The two walked through the dim stairwell.
Once they passed the second floor and headed up, they could smell a mixture of lamp oil and burned paper money, as though some household had just held a ceremony.
"It's apartment 301. The woman there went mad after her husband and son died horrible deaths. She tried everything to summon their souls, but what she called back weren't her family."
Su Ling warned him quietly.
After passing the second floor, she grew even more cautious, practically pressing herself against Jiang Chen's back.
It was as though merely walking through the corridors above the second floor would cause something terrible to happen.
They rounded the turn in the stairs.
Su Ling's steps faltered. For a moment, she thought she heard someone calling her name.
"Something's wrong!"
She didn't look back. She hurried forward, just about to call out to Jiang Chen.
"Ling, Ling..."
The voice behind her grew clearer, gradually overlapping with someone in her memories.
In a daze, Su Ling was back on an afternoon after school, when she had played until dark before going home and run straight into her mother, who had come looking for her.
"Ling, stop right there! Coming home this late again! Do you really think I won't punish you?"
That angry scolding voice.
Yet it belonged to a time Su Ling could never return to.
Her eyes unwittingly grew wet. She stopped in a daze and turned around. A little boy with a deathly pale face and hollow eye sockets stood behind her, pinching his throat and grinning grotesquely.
Her mother's voice came out of his mouth.
"Ling, Ling..."
A ghost?!
Su Ling snapped out of it.
Her breathing grew heavy, her hair stood on end, and goosebumps covered her body.
She wanted to run, but