Someone Has Been Here?

Three days had passed since the previous Death Game ended.

On the first day, perhaps because Yimo wanted to vent, he really did livestream until midnight before signing off. At the peak, the stream had more than four million viewers, and the tips he received that day were triple those of the second-ranked streamer on the Kaki website.

Although he had made quite a lot of money, Yimo, who had already enjoyed financial freedom for two years, did not feel particularly happy. Once he was exhausted, he collapsed onto the bed and fell straight asleep.

He did not wake up until noon the next day, still groggy.

And then things went horribly wrong.

Not only did he have a fever, but his throat hurt so badly that he could barely speak. Every time he moved his throat, it felt as though a fish bone were stuck there.

Yimo had lived alone for four years and rarely got sick, but he had never been short on medicine.

Still wearing his pajamas, he crawled out of bed as if he were marching into battle under a heavy load, then listlessly rummaged through his medicine box.

Cold medicine, fever medicine, anti-inflammatory medicine—he did not even check whether they had expired. He simply grabbed a large handful, boiled some water, made a bowl of instant noodles, and forced himself to finish them. Since he did not want to wait for the water to cool, he mixed bottled water with the hot water, shut his eyes, swallowed everything, then rolled back into bed and fell asleep again.

While sleeping, Yimo felt as though he were constantly having nightmares. He kept waking up, sweating nonstop until even the blanket grew damp.

Because he was utterly exhausted and still half-conscious, it was already noon on the third day by the time he fully woke up.

Perhaps the medicine had taken effect. Although his voice was still extremely hoarse and his throat still hurt, his head was no longer muddled, and his body felt much lighter. He got dressed and went to check whether his new phone had arrived at the community's delivery lockers.

He lived in Building 18, Apartment 502, but he opened the delivery locker for 501 instead. Sure enough, the package had arrived. He instinctively glanced around. Perhaps because the weather was too hot, no one was wandering around outside at this hour, so he returned home without worry.

He boiled some water, took a bowl of instant noodles from the little storage room, and hurriedly began unboxing the phone.

After all, not having a phone was very inconvenient.

It was not as though anyone would contact him. He simply felt uncomfortable if he could not fiddle with his phone, as if he had lost his wife.

Yimo had bought the same model as before. It was not cheap—more than eight thousand yuan.

It was not that he could not afford a better one, but he was simply too lazy to study a new phone system and slowly get used to it.

His mindset was practically that of an old man, devoid of any desire for novelty.

He charged it, turned it on, and set up the system in one smooth motion, intending to quickly download all the apps he needed.

But...

"..."

The desktop looked extremely jarring. The icon for an app called Send a Girlfriend at the Start was lying there quietly, almost like an eye, staring at him mockingly. All his strength left him, and half his heart turned cold...

"Ugh... My throat... hurts..."

Yimo tossed the new phone aside, thinking that his cold had not yet cleared up and that he must be hallucinating. He should get some more sleep.

But as soon as he lay down, he sat up again.

"Heh... face reality..."

"Of course it isn't... cough, cough... that easy to get rid of..."

After mocking himself, he went to the bathroom to retrieve his old phone.

Compared to the newly purchased phone, it was more convenient simply to use the old one.

But when Yimo reached the bathroom, he froze.

He looked at the old phone sitting on top of the washing machine, then at the empty trash can. A chill instantly ran down his spine. He instinctively turned to look at the room, as if he were being watched by a ghost.

He closed his eyes and tried hard to recall what had happened. Even though he had just gone through a Death Game and then livestreamed for twelve hours, exhausting himself to the point of illness, he knew his brain was still functioning properly.

He was absolutely certain that he had thrown the phone directly into the trash bag, which still had nothing in it at the time.

He definitely had not placed it on the washing machine!

Even if he had remembered incorrectly, the SIM card should at least have been snapped in half, right?

It should have been thrown away too!

But now?

Apart from the phone on the washing machine, there was no SIM card at all!

At that thought, Yimo hurriedly grabbed the phone from the washing machine and returned to the room to look for the SIM-eject tool. After opening it, he found that there really was no SIM card. His heart immediately sank halfway.

Could this also be the work of that app?

It was sticking its nose into far too many things!

Yimo felt that none of this made sense. He was also genuinely frightened, so he went back to the bathroom and searched carefully for the SIM card. After failing to find it no matter what he did, he finally gave up and sat back on the bed, staring blankly at the instant noodles he had left over from yesterday.

