Lu Chu had smelled that scent on Zheng Wei before and in the girls’ dormitory room 604.
Lu Chu immediately turned around, only to find himself face to face with a floating head at eye level. The distance between them was only a few centimeters.
It was indeed a little girl’s head—her eerie eyes without whites were clear and innocent, her skin had a bluish hue, and there were signs of decay on her face. She floated at eye level with Lu Chu. Seeing Lu Chu looking at her without fear, her pitch-black eyes gleamed, and she smiled with her purplish lips: “Big brother, can you feel me even if I don’t come out?”
Xu Yuan had long since closed his eyes in fear, covering his ears tightly.
Lu Chu, unfazed, asked, “Who are you?”
She didn’t answer, just giggled innocently and began to float around the dormitory. Her eyes, without whites, looked curious, giving off a spine-chilling horror.
Zhang Cheng was already entranced, his gaze fixed on the floating, decayed head, his eyes dull and lifeless. Watching, he started to laugh foolishly.
Meanwhile, the left side of his face slowly split open, revealing a squinting eye.
Lu Chu frowned.
The girl floated in a circle, stopping in front of Lu Chu. She looked at Xu Yuan, who had his eyes tightly shut and ears covered, and suddenly grinned: “I’ve seen you before.”
The voice was not loud but unmistakably reached Xu Yuan’s ears despite his hands covering them. Terrified by what he heard, Xu Yuan curled up, squatting on the ground with his head buried in his legs, trembling and muttering, “I can’t hear… can’t hear…”
She floated down following Xu Yuan’s movements, affirming, “I’ve seen you before.”
After saying this, a faint blue light emitted from the void below her head, slowly forming a body. The skin of her manifested body also had a cold bluish tint, and she wore a white dress. She squatted in front of Xu Yuan, tilting her head, looking at him with her pitch-black eyes in curiosity.
Lu Chu asked, “Who exactly are you?”
She looked up at Lu Chu, pointed at Xu Yuan, and said, “I’ve seen him before. He knows.” Then she continued speaking to Xu Yuan.
Lu Chu exchanged a glance with 7. He thought maybe he could talk to this ghost, who looked terrifying but seemed simple-minded.
As he was contemplating this, Xu Yuan suddenly stopped trembling. He put down his hands from his ears, raised his head, and stared blankly at the little girl.
Seeing Xu Yuan like this, Lu Chu tried to pull him away but found he couldn’t touch him. It was as if an invisible wall separated them, blocking him from the little girl and Xu Yuan.
To Lu Chu’s surprise, the little girl didn’t do anything to Xu Yuan. She just kept staring at him with her eerie, innocent eyes. After a while, Xu Yuan, seemingly enchanted, looked at the little girl’s face and murmured, “Zheng Ran.”
The girl smiled brightly: “You remember me after all.”
Lu Chu whispered the name: “Zheng… Ran?”
The little girl beamed: “Big brother, it’s me.”
“Zheng Wei, who is he to you?”
“He’s my brother.” Then the girl asked Lu Chu the same question again, “Big brother, can you feel me even if I don’t come out?”
Lu Chu didn’t answer her but asked, “Where is your brother now?”
She shook her head, smiling innocently: “You tell me first, then I’ll tell you. Otherwise, you can’t go anywhere.”
Hearing this, Lu Chu looked back at the dormitory door, which was tightly shut and couldn’t be opened. Inside the dormitory, 7 stood by his side, Xu Yuan squatted on the ground, staring blankly at the bluish decayed girl. Zhang Cheng stood at the far end of the dormitory, leaning against the heater and balcony, his eyes lifeless, with an extra eye on his left cheek, squinting as if smiling.
In the cramped and narrow space of dormitory 318, the four humans and one ghost stayed together quietly, creating a bizarre harmony.
The little girl kept staring at Lu Chu, her eyes full of intense curiosity. After a while, Lu Chu nodded: “I can feel you.”
The girl, hearing this, excitedly stood up, floating in front of Lu Chu, at eye level: “What do you feel?”
Lu Chu said: “I can feel your presence.”
“Anything else?”
Lu Chu shook his head: “Nothing else.”
“I don’t believe it,” the girl’s expression changed, turning gloomy, “otherwise, my brother wouldn’t have told me to stay away from you.” Saying this, she reached out her bluish-white hands to touch Lu Chu. 7 pulled Lu Chu back a step to avoid her touch. She tried to pounce again, and 7 was about to pull Lu Chu away once more, but Lu Chu stopped him.
