"Don't panic. Try to calm down first..."
Yuwen Hao hadn't finished speaking when a loud crash came from the other end, as if the phone had been violently knocked to the floor. Then Lin Yue'er screamed.
A moment later, the call was disconnected.
He shuddered and reached out to call her back, only to find that her phone was unreachable.
An eerie silence fell over the room. Yuwen Hao held the phone, unsure whether to put it down or keep holding it.
Just then, he felt that intense sensation of being watched again, as if something had been staring at him the whole time.
He slowly turned his gaze toward the bedroom door. It was still tightly shut, without so much as a crack.
Then he looked up, finally fixing his eyes on the vent above the door.
The vent was transparent, and from where he stood, he could see the living room ceiling.
It was pitch-black outside. It looked as if a head were hanging from the ceiling, staring straight at him through the vent.
Yuwen Hao swallowed, trying to calm himself down.
He flipped through his phone book. "I have to stay calm... Calm down... I'll call the others first and see if anything's happening to them too..."
Yuwen Hao's gaze first settled on the name "Gu Mian."
But after hesitating for a moment, he seemed to decide that the doctor wasn't very reliable and that talking to him wouldn't help. He skipped over Gu Mian and looked at Qing Huan's name below it.
With a slight tremble in his hand, he called Qing Huan.
She answered almost immediately.
"Hello?" Qing Huan's voice came through the phone, sounding a little breathless. "Yuwen Hao?"
"Yeah. I wanted to ask how things are on your end. Lin Yue'er just called me, and things over there seemed... not good."
Qing Huan spoke hurriedly. "There's something really wrong with this room. I'm pressed against the wall while I talk to you."
Pressed against the wall? Yuwen Hao froze.
Qing Huan's voice continued to come through the phone.
"I don't know why, but ever since I came back to this room, I've felt like something was following me."
"Whether I'm in the living room, the bedroom, or the bathroom, I feel like someone's behind me!"
"When I walk, I hear footsteps behind me. They're very quiet, but I can hear them. It's close!"
"I turn around, and there's nothing there... But I know it's still behind me, following me... I couldn't take it anymore, so I pressed my whole back against the wall. There's a wall behind me, and that makes the feeling a little less intense..."
Yuwen Hao gripped the phone tightly. "Have you tried leaving the room?"
"I have, but it keeps following me. When I went down the stairs, I heard footsteps coming down from above. It followed me downstairs!"
"There are no lights in the stairwell, and it's too dark. I didn't dare keep going down, so I came back up the other staircase..."
Yuwen Hao took a deep breath. It seemed he wasn't the only one who'd sensed something was wrong. All five of them were probably in danger now!
Thinking this, he comforted Qing Huan for a few moments, hung up, and called Golden Wings.
"I wonder how Huang Yu's doing..." Yuwen Hao muttered to himself, recalling what Golden Wings looked like. "Someone as much of a shut-in as him probably wouldn't even be able to run if he ran into a ghost."
But the phone rang for a long time, and no one answered.
Yuwen Hao began to worry. "What's going on? Is he not home?"
Or had he already...
After a while, a woman's cold voice came through the phone. "The number you have dialed is currently busy. Please try again later..."
Yuwen Hao frowned.
Who could Huang Yu be calling?
Lin Yue'er's phone was already unreachable, and Qing Huan had just spoken to him. Could Huang Yu be talking to that doctor?
As he wondered, he glanced at Gu Mian's name in the phone book.
"I'll try calling him. I need to find out what's going on with everyone. I'll have to call him eventually anyway."
Yuwen Hao hesitated for a long time before dialing the number listed for Gu Mian.
About ten seconds later, someone finally picked up.
As soon as the call connected, Yuwen Hao forgot everything he'd planned to say. The sound coming through the phone had startled him.
A continuous "creak, creak" came through the receiver. It was loud, like something on the other end was twisting its joints.
Besides that eerie joint-twisting noise, Yuwen Hao could hear other faint sounds too, like the buzzing of flies or the shrill scrape of a fork against a plate.
Trembling, he moved the receiver a little farther away. "D-Doctor Gu, what's going on over there?"
Had he already... been killed?
But right away, Gu Mian's perfectly casual voice came through. "Nothing's wrong. Sadako just crawled out of the TV."
What? Yuwen Hao jolted. His hand shook, and he dropped the receiver. By the time he picked it up again, the call had ended.
He didn't dare call back. He could only stare blankly at the phone.
Tonight was bound to be a sleepless one.
He couldn't get through to Lin Yue'er or Huang Yu.
Qing Huan spent the whole night pressed against the wall, not daring to let her guard down for even a moment.
Yuwen Hao was terrified by the sound of Gu Mian eating popcorn and playing a horror movie.
Only Gu Mian slept soundly and woke up naturally.
By the time he woke up, it was already 7:48. The five of them had agreed to meet at a restaurant at eight in the morning.
After Gu Mian had unexpectedly stuck his face out last night, the knocking had stopped for good.
That gave Gu Mian time to finish watching an entire movie, The Ring. He'd nearly finished both bags of popcorn, too.
By the time he returned the movie and arrived at the restaurant where they'd arranged to meet, the other four were already there, waiting with dejected expressions.
Gu Mian set his chainsaw aside and sat down. He counted the people and saw that no one was missing.
It seemed this was a very merciful instance.
Yuwen Hao looked up and stared at him, seeming surprised that Gu Mian was still alive.
It wasn't until Gu Mian had taken his seat that Yuwen Hao slowly edged closer. "Doctor Gu, I called you last night... You said Sadako crawled out?"
Gu Mian answered casually, "Yeah. I was watching a horror movie."
At that, the others' expressions changed slightly.
Yuwen Hao sounded incredulous. "A horror movie?"
The doctor had been talking about a horror movie last night?
Yuwen Hao was certain that even if his parents had given him ten more guts, he still wouldn't dare watch a horror movie in a place like this, especially in the middle of the night.
He steadied himself. Never mind. If the guy wanted to watch horror movies in the middle of the night, that was none of his business...
Yuwen Hao stopped fixating on the strange doctor and turned to the others. "Let's talk about what happened last night."
As he spoke, he looked at Lin Yue'er. "Yue'er, you go first."
There'd been such a commotion on her end during their call last night, and afterward he hadn't been able to reach her. Yuwen Hao had even thought Lin Yue'er was dead. He hadn't expected to see her alive today.
Gu Mian also turned to look at Lin Yue'er. No one besides Yuwen Hao had called him last night, so he had no idea what had happened to the others.
Before you continue