In the still of the night, the knocking sounded particularly jarring.
Ke Xun felt the knocking was right next to his ear, even believing it was coming from his own apartment, 411.
The knocking grew louder, accompanied by a woman's tearful voice: "Open the door! Please open the door!"
The voice sounded somewhat familiar, perhaps one of the three long-legged girls. Thinking it was one of his companions, Ke Xun couldn't stay still and sat up, intending to peek through the window.
Mu Yiran, lying beside him, reached out and pulled Ke Xun back, saying in a very low voice, "It's 410."
Sure enough, the knocking resumed, this time pounding on the door. The girl outside cried out pleadingly, "Sisters! There's something wrong with this building! It's uninhabitable! Come out, let's discuss how to get out!"
The pounding grew louder, filled with a deathly despair.
But all they received in return was deathly silence.
Ke Xun still wanted to peek through the window, but Mu Yiran held her arm firmly, her voice close to her ear: "The other party has violated the rules of the painting."
Ke Xun's arm paused. Indeed, they had violated the gatekeeper's rule of "no visiting after lights out." Knocking on the door was itself an invitation to visit.
A light flashed outside, like the beam of a cell phone flashlight, brushing past the window before dimming again.
The knocking gradually subsided, and it sounded like a girl was crying: "What should we do? Is there anyone left in this building...?"
Another girl's voice said: "It's past midnight, let's go back inside, we'll move out tomorrow!"
The two girls' figures were cast on the curtains by the cell phone light, the light flickering, their figures appearing somewhat chaotic, as if cut by the light.
The two passed Ke Xun's window, the light fading into the distance, but their voices were clear in the darkness: "Luckily we bought candles, we'll use them for light tonight."...
Ke Xun and Mu Yiran remained silent for a long time. Ke Xun sat on the edge of the bed, while Mu Yiran lay still.
In the pitch-black night, one is extremely sensitive to light—a window across the way suddenly lit up, emitting a warm orange glow, the one from room 402 where the girls lived.
"One of the three of them is alone." Mu Yiran's voice remained extremely low.
Indeed, only two girls had run over for help earlier.
"Perhaps they violated more than one rule." Ke Xun lay back down, sensing that the participants in this painting were quite different from those before, but soon they would submit to the rules of the painting—all their self-righteousness would be quelled in the face of death.
Because of the candlelight in the opposite room, this room was no longer so dark. Ke Xun lay down on his side and looked at Mu Yiran's angular profile: "Mu Yiran, have you noticed that the people living in this apartment call this place the Spring Bamboo Shoot Dormitory?"
The word "Mu" was uttered softly by Ke Xun, sounding almost the same as "Yiran".
Mu Yiran ignored being called "Yiran" and continued the conversation: "The term 'dormitory' often comes from a collective of a unit or school."
"Logically speaking, 'dormitory' is an old-fashioned term; in the past, they were called student dormitories, and now universities call them student apartments," Ke Xun said, resting his head on his arm. "It seems that the predecessor of Chunsun Apartment was Chunsun Dormitory. So… Chunsun Apartment used to belong to a collective of a unit?"
Mu Yiran agreed: "The elderly people cooling off downstairs seem very familiar with each other, unlike the way people interact in ordinary residential areas or apartments."
"You mean, these elderly people used to be employees of a unit? So they weren't just neighbors, but also former coworkers?"
If that's the case, the relationships between the residents of these unit dormitories are not so simple.
These people can be said to form their own collective, and they are inherently somewhat xenophobic towards outsiders.
It's like the hostility of people in a village towards outsiders.
"There are still quite a few outsiders here, and most of the shopkeepers downstairs speak with accents from other places." Mu Yiran's voice came clearly from beside the pillow. Although the pillows were a bit far apart, Ke Xun actually found the distance warm and comfortable.
"Hmm, like the fifth sister at the restaurant, and that woman in red at the Wenzhou hair salon," Ke Xun's mind flashed back to the people he had seen that evening, and he shivered in the middle of summer. "Did you notice that all those people had one thing in common in their clothes today?"
Mu Yiran didn't answer immediately, and after a while said, "Let's discuss this topic during the day."
Ever since Ke Xun summarized the characteristics of these people's clothing, he felt that it was full of ominous signs. Hearing Mu Yiran say this, he also felt that it was not good to talk about this in the middle of the night. Besides, they were in the painting, and nighttime was the most dangerous time—what the two of them were saying now might be heard by something else in the corner.
The more they talked about it, the more eerie the apartment seemed. Ke Xun couldn't help but lean closer to Mu Yiran's ear: "When you first arrived, did you carefully observe this building?"
Mu Yiran's voice was so low it seemed only he could hear: "From the outside, it looks like a pillbox."
It turned out he wasn't the only one who noticed this. If the entire cylindrical building looked like a pillbox from the outside, it meant the pillar couldn't possibly have many windows. But the room clearly had windows facing the street!
Why couldn't these windows be seen from the outside? Where were they located?
Ke Xun recalled the pitch-black night he saw through the window when he first entered the room, and he seemed to understand a little.
Some things, however, were better left unsaid at night.
So Ke Xun yawned: "Go to sleep, we have to get up early for the restaurant tomorrow."
"Mm."
