Girlfriend's Corpse, Dead for Seven Years

The night before, I had been on a date with Xiao Yu until three in the morning.

After finishing classes during the day, I was exhausted and sleepy. I went back to the dorm and fell asleep, so I never used the coin.

Then, early the next morning, I received a breakup text from Xiao Yu...

From that day onward, I never had any contact with my ex-girlfriend again.

It was as if she had vanished off the face of the earth. I tried every possible method, but I couldn't reach her.

After thinking it over and over, I believed there was only one reason she had broken up with me.

It was because I hadn't used that coin and hadn't sent her the video.

But was something so trivial really worth breaking up over?

I thought that once her anger had subsided after a few days, she might contact me on her own.

But I never could have imagined it.

Our reunion would be with her lying on an autopsy table.

Looking at her pale white face, my heart was filled with mixed emotions.

What had she gone through in the seven days since we broke up?

How could someone just suddenly die...

Seeing my complicated expression and that I still hadn't started, the instructor beside me

spoke up to remind me:

"Jiang Ning, why haven't you started yet?"

Hearing the instructor's words, my grief turned hollow and numb.

With trembling hands, I reached toward Xiao Yu's corpse as if possessed.

We had still been together just last week.

Xiao Yu's body had been soaked in Formalin Pool, leaving her muscles slack and devoid of elasticity.

The moment I touched her head, one eyelid lifted open a slit, exposing half an eyeball.

I kept feeling as though she was looking at me through that raised eyelid.

My heart was full of pain and struggle.

I wanted to touch her face and give her one final farewell.

But then I unexpectedly noticed that she seemed to be holding something in her mouth.

Something silvery white...

I instinctively reached in to pry it out, only to pull a coin from her mouth.

And that coin was the very one I had given her seven days ago.

Because the two red dots on it had been marked by the two of us ourselves...

But why had Xiao Yu kept this coin in her mouth?

Seeing me take a coin from the corpse, the instructor beside me

leaned closer curiously as well.

He pushed up his large-framed glasses, then said with a suspicious expression:

"How strange. This body has been soaking in the pool for seven or eight years.

How could it have an 18-year coin in its mouth?"

The instructor's words were like a bucket of ice water thrown over me, chilling me from head to toe.

I stared at him in shock and stammered:

"S-seven or eight years?"

Holding a file folder, the instructor replied seriously:

"Yes! This cadaver has been soaking in the pool for seven or eight years.

If we don't make use of it soon, it'll have to be sent to the funeral home for cremation..."

After saying that, he handed me the file folder for a look.

It clearly recorded the exact time Xiao Yu had been made into a cadaver and sent to the school's body storage, among other details.

I felt as if my entire world had collapsed.

We had clearly seen each other seven days ago...

She had even said she would return this coin to me at the end of the month and let me use it.

How had Xiao Yu suddenly become someone who had been dead for seven years?

If this was true, then the ex-girlfriend who had dated me before was either a corpse, or...

But the facts were right before my eyes, forcing me to believe.

I didn't dare think any further. Terror engulfed my entire body.

The coin in my hand fell to the floor with a clatter.

At that instant, I remembered when I had first met Xiao Yu.

She had seemed just like she did on the autopsy table—deathly pale and colorless.

The strange odor on her body had also been almost identical to the smell now emanating from the autopsy table.

No wonder she only ever came out at night. She hadn't been working at an institute at all—she had been soaking in the Formalin Pool in the body storage.

I looked at Xiao Yu on the autopsy table in horror.

Xiao Yu's mouth was stretched wide open now, wide enough to fit a fist inside.

It was as though she were screaming herself hoarse, or as though she had something to say but couldn't make a sound.

At that moment, countless terrifying thoughts spread through my mind. I shuddered with fear, unable to accept it.

"No, it isn't real!"

Ignoring the stares of the students around me,

I turned and ran wildly out of the Anatomy Room.

The girlfriend I had dated for over a year had been dead for seven years.

Then had I been with a corpse? Or a ghost?

Who could accept that? It was simply unimaginable.

I only wanted to get away from the Anatomy Room and wake up from this nightmare as soon as possible.

I ran back to the dorm alone.

I crouched on my bed, my body shaking uncontrollably.

My mind was filled with every moment of my relationship with my ex-girlfriend.

I clutched my hair hard, overwhelmed by a turmoil of emotions...

I would rather accept that Xiao Yu had died after breaking up with me.

Than accept that Xiao Yu, who had been with me for more than a year, had actually been a ghost—a corpse.

After a long while, the dorm door was pushed open.

My roommate Zhang Qiang returned from outside, drenched in sweat and pale-faced.

The moment he entered, he took two deep breaths toward me on the bed, then said in lingering terror:

"Jiang Ning, good thing you ran from anatomy class. It scared me to death.

After the teacher dissected the body, he discovered

that the corpse had suffered immensely before death. It was very likely drowned alive in a swamp.

A large amount of mud, sand, and sandworms were found in its respiratory tract and lungs..."

After saying that, Zhang Qiang took out the coin I had left behind in the Anatomy Room.

Wiping away bead-sized drops of sweat, he muttered:

"But it's pretty strange! How could a corpse that had been soaking in the body pool since 2014 have an 18-year coin in its mouth?"