Have you ever watched surveillance footage at two o'clock in the morning?
The grainy black-and-white night vision blurs everything into a hazy gray mist. The corridor lights cast a ghastly pale glow, far too lifeless for the living world. What if a figure suddenly shifts in the frame? Would your heart skip a beat?
What if that figure is you?
Yet you are clearly sitting inside the monitoring room.
## Chapter 1
I took this job when I only had four hundred yuan left in my pocket.
This is no exaggeration. I checked my Alipay balance: 398.6 yuan. My rent was due in three days, and I could never afford the deposit and quarterly payment upfront. So when Senior Zhou messaged me out of the blue: *"Night shift job, free accommodation. You in?"* I agreed without a single question about the work.
Senior Zhou was my senior from university. Three years after graduation, he was barely faring better than me. He worked as a supervisor at a haunted house built inside an abandoned amusement park on the city's outskirts. The title sounded fancy, but in truth, he only managed a handful of part-timers and a single janitor.
"Let me be clear," Senior Zhou yawned over the phone. "Your role is surveillance duty. All you do is watch the monitors and radio if anything happens. Ten PM to six AM. Your quarters are right next door, an old staff lounge we cleaned up."
I said okay.
"Monthly salary: four thousand five hundred yuan."
I still said okay.
"Aren't you curious about the place?" He sounded surprised.
I paused, then asked quietly: "Did something terrible happen at this amusement park before?"
Silence lingered on the line for two seconds.
"You'll see when you get here."
I took a two-hour bus ride to the venue the next evening. The abandoned park sat on the northern edge of the city, surrounded by run-down residential buildings marked for demolition and overgrown wasteland. The rusted iron main gate had long lost its original color, yet the haunted house itself looked surprisingly new. Rumor had it the owner poured over three million into renovations to build an immersive horror experience. Then the pandemic hit, the park collapsed, and only this haunted house lingered on, barely scraping by with team-building events and escape room bookings.
The building stood in sharp Gothic style, its exterior painted charcoal gray. A three-meter-tall skeleton sculpture loomed at the entrance, holding an electronic display scrolling ticket prices and show times. Oddly comical in daylight, it exuded undeniable dread after dark.
Senior Zhou waited for me at the gate, wearing a crumpled work uniform with a greasy collar and thinning hair. "You're here. Come check your station first."
The monitoring room was a cramped cubicle beside the main haunted house building, barely ten square meters wide. One wall held twelve surveillance screens lined above a clunky control console and an old desktop computer. The opposite wall housed a folding camp bed, an iron locker, and a mini-fridge.
"Twelve camera feeds total," he explained, pointing at the monitors. "Lobby, ticket booth, entrances, Corridors A to E, Zone A mechanism control, Zone B prop storage, and the rear staff passage. Crowded during the day, empty after ten PM. Keep an eye on entrances and corridors, confirm visitors or staff, stop anyone from causing trouble."
He added in a low tone: "Hardly anyone comes at night. You can sleep, just don't pass out completely."
I sat on the camp bed, and its rusted springs creaked loudly.
"One more thing." He pulled a key from his desk drawer and handed it over. "Lock that iron locker tight. It stores surveillance hard drives and maintenance tools—no visitors allowed near it."
A white label stuck to the key, marked in permanent marker: **Locker 403**.
"403?"
"Just locker numbering across the whole park, leftover old rules. Don't overthink it."
Senior Zhou checked his watch, said he had a dinner gathering to rush to, and left a bag of frozen dumplings on the fridge. "Don't starve out here."
I watched his figure vanish down the corridor.
Nothing happened on my first official night shift. I stared at twelve cold screens from ten PM till two AM, not a single shadow stirring. Corridors A through E lay desaturated and gray, mannequin props in the storage room looking even more artificial under night vision. I browsed short videos, ate instant noodles, dimmed the main lights at half-past two, and laid down on the bed.
Curtains hung askew, letting faint pale light seep inside, painting a thin white line across the floor.
Halfway to drifting off, static crackled from the walkie-talkie.
Then a voice spoke.
"Hello?"
A woman's soft voice.
I jolted upright and grabbed the radio. "Who's there?"
Only endless static.
All twelve monitors stayed dead silent. Empty corridors, frozen mannequins, the ticket booth screen stuck on gray *Closed Service*.
I brushed it off as signal interference. Cheap walkie-talkies always picked up stray frequencies from nearby construction sites.
I laid back down.
Dawn broke at six AM. I shut down the surveillance system, realizing I had terminated my old rental lease—this cramped monitoring room was my new home. A part-time college student covered the day shift, with far lighter duties: managing visitor order during opening hours.
I unlocked the 403 locker to grab a bottle of water. Rows of labeled hard drives lined the shelves, marked with years and dates. A rusty needle-nose pliers rested on the bottom shelf.
As I twisted the key back into the lock, I noticed faint handwriting on the back of the label I'd never seen before.
> Locker 403 — Do NOT view the following hard drives between 00:00 and 04:00.
I flipped the label back and forth, confirming the words were real.
The wall clock read ten past six in the morning, yet my mind felt slow and foggy. I pocketed the key, locked the locker, and splashed cold water on my face in the restroom.
