The girl was covered in blood. She leaned against the wall without moving, her eyes closed.
The beam of light shone directly onto her face, yet she showed no reaction at all, as if she had fainted.
For a moment, I was stunned.
The Vengeful Ghost that appeared around this abandoned construction site in the dead of night was actually a young girl?
No. Aside from being "covered in blood," this girl had absolutely nothing in common with the Vengeful Ghost I had heard about through rumors.
So, was she a living human being? But why was she seriously injured, and why was she wearing a hospital gown in such a remote place?
Now wasn't the time to think about that. Since she was a badly injured living person, what I ought to do now went without saying.
I hurried over and crouched in front of her. While using my amateur knowledge to check her vital signs, I took out my phone and prepared to call an ambulance.
At the same time, I carefully observed her appearance.
She was probably only thirteen or fourteen, around the age of a middle school student. Although her cheeks were stained with blood, it was clear that she had neat, youthful features. Her skin was so fair and delicate beneath the light that it was dazzling. Her head drooped pitifully to one side, and her medium-length black hair spilled over one shoulder.
The blue-and-white-striped hospital gown she wore had been badly torn in several places, with dark-red blood seeping through from beneath. These injuries were absolutely not the sort caused by accidentally tripping on the road or falling down the stairs. They were evidence of lethal violence. There had to be a cold-blooded assailant nearby, armed with a deadly weapon.
The blood was very fresh. She could only have been injured somewhere nearby.
The assailant was close!
I kept my eyes and ears alert, but I detected no sign of any third party. Even so, I didn't let down my guard.
It looked like I would have to call the police afterward as well.
However, I never expected that I wouldn't even have time to make the emergency call. Just as I was about to press the dial button, the girl abruptly raised her arm and seized the wrist of the hand holding my phone with tremendous strength that didn't match her childish appearance.
She weakly opened her eyes. Her consciousness seemed unclear, and I couldn't even tell whether she had seen my face clearly.
"Don't call the police..." she murmured faintly.
After saying that, her eyes closed again, but her hand remained stubbornly wrapped around my wrist. No matter how I called out to her, I couldn't wake her.
Don't call the police? Why?
I was afraid I couldn't comply with that request. Regardless of whether I called the police, I definitely had to call an ambulance. I wasn't so cold-hearted that I could stand by and watch a stranger die. Besides, once the hospital saw her condition, it would surely contact the authorities.
That was what I had originally thought.
But very soon, I discovered that there was no need for me to call an ambulance at all.
I moved her hand away. Just then, the tugging caused by her movements pulled at her hospital gown, revealing the skin beneath a tear in the fabric.
That skin looked completely unharmed.
I immediately realized something was wrong. Forgetting all about propriety between men and women, I reached directly under her clothes to examine her injuries.
I wouldn't have known without checking, but the moment I did, I immediately touched upon another extremely serious problem. Through her top, I felt an utterly unfamiliar, hard, cold object. When I lifted the hem of her clothes and looked inside, I found a murderous-looking weapon tucked beneath them.
The killing intent I sensed transformed into a chill I had never experienced before and shot straight to the crown of my head.
It was a handgun!
I pulled the handgun out in disbelief and examined it over and over. Even an amateur like me could identify it—it was absolutely a real gun!
Moreover, if I hadn't made any mistake while examining the girl's body, she was genuinely completely unharmed.
If that was the case, why had she fallen into a coma that looked exactly like one caused by severe blood loss?
It couldn't be that she was simply tired and wanted to sleep, right?
Whose blood was on her? Since it wasn't hers, could it actually be animal blood? Was this some kind of joke? How was I supposed to believe that someone carrying a genuine firearm had been drenched in fake human blood?
I had to revise my view of the situation. At first, I thought a crime had occurred here and that she was the victim, but the truth might be completely opposite to my preconceived impression.
I had to call the police.
Even if I assumed for the moment that she herself was innocent, firearms shouldn't be allowed to appear among civilians. That was the most ethical and conscientious thing to do.
And yet, on this mysterious girl shrouded in enigmas, I couldn't help sensing a seductive radiance—a dramatic potential completely beyond my experience and life, unpredictable and inconceivable.
A mysterious, bloodstained beauty collapsed amid the ruins. In all my life so far, I had never encountered anything more unreal.
At that moment, my curiosity defeated my morals.
I was going to take her home.
Once I made up my mind, I acted immediately.