Was it haunted... or had someone entered his home...

Yimo was a little dazed. He could not figure it out, so he picked up the old phone and decided to open the app first.

After entering, the most conspicuous thing was the friend list, where a red notification showed forty-four unread messages.

"Even the number of messages is this kind of number... You're ruthless!"

Yimo's face darkened, but he still could not resist opening the girlfriend group.

Sure enough, it was one long string of messages, all sent by Twilight alone.

At first, there had been one every few dozen seconds, then one every few minutes.

The final message had been sent at eleven in the morning the previous day.

Qin Muse: You can't escape, liar!

Qin Muse: I'm coming to find you knife (emoji) heart-heart (emoji).

To be honest, during the Death Game, Yimo had felt that aside from being crazy, Twilight was also rather aloof.

He had never expected her to be so wordy online, even adding the emojis built into the phone's input method whenever she had nothing better to do.

How should he put it? It was almost as if...

She had never chatted with anyone before, and had suddenly found someone to talk to, making her especially excited.

Huh... Not only was Yimo not frightened, he inexplicably found it a little adorably contrasting.

"No, no, no. She's a lunatic. I can't let myself be fooled by my own fantasies." Yimo hurriedly dispelled the absurd thought, then muttered, "Heh, I don't believe you can really follow the internet connection all the way here... cough, cough, cough!"

His sudden excitement made him choke and cough several times.

He immediately shut his mouth obediently and stopped talking.

After doing all that, Yimo had intended to post an update on Kaki, but suddenly thought of something and stopped playing with his phone.

Wait...

The SIM card.

Where had it gone?

He had been so focused on Twilight's messages that he had completely forgotten about the SIM card!

Now that he remembered, he looked at Twilight's messages in the girlfriend group again, and his unease and panic grew stronger, as if she could really follow the internet connection all the way here.

As if she had been watching him the entire time.

His body felt somewhat heavy. He mechanically raised his head and looked toward his bedroom door.

Click—!

His heart suddenly spasmed. Cold sweat instantly broke out across his forehead, and his hands went slightly numb.

The peephole of the security door...

The instant he looked at it, it had changed from black to transparent white!!!

Huff... huff...

Yimo rubbed his eyes and took two deep breaths, wondering whether he had seen incorrectly.

After all, although his eyesight was good, it was not so good that he could see the tiny hole of a peephole clearly from several meters away.

Still feeling uneasy, he got out of bed and cautiously walked over.

Naturally, he deliberately crouched as he went.

Thump... thump...

Yimo was so tense that he could even hear his heartbeat. Half-crouched, he waited for the right moment, then suddenly raised his head and looked through the peephole.

He still had a low fever, and standing up too quickly made his head feel extremely dizzy. Nevertheless, he endured the discomfort and looked outside.

And then... he saw...

Well, there was nothing in the hallway!

"Could I... really have seen it wrong?"

Yimo looked up and down suspiciously. Sure enough, there was nothing there.

He lived in an old residential complex with only five floors. The concrete stairs were extremely worn, the metal handrails were not only peeling but rusty, and whether the hallway light on the fifth floor worked depended entirely on its mood.

Through the peephole, aside from the empty corridor spanning only a few square meters and the two closed doors, where could anyone be?

Yimo thought for a moment, rubbed his brow, and unconsciously grabbed the doorknob, intending to open the door and take a look.

But when he had only turned it halfway, his hand stopped.

"Whatever... forget it."

"I'm just scaring myself!"

"Maybe that app really is behind this!"

"How could that crazy woman... find her way here!... cough, cough!"

He had said too much in one go, and his throat hurt so badly that he coughed several times again. Then he rubbed his throat and walked back into the room.

As for why he had not opened the door to confirm it, it was simply because he had suddenly remembered a movie he had once seen.

In the movie, the moment the door opened, a group of huge men suddenly barged in and pinned the homeowner to the bed for a vicious assault. It had left him somewhat frightened.

So he decided not to open the door. He relaxed and returned to bed to study the app.

.

.

Outside the door of Apartment 502, in the peephole's blind spot,

a girl in a light-blue dress, with shoulder-length flaxen-brown hair, was crouching against the door. She held something wrapped in floral cloth in her arms.

Both arms shielded her slightly lowered face, making it impossible to see her features clearly.

But through the gaps between her arms, one could seemingly glimpse the gloom covering her face and the faint downward curve of her lips.