Chen Zhi suddenly grabbed Hongyu's wrist. "What did your mother do to you?"
Hongyu's expression changed instantly. Her gaze turned cold, and the faint curve at her lips vanished.
"She said I had a demon inside me," Hongyu replied, her voice no longer that of a little girl—it had dropped into the chilling tone of an adult woman. "She tied me to the bed, poured holy water on me, and burned my back with a crucifix…"
She lifted the hem of her pajama top, revealing a back crisscrossed with scars—some still fresh and pink, others scabbed over and jagged. The pattern of the wounds looked strange, like an ancient language written in pain.
Chen Meng's voice trembled. "What happened after that?"
Hongyu lowered her shirt, her expression once again calm and emotionless. "Then I locked Mommy inside the mirror," she said cheerfully, skipping back to the bed. She reached under her pillow and pulled out a ragged cloth doll. "Now she can only watch me from in here."
Only then did Liu Ming notice—the doll's face had been slashed into a mess. Two buttons were stitched where the eyes should be, and a jagged red line formed a crooked mouth. A thin wire was looped tightly around its neck.
"You…" Liu Ming croaked, voice raw. "You're not like Bai Ye… are you?"
Hongyu tilted her head, pondering. The motion should've been childlike, but it was anything but. "Big Sister Bai says we're both monsters," she said with a pout. "But I don't like it when she calls me that. I'm just… different."
Chen Zhi abruptly raised the coin sword and pointed it at her. "Do you know what a 'Flesh-Eater' is?"
Hongyu's eyelashes fluttered slightly. "The man in white called me that too," she said calmly. "He said I'll grow up to be like Bai Jie one day."
She lowered her head and began fiddling with the doll's arm. "But I don't want to wait that long."
"What man?" Chen Meng asked urgently.
Hongyu didn't answer. Instead, she twisted the doll's head clean off. A few human teeth tumbled out of its neck and scattered across the floor. She picked one up and rolled it between her fingers like a marble.
"Big Sister Bai says the demon inside me will awaken on my eighteenth birthday," she said softly. "But I don't want to wait."
The cracked wall mirror suddenly began to shake violently. The shards clanged against each other with a piercing clatter. Bai Ye's figure inside started to distort—her mouth opened unnaturally wide in a silent scream.
"She knows," Hongyu said calmly, clutching the headless doll tightly. "Bai Jie doesn't like anyone interrupting her game."
Lights in the hallway began to go out, one after another. Darkness flooded toward the room like a rising tide. The copper bells in Chen Zhi's hand finally emitted a shrill, blood-curdling screech—like a warning from something ancient.
"We have to go," Chen Zhi snapped. He grabbed Liu Ming and Chen Meng by the wrists. "Now!"
Hongyu stood still as the others fled. Her eyes remained disturbingly calm.
"Big brother," she called out to Liu Ming, her voice as light as a feather, "can you do me a favor?"
Liu Ming froze. "What is it?"
"Next time you come," she said, tilting her head with a slight smile, "bring me a real mirror, okay? Not this one." She nudged the bronze mirror on the floor with her toe. "I want one that can shatter."
Chen Zhi yanked Liu Ming out the door. Just before it shut, they heard a sharp shatter of glass—and Hongyu's silver-bell laughter echoed through the ward.
"Hide-and-seek has begun!"
As they bolted out through the hospital gates, Liu Ming glanced back. In the window of Room 12 on the seventh floor, a small silhouette stood quietly, waving goodbye under the moonlight. And in that pale glow, Liu Ming saw—
Hongyu's eyes were not just black.
They were bottomless holes
Liu Ming saw Bai Ye again on the fourth night.
It was 2:17 a.m.
He was trapped in a chaotic dream—an endlessly stretching hospital corridor, lined with doors. Behind every small window on those doors pressed a face, festering and rotting. Footsteps echoed from afar, slow and steady, like a metronome. He tried to run, but the hallway never ended.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The line between dream and reality suddenly blurred.
Liu Ming jolted awake. The footsteps were no longer inside his dream—they were coming from right outside his bedroom door.
The ticking of the wall clock grew unbearably loud. Liu Ming lay frozen in bed, drenched in cold sweat. The shuffling noises outside stopped. A new sound began—wet, sticky, like a clammy hand sliding up glass. It crept up the door slowly.
"Liu Ming…" Bai Ye's voice came through the door—sugary sweet, like melted candy. "I'm coming in."
His heart nearly stopped.
Moonlight seeped in through the curtain slit, casting a pale line across the floor. The door creaked open—no wind stirred, but the papers on his desk fluttered as if touched by an invisible hand. A cloying mix of rot and cheap floral powder filled the room, like spoiled blood mingling with outdated perfume.
"Long time no see."
The voice came from right beside the bed.
Liu Ming nearly bit through his tongue.
Bai Ye was sitting at the edge of his bed. Moonlight passed through her semi-transparent left arm, revealing a network of pulsing blood vessels beneath the skin. The right side of her body was grotesquely decayed—flesh sloughing off her neck like wet paper, exposing a layer of muscle with a pearlescent sheen.
