9
Early that morning, I was lying in bed when a faint sound woke me.
I opened my eyes.
Ngô Lam was walking past my bed.
I asked softly, “Sister Lam, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head, her voice as gentle as ever. “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
She went outside.
After the door closed, the dormitory fell quiet again.
But I couldn’t fall back asleep.
I stepped into the hallway to get some fresh air, but suddenly saw something white fall.
…
It was four in the morning, and the campus was still quiet.
I took a long time to calm down before finally poking my head out.
I saw Sister Lam.
She was lying in the middle of the courtyard, her limbs and neck bent at strange angles. Blood slowly spread from her body.
I told myself:
This isn’t real.
It’s just a nightmare.
So I went back to the dormitory and climbed into bed, Ngô Lam’s voice ringing in my ears: “Go back to sleep.”
I slept for a long time again. When I woke up, Sister Lam had returned.
She was still wearing that beautiful white dress, smiling quietly and gently at me. “Nguyễn Nguyễn, why are you up so late? You look awful—did you have a nightmare?”
At her smile, I hurriedly nodded. “Yeah, I had a nightmare. Good thing it was only a dream.”
…
So that was it.
Sister Lam had been dead for a long time.
I just hadn’t wanted to accept it.
The student who jumped to her death last month was her.
And her ghost had returned to this coffin room to stay by my side.
10
I stood in the bathroom doorway.
It felt like I’d been remembering for a long time, but in reality only a few seconds had passed.
Beside me, Tần Tiếu was crying as she asked, “Nguyễn Nguyễn, what do we do? Where can we hide?”
I froze, then clenched my palm, forcing myself to calm down.
Tiểu Nhiên’s voice came through my earpiece: “Don’t lose focus. Stick to the plan and lure the tomb owner to the window. This is your last chance!”
I took a deep breath.
“Tần Tiếu…” I stepped back and said quietly, “Go inside.”
This bathroom was large, with a sink area outside and the toilet inside.
There was a small ventilation window in the toilet area, but it might be big enough.
“Inside?” Tần Tiếu asked in disbelief. “That’s a dead end!”
“Trust me!”
My voice suddenly rose. I turned and ran inside.
Tần Tiếu gritted her teeth, but in the end she followed.
We reached the innermost room of the bathroom.
The narrow ventilation window stood silently there.
The security staff hadn’t sealed this window for a simple reason: it was so small that even a child couldn’t squeeze through. It was perfectly safe.
Drip, drip—
More drops of water fell on Tần Tiếu and me.
Even the bathroom ceiling had started to leak.
That made sense. This was part of the coffin room, too.
Outside, the pounding on the door continued. At most, Ngô Lam would break through it in less than a minute.
Tiểu Nhiên’s voice came through my earpiece: “Nguyễn Nguyễn, find a way to hold out for one more minute. Quý Triệu is almost ready.”
I thought for a moment, then pulled a piece of red paper from my pajama pocket.
It was a scrap I’d just cut from a Cartier bag.
“So this should work, too.”
I said, “Write Ngô Lam’s birth date on it, then keep it on you.”
Tần Tiếu was startled, but she didn’t ask questions. She took the pen from my hand.
“Sister Lam’s birthday is… what date again?”
“October 28.”
Tần Tiếu quickly wrote the date down and tucked it away.
“Nguyễn Nguyễn, you’re writing down this birthday, too?”
“Yeah.”
“All right…”
Tần Tiếu nodded, as if she’d misunderstood me, and let out a sigh of relief.
For a moment, I thought I saw the corner of her mouth curl into a smile.
Suddenly, Tần Tiếu shouted behind me, “Ngô Lam!”
I spun around. The next second, a hand pierced my chest.
…
There was no one in front of me.
The pounding on the door continued.
Ngô Lam hadn’t come in yet.
The one who’d thrust her hand into my body was Tần Tiếu.
I lowered my head. In the dim light, the arm was covered in terrifying blotches.
She whispered behind me, “Didn’t see that coming, did you, Nguyễn Nguyễn?”
I closed my eyes.
A deathlike sound came from my throat.
But a moment later, I opened my eyes again.
My vision cleared, and I asked calmly:
“What didn’t I see coming?”
“That you’re the tomb owner?”
The next second, I grabbed the arm that had stabbed into my body.
