11
The sunlight streaming in through the window grew increasingly blinding.
Mạnh Lệ Nhi’s body grew more and more transparent.
Outside the window, two figures appeared, a man and a woman, both wearing white shirts. The woman had a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. When she saw me, she raised her phone.
It was Tiểu Nhiên, and the young man beside her was Quý Triệu.
“The coffin is open. The living soul goes out; the dead soul goes in.”
Quý Triệu looked at Mạnh Lệ Nhi, pinned to the window, and said in a low voice, “Tomb owner, the barrier is broken. Stop struggling.”
Mạnh Lệ Nhi looked at Quý Triệu. Blood and tears welled from her eye sockets.
She suddenly let out a heart-wrenching scream.
Quý Triệu’s expression suddenly changed.
“Watch out!!!”
But it was too late.
Mạnh Lệ Nhi suddenly broke free of the ropes binding her and lunged toward me.
It all happened in the blink of an eye. Quý Triệu and Tiểu Nhiên were too far away to intervene.
A violent impact struck me from the front. The force knocked me unconscious.
In the last moment before I lost consciousness,
I saw a white figure rush toward me from behind,
and shield me.
12
I had a very, very long dream.
I dreamed about Ngô Lam.
In the dream, it was still the beginning of our freshman year. I was a low-ranking new recruit in the student union, and the handsome, gentle student union president pursued me. A month later, I was dating him.
As it turned out, he was rotten to the core. He drugged me, took pictures of me, used them to blackmail me for money, and kept harassing me.
While I was hiding alone in the dormitory and crying, Ngô Lam came back.
Before that, I hadn’t known Ngô Lam very well.
She was cold and didn’t like to talk. Tần Tiếu and Mạnh Lệ Nhi had often told me they thought Ngô Lam was a weirdo who did nothing but study.
But that time, Ngô Lam came over to me as I sobbed.
She asked, “What’s wrong?”
It was the first time I realized that Ngô Lam actually spoke very gently.
…
Ngô Lam went to see the student union president and got my money and pictures back.
I didn’t know how she did it. When I asked, she wouldn’t tell me.
After that, the student union president never dared harass me again. So I often followed Ngô Lam around admiringly, singing her praises to the skies.
“Lam, you’re amazing.”
“Lam, you always protect me.”
“I love you most, Lam.”
Whenever I praised her, Ngô Lam would put on a stony face, looking utterly unable to stand all the mushy things I said.
She often looked at me and sighed.
“You’re all grown up now, and you’re pretty, but you’re still such a fool.”
I didn’t care. “So what if I’m a pretty little idiot? Lam will protect me anyway!”
“Right, Lam?”
“…”
“Right? Right?”
“…”
“You’ll protect me, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
I suddenly realized that in this darkness that could never be illuminated, Ngô Lam had become a ghost. The words she said to me most often were:
“I’ll protect you.”
13
The dream faded away.
I opened my eyes to the stark white ceiling of a hospital room.
Tiểu Nhiên was peeling an apple beside me. Hearing me stir, she raised the head of my bed. “You’re awake.”
I looked around with difficulty. “Where am I?”
“A private medical facility. There’s still a lot to deal with, so we brought you here secretly and didn’t notify your family.”
My throat twitched. I wanted to ask something, but in the end I couldn’t get the words out.
Tiểu Nhiên seemed to understand what was on my mind. She lowered her head and sent a message. A short while later, Quý Triệu came in.
Quý Triệu carried a thick notebook. He opened it for me to see. It contained some written notes and had several photographs pasted inside.
I immediately recognized the man and woman in the photos. The woman was Mạnh Lệ Nhi, and the man was our school’s vice principal.
“Mạnh Lệ Nhi was the vice principal’s mistress.”
Quý Triệu stated matter-of-factly, “She died in an accident six months ago.”
“At first, her ghost could have been reincarnated normally. But Mạnh Lệ Nhi and the vice principal didn’t want to be parted. Somehow, they learned how to use a sacrifice to nourish a corpse. So the vice principal hid Mạnh Lệ Nhi’s ashes in the storage room of your dorm and arranged for three other innocent female students to live there. That’s how the coffin room came to be.”
“As the tomb owner, Mạnh Lệ Nhi’s power grew stronger and stronger over those hundred days. In the end, her barrier completely enveloped your dormitory, cutting it off from the outside world.”
“You can think of your dormitory as the coffin and the entire floor as the tomb chamber—in short, it was all Mạnh Lệ Nhi’s domain.”
