"Run! I can't stop! He might be the one who hanged that madwoman in the stairwell! It must have been him!" Fear gave Tang Hanlu's frail body a fresh burst of strength. Bracing her elbows against the rough concrete steps and clutching the rusty railing, she crawled upstairs in a strange posture, more beast than human.
"Nothing in my nightmares was as terrifying as this. I'd rather what I'm going through now were a nightmare!" Tang Hanlu ran all the way from the eighth-floor landing back to the tenth floor. As she passed the wreath and the Posthumous Photograph again, it felt as though needles were stabbing her brain. The two faces in the photograph filled her with an inexplicable fear.
This fear did not come from sensing danger, but from her resistance to some tragic memory. Things she refused, deep down, to remember were being awakened little by little.
"They look so familiar. The more I look, the more familiar they seem. Why does the middle-aged couple who died on the tenth floor make me feel this way?"
Fragments flashed through her mind, and Tang Hanlu remembered the unfinished birthday cake on the ninth floor. The writing on the cake grew larger in her mind, gradually becoming clear—May our precious daughter stay healthy and well.
"Healthy? Why would they wish her good health? Was their daughter sick? Could she have fallen ill from seeing something terrifying?"
Her thoughts began spiraling out of control. Tang Hanlu heard footsteps behind her. That twisted monster was close on her heels!
She did not dare look back, much less stop. Even as she panted with exhaustion, she forced herself to keep climbing.
She went up floor after floor. The higher she climbed, the more clutter filled the stairwell, including many things she could