My ribs formed a cage around it, trapping the arm. I put all my strength into shoving forward.
“Tiểu Nhiên!”
I shouted, “Now!”
I lunged forward, and the momentum dragged Tần Tiếu with me, bringing her fully into the ventilation window’s range!
Quý Triệu’s voice immediately sounded in my earpiece. He began chanting, as if singing an ancient song.
“Sweep away the Jia and Yi Wood of the East; sweep away the Bing and Ding Fire of the South.”
“The living soul departs; the dead soul enters.”
As he chanted, though it was clearly the middle of the night, it seemed as if a sun had risen outside. Blinding sunlight poured in through the ventilation window.
Tần Tiếu’s body suddenly seemed pinned in place. She was nailed in front of the ventilation window, unable to move, and let out a shrill scream.
She stared at me as I broke free of her and pulled her arm out of my body.
My chest should have had a hole in it, but my body was unharmed. Only a piece of red paper fell out of me, crumbling into powder in the air.
Quý Triệu and Tiểu Nhiên hadn’t lied to me. The red paper bearing the tomb owner’s birth date really had taken the fatal blow for me.
“That’s impossible. You clearly wrote…” Tần Tiếu murmured in disbelief.
“October 28?”
I curled my lips into a faint smile. “I lied to you.”
I’d taken out the red paper just now so Tần Tiếu could write down the birthday for two reasons: first, to buy Quý Triệu the last bit of time he needed to prepare; second, to let Tần Tiếu lower her guard.
As long as she thought I’d written October 28, she’d feel safe attacking me.
“Sister Lam’s birthday is October 28, but I didn’t write October 28.”
I looked at Tần Tiếu and spoke softly.
“Of course, it wasn’t February 15, either.”
February 15 was Tần Tiếu’s birthday.
Tần Tiếu stared at me. After a moment, a look of shock came over her face.
“You actually… You actually figured it out…”
“That’s right. I figured it out.” I nodded.
“So I wrote January 22.”
January 22…
I looked the person in front of me straight in the eye and said coldly,
“Mạnh Lệ Nhi, you’re the tomb owner.”
…
Silence stretched on.
After a while, the “Tần Tiếu” in front of me looked at me with a strange expression.
She asked quietly, “When did you figure it out?”
“A long time ago, before I left the dormitory for the last time.”
“Actually, if you calmly think back over everything that happened tonight, you can piece the whole thing together.”
“The first time I left the dormitory, I said I was going downstairs for a walk. At that point, everyone was still alive.”
“After that, I brought Ngô Lam back. From our point of view, only Tần Tiếu was left in the dormitory.”
“Then you and Ngô Lam left together, and I found Mạnh Lệ Nhi dead.”
“The ghosts in this space have to obey the laws of physics, too. They can’t kill someone from a distance. So Ngô Lam was never alone with Mạnh Lệ Nhi. She didn’t have time to kill her, which means she isn’t the tomb owner.”
The “Tần Tiếu” in front of me wore a gloomy expression and said nothing.
“Of course, up until that point, I still believed Tần Tiếu was the tomb owner.”
“But just as I was about to write down Tần Tiếu’s birthday, I suddenly thought: the tomb owner had gone to so much trouble to set this trap, so she would surely do everything she could to avoid any vulnerability.”
“The method of writing a birthday on red paper was already known outside, so the person who set this trap might know about it, too. In that case, putting myself in someone else’s shoes, if I were the tomb owner, I’d find a way to conceal my true identity until the very end.”
“What’s the best way to hide your identity? To appear as someone else.”
“That way, even if someone knew about writing a birthday on red paper, the birthday they wrote down would still be wrong.”
“Just like me—I came this close to writing down Tần Tiếu’s birthday.”
“Luckily, after thinking it over, I got more cautious and went back to check the body.”
“Sure enough, I realized I hadn’t been overthinking it.”
“Although you deliberately disfigured her face, you overlooked one thing: you forgot to do anything to her hands. Mạnh Lệ Nhi loved doing her nails. When I first left the dormitory, she was still painting them.”
“But the corpse on the bed had clean fingernails.”
Meanwhile, the “Tần Tiếu” standing in front of me now had countless horrifying blotches spreading across her hands, yet her nails were painted bright red.