Chapter 13: I’m Stuck
The “girl” in the mirror was wrapped back up in a bath towel.
Her wet, silvery long hair hung down against her back, and droplets of water fell from her rounded, delicate shoulders, making her fair skin look as enticing as a beautifully crafted sakura milk jelly.
It was unclear whether Luxianbei was not very skilled at wrapping a woman’s bath towel or if the girl’s figure was just too stunning, but the bath towel could never quite cover her completely, revealing her graceful curves. The wafting mist in the bathroom only added to her unique charm.
Even with Mrs. Wang Meili and Nanling Yaohua in front of him, Luxianbei still felt that the “girl” in the mirror was definitely one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen in his life.
If beautiful women were compared to flowers, then Nanling Yaohua would be a sincere and noble magnolia, while the “girl” in the mirror would be a gloomy and enchanting red spider lily.
Admiring flowers should have been a delightful thing, but the moment Luxianbei thought that it was his own reflection, even the red spider lily turned into a red flower stone lily, and he couldn’t feel any joy.
“Really™ seeing ghosts, I must still be dreaming, right?”
A strong man of seven feet tall, his reflection in the mirror had turned into a beautiful girl. Was there anything more absurd than this in the world?
And just a moment ago, his body had felt hot and cold… his body temperature had been high enough to cause his phone to explode, yet it hadn’t caused any protein denaturation. Was that physical quality something a normal carbon-based organism could possess?
“A little rest, just a little more sleep will surely help…”
Standing in front of the mirror, he stared blankly for a while until his emotions calmed a bit. Murmuring to himself, he turned around and returned to his room, collapsing onto bed and wrapping himself up in a blanket, curling into a ball.
After lying quietly in bed for more than ten minutes, Luxianbei’s heavy sighs echoed from within the blanket.
They say a person pretending to sleep can never be awakened, but that person can fool others, yet it’s hard to deceive oneself.
Luxianbei tried to convince himself that this was all just a dream, but his brain continuously reminded him that he was awake.
Emerging from the blanket, he went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face, looking at the mirror above the sink.
Water beads slid down his delicate face as he looked at himself in the mirror, using two fingers to pull at his cheeks, attempting to force a smile, but realized he wasn’t able to smile at all.
The fragmented memories from the bizarre dream last night seemed to have become clearer, and their influence felt even stronger. In the dream, he couldn’t smile due to facial paralysis, and now in reality, he truly couldn’t smile.
The infamous mental leader of Arkham Asylum, Mr. JOKER, once said: “It only takes one bad day to ruin a person.”
Since last night’s strange dream, Luxianbei felt that he was really about to go insane.
He went to the living room, turned on the TV, found a comedy show, and turned the volume up so the laughter from the TV could fill the entire room. He tried to relieve the helplessness and anxiety in his heart with this method.
He dimmed the brightness of the TV, turned off the lights, and pulled the curtains to let the darkness hide the shadows.
Returning to the bedroom, he collapsed onto the bed, pulled the blanket over his chest, and stared blankly at the ceiling, his brain felt like it had crashed after being overloaded, leaving it blank.
If only the reflection in the mirror had changed into a girl, that would still be acceptable. At worst, he could stop looking in the mirror; after all, he rarely looked in the mirror more than a few times a week.
However, what was scarier was that when he came out of the bathroom again just now, Luxianbei had already confirmed it.
Now, even the windows, glass doors, and the shadows cast by the light had that tempting curvy figure.
Everything he saw seemed to whisper to him, “Even though you think you’re a strong man, you’re really a beautiful girl.”
It was trying to persuade him to give up resistance and accept reality.
Accept reality? Which normal person could accept such a thing?
If he were to walk down the street on a sunny day, or pass by a glass storefront, seeing a shadow that didn’t match his actual figure, how ridiculous would that be?
He would definitely be treated as a monster! Luxianbei thought furiously.
He felt that during the daytime, that doctor was right; even if he temporarily didn’t have any mental illnesses, he was about to develop one.
If he had known on the way back that he shouldn’t have thrown away those medications, he might have been able to use them soon.
After calming down a little, Luxianbei began to think to himself.
It was still unclear whether he was experiencing hallucinations or if his shadow had truly turned into a female. Reporting it carelessly or seeking help at a hospital would definitely get him treated as a madman.
He could only look for someone familiar and trustworthy to confirm whether others could also see the abnormal changes happening to him before figuring out how to seek help.
