Meng Yifan had been dead to the world when he got my call.
"Second-in-command, look at the time. Don't you ever sleep...?"
"Get over here, quick! Something's happened!"
The moment I said that, I heard Meng Yifan spring out of bed.
"What are you doing...?"
A woman's sleepy voice soon came through the phone. It was Meng Yifan's girlfriend.
"Go back to sleep. My buddy's in trouble. I need to get over there right now."
Before long, I heard Meng Yifan racing downstairs.
It sounded like he hadn't even had time to change out of his slippers.
"Boss Meng, don't hang up. I'm a little scared..."
"Okay, stay there. I'm on my way!"
Only after keeping Meng Yifan on the line did I feel a little safer.
Honestly, I wasn't a coward. Or at least, I hadn't been before last night...
The main thing was that everything about this was strange in ways I couldn't explain.
If I'd moved from the master bedroom to the living room in my sleep and turned on the TV myself, that might have been explained by sleepwalking, even though I'd never sleepwalked before.
But the cement on the floor... how was I supposed to explain that?
I didn't think there was any explanation for it.
About twenty minutes later, Meng Yifan arrived in his car.
"What happened? What's this about seeing a ghost?"
He looked worried as he pushed the car door shut behind him and ran toward me.
I hurriedly told him everything that had happened.
After hearing me out, he was stunned too. He leaned against a tree and stood there in a daze for a long time.
"Buddy, you're not messing with me, are you...?"
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"I ran out without even putting my fucking shoes on! I didn't even bring my computer!"
Meng Yifan could see how rattled I was.
I was obviously scared out of my mind.
But he still looked skeptical. "I believe you when you say someone knocked in the middle of the night. I can even believe you sleepwalked into the living room and turned on the TV. But cement footprints on the floor... are you sure your eyes weren't playing tricks on you...?"
I told him my eyes definitely hadn't been playing tricks on me.
The living room lights had been off, but the TV had been on. How blind would I have had to be to mistake something like that?
"Then let's go back and take a look." He locked his car and pulled me along as he ran into the residential complex.
I really didn't dare go back. After all, dawn hadn't even broken yet.
But Meng Yifan didn't believe me, so I had to prove it to him.
Before long.
The two of us were back upstairs.
Standing in that apartment's living room again, I was dumbfounded.
The smooth, clean floor had no cement footprints on it. There wasn't even a trace of cement.
Meng Yifan gave me an exasperated look. "Where are these footprints you were talking about? Where?"
I pointed to where the cement footprints had been and explained frantically, "Right there! There were loads of footprints before. I saw them clearly. How could they be gone...?"
Could someone have come in and cleaned them up while I was downstairs?
After all, I hadn't even closed the door when I ran out.
"I can't believe I fell for your bullshit. You actually tricked me into coming over at this hour. What the hell is wrong with you?" Meng Yifan was now convinced I was messing with him.
I swore to him, "If I'm messing with you, may I be infertile and still end up with a house full of children and grandchildren. Is that good enough?"
Meng Yifan could tell I didn't seem to be lying. He thought for a moment, then said, "Let's just check the footage."
The surveillance footage could prove everything. It could also show everything that had happened throughout the apartment.
Without explaining any further, I opened my laptop and pulled up the surveillance footage from eleven the night before.
I'd gone back to the master bedroom to sleep at eleven, and the girl looking for Li Xiumei had knocked at exactly midnight.
The footage had already confirmed that. There was no mistake.
And taken on its own, there really wasn't anything strange about that incident.
Then I set the playback speed straight to twenty times normal.
Before long, a scene appeared on the screen that made my skin crawl.
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