The spirit that Nantian or Gu Yan had become didn't arrive so quickly.
After the weekend passed, the hot topics online were still about the entertainment industry, while the social news continued to focus on the people who kept being found dead by suicide.
On Monday, after I got to work, I became increasingly aware of the change in the atmosphere around the world. It wasn't just online. It wasn't that the hot news stories breaking on the internet were rarely discussed in real life. It was a change affecting society as a whole.
It was one thing for everyone in the office to be on edge. We'd had an actual murder here and seen the corpse. Even on my way to work, I could feel that strange atmosphere. Everyone seemed distracted, wary of their surroundings. That wasn't how people usually felt on a Monday morning.
To make sure I wasn't imagining it, I asked the others. Fatty and Chen Xiao Qiu drove to work, so I'd assumed they wouldn't notice the change. But I was wrong. They'd sensed it too.
"There were several minor accidents on the road. It's like... everyone's become irritable," Fatty said.
December wasn't usually a month that made people irritable.
Chen Xiao Qiu nodded in agreement. She hadn't encountered any accidents, but she had seen how strange the pedestrians on the road were. The way they stopped at red lights and hurried across at green lights had both seemed off.
"Exactly! I noticed that too!" Gu Yujie chimed in. "The people around me looked like something was chasing them. Like Lin Qi said, they were distracted, and really uneasy. Angry, too, I think. I saw two people on electric scooters start arguing right in the street."
"It makes you really uncomfortable," Skinny said.
It was