Ke Xun turned over and lay down: "Goodnight?"
"Goodnight."
Although he started his sleep with a goodnight, Ke Xun couldn't fall asleep for a while. The people he saw today kept replaying in his mind: the woman in the red skirt at the hair salon entrance; the fifth sister in the small restaurant wearing retro black leggings and a white T-shirt, with large red maple leaves printed on the front of her T-shirt, along with the words: "A maple leaf's affection"...
and the doorman in the red tank top, and the old lady next door who lived in 409, also wearing a red floral T-shirt...
All of these people were wearing red, some in shades, some in light red, which couldn't be a coincidence.
Red is clearly a symbol of celebration, but the fact that all of these people were wearing red, especially at night, in such an eerie apartment building, turned the celebration into a strange omen.
The night remained quiet, and the anticipated danger seemed to have vanished, or perhaps it was simply too deeply hidden to reveal itself yet.
The girls living across the street in apartment 402, who had already broken the taboo, still had their candles lit in their windows…
Ke Xun unknowingly fell asleep, and slept soundly until Mu Yiran woke him early the next morning: "Something's happened outside."
In the painting, "something happened" meant someone had died.
Ke Xun sat up, feeling the room was still dimly lit. Although there was light coming from the doorway and the small window beside it, the area around the bed seemed trapped in darkness.
Ke Xun involuntarily looked at the large window facing the street; there wasn't a single ray of light outside. Mu Yiran immediately pulled back the curtains, revealing a dark gray cement wall standing just an arm's length away from the window.
No wonder yesterday this building looked like a pillbox—there were no windows to be seen! Someone had built a cement wall around the building! The entire building was essentially sealed inside; people could only see the world inside, unable to see or hear anything outside.
Such a bizarre, man-made isolation—who could have done it? It couldn't have been someone living in the building, could it?
Ke Xun didn't have time to think too much. He got up and went out of the room with Mu Yiran. Standing in the corridor outside, they could see a large crowd gathered in the courtyard, and two bodies covered with white sheets—corpses.
Sha Liu and Qiu Lu were also standing by the railing, looking down. Sha Liu seemed to realize that a death was about to occur; her eyes behind her glasses were deathly calm, but her body was still trembling uncontrollably.
Qiu Lu was completely frozen in place: "What... what happened?"
"Let's go downstairs and take a look." Mu Yiran led the way to the stairs, followed by the others, all with heavy expressions.
When they reached the bottom, the onlookers had almost all dispersed, leaving mostly members of their own team. Everyone's face showed fear, pity, or blankness—all were extremely grim.
Qin Ci lifted the white sheet and found that the body was charred black, as was the other body.
Xin Miao, one of the three long-legged girls, was now as white as paper, trembling all over: "I told them that lighting candles all night is dangerous, but they wouldn't listen..."
Qin Ci frowned and asked, "Was there a fire in the room last night?"
"Maybe... maybe." Xin Miao's lips trembled, her words incoherent.
Qiu Lu couldn't help but ask, "You were sharing a room, didn't you know there was a fire?"
Xin Miao shook her head vigorously, "I slept soundly all night. In the middle of the night, I felt a bit choked and coughed a few times. I thought it was Tina smoking... I didn't feel any fire at all... until this morning, when I found them both..."
Xin Miao's eyes widened, her body trembling uncontrollably, seemingly unable to recall the scene from this morning—the two charred corpses sleeping beside her.
The doorman, still wearing his faded red tank top, directed several people to carry the bodies away, waving a large key tray in his hand: "Go to Fifth Sister's Restaurant for breakfast at eight o'clock."
The door was then opened, and the people carrying the bodies went out through the gate.
Xinmiao suddenly went berserk, her eyes wide as she rushed out, yelling, "Let me out! Let me out! This is no place for a human being! Anyone who dares to stop me! I'm calling the police! I'm suing you for illegal detention!"
Several people eventually managed to stop her. Sha Liu's sharp gaze pierced through her glasses: "Going out will only hasten your death!"
Xinmiao nearly convulsed in despair: "What happened? Can anyone tell me what happened?!"
Mu Yiran glanced at his watch: "It's only seven o'clock. Let's go to the scene of the death," he said, his gaze lingering on Xinmiao's face. "You'd better calm down and tell me everything you can remember. Maybe that can prevent another tragedy from happening."
Xinmiao's eyes were empty, like a corpse, and she murmured, "She was alive and kicking yesterday, and this morning she's charred black... The room is full of black powder from their bodies... everywhere..."
Ke Xun looked at Sha Liu: "You stay and try to persuade her. We'll go upstairs first."
Ke Xun still had faith in Sha Liu's persuasive power.
Sha Liu nodded and pulled Xin Miao aside: "The reason for this is that they broke the rules first. Last night, after lights out, they knocked on other people's doors, which is essentially a form of visiting."
Xin Miao gasped for breath like a dying fish: "Yes, they knocked on room 410 last night..." Xin Miao's voice suddenly rose, staring intently at Sha Liu, "You live in 410, right? Why didn't you open the door for them?!"
Sha Liu's expression was cold: "If I had opened the door, I might have been the one burned to death."
Sha Liu then asked: "And you? What were you doing when they knocked on the door last night?"