Chapter 16: Don't Spend the Night Here
"The landlord is highly suspicious, but other possibilities can't be ruled out either." Chen Ge scratched his head. "If only I could find a tenant to ask."
Since entering the apartment building, he had seen four people in total: the woman hiding behind the crack in the door, Wang Qi posting the missing person notices, the irritable landlord, and the old man in the wheelchair.
"The old man lives with the landlord, so I'll set him aside for now. The woman on the first floor gives me a strange feeling. That leaves Wang Qi, who seems relatively normal—he should know something about what goes on in this building." Chen Ge put the thermos back in his room, locked the door, and headed downstairs.
The sound-activated light flickered on. As soon as Chen Ge reached the first floor, he saw Wang Qi moving through the hallway with a stack of missing person notices, stuffing them under the doors of rental units, regardless of whether anyone lived there.
This odd behavior caught Chen Ge's attention. Most people posting missing person notices would go to crowded places, but Wang Qi was deliberately targeting empty apartments.
Chen Ge quietly followed behind Wang Qi, waiting until he had shoved the last notice under a door before speaking up. "Brother, I understand the pain of losing a family member, but you need to stay strong. Don't torment yourself with meaningless actions like this."
Hearing the voice, Wang Qi slowly turned around. His murky eyes seemed never to focus. "Understand? You wouldn't understand. I never expect anyone to understand..."
Without wasting words, Chen Ge pulled out his phone and showed the missing person report he had filed at the police station months ago. "I'm not lying to you. My parents disappeared suddenly half a year ago. At first, I was devastated and hopeless too."
Seeing the photo saved on the phone, Wang Qi fell silent. After a long pause, he finally spoke. "I sympathize with your situation, but our cases are different. My fiancée will definitely come back. I can feel it—she hasn't gone far."
"Can you tell me about your situation? We're both lost souls in the same boat. Maybe I can help you somehow." Chen Ge's tone was sincere, and he meant every word.
Wang Qi hesitated for a moment, perhaps recalling that Chen Ge had helped him pick up the missing person notices earlier. His gaze toward Chen Ge softened slightly. "You can't help me. You seem like a decent person, so take my advice—leave now. Whatever you do, don't spend the night here!"
"I've already paid the rent. If you want me to leave, at least give me a reason." Chen Ge had come here to complete his trial mission. Leaving now would mean giving up halfway, and the Midnight Escape horror scenario would remain permanently locked.
"What's more important, money or your life?" Wang Qi glanced around, and when he saw no one nearby, lowered his voice. "This apartment building was the site of a family annihilation case. Everyone around here knows about it."
"I've heard this is a haunted house, but I couldn't find any related case online. It's probably just a rumor," Chen Ge said, voicing his doubts.
"This building used to be called Fu'an Apartments. It was renamed Ping'an Apartments after the incident. That case caused quite a stir back then. The killer has never been caught, and the spirits of the victims can't rest in peace. That's why they appear in the old building late at night." Wang Qi's expression was serious, as if he truly believed what he was saying.
"What era are we living in now? You still believe in that stuff?" Chen Ge forced a stiff smile, but inside, he was more panicked than anyone. The mirror monster, the love letter ghost—he really didn't want to get involved with any more spirits.
"I didn't believe it either at first, until my fiancée went missing under mysterious circumstances near here." He tugged at his hair in pain, the exhaustion on his face impossible to hide.
"Why would your fiancée come to this place?" Chen Ge's attention sharpened. The speaker might not have meant anything by it, but the listener took it to heart. Wang Qi's fiancée's situation bore some resemblance to his parents'.
"I don't know. In fact, I'd never heard of this apartment building before. The police told me about it—they said all the clues ended here." Wang Qi let go of his hair, a few strands still caught between his fingers. "I had no choice but to come here to search."
"Have you found anything?" Chen Ge was extremely curious.
Wang Qi opened his mouth as if to speak, but then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he pulled out his phone and typed a line on the screen.
"I think my fiancée was kidnapped by someone in this building!"
Seeing the words on the phone, Chen Ge was taken aback. The situation was developing differently than he had imagined. "Brother, 'missing' and 'kidnapped' are two different things."
Wang Qi gestured for Chen Ge to keep his voice down. He blocked the hallway with his back and opened his phone's message inbox for Chen Ge to see.
Chen Ge had only meant to glance at it casually, but when he clearly saw the text message in the inbox, his eyes slowly widened.
Wang Qi's phone contained a text message from his fiancée!
The message had only two words—"Save me." What was even stranger was that the message had been sent around two in the morning the previous day.
"A person who's supposed to be missing sends you a distress text in the middle of the night?" After the initial shock, Chen Ge quickly calmed down. "Since you received the message, why didn't you just call the police? Your fiancée is clearly still alive."
"You probably won't believe this, but I receive a text from my fiancée every night after midnight. The content is always the same two words. And the key thing is, when I wake up, the message disappears, as if it never existed." Wang Qi pointed to the bloodshot veins in his eyes. "I haven't slept for twenty-four hours just to keep this message."
"The message disappears when you fall asleep?" Chen Ge had never heard of such a thing.
"I know you probably think I'm crazy too, but everything I've said is true." Wang Qi leaned against the wall and put his phone away. "Even stranger things happen around me. For example, my fiancée's belongings will inexplicably appear in my room, with no warning at all. It's as if she's constantly reminding me to come find her."
After hearing Wang Qi's last sentence, Chen Ge's eyelids twitched.
Based on his experiences over the past few days, it seemed more likely that Wang Qi's fiancée hadn't gone missing but had been killed and turned into a ghost, now haunting him again. That was the only explanation that made sense. Of course, all of this assumed Wang Qi wasn't lying.
"My fiancée went missing in this apartment building. My life changed because of this building. It's a haunted house, filled with restless spirits of the wrongfully dead. Anyone who dares to approach will be tainted by misfortune. You should leave now." Perhaps because he hadn't spoken so much in a long time, Wang Qi's face looked pale.