Something was wrong with the apartment

I had never had a problem with sleepwalking.

But after sleeping in the master bedroom of this apartment last night, I had somehow started sleepwalking.

And tonight, when Meng Yifan slept here with me, not only had I sleepwalked, but he had started sleepwalking too.

Even though I didn't believe in the supernatural, I couldn't shake the feeling that this apartment was horribly sinister.

Then the cement footprints that had vanished appeared again, and my first instinct was to get out of here!

Something was wrong with this apartment!

But Meng Yifan was still sleepwalking. He didn't seem to have woken up at all.

I summoned my courage and forced myself to call his name twice.

I didn't dare raise my voice too much, though. I'd heard that waking a sleepwalker with a start could leave them mentally impaired.

Luckily, despite how quietly I called, Meng Yifan woke up.

He opened his eyes in confusion, and the remote in his hand dropped to the floor with a clatter.

Once he saw his surroundings, he shuddered violently, his gaze settling on the floor outside the master bedroom.

He seemed to have spotted those horrifying cement footprints too.

"Holy shit! Holy shit!"

He let out two cries and, without even bothering about me, scrambled out of the apartment.

"Meng Yifan! Wait for me, you bastard!"

Scared out of my wits too, I grabbed my phone and charged out of the living room.

We tore downstairs without daring to stop for a second. Only after we had fled the apartment complex did I notice that Meng Yifan had lost his slippers along the way.

The street was deserted. The only sound was a street cleaner sweeping somewhere in the distance.

Meng Yifan and I crouched miserably beneath a tree, hugging our legs and trembling.

"How is that possible... how is that possible..."

"I was sleeping perfectly fine in bed... perfectly fine..."

Meng Yifan took it even harder than I did.

He was normally a brave man too, but who wouldn't fall apart after something like that?

"Boss Meng, that apartment... do you think something really happened there...?" Only after taking a long time to recover did I look at him.

He looked back at me, his expression grim. "You're the one who sold the apartment. What the hell are you asking me for? I was about to ask you!"

I said I honestly couldn't guarantee anymore that nothing had happened in that apartment.

All I knew was that I had asked the seller before, and he had said nothing had happened there.

Besides, even the police had investigated. Surely they wouldn't have helped the seller lie?

Suddenly, I remembered something the old lady in the complex had told me. The apartment had been sold once before, and the buyer then was the seller this time.

But after buying it, this seller had never moved in. He had left it empty for over a decade before listing it with our agency.

If there was nothing wrong with the apartment, why had the seller left it vacant for so long?

Even if he had just rented it out, over a decade of rent would have recouped a fair chunk of his money.

At that point, Meng Yifan and I understood each other without saying a word. Neither of us could believe that nothing had happened in that apartment.

"What rotten fucking luck. This is going to be a nightmare to sort out now." Meng Yifan's expression was grim.

I understood what he meant. The buyers were definitely going to back out of the purchase now.

Since we had installed surveillance cameras in the apartment, we had to show the footage to the couple who had bought it.

If we didn't hand it over, we would look guilty. But if we did, the footage would show us fleeing twice, as well as both of us sleepwalking. How were we supposed to explain that to them?

There was no covering this up.

And by now, reversing the sale was the least of our worries. At worst, we would have to refund our commission. But if the buyers sued us, we wouldn't just be returning the money. We would be caught up in a lawsuit and have to pay damages!

"There's definitely something wrong with that apartment."

"You must have seen those cement footprints too," I said.

At the mention of "footprints," Meng Yifan's face went pale again in an instant.

"I've never had a problem with sleepwalking before. How the hell did I start doing it? And the moment I woke up, I saw..."

He trailed off, unable to continue.

Seeing how frightened he was, I didn't dare mention anything else.

Like the sound of high heels walking, or the sound of someone brushing paint onto a wall.

What terrified me even more was that the footprints I had just seen were different from yesterday's.

Yesterday, the footprints had pointed toes facing forward, with dots behind them, and they had disappeared at the master bedroom doorway. That meant the owner of those high heels had been heading into the master bedroom.

But the footprints I saw today had the dots in front and the pointed toes behind, and they had stretched all the way from the master bedroom doorway to the living room entrance.

That meant... the owner of those high heels had left the apartment.

Meng Yifan and I stayed outside the complex until daybreak. Then he told me to call two people over so we could all go back and take another look.

Neither of us wanted to go back, but we had no choice. If we didn't sort out the problem with that apartment, we might really end up facing a lawsuit.

I took out my phone and called two employees from our branch.

They were recent college graduates, one named Xie Peng and the other Li Xingyang. Both were young men who generally did as they were told.

They sounded a little confused when they answered. I didn't tell them much over the phone, only that they should take a taxi over right away and that Meng Yifan would reimburse their fares.

About half an hour later, they arrived one after the other. They had even thoughtfully brought breakfast for Meng Yifan and me.

"So, bosses, what are we doing here? Showing an apartment to a client?" Xie Peng thought we had some business coming our way.

Meng Yifan said, his face pale, "We're not showing it to a client. We're going to look at it ourselves. That apartment our second-in-command sold six months ago... there really is something wrong with it. There's something unclean in there."

Xie Peng and Li Xingyang, two young men with college educations, froze at once and stared at us with wide eyes.

"U-unclean...? Why don't we hire a cleaning service?"

"Clean it, my ass! It's haunted!"

Unable to explain it clearly, we could only take Xie Peng and Li Xingyang back to the apartment with us.

Naturally, neither of them believed us. They thought we were messing with them.

After all, unless someone had experienced those strange things firsthand, it was hard for them to believe such things really existed.

We soon returned to the apartment and checked every room first.

But just looking around, especially in broad daylight, revealed nothing wrong at all.

And just like yesterday, by the time Meng Yifan and I came back after fleeing, the cement footprints had vanished again.

In the end, all we could do was watch the surveillance footage again.

The four of us gathered around the computer and started watching from eleven o'clock the previous night.

When the footage reached midnight, the sound of knocking suddenly came through. It was the second time that girl looking for Li Xiumei had knocked on the door.

Meng Yifan and I still weren't paying much attention to the knocking, and the video remained set to well over ten times normal speed.

But soon, the footage reached the moment Meng Yifan opened the door. I hurriedly hit pause, feeling as though I had been struck by lightning.

Meng Yifan and I stared at each other, both watching cold sweat pour down the other's face.

In the video, after Meng Yifan opened the door, there was... no one outside!

The surveillance footage showed only Meng Yifan and me standing foolishly inside the doorway. Outside the door...

There was no one!

Not a single person!