Don't Spend the Night Here

"The landlord is highly suspicious, but other possibilities can't be ruled out either." Chen Ge scratched his head. "If only I could find a tenant to ask."

Since entering the apartment building, he had seen four people: the woman hiding behind the door crack, Wang Qi posting Missing Person Notices, the irritable landlord, and the old man in the wheelchair.

"The old man lives with the landlord, so I'll set him aside for now. The woman on the first floor gives me a strange feeling. That leaves Wang Qi, who seems relatively normal—he should know something about what goes on in this building." Chen Ge put the thermos back in his room, locked the door, and headed downstairs.

The sound-activated light flickered on. As soon as Chen Ge reached the first floor, he saw Wang Qi moving through the hallway clutching Missing Person Notices, stuffing them into the door cracks of rental units without caring whether anyone lived there.

This unusual behavior caught Chen Ge's attention. Most people posting Missing Person Notices would go where crowds gathered, but Wang Qi was deliberately targeting empty rooms.

Chen Ge quietly followed behind Wang Qi, waiting until he had shoved the last notice into a door crack before speaking up. "Brother, I understand the pain of a missing family member, but you need to stay strong. Don't torment yourself with meaningless acts like this."

Hearing the voice, Wang Qi slowly turned around. His murky eyes seemed never to focus on anything. "Understand? You people don't understand. I've never expected you to..."

Without wasting words, Chen Ge pulled out his phone and showed the missing person report he had filed at the police station months ago. "I'm not lying to you. My parents disappeared half a year ago. At first, I was crushed with despair too."

Seeing the photo saved on the phone, Wang Qi fell silent for a long moment before finally speaking. "I sympathize with your situation, but our cases are different. My fiancée will definitely come back. I can feel it—she hasn't gone far."

"Can you tell me about your story? Fellow sufferers in a cruel world—maybe I can help you somehow." Chen Ge's tone was sincere, and he meant every word.

Wang Qi hesitated. Perhaps remembering that Chen Ge had helped him pick up the Missing Person Notices earlier, his gaze softened slightly. "You can't help me. You seem like a decent guy, so take my advice—leave now. Whatever you do, don't spend the night here!"

"I've already paid. If you want me to leave, at least give me a reason." Chen Ge had come here to complete his trial mission. Leaving now would mean giving up halfway, and the Midnight Escape horror scenario would never unlock.

"What's more important—money or your life?" Wang Qi glanced around, and after confirming no one was nearby, lowered his voice. "This apartment building was the site of a Massacre Case. Everyone nearby knows about it."

"I've heard this is a haunted building, but I couldn't find any related cases online. It's probably just a rumor." Chen Ge voiced his doubts.

"This building used to be called Fu An Apartment. They changed the name to Ping An Apartment after the incident. That case made a huge splash back then. The killer has never been caught, and the resentment of the wrongfully dead lingers, so they appear in the Old Mansion late at night." Wang Qi's expression was dead serious, as if he truly believed it.

"What era are we living in now? You still believe that stuff?" Chen Ge forced a stiff smile, but inside he was more panicked than anyone. The Mirror Monster, the Love Letter Ghost—he really didn't want to get tangled up with any more spirits.

"I didn't believe it at first either. Not until my fiancée vanished mysteriously near here." He clutched his hair in pain, the exhaustion on him impossible to hide.

"Why would your fiancée come to a place like this?" Chen Ge's attention sharpened. The speaker had no intent, but the listener took it to heart—Wang Qi's fiancée's situation was somewhat similar to his parents'.

"I don't know. Honestly, I'd never even heard of this apartment building before. The police told me about it. They said all the clues ended here." Wang Qi let go of his hair, a few strands still caught between his fingers. "I had no choice. I could only come here to search."

"Have you found anything?" Chen Ge was very curious.

Wang Qi opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it. He pulled out his phone from his pocket and typed a line on the screen.

"I think my fiancée was kidnapped by someone in this apartment building!"

Seeing the words on the phone, Chen Ge was taken aback. Things were developing differently than he had imagined. "Brother, missing and kidnapped are two very different things."

Wang Qi gestured for Chen Ge to keep his voice down. He blocked the corridor with his back, opened his phone's inbox, and showed it to Chen Ge.

Chen Ge only meant to glance at it, but when he clearly saw the text message in the inbox, his eyes slowly widened.

Wang Qi's phone had a text message from his fiancée!

The message contained only two words—Save me. What was even stranger was that the message had been sent around two in the morning the previous day.

"A person who's supposed to be missing sends you a distress text in the middle of the night?" After getting over the initial shock, Chen Ge quickly calmed down. "Since you received the message, why didn't you just call the police? Your fiancée is clearly still alive."

"You probably won't believe me, but every night after midnight, I receive a text from my fiancée. The content is always those two words. And the key thing is, when I wake up, the message disappears, as if it never existed." Wang Qi pointed at the Blood Thread in his eyes. "I haven't slept for twenty-four hours just to keep this message."

"The message disappears when you fall asleep?" Chen Ge had never heard of such a thing.

"I know you probably think I'm crazy too, but everything I'm saying is true." Wang Qi leaned against the wall and put his phone away. "Even stranger things happen around me. For example, my fiancée's belongings will inexplicably show up in my room, with no warning at all. It's as if she's constantly reminding me to go find her."

After hearing Wang Qi's last sentence, Chen Ge's eyelids twitched.

Based on his experiences over the past few days, her fiancée hadn't just gone missing—she had been killed and turned into a ghost, and was now haunting him again. That was the only explanation that made sense. Of course, all of this assumed Wang Qi wasn't lying.

"My fiancée disappeared in this apartment building. My life changed because of this building too. This is a haunted house, filled with wrongfully dead wandering spirits. Anyone who dares to come near will be tainted by misfortune. You should leave now." Perhaps because he hadn't spoken this much in a long time, Wang Qi's face looked pale.