I took off my coat, wrapped the oversized garment around the girl, and then carried her in my arms.
I usually had no luck with the opposite sex and had little resistance to women. Holding this girl's soft body, I couldn't help letting my imagination run wild. Under normal circumstances, mere physical contact with a woman would never have been enough to make me think improper thoughts. But at that moment, this strange beauty possessed a fatal charm, like a poisonous flower.
She was so mysterious and dangerous, harboring the possibility of destroying the life I had lived until now.
Was it really necessary to take her home? Even if I followed her request and refrained from calling the police, I could simply leave her here. But I was truly curious—extremely curious—about why she was barely clothed and drenched in blood, why she was illegally carrying a firearm and ammunition, and what kind of unbelievable story lay hidden behind it all. I had to find out.
I carried her away from the abandoned construction site.
My rented place outside campus and this abandoned construction site had one thing in common: both were near Xianshui University, where I studied. The distance from here to my home wasn't far.
The problem was that although I could take a side path and avoid people's eyes for the first half of the journey, I couldn't avoid being seen by passersby or caught on surveillance cameras for the entire route. The security guard would also see me when I entered the residential complex, and I might be stopped and questioned.
So halfway there, I hid the girl in a nearby patch of grass, hurried back to my rented place, took out the large suitcase I had previously used to move luggage, and then rushed back without stopping.
On the way back, I was terribly worried. I was afraid the girl had already woken up and left on her own while I was gone, or that my luck was simply awful enough for a passerby to discover her during that short interval.
Fortunately, my luck hadn't been quite that terrible.
I carried the girl out of the grass. She was small, and it wasn't difficult to curl up her arms and legs and put her into the large suitcase. I had been worried that I was just imagining it would work, but she really did fit inside.
Heaven as my witness! When I bought this suitcase in the past, I had never imagined that one day I would use it to transport an underage girl like some perverted sex criminal from an adult story.
My heart pounded as my thoughts ran wild. But compared to those vulgar ideas, what intoxicated me even more was the abnormality of the experience and the fact that I was taking such an abnormal action myself.
That's right. This was extremely strange, absolutely not a normal event that could occur in an ordinary life.
What would happen next?
I entered the residential complex where I lived and glanced back as I passed the security booth at the entrance.
The guard was bored, playing with his phone. He didn't even look at me, a suspicious person dragging a suitcase back and forth in the middle of the night. None of the pedestrians I encountered along the way paid me any attention either.
No matter how extraordinary tonight was to me, in the eyes of everyone else, it was merely another ordinary day.
I dragged the large suitcase back home.
Fortunately, I was currently a university student living alone off campus. Otherwise, I truly wouldn't have known how to explain this to my parents.
I carried the girl out of the suitcase. Clearly, the inside of it had been anything but a comfortable means of transportation. Even while deeply unconscious, the girl's brows had unconsciously furrowed in discomfort.
I had to thank the bumps along the way for not waking her. No matter how indifferent the pedestrians and security guard had been, if the cries for help of an underage girl had suddenly come from inside that suitcase, I would certainly have ended up in a humiliating predicament.
I tried once more to wake her, but as expected, I failed. She wouldn't wake up for the time being. In that case, I would let her rest for now.
I carried her into my bedroom and laid her flat on the bed.
From a hygienic standpoint, it wasn't good to let her continue wearing bloodstained clothes, and the sheets and blanket were stained as well. But I had no intention of changing her clothes for her myself. I would let her change them when she woke up. If she still hadn't regained consciousness tomorrow, I would help her change them then.
Tonight, I would sleep on the living room sofa and temporarily give her the bedroom. This wasn't out of some so-called gentlemanly spirit. If she slept in the living room, I might not notice if she woke up and left. As long as I stayed in the living room while she was in the bedroom, she would have to pass by me to leave, which would inevitably wake me.
To be safe, I carefully balanced an empty cola can on the outside door handle of the bedroom. The handle wasn't round but lever-shaped. Without outside force, the can could rest there quite steadily. But if she turned the handle from inside the bedroom, the can would certainly fall to the floor and make a conspicuous noise.
Was she a witch who would bring ruin to my life, or something else entirely? Before leaving the bedroom, I looked at her sleeping face. I could barely suppress the heat in my heart; I could even feel the vigorous throbbing of the blood vessels behind my ears.
I was truly looking forward to what would happen tomorrow.