Thinking about whether others could see this brought back to mind the girl he had encountered at the crossroads during the day.
That girl, whom no one except for him could see, seemed like a ghost.
Ah, a ghost!
The various strange occurrences of the day couldn’t possibly be part of an urban legend event, could they? Luxianbei wondered.
Although he considered himself a half-atheist, one fitting the type who scoffed at superstitions like “left eye twitching means wealth, right eye twitching… go to hell with feudal superstitions,” he couldn’t dismiss the multiple instances of urban legends that appeared so vividly in his bizarre dream. If that dream were a projection of some reality, it’s quite possible that urban legends truly existed in this world.
Thinking this way, Luxianbei suddenly found his experience made sense.
After all these strange incidents, either this world was crazy, or he was; and compared to the latter, he preferred to believe that the world had a problem.
If it were him during his youth, at this point he would be certain to proclaim, “It’s not my fault; it’s the world that’s wrong!”
But at the same time, a chilling sensation rose behind him.
He worried that if what he was encountering was due to suddenly being able to see urban legends, then would those terrifying entities come looking for him?
From the information in the bizarre dream, the vast majority of urban legends carried malevolence. There’s no saying such as “those who do not do bad deeds do not fear ghost knocking on the door.”
Urban legends harm people simply by “seeing eye to eye,” and on a whim, they strike.
Except for… that solemn and divine towering tree, its name unreferenced for the moment.
What was it called again? Sister?
But how could a person’s sister be a tree?
Could it be dry? Luxianbei thought.
His gaze shifted from the open door of the bedroom to the outside, the house was pitch black, and all the furniture was merely deep black silhouettes, as if they could move at any moment.
All sounds of human activity were blocked by the tightly drawn curtains.
Yet they were like stubborn bubbles in water, one after another rising to the surface until they broke, bringing some noise.
The TV was still on, with images shifting and flickering like an eye secretly watching, pale light spilling onto the walnut-colored floor like frost.
The whole house felt extremely oppressive.
The synthetic laughter from the sound system, paired with the comedy show, suddenly became eerie. There was no semblance of liveliness, as if disguising something.
It made one feel that “they” were not amused by the comedy program, but rather barely holding in their laughter, that laughter contained mockery towards the living.
Luxianbei stared intently at the direction of the living room, not daring to blink, fearing that the moment he did, some thing would crawl out from the TV or that a figure would appear on the sofa.
That figure should look very handsome, but it had no mouth, hence it never made a sound.
As he stared for too long, gradually fatigue set in.
Right as Luxianbei was about to doze off, he suddenly thought of a bizarre tale a certain elder had told him in the faculty neighborhood about a legend from his hometown.
He said, in their region, a family had to live together. If one person lived alone for too long, they would attract a being called “Black Granny.”
Black Granny would sneak into the person’s home on a night when no lights were on, just as they were about to fall asleep, come to their bedside, and softly hum a lullaby in their ear. If one fell asleep at this moment, Black Granny would s*ck out their brain through their ear…
Suddenly recalling the urban legend the elder recounted, Luxianbei instantly became alert, doing a fish jump from the bed and instinctively reaching for his phone to call Nanling Yaohua.
Even though calling his girlfriend at night to come over because he was scared of the dark and urban legends sounded a bit embarrassing, at this point he couldn’t care less.
Moreover, couldn’t he just make up an excuse?
Like, “Are you free for a drink? By the way, could you come over?” Luxianbei thought.
However, when his hand stretched to the bedside but found nothing, he suddenly remembered that his phone had exploded in the afternoon.
It was frustrating that it was just upstairs and downstairs, yet it felt like a world apart.
“Bang, bang, bang…”
As Luxianbei hesitated whether to leave the blanket and cross the living room directly to find Nanling Yaohua, a faint sound came from the window behind him.
The light tap against the glass was very weak and soft, like a… old lady.
Luxianbei’s back immediately felt cold, and sweat broke out on his forehead.
His home was on the fifth floor, the bedroom window was locked, and there were no security railings outside.
What kind of entity could be right outside the window, lightly tapping on it?
———
Half an hour earlier.
Inside the family community of Huacheng University, a round-faced girl with chestnut hair lay motionless in the garden.
Like she was dead.
Though a Berserker’s combat power is formidable when in a frenzy, it often has time limits.
Having entered the community in the evening, it had been over an hour, and Gu Qiqi could no longer hold on.
