Chapter 55: Five Girls
The chair sat in the middle of the hallway. To reach the second floor, one would inevitably have to pass by it.
Chen Ge still vividly remembered what had happened at the entrance of the girls' dormitory—this chair seemed to actively move toward living people.
He hid at the corner of the stairs, hesitating.
"With a backrest, this chair is completely different from the ones in the activity center classrooms. It must have been brought here from somewhere else on purpose. But why would they throw this chair in the activity center?"
Judging by its style, the chair on the second floor of the activity center was the same as the ones in the girls' dormitory—likely standard-issue dorm chairs provided by the school to each student.
Chen Ge used his phone to shine a light on the doorplate across the hall, which read something like "Vocal Music." "The dance studio isn't on the second floor. Should I just go straight to the third? But what if there's another chair in the middle of the third-floor hallway? Then I'd be chased to the stair corner, and when I try to go down, I'd get blocked by the chair on the second floor..."
The unsettling image flashed through his mind. After a moment of thought, Chen Ge decided not to avoid it. Gripping his tool hammer tightly, he stepped into the second-floor hallway.
The pitch-black corridor stretched endlessly before him, with no end in sight. The doors on both sides were all tightly shut, their windows caked with dust, blurry and opaque, making it impossible to see what lurked inside the classrooms.
Chen Ge walked slowly. He didn't let the chair's proximity distract him from other details.
In fact, to Chen Ge, the empty classrooms on either side seemed even more terrifying.
"This place probably hasn't seen anyone in who knows how long. The floor tiles are covered in dust, and footprints can't be erased. If the person following me also enters the activity center, they'll definitely find me." Even in such a eerie environment, Chen Ge didn't forget to stay alert for a possible third party. "I need to speed up—finish this quickly!"
The light from his phone swayed with the movement of his arm as he drew closer to the chair.
"Is there really anything to be afraid of? Can a chair actually kill me?" Chen Ge circled around it. To him, it felt like a perfectly ordinary chair.
"Should I take it apart and have a look?" As the thought crossed his mind, his hands moved to act. He raised the tool hammer and tipped the chair over, only to notice something written underneath.
"Qian Yujiao? Sounds like a girl's name."
This discovery confirmed Chen Ge's earlier suspicion: the chair wasn't originally from the activity center but belonged to someone specific.
During large school events, students were often asked to bring their own chairs. To avoid mix-ups, many would write their names on the underside.
"Is there also a name under the chair in the girls' dormitory?" Chen Ge committed the name to memory. After a moment's thought, he decided not to smash the chair. Instead, he placed it inside a nearby classroom. "The longer I stay, the more uneasy I feel. I'd better head to the third floor."
He retraced his steps and climbed the stairs to the third floor.
The empty hallway had nothing in it. Chen Ge pushed open a few classroom doors. Inside, desks and chairs were piled up at the back, and parts of the walls had been repainted with fresh paint, clearly showing two different colors.
"The school is about to close down. Why bother repainting now? Who are they decorating for?" His experience at the Ping An Apartment instantly sparked a thought: "The fresh paint must be meant to cover something up."
He scraped at the wall paint with his tool hammer. Strangely enough, the wall beneath the new paint looked normal—no traces of blood or women's hair as he had imagined.
"It can't be that simple." He checked several classrooms and found that not all of them had repainted sections. The few that did were all close to the building's drainage pipes.
"Before the school shut down, the drainage system in this building must have been reinstalled." Chen Ge looked up. "The classrooms on the first and second floors of the activity center show signs of use, but the ones on the third floor seem to have been abandoned before the school closure."
Desks and chairs were stacked together, not a single piece of chalk on the podiums, and some classroom doors were even locked.
"Haunted? Murder? Safety hazards?" There were many possible reasons for the closure, and Chen Ge couldn't be sure. He stepped out of the classroom and headed toward the fourth floor.
As he climbed the stairs, Chen Ge kept glancing back. The chair hadn't followed him.
When he reached the landing between the third and fourth floors, he found a wooden board standing on the stairs with the words "No Entry" written on it. Ropes were strung around the board to form a barrier.
Having come this far, Chen Ge wasn't about to turn back because of a flimsy wooden board. He moved the board aside and ducked under the ropes.
Upon reaching the fourth floor, Chen Ge immediately spotted a faded doorplate hanging on the door directly opposite the stairs.
"Dance Studio!" After searching through the activity center for so long, he had finally found the most likely place where the red dancing shoes would be.
The layout of the fourth floor was different from the others. Several classrooms had been knocked together into one large space.
Tearing off the seal on the door and picking the lock, Chen Ge pushed open the dance studio door that had been sealed for years.
Time seemed to have forgotten this place. Everything remained as it was years ago.
The smooth wooden floor was thick with dust, and the room emitted a strange, indescribable odor. It seemed that a large amount of deodorizer had been sprayed here, but due to poor air circulation and years of sealing, the deodorizer itself had decayed into a new kind of stench.
Chen Ge pressed himself against the wall as he entered. The dance studio was highly professional—the wooden floor was covered with a layer of flooring material to facilitate practice, and the walls were lined with sound-absorbing panels and soundproofing boards, likely to prevent the music from disturbing the classrooms below.
"I've never seen such a large dance studio before." Chen Ge raised his phone, shining the light into the distance.
Wall-mounted ballet barres were installed at adjustable heights, with a row of low seats beneath them for students to rest on.
At the other end of the studio, six full-length mirrors stood side by side, seamlessly joined together. Each mirror was about a meter wide and two meters tall.
"I almost forgot there are mirrors in the dance studio too." Staring at the wall of mirrors, Chen Ge took a sharp breath. In the center of the mirror's reflection, three chairs with backrests were placed.
"Three chairs at once?" Chen Ge gritted his teeth and walked toward them. Every move he made was reflected in the mirrors.
In the early morning dance studio, watching himself in the mirror, the closer Chen Ge got, the more uneasy he felt.
Suppressing the urge to smash the mirrors, he tipped the three chairs over. Just like the chair he had seen earlier, each one had a girl's name written underneath.
"Counting the chair in the girls' dormitory, I've seen five chairs in total. If each chair represents a girl, then what exactly happened to these five girls?"