The woman's voice was hazy, as if it came from far away. It shot into my ears, then immediately drifted through my mind and faded.
What I saw was no longer the screen of Nan Gongyao's notebook, nor the surveillance footage. It was a mirror.
On closer inspection, it wasn't still at all. It was a large shop window. The glass reflected the woman inside. Her face looked somewhat dark—not her natural complexion, but a difference in color caused by the scenes and lighting on either side of the glass. The three female ghosts beside her, however, were still deathly pale. They weren't affected in the slightest by the change in lighting. They were just a mass of white, like plastic bags polluting the environment, pressed close to the woman as they followed her.
The woman only glanced hurriedly at the shop window before running off.
But this was a commercial street, and shop windows like this lined the road. In some of them, only the woman and the ghosts were reflected; nothing else appeared.
The woman ran in a panic, swinging her arms. The wind brushed over her rotting hands, carrying a pungent smell of disinfectant, and I could see beads of blood.
My vision was chaotic. One moment I saw the woman from behind, the next from the front or the side, and then I was looking at the shop windows again.
The ghosts were like kites, with the other end of the string in the woman's hand. But she clearly didn't know how to fly a kite. She clutched the string tightly, making the three ghosts follow close behind.
She was about to cross an intersection without even looking at the traffic lights.
Someone shouted, and a car slammed on the brakes.
The woman fell to the