Repentance

Yuan Li turned to look and, by chance, met Nan Changgeng’s calm gaze.

The words died in her throat. She hesitated over whether she should tell the truth.

“Then what?” Lin Baiyu asked anxiously.

Now it was her turn to start feeling afraid. If everything Xu Yang said was true, didn’t that mean their dorm had been targeted by a ghost?

“Why are you so tense? You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Chen Xia stood beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “It has to be some kind of mistake. Where would ghosts even come from?”

“You can’t say they don’t exist just because you’ve never seen one!” Xu Yang shot back at once. “There are tons of news reports online, especially in recent years. So many strange incidents have happened that science can’t explain. Just recently, there was that second-year class three at No. 1 High School. Every student in the whole classroom suffered sudden brain death at the same time, and they never even figured out the cause of death.”

Chen Xia frowned.

She had heard that news too. It had caused quite a stir back then, but she had never taken it seriously from the start, so of course she hadn’t followed up on it. She really didn’t know the details.

Instead, Zhao Shengxiao spoke up. “Didn’t you see the later clarification? It only said two people died, one teacher and one student. It was just those clickbait accounts spreading rumors.”

“I did see it, but they still never figured out the cause of death for those two people! They had no history of brain disease while they were alive, and then they suddenly died of brain death. Isn’t that still creepy? And apparently, before they died, they forced a student to death. People even said that student turned into a ghost and came back for revenge!”

Chen Xia’s brow furrowed even deeper. “How could that be possible? Stop with the superstition. You know it was just hearsay. Who knows if it’s even true?”

The two of them argued back and forth, and neither could convince the other.

Yuan Li naturally didn’t continue the topic. She turned back, glanced around at the people beside her, and lowered her voice to ask the two roommates:

“Where did Yu Mao go? Did she come back to the dorm?”

“No idea.” Liu Yuanxi didn’t understand why she was speaking so softly, but she shook her head and instinctively kept her voice low too. “Anyway, we didn’t see her come back before we fell asleep.”

Qi Qi scratched her head and said casually, “I think I heard something in the bathroom when I came out.”

Yuan Li frowned, lost in thought.

She had no evidence, and she couldn’t say whether the ghost Xu Yang saw was really Yu Mao… but her instinct told her there was a very high chance it was.

Leaving aside Yu Mao’s previous habit of peeking through doors, just from Xu Yang’s description alone—lots of hair, very fast… Having personally witnessed Yu Mao’s inhuman running speed twice in one day, it was hard not to be suspicious.

And the netizens who had watched the whole thing had no doubts at all. They saw Xu Yang scream, saw Yu Mao snatch up Little Flying Hero and dart off like a streak of lightning, and even, before entering the room, stuff it into its charging slot...

Their hearts filled with reverence as one after another they laughed themselves nearly insane.

[Hahahahaha I can’t believe I actually got to witness such dramatic chaos live]

[When you all leave the show and learn the truth, will you think you looked like clowns while arguing about whether ghosts exist]

[I’m dying… Xu Yang cares so much about her image; she must hate cultists to death, hahaha. I really want to see what Xu Yang’s face will look like when she finds out the truth]

[Wait, that new nickname got attached this fast??? Isn’t that a bit rude?]

[Little Cat got scared by Xu Yang and Yirui An during the day, then Xu Yang got scared by Little Cat at night. Doesn’t that count as even]

[Production team, have some sense. I want to see the contestants’ first live reaction when they learn the truth!]

After all that commotion, the attention was completely diverted, and basically no one in the audience kept fixating on how strange Yu Mao had acted earlier.

The contestants chatted over one another for a long while. After trying and failing to get in touch with the production team, they all understood that the whole ghost story was nonsense; even if they kept digging into it, they wouldn’t get a definite answer. So they gradually returned to their rooms to go back to sleep.

Lin Baiyu was still somewhat bothered by Xu Yang’s words, but she couldn’t reach the outside world, much less look anything up. Head aching, she rubbed her temples and stood at the doorway without moving for a moment.

Xu Yang was the most shattered of all; she practically wanted to storm into the control room and demand the footage be played back. She absolutely did not believe she had been seeing things or hallucinating.

But things had come to this, and there was nothing she could do.

She could only turn back to her dorm, looking dazed and despondent, as if she had lost all joy in life in the span of a single breath.

“My innocence… my image…” she muttered under her breath. She sniffled once, her voice heavy with grief.

It looked as if she might cry at any second, but she still held it in with impressive strength.

One by one, the dorm doors in the corridor closed. Besides the four people in Lin Baiyu’s dorm, only the three on Yuan Li’s side remained outside.

Lin Baiyu glanced at them a couple of times and suddenly realized, “Huh, why didn’t Yu Mao come out? Did she not get woken up?”

Yuan Li hesitated and didn’t answer.

Qi Qi, however, had no such reservations. She said plainly, “She seems to have come back not long ago. She’s in the bathroom; none of us have seen her tonight.”

“Oh, that’s a coincidence.” Lin Baiyu scratched her hair and didn’t think much of it. “Good thing it wasn’t her who ran into a ghost, or she’d probably have been even more scared than Xu Yang.”

A beat jumped in Nan Changgeng’s brow; sensing something, she looked up and met Yuan Li’s gaze at the same time. The other girl’s eyes flickered, and she quickly looked away.

“Since nothing happened, hurry up and go back to sleep. We still have class tomorrow.”

Yuan Li lowered her eyes and said this in a hurry. Then she reached out and put an arm around each of her roommates’ necks, practically dragging them back into the room.

Chen Xia couldn’t help frowning as she stared at the tightly shut door. “Why do I feel like Yuan Li is hiding something from us?”

