The news of a female postgraduate student jumping off the building in the Faculty of Pharmacy quickly spread throughout the entire campus. Back then, on campus, instances of students being unable to cope with pressure and resorting to jumping off buildings seemed not uncommon. Regardless of whether they knew each other or not, they all felt a little regretful, but it didn’t seem to stir up too much commotion.
The Faculty of Pharmacy building was sealed off that night, but it was reopened as usual the next day. Students moved in and out without feeling too much out of the ordinary.
About two days later, it was already evening when Song Jun received a call from Zhou Yingchun, asking him to help her go to the tenth floor of the Faculty of Pharmacy to get a copy of the experimental data and then deliver it to her to the Forensic Medicine office building.
Song Jun was stunned for a moment, then quickly agreed and said that he would go immediately.
He packed up and went out with his cell phone and keys. Just when he opened the door, he saw Xia Hongshen coming back from outside. He nodded and greeted him, “Senior Brother Xia.”
Unexpectedly, Xia Hongshen asked him, “Where are you going?”
Xia Hongshen’s tone was not considered polite, and at first, it sounded a little less than polite. Fortunately, Song Jun was someone who didn’t care and replied, “Go and help Teacher Zhou get something.”
Xia Hongshen nodded to show that he understood, then opened the door and went back to his room.
When Song Jun came out of the dormitory, it was already dark, and the sun was about to set. However, it was the busiest time inside the campus. Many students were walking to the classroom and were about to go to self-study. There were also boys who came out to play football on the playground while the sun was down.
When Song Jun walked to the bottom of the Faculty of Pharmacy building, he subconsciously glanced up at the building. He didn’t know why, as he hadn’t intentionally tried to remember anything, but for some reason, he vividly recalled the window from which the girl had jumped that day.
The Faculty of Pharmacy building was one of several newly built buildings in the school. The building was ‘L’ shaped. There was an elevator at the corner of the ‘L’, but the staircase was at the top and the two ends of the right side of the building.
At this time of the day, the building was already a little deserted, but from the outside, one could still see many rooms with lights on. Most of them were graduate students from the Faculty of Pharmacy, either still doing experiments or studying on their own.
Song Jun received a call from Zhou Yingchun, asking him to go to the tenth floor to find a girl named Liao Wan to get the data. According to Zhou Yingchun, she had already called Liao Wan in advance, and Song Jun only needed to go for the other party to know.
But it was Song Jun’s first time to enter the Pharmacy School Building. He started walking in the wrong direction and walked to the stairwell on the far right. He quickly turned around and found the elevator in the middle.
The process of finding Liao Wan went smoothly. Once the other party heard that he was called by Teacher Zhou to get the data, she gave him a USB stick and said that he could just return it to her after copying it.
Song Jun thanked her, walked out of Liao Wan’s laboratory with the USB flash drive, and walked in the empty corridor.
At this time, it was completely dark outside, and the corridor was empty, except for him. As he approached the elevator, Song Jun noticed that it was on its way up from the first floor. He reached out and pressed the down button, observing that the elevator didn’t stop on its way up until it reached the tenth floor.
When the elevator door opened, Song Jun originally thought there would be someone inside, but there was no one there. There were smooth mirrors on three sides, reflecting Song Jun’s lonely shadow.
Song Jun stood in, turned around, and faced the elevator door. He saw the Arabic numeral ‘10’ written on the opposite wall.
The elevator door slowly closed, and all the way down, Song Jun watched the red floor numbers slowly jump down from 10 to 1. When he reached the first floor, he thought the elevator door was about to open, but he realized that the elevator had not stopped at all. As it continued to go down, the bright red number suddenly jumped to the top floor, 14th floor, and then jumped down from 14 again.
Song Jun suddenly felt a chill in his body. He subconsciously took a step back and pressed his back against the elevator wall to make sure there were no blind spots around him. Then he stared at the jumping floor numbers in the elevator again.
At first, he thought it was an elevator malfunction, but he quickly dismissed the idea because he could detect a slight weightlessness as the elevator moved downwards. He was sure that he was going all the way down. He had clearly gone down from the 10th floor to the 1st floor just now, but now he had gone all the way down to more than ten floors. How could it be possible? Unless there were more than ten floors underground in this pharmacy faculty building!
