Transmigrierte Kaiserinnen (männlich und weiblich)

Kapitel 6

As expected, Shen Meixuan committed suicide. Dressed as a teru teru bozu (a Japanese doll), she hanged herself in mid-air.

She then realized that she had been used, a pawn in someone else's game, a weapon used to kill, and had committed an irreparable mistake. The price she paid was undoubtedly heavy.

She never went to see Shen Meixuan; it was a nightmare for her, and she felt deep guilt and regret... She never expected that she would find that daughter, only to lose her forever.

After Shen Meixuan's death, everything seemed calm again. Chi Huimei lived a solitary life in the girls' dormitory. Seeing the lively and lovely girls reminded her of Shen Meixuan, and she often knitted sweaters for her in her room. In truth, for the past two years, she had been filled with remorse, regretting agreeing to the young man's request. To commemorate her, she secretly set up a mourning altar in Shen Meixuan's room. Every night, when all was quiet, she would go there to burn incense and whisper secrets to her "daughter." The person was gone, but the living continued to struggle in the world.

She kept this secret in her heart forever.

She was afraid of dying.

At this moment, Chi Huimei saw the teru teru bozu (a Japanese doll shaped like a teru teru bozu) again. It appeared like a ghost, its round head filled with vicious curses. Her consciousness grew increasingly blurred; she felt that Shen Meixuan's resentment had accumulated enormous energy and was now uncontrollably erupting.

Do the dead become ghosts?

Chi Huimei shook her head, trembling, opened the closet on the wall, took out some tinfoil and ghost money, and put them in a small basket. Every month at this time, she would go to burn some things for Shen Meixuan, praying that she could have a better life down there.

Chapter 28: The Ghost Doll Returns (28)

The midnight wind was bone-chilling. Carrying her basket, she walked nervously into a side street. For some reason, she felt a nameless fear, as if something was closely following her, like her own shadow. She dared not look back, afraid of seeing something she shouldn't.

As she passed 733 Xianshan Road, she encountered a large crowd weeping around a coffin. A black-and-white photograph of the deceased stood prominently in the center of the mourning hall, like a vibrant head, seemingly telling her something. In an instant, a vast sea appeared before her eyes, with a small cargo ship adrift on it. Her parents, brother, and husband were leaning on the bow deck, their hands swollen from being soaked in seawater, beckoning to her…

"Come down, come down..." The voice seemed to come from underground, from the mouth of her husband who had been dead for more than ten years, pouring into her ears and then seeping into every blood vessel in her body through her nerve cells.

"No!" Chi Huimei couldn't help but cry out, staggering away from the door of number 733. The deceased's relatives were all looking at her with a strange feeling, a gaze so bizarre, as if they were at a funeral...

On the way, she met a handsome young man. He was also going to number 733. She pointed to the location behind her and hurried away. Unconsciously, she began to envy the person in the coffin. She thought that if so many people could visit him after his death, to grieve and weep for him, then his life had not been in vain. What would it be like if one day I lay there too? Would anyone weep for me? She kept asking herself these questions, then looked up at the dark sky. No one gave her an answer.

After a while, Chi Huimei stood at a crossroads facing the wind and burned all the tinfoil and ghost money.

It was getting late, and she remembered she needed to go back and lock the dormitory building, so she quickened her pace.

As she turned a corner, a shadow suddenly flashed past on her right. It was too fast for her to tell whether it was a person or a ghost.

Her heart skipped a beat, and using the dim streetlights, she strained to look around...

In a flash, the silhouette of a person appeared in her pupils. Under the stark white streetlights, the person's face looked as pale as a corpse.

"It's you!"

In that brief moment, she suddenly felt a cool sensation in her throat, as if a cold wind had crept into her neck...

(9)

12:30 a.m.

Song Xiaomo knocked on the door of the boys' dormitory building. A few minutes later, the large iron gate slowly opened a small crack. A dim candlelight illuminated the male administrator's narrowed eyes.

"Where have you been? Why are you back so late?" the male administrator asked warily.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I just went to dinner with a friend, so I'm a little late," Song Xiaomo stammered.

