... Let me see..."
When Qiao Liangyi met Qi Wei's eyes, which were full of shifty light, his heart skipped a beat and the feeling of uneasiness grew stronger.
He took a step into the kitchen and was about to take a closer look when Qi Wei's face changed and he stood in front of him with his chest puffed out.
"Hey, don't meddle in other people's business. I'm warning you. I told you you saw it wrong just now, what else do you want?!"
Perhaps because he raised his voice too high, a tiny noise was heard in the originally quiet rental house. And that noise came from Gu Hezhi's room.
Qi Wei narrowed his eyes, and before Qiao Liang could react, he grabbed Qiao Liang's throat and dragged him into the bathroom.
The glass door slammed shut with a bang. Qi Wei's face was ferocious, his eyes wide open, and he glared at Qiao Liang viciously.
"I told you to stay out of my business. Are you looking for death?"
"But you—"
Qiao Liang shuddered violently. He stammered and wanted to say something else, but he felt a chill on his jaw.
It turned out that Qi Wei took out a folding knife and put it against Qiao Liang's neck.
In fact, the small knife was just a blunt knife that men hung on their keychains to open packages. However, the moment the cold blade touched him, Qiao Liang's knees instantly went weak.
His vocal cords were instantly blocked, and he could only gasp and stare blankly at Qi Wei, unable to utter a single extra word.
Qi Wei narrowed his eyes and looked up and down at the cowardly man with a pale face. A gleam of light flashed in his eyes, and his expression became more terrifying and ferocious.
"I'm warning you, if you dare to tell that pretty boy a word... I guarantee you'll be in big trouble from now on, do you understand? You'd better keep your eyes open every night, otherwise... hehe..."
He deliberately didn't finish his words, and sure enough, Qiao Liang trembled like a sieve under his palm.
Only then did Qi Wei relax a little, put away the knife, and patted Qiao Liang on the shoulder.
"Don't worry, I really don't plan on doing anything to that guy. I just saw that he hasn't been sleeping well lately, so I'm just giving him a hand. We're all law-abiding citizens, so there's no need to worry about this or that. Do you hear me?"
In fact, if Qi Wei were to say it, he was forced into a corner.
Even though Qi Wei knew that Gu Hezhi's room was piled with a lot of expensive gifts from pretty boys who didn't need to throw them away but were reluctant to give them away, he never had the chance to get them.
For a few months, Gu Hechen would occasionally go out for a walk with a dazed look on his face. But during these months, that guy was like he had seen a ghost. He stayed in the room day and night. Even opening the security door to temporarily leave the garbage outside the door seemed to be a death sentence for him. His face was frighteningly pale.
Moreover, Gu Hezhi also suffers from very light sleep and neurasthenia.
Even if he had been drinking, he would wake up at the slightest noise.
But Qi Wei is really short of money now.
He was so short of money that he was almost desperate.
Qi Wei had no choice but to resort to this method. His only thought was to make Gu Hezhi, whose alcoholism had recently increased significantly, sleep more deeply after drinking so that he could steal the things and turn them into cash.
…
"Don't worry, it's really just sleeping pills."
In the bathroom, Qi Wei patted Qiao Liang's face and said in a deep voice.
"You're not going to tell him, are you? Because you didn't see anything."
Although he was almost thirty years old, Qiao Liang's eyes were red like a little girl. It took him a long time before he nodded in a trance, filled with fear.
Qi Wei smiled. When he saw Qiao Liang's chicken-like look, he knew that the other party really didn't have the courage to tell the secret. Only then did he feel satisfied and walked out slowly.
Only Qiao Liang was left standing in the toilet, not daring to move.
A dazzling light kept spinning in front of his eyes. Sometimes it was Qi Wei's hideous and terrifying face and threat, and sometimes it was Gu Hezhi's gentle and haggard face. Finally, the nightmare-like erratic picture stopped on a pale and twisted figure.
A tall man dressed in black with a face as pale as paper was staring at him with red eyes.
Like a wronged soul that had long since drowned in the sea of pain, the man grinned and hurled vicious curses at him.
"Why wasn't it you who died?"
Yes, why...
Why wasn't I the one who died?
Qiao Liang caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror.
The human face began to collapse and deform bit by bit, and finally dissolved into a ball of bloody and soft flesh.
It looked like a dead mouse that had been crushed in two by a mousetrap, dirty and filthy.
"So I am the mouse."
As he was thinking this, Qiao Liang fell heavily to the ground.
I don't know when the bathroom light went out.
The hum of the ventilation fan had long since stopped.
In the complete darkness, there was only the rustling sound of wet flesh moving, and that sound was constantly coming towards him.
*
Gu Hezhi only heard a mournful whimper.