Song Jun didn’t dare to think about these illogical things. He reached out and pressed the floor button. It didn’t matter which floor he pressed as long as he could stop immediately.
As a result, the elevator suddenly stopped on the fifth floor. The elevator door slowly opened, and Song Jun saw the number ‘5’ on the opposite wall.
Without much hesitation, he immediately walked out of the elevator. The elevator door slowly closed behind him and stopped at the fifth floor.
Song Jun stood at the corner of the fifth floor. There were empty corridors to the left and right. The corridors were lit with pale fluorescent lights, but there was no one there. All the doors of the rooms on both sides were also closed.
He hadn’t recovered from the panic just now. His back was chilled, and his arms were covered in goosebumps, but he didn’t dare to enter the elevator behind him no matter what. After standing there in a daze for a while, Song Jun plucked up the courage and walked towards the stairwell on the right.
There was a fire door1A fire door is a door with a fire-resistance rating used as part of a passive fire protection system to reduce the spread of fire and smoke between separate compartments of a structure and to enable safe egress from a building or structure or ship in the stairwell, which was usually closed and could be pushed open with some effort.
But the stairwell looked much scarier than the empty corridor because there was no light in the stairwell. He pushed open the fire door and saw a ray of light seeping in, casting his own shadow on the ground. But once he entered, the door would automatically pop back up, and then it would block out all the light.
Song Jun looked around but couldn’t find the light switch in the stairwell.
He was a little nervous because he didn’t think that the phenomenon in the elevator just now could be explained clearly by science, but he hoped that he could be calmer and not be so paranoid.
He took a deep breath. Song Jun pushed open the fire door and walked into the stairwell. Whether going up or down, the stairs were pitch black. He took out his phone, and the weak light from the screen illuminated a small area in front of him. At least he wouldn’t miss the steps, but no one knew what was in the darker places ahead.
Song Jun did not stop, nor did he look around anymore. He concentrated on looking at the small bright spot in front of him and walked downstairs. He himself didn’t know which floor he had reached when his cell phone suddenly rang.
In an absolutely quiet environment, the sudden ringing almost scared Song Jun out of his wits, and he almost lost his grip. But he still stopped, stepped back slightly, pressed his back against the wall, and answered the phone.
The call turned out to be from Xia Hongshen. The moment the call was connected, Song Jun didn’t recognize it because he had never asked for Xia Hongshen’s phone number.
For some reason, Song Jun felt a little more relaxed when he heard Xia Hongshen’s voice.
On the other side of the phone, Xia Hongshen’s first sentence was to ask, “Where are you?”
Song Jun said, “I’m in the Faculty of Pharmacy building, and I’m about to come out—”
Before he finished speaking, he heard Xia Hongshen say, “Wait for me there.”
Song Jun was stunned and hurriedly told Xia Hongshen what was going on. Song Jun said, “I don’t know what’s going on. There seems to be something wrong with the elevator. I was coming down the stairs…”
“Stand where you are and don’t go anywhere,” was what Xia Hongshen said.
Then, the call was hung up.
Song Jun saw that the phone was disconnected and thought of what Xia Hongshen had just said, so he simply sat down on the stairs against the wall. To be honest, he didn’t want to stay any longer, but he felt nervous facing the darkness ahead. And how many floors had he just descended? Was there an exit up ahead? He found himself a bit confused.
After almost ten minutes, Song Jun heard footsteps going up the stairs.
He suddenly stood up from the ground, holding the phone tightly, shining a small piece of light.
The footsteps got closer and closer and stopped in front of the stairs where Song Jun was. Then Song Jun saw Xia Hongshen through the faint light.
Song Jun suddenly breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Senior Brother Xia.”
Xia Hongshen didn’t say much. He just stretched out a hand to him, “Follow me.”
Song Jun was stunned; his body reacted before his brain, and he reached out and held Xia Hongshen’s hand.
Xia Hongshen pulled him and walked downstairs.
Because there was one more person, Song Jun felt less scared, so he asked, “Why don’t you take the elevator? Maybe it’s already fine?”
Xia Hongshen replied briefly, “Not taking it.”
Song Jun didn’t want to ask any more questions and followed Xia Hongshen all the way down.