"Did you have fun playing your little game?" Bai Ye tilted her head. A chunk of rot slipped from her cheek and landed on his blanket with a wet plop. It instantly burned a hole through the fabric, leaving charred yellow edges.
Liu Ming couldn't move. His mind screamed for him to reach under the pillow, where Chen Zhi had left the coin sword. But his limbs no longer responded—they were frozen.
Bai Ye leaned in, her rotted right eye nearly brushing his nose. Her pupils were solid black, mirror-like, reflecting a twisted version of himself—like an insect trapped in amber.
"I still like you," Bai Ye said sweetly, her voice suddenly that of an eight-year-old. "Just like how I liked Zhou Xiaomei's pencil case back in second grade." Her left hand touched Liu Ming's face—cool and smooth like silk soaked in ice. "And when you like something… you break it."
"I… what do you want from me?" Liu Ming finally croaked.
Bai Ye grinned, her mouth splitting all the way to her ears, revealing shark-like rows of needle-sharp teeth.
"I want to be your friend," she said softly. "The closest kind of friend."
Her hand slid from his cheek to his neck. Her fingernails extended unnaturally, and her body began to wrap around him like a shroud. Her decayed parts liquefied into translucent black gel, swirling in the air like ink dropped into water. Liu Ming tried to move, but his limbs were pinned down by invisible force—he couldn't even blink.
"Your fear… is delicious," her voice echoed directly inside his skull. "So much richer than that bookstore clerk's…"
Black matter began to seep into Liu Ming's nose, ears, and mouth. It felt like being filled with icy water and shattered glass—every inch of his insides screamed. His vision turned crimson. Shadows pulsed across his retinas—tiny, writhing demons dancing in ecstasy.
Just as he was about to pass out, a memory surfaced—Chen Meng had said, "The formation will activate on its own when danger strikes."
With all the strength he had left, Liu Ming reached toward his chest. Beneath his pajamas, the talisman Chen Zhi had given him was burning hot.
Bai Ye shrieked—a sound so sharp it nearly burst his eardrums. The black matter inside him writhed violently, like leeches doused in acid. Hot liquid gushed from his nose and mouth—not blood, but the retreating black substance.
The floor beneath them began to glow faintly red. Ancient symbols drawn with chicken blood and cinnabar earlier that evening now lit up, glowing like molten iron. Bai Ye's transparent body twisted violently within the array, her decayed flesh peeling off faster, revealing something even less human beneath—something between insect shell and exposed bone.
"You think this will stop me?" Bai Ye hissed, voice crackling like a broken radio. Her left arm exploded into a swarm of black insects that scattered in all directions.
Liu Ming scrambled toward the desk, grabbing for the bronze mirror in the drawer. His eyes were bloodshot, vision fading at the edges—but primal survival drove him on. Behind him came the sound of boiling fluid and Bai Ye's inhuman growls.
The moment he touched the mirror, it burned his skin—hot as fresh-forged iron. Gritting his teeth, he turned and aimed it at the distorted figure in the array.
The mirror did not reflect Bai Ye's decaying face—but a mass of shifting black mist. At its core curled a fetus-like creature covered in countless blinking eyes. Every eye reflected a different moment of Liu Ming's death.
Bai Ye screamed—a shriek not of any human origin. Her body turned translucent at a terrifying speed, like ink being washed from paper.
"This isn't over…" her voice came from all directions. "Don't you want to be with me?"
A bone-chilling wind tore through the room. Every glass object shattered at once. Liu Ming covered his head as shards rained down. When he looked up again, Bai Ye was gone.
Only puddles of black sludge remained, steaming as they evaporated. The stench of rot lingered in the air.
The glow of the formation slowly dimmed.
Liu Ming slumped to the floor. He could move again.
He touched his neck. Five small puncture marks. Her fingernails. The blood had clotted, but the pain was still sharp—like he had been branded.
Suddenly, a rustling came from the window. A crow landed on the sill, beak stained red with something thick and dark. It cocked its head at Liu Ming.
Its left eye was that of a normal bird.
Its right eye—was unmistakably human. The iris was blood-red.
Liu Ming hurled a cup at the window. The crow vanished into the night.
The cup bounced off the frame and shattered on the floor.
Moonlight grew unnaturally bright. Liu Ming stayed curled inside the protective array, struggling to stay conscious, holding on until dawn.
His phone lit up with a message from Chen Meng:
"My dad found something. Bai Ye's power is weakening! She needs a host to survive…"
Sunlight pierced through the blinds and stabbed into his eyes.
He blinked.
But the images from the night wouldn't fade—Bai Ye's rotting face, her gaping smile, and the black substance oozing from her eyes.
He instinctively touched his neck.
The five puncture wounds had crusted over.
But they still burned.
And when he looked down at his right arm…
A strange numbness had taken hold.
Beneath the pale skin, black threads squirmed—like water snakes trapped in glass.
When he focused on them, they stilled—pretending to be nothing but veins.