"Then be more careful next time. There was a power outage tonight, and who knows what kind of ghosts might be lurking in the dead of night."

"Okay, definitely." Song Xiaomo quickly smiled and squeezed through the door, heading upstairs.

Chapter 29: The Ghost Doll Returns (29)

He had only taken a few steps when he suddenly stopped and asked cautiously, "Uncle, did you hear any strange noises just now?"

"What did you say? What happened?"

"Oh, it's nothing, it's nothing. I'll go upstairs now. Goodnight." Song Xiaomo hurried upstairs.

"How inexplicable," the male administrator muttered, entering the room and blowing out the candles.

At this moment, the corridor was pitch black.

Song Xiaomo, clutching the large box, cautiously made his way forward. The corridor was eerily quiet; the rustling of the wind outside was clearly audible, like a trembling groan. Although he was familiar with the layout, he couldn't help feeling a chilling aura permeating the corridor, and something unseen was slowly approaching him.

He held his breath as much as he could, trying not to make a sound under his feet, afraid that any noise would alert anything lurking around him. He walked very, very slowly, the long staircase seemingly endless.

After a while, he finally climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. Room 520 was not far away. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, took a long breath, and wondered, "Was I too nervous?"

As he approached room 520, he suddenly stopped as if by reflex.

Good heavens, a white shadow is slowly drifting in front of me; it's definitely not a human shadow. It's floating in mid-air, headless, without hands or feet, without legs… like a bizarre phantom.

A headless corpse?

Or is it the ghost of the dead?

Song Xiaomo felt a sudden chill run down his spine, his scalp tingling, and his heart leap into his throat. He stood frozen, unable to move. He seemed to see the dead head hanging in mid-air in the opposite room again. It was floating towards him, inching closer to the body. Ghostly shadows loomed all around…

"Don't be afraid, there's nothing here, don't be afraid..." Song Xiaomo quickly closed her eyes and cheered herself up.

Several minutes passed, and the shadow was still floating, neither attacking him nor showing any unusual behavior. Song Xiaomo hesitated for a moment, then mustered his courage and walked over. Then, the white shadow gradually took shape in Song Xiaomo's eyes; it was a white shirt hanging in front of room 519.

"Damn it, who hung these clothes?" Song Xiaomo cursed inwardly as she took out her keys to open the door.

Just then, he vaguely sensed something strange behind him, as if something was following him.

He turned around abruptly, and was shocked to find a pair of eyes staring at him from some dark corner...

Song Xiaomo's heart was pounding in his throat. He wanted to shout, but his throat was too tense to obey him, and he could only stammer out a single word: "Who?"

The owner of those eyes glanced around but remained silent. At that moment, a mysterious man appeared out of nowhere. Who could he be?

It took Song Xiaomo a long time to calm himself down. Although the light was dim, it was enough for him to see the person in front of him clearly at close range.

Chapter 30: The Ghost Doll Returns (30)

He was an unusually thin man, his face devoid of color. He looked like a dried-up corpse, his emaciated back bare, wearing only white shorts, sitting on the floor, his hands trembling—almost nothing but bones, with hardly any flesh left.

Soon, the man lowered his head and began busily working on something again. His hands kept moving, up and down. Even stranger, he seemed to ignore Song Xiaomo's presence. Song Xiaomo noticed that when he saw her earlier, there wasn't a trace of panic in his eyes. In other words, he seemed to treat Song Xiaomo, a living, breathing person, as if she didn't exist.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Song Xiaomo asked curiously.

There was no response.

The man seemed not to hear at all, continuing his work. He appeared very absorbed, and his movements were quite practiced. Song Xiaomo observed for a while and noticed that he was holding a white object in his hands, which resembled a sinister skull.

"Hey, can you say something?" Song Xiaomo said again.

The person still did not react.

"Is he deaf?" Song Xiaomo wondered.

Just then, a few blinding flashes of light appeared in the darkness. The lights in the hallway suddenly switched on; the power was finally back on.

Song Xiaomo's eyes widened, almost unable to believe what he was seeing. His eyes felt as if they had been stung by something—

It's a Teru Teru Bozu doll again!