“Huh?” Lin Baiyu looked blank. “What could she be hiding?”

“I don’t know.”

That was exactly why Chen Xia was confused; she just couldn’t make sense of it.

While her thoughts turned over and over, Nan Changgeng suddenly let out a low laugh. “Forget it. Don’t think so much about it. In any case, it doesn’t have much to do with us.”

“True.”

“Go back and sleep.”

The last dorm door closed, and the corridor once again fell into a long silence.

[What do you think Nan Changgeng laughed at?]

[I’m guessing it might have reminded her of the fan who crouched at her dressing room door years ago and shoved her a down jacket]

The night deepened further.

Yu Mao only came out after showering and tidying up in the bathroom.

Yuan Li had originally wanted to hold on a bit and wait until she came out to ask her something, but on second thought, there were still two roommates in the dorm, and some things weren’t easy to say in front of them. Her mind loosened, and she couldn’t hold out against sleep any longer, so she drifted off again.

Even if she had asked, Yu Mao wouldn’t have had the mind to answer right then.

Her mood was terrible, and her heart was filled entirely with regret.

Without making a sound, she climbed back into bed, lay on her side, and curled in on herself; her breathing was faster than usual.

She bent the knuckle of her right index finger into her mouth and pressed it against her hard teeth.

Then she bit down hard.

The intense pain made it feel as though flesh were being squeezed apart; afterward came a numbness like a thin layer of air floating over bone, threading through her mouth into her throat and down into her chest, barely managing to soothe her heart.

She inhaled and exhaled without loosening her bite, letting the pain continue.

She knew Nan Changgeng had struggled with neurasthenia for years. She suffered severe insomnia and had a hard time falling asleep; once awakened in the middle of the night, she found it very difficult to fall back asleep.

She could not forgive herself for doing something that might hurt Nan Changgeng.

Even if it had been an accident.

Even if she couldn’t be sure whether Nan Changgeng had already been asleep at the time.

Yu Mao closed her eyes. A faint taste of blood spread across her tongue, blooming through her mouth.

She released her teeth, held the wound in her mouth, and swallowed the pain into sleep.

...

The next day, the sky was bright.

Yu Mao was awakened by the tugging force on her hand and opened her eyes abruptly.

What met her gaze were three faces crowded close together, all looking anxious.

One hand was gripping her wrist, but because of the injury, no one dared yank her hand out forcefully.

“At last you’re awake.” Yuan Li’s tightly furrowed brows relaxed a little. She let go and said urgently, “Hurry up and open your mouth; stop biting! You’ve bitten your hand all the way to injury!”

Yu Mao frowned slightly, pulled her finger out of her mouth, and yawned sleepily.

Her hand hung carelessly over the edge of the bed. Around the knuckle of her index finger was a ring of tooth marks seeping blood; after a night, the edges of the wound had gone swollen and pale from the saliva.

Her fingers were already so thin they seemed to have only a paper-thin layer of flesh left. At first glance, the injury looked almost as if it had gone to the bone, shockingly ugly.

“My God…” Qi Qi bared her teeth at the sight, her own fingers practically aching in sympathy. “What’s wrong with you? How can you bite yourself that badly in your sleep? Didn’t it hurt enough to wake you up?”

Liu Yuanxi didn’t even dare look closely. She went through her luggage to find the first-aid kit.

“I’m fine.”

Yu Mao was in a bad mood and didn’t really want to talk. Her eyelids drooped again; she looked ready to fall asleep once more.

Yuan Li drew in a sharp breath and studied her suspiciously, a doubt rising in her heart that she herself didn’t want to believe.

That attitude… could that wound have been bitten on purpose by Yu Mao?

The question was a little too personal. She opened her mouth, unsure whether she should ask it.

Liu Yuanxi came over with iodine and gauze, cleaned and disinfected the wound for her, then wrapped it in two layers of gauze to make sure it could breathe.

The wound was a little large; even a bandage couldn’t fully cover it.

Yu Mao only moved her finger slightly and didn’t dodge. She didn’t even lift her eyelids.

Qi Qi stood with her hands on her hips and looked at her, sighing repeatedly.

“You really are worrying.”

Yuan Li was even more qualified to say that. In just two or three days, she had worried herself into several gray hairs. If she had to live with Yu Mao like this for three months, she felt like she could shorten her own life by several years.

“Forget it, let’s go. We need to get to class.”

The three of them left the dorm under a low cloud of tension.

It was still very early, not yet eight o’clock, and the fixed camera in the room had not turned on yet.

A faint iodine smell lingered in the air. Yu Mao’s lashes trembled, and she slowly opened her eyes to face the bright, blinding sunlight outside the window.

She climbed up, knelt on the bed, folded both hands over her chest, bent forward until her forehead nearly touched her knees, and let her hair spill down like ink and water at her side.

Bathed in the warm morning light, her mind settled. With her eyes closed, she murmured softly:

“In the sacred light of the sun, I sincerely offer you my gratitude for today, my wholehearted faith, and my boundless reverence. My Lord who saved me, I repent for what I did last night…”

...

The prayer ended an hour later when Yu Mao, dizzy, toppled onto the bed.

Her blood sugar had dropped.

The sensation of the world spinning was enough to make anyone panic, but Yu Mao was very calm. She kept her eyes open and imagined herself to be a small boat tossed up by wind and waves.

The song in her headphones drifted gently through her mind.

When she had a little strength again, she barely managed to sit up and used milk to make herself a cup of powdered milk to drink.

Get up, wash up.

The bandage on her hand had gotten wet, so she casually tossed it into the bathroom trash can.

Once everything was sorted out, she was just about to head out to check the practice room when someone suddenly knocked on the dorm door.