Chapter 3: The Investigation

3

Starting the next day, I began researching the strange events my friend mentioned.

Judging by the events alone, I couldn’t find any obvious connections.

According to my friend, her colleague didn’t feel uncomfortable living there. Life was generally good, just with occasional weird occurrences.

For renters, after all, the place isn’t their own. It’s common to feel uneasy at first. Maybe they just mistook these discomforts for supernatural events.

Like when I used to rent, I always found long women’s hair at home, only to realize later that the previous tenant was a woman with long hair. Some corners hadn’t been cleaned, and the broom had hair stuck in it, which would fall out while sweeping. That made me think there was always women’s hair at home.

So, I believe these strange phenomena must have reasonable explanations.

At the very least, I don’t believe in my friend’s so-called ‘haunted house’.

With this in mind, I continued to analyze the apartment using my notes.

Two days passed, and I still had no clue—until I suddenly noticed this spot on the second floor.

Since I rarely deal with floor plans, I couldn’t tell what it looked like just from the diagram.

So I sent the plan to my friend, with a message:

Dian Deng: “Do you have a photo of this spot?”

My friend replied after a while.

Friend: “I’ll ask my colleague. She should be home now.”

A few minutes later, my friend sent me a photo.

Friend: “She just sent this.”

Looking at the photo, I finally understood what the structure was:

That area was an extension of the second-floor corridor—the black line was actually a continuation of the stair railing.

Studying the photo, I picked up the floor plan again and combined it with my previous conversations. A picture began to form in my mind.

I overlaid the two floor plans to test my hypothesis.

Looking at the diagram, I came to a terrifying conclusion:

There is a dead person in this house.

My phone buzzed—a message from my friend: “So, should I take the flat or not?” I stared at the floor plan, heart pounding, and typed back: “Wait. Something’s not right.”