Chapter 15: The Landlord
Exhaustion, numbness, and frailty were Chen Ge's first impressions of Wang Qi.
They passed each other, and Chen Ge returned the missing person flyer he had picked up from the ground. The man whispered a thank you.
It was the first time he had spoken, his voice hoarse and barely audible.
"No problem, just a small thing."
Chen Ge offered a smile and followed the limping man to the second floor.
Compared to the first floor, the second was damper and darker, with cobwebs clustered in the corners and walls mottled and scarred, as if gouged by a knife.
The limping man led Chen Ge to the end of the long hallway before stopping. He opened the door to the deepest room in the corridor and retrieved a long string of keys from inside. "Fifty yuan a night. Pick any room on the second floor."
"Fifty is a bit steep, isn't it?"
"For miles around, I'm the only apartment building here. Charging you fifty is already a bargain." As the limping man spoke, his eyes would unconsciously dart backward, as if looking at something.
"Fine, but why can I only choose a room on the second floor? Are the first and third floors unoccupied?"
"Why so many questions? If you can't stay there, you can't stay there!" The limping man took the fifty yuan from Chen Ge and casually tossed him a key. "The room number is on the key tag. Find it yourself."
With that, he ducked into the room. Just as the door was closing, Chen Ge heard a muffled, whimpering sound from inside, like an old man choking on his food.
A sense of unease crept over Chen Ge. He reached out and pressed against the door lock. "Hold on."
"What now?" The limping man's tone was hostile, clearly annoyed.
Chen Ge peered through the crack in the door. The rental room was small. Besides the limping man standing at the entrance, there was an old man sitting in a wheelchair with his back to the door. The sound had come from him.
"I'm a bit thirsty. Do you sell water or drinks here?"
"No!"
"Business thrives on goodwill. Why get so worked up..."
The door slammed shut with a bang. Chen Ge stood alone in the hallway, growing more suspicious.
"In a normal apartment building, the reception desk would be at the main entrance. But here, it's hidden at the end of the second-floor corridor." He looked at the key in his hand, a flood of questions rising in his mind. "Why can't anyone stay on the first or third floors? And who is that old man living with the landlord?"
The key tag read 208. As luck would have it, the room corresponding to this key was right next to the limping man's.
"Forget it, I'll check in first." After over two hours of running around, Chen Ge was tired.
He opened the door, and a faint musty smell wafted out. The room had likely been unoccupied for a long time. Furniture was covered in dust, the sheets were damp, and they felt unpleasant to the touch.
"Can this bed even be slept on?" Before Chen Ge could set down his bag, he heard a sharp crack from the next room, like a bowl shattering.
He closed the door and pressed his ear to the wall to eavesdrop. Soon, the limping man's curses came through. He was so angry that his insults were laced with a few phrases in a dialect, suggesting he wasn't a local.
The old man whimpered, unable to speak. The limping man cursed for a few minutes before stopping. Then, oddly, the volume of the TV next door suddenly increased.
"What's going on? What is he doing? Why turn up the TV volume?" Chen Ge listened for a few more minutes, but the loud TV drowned out everything else. He gave up. "Forget it. I'd better focus on my own business. Tonight is bound to be a sleepless night."
Chen Ge tossed his backpack onto the dresser and pulled out a fruit knife, hiding it in his pocket. "According to the complaints on the second-hand housing site, there are bloodstains left behind the wall paint, and a foul smell always lingers late at night. They suspect this place is a haunted house. But I searched online for everything related to Ping An Apartments and found no record of any murder happening in this building."
Being chosen by the black phone as the venue for a trial mission meant that Ping An Apartments must hide some dark secret. Chen Ge was well aware of this.
He stashed the fruit knife, then took out a multi-tool hammer. He tapped and inspected every corner of the room but found nothing.
It was just an ordinary guest room, dilapidated to an appalling degree but otherwise unremarkable.
"The landlord only let me pick a room on the second floor, which means those rooms shouldn't have issues. Otherwise, he wouldn't rent them out. If I want to find anything, I'll have to check the first or third floor." The trial mission was set to start at eleven o'clock at night. With over three hours to go, Chen Ge didn't want to waste time. He put away the hammer and crept to the door.
Hand on the lock, he opened the door halfway and suddenly froze.
Cold sweat beaded on his palm as a chill ran up his spine.
The limping man was standing right outside the door! He had no idea how long he had been there!
The man was just as startled by Chen Ge's sudden opening of the door. They stared at each other through the half-open door, both taken aback.
"Landlord, what are you doing at my door?" Chen Ge's expression darkened. He grew more convinced that something was off about this landlord.
"Didn't you say you were thirsty? I came to bring you this." The limping man set a thermos on the floor in front of Chen Ge's door, his expression somewhat unnatural.
"Thanks." Chen Ge didn't call him out on it and simply picked up the thermos, bringing it inside. "Anything else?"
"No, get some rest early." The limping man glanced into the room and added, almost to himself, "There are no lights in the hallway. It's very dark at night. You'd better not wander around."
He turned and left. Only when he had returned to his own room and closed the door did Chen Ge let out a sigh of relief.
"This landlord is ugly, bad-tempered, and not much of a talker. He's a bit disabled but built sturdy enough to easily knock down that middle-aged man earlier." Chen Ge wasn't skilled in deduction; he was just piecing together scenes from murder movies he'd watched. "Born with a limp, bullied as a kid—that could make him deeply insecure. When that kind of feeling builds up, it might twist and explode into a desire to destroy others and himself. Damn, thinking about it, he fits all the traits of a serial killer!"
Chen Ge set down the thermos, his mind racing. "If the landlord really is a killer, then I'm spending the night next door to a murderer in a haunted house?"
The thought made his scalp tingle. That old creep might even stand outside his door all night! And worse, he was the landlord—he probably had spare keys to every room!