It sounded like Qiao Liang's crying, but... for a moment, the sound overlapped with Que Bai's.
He shuddered suddenly and opened his eyes instantly, then met Qiao Liang's pale and narrow face.
Gu Hezhi's ghostly face was reflected in the eyes of his former university classmates. Gu Hezhi let out a sharp scream and jumped up from the ground.
"Call the police…Call the police…Wuwuwu…Qi Wei…Qi Wei is dead…"
He grabbed his head and screamed in despair.
"It's Que Bai, it must be Que Bai. It's all my fault. Que Bai is here to seek revenge. He won't let me go, he won't let anyone go..."
"Gu Shen? Wait, calm down, you just had a nightmare!"
Qiao Liang stretched out his arms and hugged the trembling Gu Hezhi tightly, and he kept repeating in the latter's ear.
"You just had a nightmare."
"real..."
"When I came in, you were lying on the ground motionless. It was obvious that you were in a state of terror and kept talking nonsense. I didn't know what to do, but luckily you woke up on your own."
"You haven't been sleeping well lately, have you? Isn't this just an old problem?"
…
I don't know how long it took, but Gu Hezhi finally regained his sanity bit by bit after hearing Qiao Liang's murmurs.
Looking around, he realized that he was lying on the sofa in the living room, with the humming freezer not far away.
Gu Hezhi opened his eyes wide and looked at Qiao Liang in panic.
"Just... a nightmare?"
He repeated in a trance.
"Yeah, it's just a nightmare."
Qiao Liang smiled at him.
Gu Hezhi stared at him for a long time. One of Qiao Liang's eyes was a little red, but he looked very gentle when he smiled.
After pausing for a few seconds, Gu Hezhi staggered to his feet and rushed directly to Qi Wei's room.
The door was not locked.
However, unlike what Gu Hezhi remembered, Qi Wei's room wasn't too messy. It could even be said that it was tidy because there were so few things in it. Most importantly, outside Qi Wei's window was a clear, clean sky. There wasn't a single horrible corpse hanging outside the window, bumping against the glass in the wind.
Gu Hezhi looked at Qi Wei's window blankly, his mind in a mess.
Although he was standing in a silent and stagnant room in the concrete city, Gu Hezhi felt as if he was standing on a small raised reef in the middle of the vast ocean, and not far away was the towering tsunami wall.
He was at a loss and had nowhere to hide.
"Qi Wei just went out. Do you have something to do with him?"
Qiao Liang stood at the door of the room and asked with some concern.
Gu Hezhi blinked and slowly turned his head.
"You... saw Qi Wei?"
He asked.
Qiao Liang nodded in confusion.
"Yes, but he doesn't look too good. I guess he hasn't had a good time recently."
After a few seconds of silence, Qiao Liang walked into the room carefully and put his arm around Gu Hezhi's shoulders.
"Gu Shen, have you been worried about something recently?"
The timid and thin man in the past now looks so gentle and reliable.
Under his guidance, Gu Hezhi staggered back to the sofa and sat down. There was a slight noise coming from the kitchen, and Gu Hezhi trembled suddenly in fear.
"Oh, no, I forgot to turn down the heat—"
Qiao Liang jumped up and ran hurriedly towards the kitchen.
A few seconds later, he popped his head out from behind the kitchen door and smiled at Gu Hezhi in a flattering manner.
"Well, God Gu, I noticed you haven't eaten much lately, so I made some soup. You should have some to replenish your energy."
Soup?
Gu Hezhi was stunned for a moment, then he sniffed and found that the aroma of broth was slowly spreading from the kitchen to the living room.
"No, no, I don't want to drink, I'm not hungry——"
Just as Gu Hezhi tried to stop him, Qiao Liang had already tiptoed over and used a rag to hold the bowl against the heat, and brought the bowl of soup to Gu Hezhi.
"Would you like to drink something? You really...ah, you really don't take care of yourself."
Qiao Liang stared at Gu Hezhi worriedly and said.
Faced with such a concerned friend, Gu Hezhi's lips moved slightly, and the words of rejection were stuck on the tip of his tongue.
"I've been cooking this soup for a long time, just try it."
After saying that, Qiao Liang sighed and turned back to the kitchen.
There was a clanging sound of dishes and chopsticks colliding, presumably he was cleaning the kitchen. Gu Hezhi's gaze lingered on the bowl of soup covered in oil for a few seconds, and a feeling of nausea instantly washed over him.
He suppressed his discomfort and casually stirred the meat at the bottom of the bowl.
Then, a translucent object swayed and floated up from the bottom of the bowl during stirring, and flashed past Gu Hezhi's sight.
Gu Hezhi's movements froze instantly.
Because, what just floated up from the bottom of the bowl was nothing else...
It was clearly a small piece of nail.
Human nails.