At this moment, he discovered a problem. He had just come out of the elevator on the fifth floor and then went down at least three or four floors. It was almost time to reach the first floor; however, Xia Hongshen was still pulling him along, and it was apparent that there was still a considerable distance below. Unable to hold back, he asked, “Which floor were we on just now?”
“Fourteenth floor,” Xia Hongshen said.
Song Jun was stunned. He felt that something was wrong. The fourteenth floor was the top floor of this building. Leaving aside whether the floor numbers he saw while descending were accurate. When he entered the stairwell just now, he did see that there was another one facing upwards. How could the stairs be on the fourteenth floor?
But the fourteenth floor… wasn’t that the floor from which that senior sister jumped?
Song Jun suddenly felt cold and couldn’t ask the questions he wanted to ask. He followed Xia Hongshen downstairs in silence.
This time, he still couldn’t remember how many floors he had gone down. When he passed the corner of the first floor, he suddenly noticed something reflecting light in front of him. Song Jun subconsciously wanted to take a closer look, but Xia Hongshen beside him raised his hand to block his eyes and said, “Don’t look. Follow me.”
Song Jun was stunned. He thought what he just saw was probably a mirror, but he wasn’t sure.
With Xia Hongshen blocking his eyes, he could feel Xia Hongshen’s slender and cold fingers, and he was slightly nervous. However, he didn’t dare to push them away, so he followed Xia Hongshen all the way down to the first floor and walked out of the Faculty of Pharmacy building.
The moment he walked out of the door, Song Jun felt a rush of hot air rushing towards his face. Then, he suddenly realised that the building was as cold as if the central air conditioner had been turned on. But this was impossible. It was obvious that he still felt stuffy when he entered. There was no central air conditioning at all in the Faculty of Pharmacy building.
People were coming and going on the campus roads as if there were two worlds inside and outside, and now they had returned to the human world.
Song Jun turned to look at Xia Hongshen, only to see Xia Hongshen looking back at the building behind them. He couldn’t help but follow Xia Hongshen’s line of sight and felt a chill when he remembered what he had just experienced.
“Is it ghost…?” Song Jun said this with some hesitation because the person next to him was a doctoral student in forensic medicine. It was really funny for the two of them to discuss whether they had seen a ghost.
But Xia Hongshen didn’t laugh. He said, “What else do you need?”
Song Jun suddenly remembered the USB flash drive in his pocket, “I need to send the data to Teacher Zhou.”
Xia Hongshen then said, “Go ahead.” Then, he had no intention of continuing to talk to Song Jun.
Song Jun had no choice but to tell him, “Then I’m leaving.”
After walking a few steps forward, Song Jun turned back to Xia Hongshen and said, “Thank you, Senior Brother Xia.”
Xia Hongshen stood there and looked at him calmly.
Song Jun raised his hand, turned and walked towards the forensic building.
When Song Jun returned to the dormitory at night, he saw that the door of Xia Hongshen’s room opposite was closed, and he wondered if he had fallen asleep. He took out the key and opened the door, and suddenly saw something black on the window jumping in from the outside.
He was startled and immediately turned on the light in the room and saw it was a little black cat.
The little black cat raised its head and gave him a ‘meow’.
Song Jun breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that the cat had come in from outside because his window was open. He walked over to the table and dropped the keys, then sat down to change his shoes.
The little black cat kept staring at him, and when he saw the black cat looking at him, he would whisper back ‘meow’.
Song Jun originally wanted to drive it out, but he couldn’t bear it because of its well-behaved appearance, so he took out a ham sausage from the drawer and fed it to the black cat.
The little black cat buried his head and smelled it but refused to eat it.
Song Jun hesitated a little and reached out to touch the little black cat’s head. He found that the little black cat lay down softly, so he scratched its chin with his fingers and watched it narrow its eyes in enjoyment.
Later, Song Jun went to the water room to take a shower, and when he came back, the little black cat was gone. He stuck his head out of the window to look but saw nothing.
The author has something to say:
I would also like to thank the girl who commented and caught bugs2usually typos. As for the settings, it’s correct that the senior brother is the gong.
Notes:
The title itself actually has English similar expression that is running into a brick wall or hitting a dead end.
But since the whole novel is a horror theme, I leave it that way
While I’m translating this chapter, I keep praying plis don’t jumpscare me, plis don’t jumpscare me TᴖT
Idk what’s the deal with Arabic numeral number tho, but I hope it’s explained later
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