Breathing in the enticing aroma of meals wafting in the air, her consciousness drifted, and scenes of various dishes passed before her eyes: stir-fried sausage, sesame oil rolls, boiled black crow, sautéed mushrooms, sautéed fish fillets, vinegar stir-fried meat slices, braised pigeon eggs, stir-fried shrimp…
It seemed everywhere there was something to eat!
She trembled and reached out, managing to grab a white cabbage sh**t floating past her, and without hesitation, stuffed it into her mouth.
Then…
The bitter taste of plant juice burst in her mouth, and she abruptly woke up, pulling herself out of the state of seeing food.
“Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey! YUCK, YUCK!”
Spitting out the leaves from her mouth and gagging a few times, the originally lifeless Gu Qiqi inexplicably regained some strength and perked up again.
“Only two more buildings left! Come on, Gu Qiqi, you’ll find Luxianbei soon!”
———
The faint sound still gently tapping against the glass continued for who knows how long, then suddenly vanished when Luxianbei let his guard down.
The house was immediately filled with the monotonous repetition of the TV commercials and the ticking of the clock in the living room.
But this kind of “silence” didn’t help Luxianbei relax at all; in fact, his nerves were even more tightly strung.
The sound outside the window had disappeared; the best case scenario was that “it” had left, and the worst case scenario was that “it” had somehow entered the room.
Perhaps at this very moment, “it” was hiding in some dark corner of the house, crouching down, grinning and watching him, waiting for the chance to come close and s*ck out his brain through his ear, Luxianbei thought.
“Creak—!”
A faint sound came from the direction of the bathroom.
Luxianbei’s eyelids twitched violently as he turned his head to look toward the bathroom, his pupils constricting.
Earlier, while pulling the curtains, he had locked nearly all the windows in the house, but had only forgotten about the bathroom’s ventilation window.
“Creak! Creak!”
The ventilation window, which hadn’t been opened for a long time, seemed to have rusted; at this moment, it was being pushed open, producing teeth-grinding sounds.
Then suddenly, a ghostly voice, as if on the verge of dying, came from the bathroom.
“Luxianbei, I know you’re home; I’ve finally found you…”
“Luxianbei… I haven’t eaten anything for a long time; I’m so hungry…”
“…”
That intermittent voice seemed to come from a dark, damp, silent grave, filled with the whimpers of a dying person, sending chills down one’s spine.
Gazing toward the bathroom, cold sweat dripped down Luxianbei’s face, and his heart raced; he didn’t even know when he’d put his fingers into his mouth, biting down to keep himself from making a sound.
He felt that if he made even a slight noise, that thing calling his name would suddenly burst out from the bathroom.
Stay calm, must stay calm!
Luxianbei cursed silently, and just then, he suddenly heard the voice say, “Luxianbei… hurry, help me; I’m stuck at the window…”
Luxianbei, “??? What kind of urban legend is this?”
Is the execution so unskilled?
Stuck at a window?
After a few inner complaints, he realized that the fear that “thing” had instilled in him had diminished by more than half.
If it was clumsy, even if it were really an urban legend, it didn’t seem so frightening anymore.
Just imagine if Sadako crawled out of the TV and got stuck because her chest was too big; would that still be so terrifying?
Luxianbei thought, getting out from under the blanket, he tiptoed toward the bathroom, hesitating at the door, leaning against the wall, peering through the gap to look inside.
Then…
He saw that “female ghost” hanging at the ventilation window, the familiar face.
Huh? Isn’t this her from earlier?
Who would have thought that after pretending not to see her, this girl actually followed him home!
Luxianbei thought, discreetly bending down to pick up the neglected plunger from the bottom of the bathroom shelf, took a deep breath, and, with the lights on, pushed the door open in one movement.
———
As a child, Gu Qiqi remembered a time when she was playing with her brother, who had told her that anywhere her head could fit through, her body could follow.
Gu Qiqi kept this in mind until she tried to crawl through the ventilation window of Luxianbei’s bathroom, only to find that her brother’s words seemed to be wrong.
She got stuck.
Just as she had been calling for a while, thinking Luxianbei wasn’t home, and had resigned herself to hanging on at the window for the night, the bathroom light turned on.
A figure flashed in from outside the bathroom, holding a broken sword, and headed straight towards her forehead.
“BANG, BANG, BANG—!”
After three dull thuds, her vision went dark, and she lost consciousness…