“Inside the barrier, the perceptions of both the living and the dead were severely distorted. They unconsciously overlooked anything strange or supernatural.”
“That’s why…”
Quý Triệu didn’t finish.
But I understood.
That was why, even though Ngô Lam was dead, neither Mạnh Lệ Nhi nor any of us had realized it.
Or rather, I had realized it, but part of me didn’t want to face it, and the coffin room had also severely distorted my perception. So my brain had automatically erased that memory.
“Ngô Lam jumped to her death last month. The reason for her suicide probably had nothing to do with the tomb owner. Since it was her own doing, the tomb owner didn’t realize that one of her sacrifices had died ahead of time.”
“The yin energy in the coffin room was strong enough for Ngô Lam’s ghost to stay there. She probably realized she was dead, but didn’t tell anyone.”
“It wasn’t until that night in the stairwell, when you told Ngô Lam about the tomb owner, that she finally understood why she could live in the dormitory as a ghost.”
I was silent for a long time.
Finally, gathering all my strength, I asked, “Lam… she…”
Quý Triệu and Tiểu Nhiên fell silent together.
A moment later, Quý Triệu spoke in a low voice. “Her soul has been utterly destroyed.”
It was as if all my strength had suddenly drained away.
“Mạnh Lệ Nhi used all her strength to unleash one final attack on you. Ngô Lam took the blow for you.”
“The tomb owner’s power was far greater than that of an ordinary ghost. Ngô Lam’s soul was shattered to pieces.”
…
The hospital room was very quiet.
A long while later, a choked sob broke the silence.
I covered my face, hiding my tears deep in my palms.
Tiểu Nhiên patted my shoulder and said softly,
“This was the ending Ngô Lam chose for herself. Even if she hadn’t taken that blow for you, she couldn’t have gone on existing.”
“When the coffin opens, the living soul leaves and the dead spirit enters. If she wanted to keep existing as a ghost, she would have had to help Mạnh Lệ Nhi guard that coffin room.”
“But she didn’t. She betrayed the dead and chose to help you. From that moment on, she had already chosen her fate.”
“Nguyễn Nguyễn, I’m sure she wanted you to go on living well.”
14
Hứa Tiểu Nhiên had once thought about saving Ngô Lam.
She was someone who could reverse time, and Quý Triệu was someone who could seal souls.
But it was no use.
A soul-sealer could only seal an intact soul. After taking a blow from Mạnh Lệ Nhi, Ngô Lam’s soul had been shattered beyond repair.
Like a brittle old sheet of paper, she would vanish at the slightest touch.
So all they could do was watch helplessly as she disappeared.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
In her final moments, a gentle smile bloomed on Ngô Lam’s face.
“Every choice I made was my own.”
“Don’t be sad for me. And of course, don’t tell Nguyễn Nguyễn my secret.”
“I’m glad I could protect her.”
In the last moment before she vanished, Ngô Lam looked up at the sky and said softly,
“The stars are so bright.”
Hứa Tiểu Nhiên and Quý Triệu both looked up.
There was nothing in the sky.
By the time they looked down again, Ngô Lam had disappeared.
Her soul drifted away on the wind, vanishing into the sky just before dawn.
15. Ngô Lam’s Story
Ngô Lam was born in a tiny village.
Her mother died young. Her father married her stepmother, and they had a younger daughter.
Her family was poor. The year she finished middle school, she placed first in the entire county, and the provincial high school wanted to recruit her into its honors program.
But her stepmother turned the offer down for her.
Her stepmother said, “We’re poor. We can’t afford the tuition.”
Her stepmother also arranged a match for her: a widower from the next village. He had already buried three wives and was paying for a fourth.
Ngô Lam knew her father and stepmother wanted to save their money for her younger sister.
So she couldn’t go to school. She could only marry the old widower young—and die young.
Her younger sister didn’t really know any better. She was still little and had been spoiled as she grew up. Even during summer vacation, she wouldn’t stay put, and dragged Ngô Lam off to swim in the reservoir.
The accident happened in an instant.
Her younger sister got a cramp and thrashed about in the reservoir.
Her sister cried, “Sis, help me!”
Ngô Lam wanted to save her sister.
She quickly stripped off her clothes and plunged into the water.
But in that moment, a dark seed hidden in some corner of her heart suddenly began to sprout.
If her sister were gone, she wouldn’t be sold off.
Ngô Lam slowed her swimming.
…