Chapter 55

"Hiss... so cold..."

On a midsummer afternoon, after getting out of the Li family's car, Yang Siguang clutched his backpack and walked toward home in a daze.

However, as he stepped into the entrance of his residential building, he shivered violently.

Despite the scorching weather, for some reason, the hallway was exceptionally cold, the chill seeming to pierce through his skin and directly into his marrow.

Was he catching a cold?

Yang Siguang couldn't help reaching up to touch his forehead; his skin did indeed feel slightly feverish.

He must have caught a chill in the funeral home's lounge, Yang Siguang thought, before dragging his heavy steps and returning to his front door, feeling lightheaded.

The moment he opened the door, however, a pitch-black shadow abruptly lunged into his field of vision, and the next second, a piercing roar pierced his eardrum.

"Woof woof woof woof—"
"Woof woof woof—"
...

Yang Siguang was startled.

Griping the doorknob, he took a sharp step back and looked again, only to discover that standing in his family's foyer was a medium-sized black dog, appearing from nowhere.

The dog was shrieking incessantly at him now, its excessive excitement making its eyes bulge slightly, while semi-transparent saliva hung between its sharp, pristine white teeth, dripping downward in sticky strings.

Yet, the instant its gaze met Yang Siguang's, the dog abruptly clamped its mouth shut.

A string of terrified whimpers escaped its throat, the black dog's tail instantly tucking tightly between its hind legs, and a pungent, musky odor rose alongside the sound of trickling liquid as the dog urinated right where it stood.

"What the hell..."

Still shaken, Yang Siguang glared at the unfamiliar puppy in the familiar foyer, completely baffled.

A moment later, he heard slow footsteps coming from the living room. His mother walked out wearing slippers with an expression of annoyance. As she looked at Yang Siguang by the door and the dog that had wet itself yet remained too terrified to move, her brow knitted together tightly.

*

Yang Siguang endured a round of unprovoked scolding before he was finally allowed to enter his own home.

Amidst his mother's reprimands, he learned that this unfamiliar black dog was something Ding Xiaolong had suddenly brought home.

Naturally, his mother disliked the sudden addition of a dog to the household, but Ding Xiaolong had always enjoyed immense privileges with her; with just a bit of shameless pestering and rolling around, his mother would immediately surrender. Still, deep down the woman was somewhat angry, and Yang Siguang happened to be the one walking into the line of fire this time.

In truth, Yang Siguang was somewhat accustomed to this kind of treatment, but today he genuinely felt unwell. The woman's sharp screeching fell upon his ears, sounding unbearably shrill, and even his forehead began to throb faintly.

"Every day I see you wandering around doing nothing useful, never bringing any money home... Pulling this dead face the moment you're in the house, who is that for, really? Always bullying your own family inside these four walls, and now what did this dog ever do to you to scare the poor beast like this..."

Yang Siguang changed his shoes and was about to head to his room when his mother grabbed him and continued berating him.

A sense of stifling annoyance welled up quietly in his chest.

Right at that moment, he abruptly sensed an unpleasant gaze of scrutiny. Yang Siguang raised his head sharply and looked straight back, locking eyes with a pair of terrified eyes.

It was Ding Xiaolong.

The boy, who should have been studying at school at this hour, was currently clutching the reeking black dog for dear life, shrunk entirely into the furthest corner of the house.

He seemed entirely unprepared for Yang Siguang to suddenly meet his gaze; his face instantly turned deathly pale, and his shoulders began to tremble.

Then, he instinctively shuddered, actually pushing the trembling, whimpering dog even further out in front of himself.

Yang Siguang: "..."

While the usually unruly and dim-witted Ding Xiaolong was annoying enough, this person with a panic-stricken and trembling face made him feel even more an eyesore.

When his mother finally finished cursing and retreated into her room, Yang Siguang cast aside his usual restraint and walked straight up to Ding Xiaolong with a gloomy face.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Yang Siguang stared into Ding Xiaolong's eyes and asked coldly.

Ding Xiaolong shuddered again.

"Huh?"

The boy swallowed hard.

"What—what meaning?"

His acting skills were poor; even his confusion appeared ridiculous and fake.

Yang Siguang took a deep breath, mustered his strength, and squatted down.

With this movement of his, the black dog let out a sharp, miserable howl, its four paws frantically scratching at the floor as if trying to flee, though unfortunately, the greater part of its body was firmly trapped in Ding Xiaolong's embrace.

And Ding Xiaolong was currently hugging that dog like a drowning person clutching their last piece of driftwood, leaving the dog zero chance of escape.

The suspicion in Yang Siguang's heart grew steadily thicker.

"...You're afraid of me."

Yang Siguang looked at Ding Xiaolong and muttered.

Before that bloodless fool could cobble together any other excuse, he asked on his own accord.

"Why are you afraid of me?" he asked. "...What did you see in my room?"

Ding Xiaolong looked as though he was on the verge of tears.

"A ghost... There's... there's a ghost in your room..."

*

If time could flow backward, Ding Xiaolong would rather die than ever enter Yang Siguang's room again.

Actually, he hadn't planned on doing anything particular that day; he just wanted to see if there was a chance to swipe something from that guy's room and sell it off for some pocket money to go to the internet café.

This semester, Ding Xiaolong's grades were so atrocious that his allowance had been nearly cut off entirely, and even his mother wasn't as easy to talk to as she used to be.

He had been driven to desperation before resorting to theft...

Yet he never expected to run into a ghost in Yang Siguang's room.

"When I came home back then, I saw your room door was open, and it sounded like someone was whispering inside... I thought it was—well, I thought your friend had come over, and out of curiosity, I walked over and took a peek."

"When I got to the door, I realized there was no one in your room, so... I walked in to look around. I was just searching... looking through your bookshelf, and before I even touched anything, I suddenly felt like someone was watching me," Ding Xiaolong hugged the dog, gasping for breath as he spoke, looking utterly terrified. "I thought you were back, so I got ready to leave, but right then, the wind blew your room's curtains open..."

Bears of cold sweat seeped out of Ding Xiaolong's forehead one by one.

Boys of this age were usually at the stage of fearing neither heaven nor earth; even if they genuinely encountered a supernatural event, after the initial panic, most would laugh it off and perhaps even use it as bragging material among brothers and friends.

Yet Ding Xiaolong's reaction was completely unlike theirs; he looked genuinely terrified out of his wits.

"There was a face."

Ding Xiaolong spoke incoherently, his voice pressed extremely low, as though someone was still lurking right beside him, eavesdropping.

"I saw it right then. There was a face... That face was pressed flat against the outside of your brotherly window, its eyes wide open, the features completely distorted. When it saw that I'd discovered it, it even glared right at me."

"At first I thought it was just some busybody outside meddling, but then I remembered—we live on the fourth floor..."

So, exactly how did that face outside the window manage to press itself up against it?