Chapter 53: The Chair Really Is Moving
The driver's face turned pale, and he let out a dry laugh. "Well, good luck with that."
"I will. Can you turn off your phone now?" Chen Ge put on what he thought was a friendly smile. "It's just a misunderstanding."
"Of course." The driver agreed readily, tapping his phone a few times before driving another two or three meters. The in-car walkie-talkie suddenly lit up red. He touched it lightly, and before he could speak, a gruff voice came through.
"Old Liu, you're at West City Private School too? I was just wondering who'd be heading there this late at night. I've got a passenger too, and we're pretty close. By the way, what did you post in the group? Did I get pranked?"
"Nothing, nothing. Just drive your car." The driver wiped the sweat off his forehead and hung up the walkie-talkie.
"Shouldn't I be the one who's been kidnapped? Driver, where's the basic trust between people?" Chen Ge raised an eyebrow, also worried the police might get called. "Stop here."
"Fine!" The driver stopped without a second thought, his legs still trembling.
Chen Ge checked his belongings, slung his backpack on, and got out of the car. As he closed the door, he looked up and noticed a scrolling message on the taxi's roof display—I've been hijacked, please call the police!
"You're quite something."
Watching the taxi speed away, after a dozen seconds, the surrounding hundred meters fell into dead silence.
No stars or moon in the sky, as if rain was coming. The clouds hung low, with not a trace of light.
Chen Ge turned on his phone and checked the time. There were still eight minutes until the agreed deadline.
"Back in the car, someone on the walkie-talkie said they also picked up a passenger heading to West City Private School. Heading this way past one in the morning—could it be related to me?" He stayed alert. If not for the time limit, he might have hidden by the roadside to see who was following him.
"Eight minutes left. I'd better get into the school first. Familiarizing myself with the terrain will give me an edge." The area around West City Private School was a wasteland, with no lights in sight. Only a narrowing road cut through the woods and bushes.
Turning on his phone's flashlight, Chen Ge walked nearly a hundred meters along the road until he reached the front gate of the abandoned school.
The chains and fence were rusted together. The gate was shut tight. Peering through the iron bars, everything was pitch black.
"How do I get in?"
Chen Ge paced outside for a moment, then tossed his backpack over the fence. He took a running start, jumped, grabbed the top edge of the wall, and climbed over.
The campus wasn't large, visible at a glance. In the darkness stood several shadowy, blackened buildings, like lonely night watchmen.
The school's sign had been removed. Chen Ge didn't even know its real name, only that everyone called it West City Private School.
Overgrown bushes obscured the paths, and things scraped against his calves, leaving an itchy, painful sensation.
"I made it in time. Now the task is to find Zhang Ya's red dancing shoes." Chen Ge pulled out a tool hammer from his backpack. Gripping the cold handle made him feel much steadier.
Using his phone for light, Chen Ge walked into the campus. After just a few steps, he felt something was off. He stopped and took a few steps back.
"Is it my imagination? Why does it feel like something's pushing my shoulders when I walk toward the school? And when I step back, there's a force blocking me from behind, like some kind of resistance." He turned to look at his shoulders—nothing there. He shone the light on his back, but there were no ghosts or anything like he'd imagined.
"Could she already be here? Right beside me? I just can't see her?" Chen Ge shivered, tempted to swing his hammer behind him. But then he thought: what if Zhang Ya was actually there, and hitting her would anger her?
He was just a lonely, weak, helpless haunted house owner. Out in this wilderness, provoking a vengeful spirit would be disastrous.
"Forget it, let's go in first." Chen Ge shouldered his backpack, held up his phone, and gripped his tool hammer as he entered the campus.
The night grew darker. Wind picked up, mixed with fine, needle-like rain.
"The most likely places for the shoes are the dance studio's women's changing room and Zhang Ya's old dorm. Those two spots need thorough checking."
Chen Ge headed toward the nearest building. The trees on campus grew crooked, the ground overrun with weeds. Around him stood many statues, mostly human figures, looking eerie in the dark.
"Girls' dormitory?"
A four-story building, not tall, but it looked sinister, probably due to years of neglect.
The glass door of the dorm was locked with chains. He pressed against it, peering inside.
A pitch-black hallway, all doors tightly shut. The strangest thing was a chair placed right in the middle of the corridor, facing away from the dorm rooms.
"A chair placed exactly in the center of the hallway? What's that supposed to mean?" Chen Ge took a small step back. "The school gate and the dorm's glass door are both locked. There's no trash in the hallway, so everything was cleaned up when the school closed. But why leave a chair right in the middle? Is this to torture someone with OCD?"
"If the school left it, what was their reason? If not, then who moved the chair to the center of the hallway after the doors were locked?" Chen Ge aimed his phone at the glass door. The chair was about five meters from the exit, directly under a shattered hallway light.
"The light's broken, wires hanging out. A chair and wires—doesn't this look like a hanging scene?" Honestly, seeing such a creepy sight made Chen Ge's heart race. "I'm probably overthinking it."
He looked around. The wind rustled the leaves, and the campus after midnight grew stranger and stranger.
"Can't scare myself. The red-clad vengeful spirit Zhang Ya is the scariest thing here, and I have her love letter. Who would dare mess with me?" At this point, Chen Ge could only comfort himself like that. "This is just a favorability task, basically a special date. No need to be nervous, no need to be afraid."
He muttered to boost his courage, then grabbed his tool hammer and walked back to the glass door. Just as he was about to smash it and go in, his eyes caught a detail.
The chair, which should have been directly under the hallway light, was now a meter off. It seemed to have moved forward.
"What the hell?"
Chen Ge had never experienced anything like this. "Did I just imagine that?"