Chapter 57: She Arrives
Their bodies were crooked, their school uniforms stained, their faces pale, and their mouths seemed to be uttering something.
These three girls wore expressions of terror and pleading, their bodies seemingly fused with the chairs they sat on.
Chen Ge's gaze flickered between the mirror and the entrance to the women's changing room. A chill ran down his spine. Not long ago, he had laid those chairs flat and examined them up close.
"Is this my first intimate encounter with a female ghost?"
He shuddered and walked toward the door, his pace quickening.
As he drew closer, the three chairs blocking the doorway seemed to shift forward slightly, and all the locker doors in the women's changing room emitted faint creaks.
The moment he uttered the name "Zhang Ya," a change swept through the entire dance studio, as if that name were a taboo not to be spoken here.
"The mirror only reflects the entrance to the changing room. There might be something even more terrifying hidden inside. I have to get out!"
His reasoning held some weight. The iron doors of the lockers rattled on their own, as if something was about to burst out from within.
Tool hammer in hand, Chen Ge dashed to the door and kicked the middle chair over. Just as he was about to charge out, something seemed to grab his shoulder.
He turned to look at the mirror. In its reflection, two slender, pale arms were resting on his shoulder.
Without a second thought, Chen Ge spun around and swung his hammer!
"Bang!"
The tool hammer struck the back of a chair, cracking it.
A faint woman's scream rang in his ears. Through the mirror, he could see the female student sitting in that chair, her eyes fixed on his back with venomous hatred, her arms gripping his shoulder tightly as if trying to force him into her seat.
"What's her goal? Does sitting in her chair mean taking her place as a new soul trapped in it?"
The force pulling at his back grew stronger. Pale hands tugged at him, trying to drag him into the women's changing room. Worse still, strange thumping sounds echoed from the hallway outside. Seconds later, another chair appeared at the dance studio's entrance.
"I feel like my luck is being wasted on the weirdest things. I never thought I'd be this popular with women!" Chen Ge could no longer hold his ground. Instead of fleeing, he turned around, pressed one hand against the chair's back, and swung the tool hammer wildly at it!
He had noticed earlier that after he casually cracked a chair, the female student's expression shifted dramatically, dropping her pleading act for pure malice.
From her reaction, Chen Ge deduced that the chairs were likely vessels for their true forms, much like how the Xiao family resided in their dolls.
"Destroy the vessel, and even if I can't kill them, I can at least cripple them."
A force around him tried to force him into a chair. If he were a rookie who had never faced such an ordeal, he would have collapsed in terror, completely at their mercy.
But they were dealing with Chen Ge. Just days ago, this haunted house owner had spent the night in a death house with a murderer. He wasn't immune to fear, but through repeated, unexpected encounters, his tolerance for terror had grown. Even when startled, he could still make the right decisions and keep his hands steady.
"Bang!"
Chen Ge smashed the back of the apartment chair to pieces, grabbed one of its legs, and swung it at the other chairs. The scene reflected in the mirror was bizarre, but he had no time to care.
In just over ten seconds, he had destroyed one chair. As he moved to attack the second, something suddenly tightened around his neck.
He looked up at the mirror. Pale hands were choking him. The entity seemed enraged, abandoning the idea of forcing him into a chair and opting to kill him outright.
The situation had changed, but Chen Ge didn't slow down. Instead, he grew more ferocious, grabbing the chair and slamming it against the wall. With each crack in the chair, the pressure on his neck lessened.
Only when all three chairs were reduced to splinters did the grip on his neck finally vanish.
"These things are nothing but trouble. I'll burn them all later and set you free." Chen Ge leaned against the dance studio mirror, panting heavily. Clear bruising marked his neck.
"That fight made a lot of noise. Whoever's following me will definitely come. I need to leave now. The red dancing shoes aren't here anyway." Chen Ge didn't want to stay in the studio. The place was too strange. The locker doors in the women's changing room were opening and closing louder and louder—it couldn't be the wind. Worse, more eerie sounds emerged: the floor and walls were darkening, and the thumping in the hallway grew more frequent.
He tried to leave, but as soon as he took a step, something grabbed his leg.
Chen Ge glanced at the mirror. The three female students blocked his path, their fingers digging into his leg, as if trying to pierce his flesh.
Seeing this, Chen Ge grew desperate. He swung the tool hammer at the chair fragments, but no matter how hard he struck, the girls on the floor refused to let go.
The strange noises from the hallway were closing in. The malicious faces on the ground showed a vengeful satisfaction. The dance studio seemed shrouded in a thick veil, the phone's light began to warp, and a pungent stench wafted from somewhere.
"Is there something even more terrifying hidden in this school?"
Chen Ge was startled by his own thought. The main reason he dared to come to this abandoned school late at night was his belief that Zhang Ya was the most fearsome entity here. He had come to help her, and she had no reason to harm him.
"The situation has changed."
Something seemed to have reached the doorway from the hallway, and the stench grew stronger.
The three female students on the ground twisted their faces in fury. Chen Ge leaned against the mirror, reaching into his pocket. The moment his fingers touched the doll, the strange sounds outside the door retreated several times faster than they had approached, and the stench slowly faded.
"What's going on? Why do I feel like whatever was outside got scared?"
All noise ceased instantly. The only sound left in the dance studio was Chen Ge's own heartbeat.
The light warped even more violently, and the temperature seemed to drop further.
"What happened?"
The grip on his leg vanished. Chen Ge looked down. The three female students were scrambling away as far as possible, staring in terror behind him.
"Behind me?"
Chen Ge turned stiffly. He faced the five- or six-meter-long mirror. But the reflection in it wasn't him—it was a woman with her head bowed, wearing a blood-red school uniform.