The man was sewing a teru teru bozu (a Japanese doll made of teru teru bozu), a round monster the size of an ordinary person's head. The facial features were so lifelike, it looked incredibly terrifying. In the dead of night, someone was actually in the corridor, sewing such a bizarre thing.

Did he encounter something strange as well?

He seemed to have gone mad, as if some power was attached to him.

Song Xiaomo glanced at the thing in his hand again, feeling a jolt of electricity run through his body, accompanied by a strong sense of nausea. He quickly tucked the small doll into his clothes.

"Tell me, what... what are you doing?" Song Xiaomo asked nervously, her voice trembling.

The thin man raised his sickly face, glanced at him expressionlessly, and then pulled a knife from his pocket. The blade was long and flat, with a brown handle.

The gleaming blade radiated a chilling light.

"You...you shouldn't do anything reckless..." Song Xiaomo tried her best to back away, her whole body tense up instantly, staring at him warily.

Then, something incredible happened again.

The man picked up a knife and slowly began to cut at the newly sewn teru teru bozu (a Japanese doll made of teru teru bozu), each cut aimed at the neck. In the blink of an eye, the doll's head was severed.

Song Xiaomo gasped for breath, as if something was stuck in his throat, and he couldn't utter a single word. He was terrified by this person's bizarre behavior; his fear had seeped into his bones, and gruesome images of "human dismemberment" kept flashing through his mind.

Just then, there was some movement behind the door. Song Xiaomo turned her head and saw Park Eun-hee's body sticking out. He had probably been woken up in room 521.

Chapter 31: The Ghost Doll Returns (31)

Song Xiaomo clung to Park Eun-hee's arm like a drowning man grasping at a straw. But when his palm touched Park Eun-hee's arm, he felt a chill.

"Xiao Mo, come in and talk."

"Then he..."

"Stop talking and come in quickly," Park Eun-hee urged.

“Okay.” Song Xiaomo stepped into Park Eun-hee’s room, then looked back. He saw the person’s lips twitch slightly, and she uttered a muffled sentence: “I saw it.”

"What do you see?"

"Enough, stop talking nonsense." Park Eun-hee quickly closed the door and pushed Song Xiaomo onto the sofa next to her.

"Eun-hee, who is he?" Song Xiaomo touched her chest with lingering fear as she looked at Park Eun-hee's face.

“Li Zhengzhen, he’s also your neighbor, he lives in room 519.”

"No way? Why have I never seen him before?" Song Xiaomo found it hard to believe.

"Of course, he was in the hospital receiving treatment when you arrived."

"What illness?"

Park Eun-hee glanced at the door and whispered, "It's a mental health issue, so whatever he says in the future, don't believe him. And whatever unusual things he does, don't overthink it... Sigh, it's been two years now. His condition has been fluctuating, and he's never fully recovered. We just moved in from the hospital tonight, and I didn't expect him to have another attack in the middle of the night. He was probably sleepwalking just now..."

"Sleepwalking?" Song Xiaomo was taken aback, then asked, "Why would someone have this condition?"

"Actually... he was classmates with Kim In-hyun, who died two years ago, and the two were quite close. He happened to witness the incident when Kim In-hyun had the accident, and was so frightened that he fainted on the spot. After waking up, he developed mental problems. The doctor said he may have suffered excessive shock, which led to schizophrenia..."

"Then why do you think he's behaving so strangely? Could it really be the curse of the ghost doll?"

"Don't scare me, okay? Have you been watching too many Japanese horror movies?"

"No, I feel like there's something fishy about all this. My mind is a mess right now, I can't think straight. Maybe there will be more unexpected things to come. By the way, did you hear what Li Zhengzhen said last?"

"What?"

Song Xiaomo's eyes were somewhat dazed, and after a moment of hesitation, she said, "I saw it..."

"You mean he... he also saw what was happening on the other side..." Park Eun-hee's expression turned serious.

A faint fishy smell lingered in the air.

Song Xiaomo didn't say anything more, stood up, and walked to the window.

A thin layer of water droplets covered the glass; it had started raining outside sometime earlier, and raindrops were constantly pattering against the glass. The opposite side was a blurry, mysterious, and unknown expanse; nothing could be seen.