A strange memory flashed through his mind, and instead of dodging, Lu Chu reached out to touch Zheng Ran’s hand.
At the moment of contact, Lu Chu felt a dizzying sensation. Everything in front of him began to spin and distort into chaotic yet beautiful lines.
This feeling, Lu Chu had experienced once before at the end of the doll incident.
It felt as if he was not himself, but another person, living in someone else’s body, experiencing their life and emotions.
Gradually, the scene before him became clear. Lu Chu realized his perspective had lowered, and his body was moving forward without his control. It seemed like someone was talking to him.
The distant voices grew clearer, and Lu Chu heard “himself” speak in a young girl’s voice: “Brother, I want to go back to the county to study. People here bully me.”
The boy beside him laughed: “Do you even know what bullying is? Get along well with others and study hard. I’m going to take the high school entrance exam here. You’ll go to high school with me then.”
After the boy spoke, Lu Chu felt “himself” lower his head dejectedly and reply with an “okay.”
The two continued walking, heading from the dormitory to the teaching building.
Lu Chu was certain now that he was experiencing everything as Zheng Ran.
He was seeing the past events from Zheng Ran’s perspective, feeling her oppression and resentment.
Zheng Ran had followed her brother Zheng Wei from the county to the city to study.
In middle school, students began to rebel, and a group of students started imitating gangsters. They formed cliques, enjoyed fighting, bullying others, and considered studying shameful. Zheng Ran, who studied diligently, initially had no interaction with them, quietly focusing on her studies.
The trouble began with a midterm exam when a delinquent student happened to sit in front of her. The boy passed her a note, asking her to give him the answers. Zheng Ran, who had always been a good student, had never done such a thing before. She feared being caught by the proctor but was more afraid of the boy, so she wrote down the answers and passed them to him.
Due to fear and nervousness, Zheng Ran didn’t perform well on that exam.
The boy, having never paid attention in class, couldn’t understand even after copying Zheng Ran’s answers. He ended up with a score twenty points lower than hers.
Someone jokingly told the boy that Zheng Ran had deliberately given him wrong answers. He believed it, and even though Zheng Ran showed him her own test paper to explain, he wouldn’t accept it. Feeling humiliated, he gathered a group and cornered Zheng Ran in a school alley during gym class.
“Isn’t this girl from the countryside?” one of them said.
“Of course, you can tell from her accent. She talks like an idiot. I almost died laughing.”
“Hick.”
“Stupid for giving me wrong answers on purpose.”
“……”
Surrounded by more than ten boys and girls, Zheng Ran endured their verbal abuse. Gradually, they escalated from insults to physical violence. She was terrified but could only endure it.
Bullying can become addictive.
In middle school, most delinquents would regularly pick on certain classmates. Unfortunately, Zheng Ran became one of their regular targets because of that exam.
Because she was soft-spoken, bullying her felt especially satisfying to them. They relentlessly exploited her.
They locked her in a bathroom stall in the boys’ dormitory, telling her that a person had died there and that she should stay in the stall overnight without calling for help. Otherwise, the ghost would dunk her head in boiling water. Zheng Ran spent a night shivering in the old dormitory bathroom. Since she didn’t return to her dorm, the dorm supervisor marked her absent, and those bullies spread rumors that she was out doing illegal activities.
During an experiment, they pulled her out, burned her skin with cigarette butts, and threatened to lock her in the experimental building’s fifth floor, claiming that a ghost there would cut off her right leg to make it into specimen slices.
They ordered her around, threatening to harm her if she reported anything to her parents or teachers.
……
Zheng Ran, naturally innocent and timid, had mentioned being bullied to her brother Zheng Wei a few times. Zheng Wei thought it was just normal schoolyard teasing and advised her to get along with her classmates.
Other classmates, despite witnessing the bullying, didn’t dare to intervene.
Over time, resentment deeply rooted in Zheng Ran’s heart. One day, she finally resisted and bit one of them. Enraged, they felt their authority challenged and beat her madly.
When it was over, Zheng Ran was in so much pain she could barely move.
She struggled back to her dormitory and lost her breath on her bed in room 604.
.
Lu Chu experienced everything Zheng Ran had gone through. Feeling both rage and sorrow, he finally understood why the previous two deaths had been so gruesome.
They were merely reaping the consequences of their actions.
Ironically, the most inhumane period in a person’s life can be around thirteen or fourteen years old. They rebel, disregard the law, think they can control others’ lives, and act with impunity.
The worst part of school bullying is not the violence itself but the fact that the bully often targets you for no reason at all.
