I guessed the female ghost Chen Zi'an had mentioned was the girl who had been killed by the teddy bear.
Meng Hua hadn't said much about the girl's situation. I figured she had vanished completely, and I wasn't interested in asking about her anymore.
"Keep driving," I said.
But Chen Zi'an didn't shut up. Once he got started, he kept talking nonstop.
"That girl killed herself years ago. I wasn't even born yet, I think. I only heard about it, but apparently she was ugly, and on top of that, she was always making a spectacle of herself. She liked dressing up like those famous actresses. Back then, they didn't have makeup, so who knows what she used to paint her face. It was all blotchy, red here and yellow there. Everyone laughed at her, and they thought she was disgusting."
Something about that didn't sound right to me.
That girl didn't look like she was from another era, and she hadn't dressed herself up. She looked like the most ordinary schoolgirl.
"...The people at school ostracized her, and some of them deliberately picked on her. There's a term for it now: bullying. Heh, it's a serious social problem. These days, a kid might have to transfer schools and go study somewhere else with their tail between their legs. Back then, nobody called it that. The teachers and students all hated her, and even her family scolded her for making trouble. In the end, she jumped off a building and smashed her head open. They say that spot—the place where she jumped—couldn't be cleaned for years. The ground was still red."
Chen Zi'an had no idea what I was thinking and kept going. "After that, the school was haunted. Quite a few people saw her there. She didn't do anything,