Facing a Lawsuit

We called the police.

The police arrived quickly.

A death was usually treated as a major case, so they sent a lot of people.

There were forensic examiners, trace evidence specialists, and crime scene investigators.

They also brought specialized tools, dismantled the wardrobe, and then tore down the wall.

We were all there to witness the entire demolition, and we saw who had made that human-shaped outline.

It was a woman. We had no idea how long she had been dead, but it must have been a long time, because her body had been reduced to bones. The long hair, dry as dead grass, was still there, allowing us to tell her sex.

Once the desiccated corpse was carried out, a foul stench of decay instantly filled the room.

I had never smelled anything so disgusting. I could hardly even describe it.

Perhaps because of the cement, the clothes on the corpse had been preserved completely intact.

When Meng Yifan and I saw what the corpse was wearing, we both collapsed to the floor in terror.

A long black dress, red high heels...

Wasn't that exactly what the girl who had knocked on the door had been wearing?

"Ugh-"

All of us ran straight to the bathroom and vomited violently.

The four of us monopolized the only bathroom, going in one after another to throw up.

Meng Yifan and I vomited the hardest, and not just because we had seen the corpse and smelled that awful stench.

More importantly, that woman had been dead for so many years, yet we might well have seen her the night before...

With a woman's body dug out right there, Mr. Hu was both shocked and furious. He flew into a rage on the spot, cursing us nonstop and calling us utterly shameless for selling him such a haunted house.

His language was filthy. He cursed eighteen generations of our ancestors, and even the police couldn't calm him down.

But honestly, we had been wronged too.

We had no idea anything had happened in that house, much less that there was a corpse hidden inside it.

As agents, we were only responsible for connecting the buyer and seller. We did have a duty to disclose, but that depended on us knowing something had happened in the house in the first place.

In the end, Mr. Hu caused such an uproar that the nearby neighbors came out to see what was happening. The police couldn't take our statements there, so they had officers bring us back to the Police Bureau first.

That day, Meng Yifan and I barely had a moment's peace.

First, we went to the Police Bureau and cooperated with the police as they took our statements.

We should have been free to leave afterward, but Mr. Hu refused to let us off the hook.

He had two demands: first, that we reverse the sale, and second, that we compensate him two hundred thousand yuan for his losses.

That two hundred thousand included the cost of renovations, as well as compensation for the emotional distress he and his wife had suffered.

There was no arguing about reversing the sale. By any reasonable standard, the seller had to take the house back, because he had sold a house where someone had died.

As the agents, we also had to refund the agency fee.

But Meng Yifan flatly refused to pay the two hundred thousand in damages. After all, it was no small sum.

The police had already completed their initial investigation and preliminarily ruled out all of us, including Mr. Hu, as suspects, so we were no longer involved in the concealed-body case.

As for the dispute between Mr. Hu and our agency, that was a civil matter, so the police handed it over to the Local Police Station.

And so, no sooner had we left the Police Bureau than we went into the police station.

The officers mediated all day, but even by nightfall, they still hadn't reached a resolution.

The seller had already been summoned by the Police Bureau. If he turned out to be connected to the concealed-body case, the buyer would most likely have trouble getting the sale reversed.

After we left the police station, Mr. Hu and his wife were still cursing us.

"Just you wait, you crooked agents!"

"I'm damn well going to sue you!"

"I'm taking you to court tomorrow!"

As we watched them get into their car and leave, Meng Yifan's face couldn't have looked any grimmer. He smoked one cigarette after another.

Reversing the sale wouldn't actually cost us much. Even paying ten or twenty thousand in compensation would have been a small expense.

What we feared was getting dragged into a lawsuit. For anyone running a business, a lawsuit meant damage to their reputation, and that could be fatal. If things went badly, doing business afterward would become difficult.

"My grandfather used to tell me that people in our family weren't cut out for business, that something was bound to go wrong if we tried. I didn't believe him before, but I damn well do now."

Meng Yifan looked utterly miserable. He sighed and said, "Once this goes to court, I might even have to close one of my branches."

I didn't know how to comfort him. All I could say was that we should take things one step at a time.

After an exhausting day, we were both worn out. Neither of us intended to go back to the office, so we decided to head to our own homes and get some proper rest.

The concealed-body case no longer had anything to do with us. As for the strange things Meng Yifan and I had encountered in that house, we would just treat them as a nightmare.

What we had to deal with next was the lawsuit. That was what mattered most.

After I got home, I felt as though the stench of the corpse clung to every inch of me. It made me feel sick, so I took a shower.

After showering, I fell into bed and went straight to sleep.

Sleeping in my own bed was comfortable, and I didn't have to worry about something knocking on the door in the middle of the night.

I would never go back to that house for the rest of my life. Whatever was inside it had nothing to do with me.

But things didn't seem to be as simple as I had imagined.

I was already sleeping in my own home, yet in the middle of the night, that knocking sounded again.

After two consecutive nights of strange encounters, I didn't linger in bed as I used to. Like a bird startled by a bowstring, I jolted awake and shot upright in terror.

I had woken so abruptly that my mind couldn't catch up. For a moment, I almost thought I was still in that house's master bedroom.

Only after I made out the layout of the room did I realize I was in my own home.

But that didn't make me feel any better. Instead, I grew even more frightened and hurriedly picked up the phone beside my pillow to check the time.

Midnight...

It was midnight again!

The knocking outside continued, as though she would keep knocking forever if I didn't open the door.

I froze in bed, barely daring to breathe.

What the hell was going on?

I had already come home. Why was someone still knocking on my door?

Clutching my phone, I crept out of bed, opened the bedroom door, and went into the living room.

By then, the knocking reached my ears more and more clearly, but I didn't dare move any closer to the front door.

I summoned my courage and called out, "Who's there?"

A faint, eerie voice drifted in from beyond the front door.

"I'm looking for Li Xiumei. Is Li Xiumei home?"