"You Rui was right. At the very least, we have to show our faces around the neighborhood enough for people to recognize us, then contact a few of their clients to prove we've put in a lot of effort searching," I said, agreeing with the skinny guy this time.
The skinny guy looked even more pained than before. He'd clearly realized just how awful this whole "showing our faces until people recognize us" business was going to be.
It was like being an extra in a TV drama. If you had no chance of becoming famous overnight and no rich parents or godparents showering you with cash, all you could do was work hard to become a familiar face—at least enough for people to call you a model employee and praise your dedication.
"Qi-ge, can you at least get me a name?" The skinny guy looked at me pitifully.
I shook my head. "All I heard this morning was that there were three of them, two men and a woman. They were all young. One had the surname Liu, and another had the surname Ye."
"What good is that?!" The skinny guy wailed at the ceiling.
I ignored him and continued looking into the "New Year's Day Ghost Fetus." By the time work was over, I'd listened to all the audio files. On the computer, Greenleaf's surveillance footage was paused on its final frame.
The footage was a little blurry, but Yu Meng and Wang Fangjie had their arms around each other, like a perfectly ordinary, loving young couple.
Who could have guessed that the man's body had already been taken over by a malicious ghost?
Yu Meng was dead, Wang Fangjie had disappeared, and Xiao Zheng and the Ghost Fetus had vanished too. In the end, the people from Greenleaf had never found the two missing ghosts or the missing man. Could they be living somewhere in a corner of this world? Maybe I'd even brushed past them once...
"Lin Qi, are you okay?" Guo Yujie waved her hand in front of me.
"Oh, I'm fine." I looked up and saw the skinny guy and the fat guy were still there, so I called out, "Add two more people."
Now I understood why Greenleaf had recorded so many audio files: one of their members could hear the ghosts in them. And their "boss" could apparently knock a ghost out with one punch. That genuinely surprised me.
"What?" All three of them looked confused.
"I said there are five people in the Greenleaf Paranormal Agency altogether."
"Oh, do we have a name now?" The skinny guy's eyes lit up.
"No." I hesitated. "There might be someone we can look into." I flipped through the files. "Zhang Dong, former manager of the rooms division at the Junli Hotel. He contacted the Greenleaf Paranormal Agency."
He had a full name and a workplace, which made him easier to track down.
Guo Yujie turned to the other two. "Have you searched online? For an agency like this to get business, either someone has to refer them or they have to advertise. Their line of work couldn't be advertised through normal channels, so they must've put up little ads online, right?"
The fat guy sighed. "We checked ages ago. There's just nothing!"
"But Yu Meng contacted them online," I said, recalling one of the audio files I'd heard.
"Maybe they deleted it," the fat guy guessed.
The skinny guy had already called the local police station and was busy trying to butter them up.
This was a real hassle for the station. They'd already looked into a whole lot of people, and now they might have to check even more. Luckily, we worked for the demolition office and had already coordinated with the neighborhood committee and the police station. They understood and cooperated with our work.
After talking for a good while, the skinny guy suddenly brightened and jotted something down. "Thanks for your help! Hey, I'll treat you to a meal sometime! All right, all right, thanks!" When he hung up, he waved the note at us. "Finally, we've got someone who's still alive!"
Guo Yujie rolled her eyes, went to the bathroom, and came back to find us looking glum. She asked in surprise, "What's wrong?"
I nodded toward the skinny guy. "That Zhang Dong left Greenleaf's contact information. It's a cellphone number, but..."
"It's been disconnected." The skinny guy slumped over the desk.
"If you have a cellphone number, why can't you find the person?" Guo Yujie asked, puzzled.
"It wasn't registered under a real name!" The skinny guy tugged at his hair.
Guo Yujie was speechless. "What about the name? You don't even know one of their names?"
"We don't. We only know one of them was surnamed Liu," the fat guy answered. He wasn't as utterly hopeless as the skinny guy, but he looked just as dejected.
"Then good luck," Guo Yujie said, offering a casual word of encouragement as she packed up. "I'm heading off!"
"You're not going to Workers and Peasants Sixth Village?" the skinny guy asked.
"It's the end of the workday," Guo Yujie said, puzzled.
"Exactly. The workday's over, and so is the workday for the people we're looking for," the skinny guy said matter-of-factly, his voice sinking into despair by the end.
"Don't you know? Lin Qi and I were assigned two old men. They don't work," Guo Yujie said with a mischievous smile. "Besides, they've gone to visit relatives. They're both out of town right now."
"So you're not working just because they're away? Don't you have any other leads?" The skinny guy was indignant.
"Not at the moment." Guo Yujie picked up her bag, gave him a breezy wave, and clenched her fist. "Bye! Good luck!"
"Damn you!" the skinny guy swore.
"I'll go with you to Workers and Peasants Sixth Village," I told the skinny guy. "I'll bring you the files."
The skinny guy looked delighted. "Qi-ge! You're like a real brother to me!"
After that, the three of us went to Workers and Peasants Sixth Village together.
As he drove, the skinny guy said, "I think that place is seriously creepy. Look at this address: Building 6, Sixth Floor, Workers and Peasants Sixth Village, Lane 666, Guoqiang Road. It's sixes all the way down!"
"Isn't that just perfect?" the fat guy interjected.
"Perfect my ass!" The skinny guy had gotten a little short-tempered after the day he'd had.
It was only when the skinny guy pointed it out that I realized how uncanny the Greenleaf Paranormal Agency's address really was.
"I bet they chose the place on purpose to open a paranormal agency," the skinny guy continued. "Otherwise, what were the odds that all four households on that floor would lend out their apartments—and that they'd manage to get every single one?"
"Workers and Peasants Sixth Village used to be housing assigned by a work unit. The residents were all longtime colleagues. If they could persuade one person, maybe the others would be convinced too," the fat guy suggested.
"Have you still not found the owners of the apartments?" I asked.
We couldn't be sure whether the owners of the apartments were the same people who ran Greenleaf. There were no property transaction records, but perhaps a sale had gone through privately. Or maybe the original owner had died, and an heir had inherited the apartment without registering the transfer. When you thought about it, finding the people who'd run Greenleaf was less useful than finding the apartments' original owners. The records at the property bureau were damaged, and the names were illegible, but as the fat guy had said, the village had originally been work-unit housing. We could ask people from that work unit and the other longtime residents.
"No. Those records are old too, and they're handwritten as well! We spent all afternoon asking someone to look through them. When they finally found the right ones, the handwriting was so awful we couldn't read a thing." The skinny guy looked miserable.
All I could do was pat him sympathetically. "The other employees don't know either?"
"We spent the whole afternoon making calls. Nobody we asked could remember."
There weren't any empty parking spaces in the village, so the skinny guy parked at a nearby mall. We had a meal, then walked over to the village and entered Building 6. We climbed to the fifth floor together, and the skinny guy immediately waved goodbye to me.
I didn't know whether to laugh or get annoyed. There was nothing I could do, so I climbed up to the sixth floor.
Maybe it was because of what the skinny guy had said, or maybe it was because I'd listened to all those recordings that afternoon, but the sixth floor really did seem much colder than the floors below.
Maybe it was because nobody lived there, I thought as I took out my key and unlocked the door.
A notice from the police station was still stuck to the door, explaining that they'd forced their way in. It also had the demolition office's contact number and said the owner could come to us for the key when they returned.
As I opened the door, the notice shifted and rustled. The sound stood out sharply in the silence of the sixth floor. I couldn't help turning to look at the stairs.
Before you continue