"It went like this... One day, Xiao Liu told me he'd gotten a ride request through the app. The passenger was a kid, a high schooler, I guess... He was heading home from a bar on Pengbai Road at night."
"Was the pickup at the bar on Pengbai Road, or did the student say he'd just been hanging out inside the bar?"
"Um... I'm not sure about that. He told me roughly what I just said: he picked the kid up at a bar on Pengbai Road and took him to a residential complex. The first time, everything seemed normal. Then, over the next month, he got a few more requests from him. He suspected the student was up to no good, maybe mixed up with gangsters. You don't have to worry about that kind of thing when you're driving a cab... It's not your responsibility. Xiao Liu's a decent guy, so he tried talking to the kid a couple of times. The high schooler didn't react at all. Xiao Liu said he'd talk to him, but the kid wouldn't answer. Sometimes he'd play on his phone, sometimes he'd stare out the window. He brought it up with me while we were eating, just making conversation. He complained about what students were like these days and so on... Then, a month or two later, he came to me again, and there was something off about his expression. He grabbed me and asked if I remembered the student he'd told me about. I said I did. Then he lowered his voice and told me the kid might be a ghost. I didn't even hear him the first time. It wasn't until he said it again that I understood."
"How did Mr. Liu come to that conclusion?"
"He saw it. He said