The day-shift part-timer was a college girl named Song Wanwan. She had morning classes Monday to Friday and only worked afternoons, asking if I could handle mornings alone. I agreed—there was never anyone around this early.
Wanwan looked barely twenty, with light makeup and a habit of tilting her head while talking. She glanced at my dark under-eyes. "Did you sleep well last night?"
"Fine."
"Heard any strange noises?" She asked casually, like small talk.
"Didn't notice anything."
"Good." She smiled, nodding at the darkest surveillance screen in the corner. "The last night guard quit after a week. Said he kept hearing a woman laughing in the empty corridors."
"Probably visitors."
"No entry for guests after ten PM." She blinked slowly. "Didn't your supervisor tell you that?"
I explained Senior Zhou had rushed through the briefing, skipping countless details.
Wanwan dropped the topic and settled at the control console, skillfully checking ticketing systems and equipment. Clearly, she was no rookie.
I wandered to that corner monitor, focused on Corridor C. This winding passage connected two core haunted house sections, with a life-sized dummy prop propped around the bend. The real-time timestamp read 8:47 AM. The corridor stood empty, cold gray walls stretching endlessly beside the dummy's silhouette.
I switched back to the main feed and turned to leave.
"Wait." Wanwan called me over. "What's your name?"
"Lin Yao."
"Brother Lin." She nodded. "I'm Song Wanwan. We'll cover shifts together, come find me if anything happens." Her voice dropped to a murmur. "If you hear odd sounds at night, don't panic. Most are broken old haunted house triggers. Those rusted mechanisms activate on their own all the time."
I nodded and laid back on the camp bed.
Sleep still eluded me after twenty minutes.
Her words looped in my head: *The last night guard kept hearing laughter in the corridors*.
Laughter echoing through empty hallways after dark.
I suddenly remembered the walkie-talkie voice from the night before, the soft woman's greeting hidden in static.
Just signal interference.
It had to be.
I curled under the blanket and pulled it over my head.
## Chapter 2
The second night shift passed without incident.
The third night, nothing out of place either.
On the fourth night, I scrolled local news past one AM, reading that the northern demolition district would finally begin construction. Aerial shots captured the full scope of the abandoned amusement park, a gray scar carved into the city's outskirts.
I zoomed in to spot the haunted house, tucked deep in the park's inner reaches. Rusted Ferris wheel foundations and overgrown merry-go-round plots surrounded it, reclaimed by weeds.
A comment section argument caught my eye.
*"This whole area was an old burial ground."*
Another reply: *"More like a mass unmarked grave."*
I dismissed it as internet folklore. Every abandoned wasteland online gets labeled a haunted graveyard sooner or later.
I arrived two hours early on the fifth evening. Daytime performances had just ended, and Wanwan packed her belongings to leave. She pressed a plastic bag into my hands. "My mom's homemade dumplings, pork and cabbage. Take them."
"No need—"
"Eat it." She forced the bag into my arms. "You look thinner these days. Stop living on instant noodles."
I thanked her. She paused at the door, glancing back with hesitation flickering across her face.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Brother Lin… does this room feel different at night compared to daytime?"
I frowned, confused.
"Never mind, just my imagination." She shook it off and stepped outside.
Alone again, I sat at the control console as dusk fell. Corridor lights flickered on, sickly yellow tones staining gray walls like faded vintage photographs.
I booted the surveillance system, twelve feeds lighting up one by one.
Empty lobby. Empty ticket booth. Vacant Corridors A to E. Deserted mechanism rooms and prop storage. An electric bike parked outside the rear staff exit, likely the cleaner's.
I adjusted camera settings, and Corridor C's feed flickered with heavy grain before stabilizing.
Ten PM sharp—night shift officially began.
I monitored the screens for two hours, stepping out once to use the restroom. The haunted house's sealed corridors reeked of damp mildew, a stench I'd grown accustomed to, far better than the chemical formaldehyde of my old rental.
I made instant noodles at midnight, scrolling my phone while eating. Wind howled outside the windows, low and mournful, like a grieving sigh.
I dimmed the main lights around one AM and laid down.
Cloudy skies dimmed the faint light seeping through the curtain gap. I stared at that thin streak, counting cracks across the ceiling.
Just as sleep crept in, I heard laughter.
Soft, distant yet eerily close, as if coming from the next room.
I froze, eyes squeezed shut, not daring to move.
The quiet giggling lasted three short seconds, then cut off. I held my breath, waiting, but it never returned.
Wanwan's warning echoed: *Old broken triggers acting up*.
Yes. Rusty mechanisms. Malfunctioning automation.
I rolled over, pulling the blanket tight.
The laughter came again.
Clearer this time. Not mechanical creaks or clicks—this laughter rose and fell in gentle tones, a woman's quiet, soothing chuckle, soft as humming a lullaby.
"You're here?"
My heart clenched violently.
This voice was different. It didn't drift from the corridors or crackle over the radio. It brushed directly against my ear, whispered inches away from my skin.
I shot upright, grabbing a flashlight to sweep the small room.
Empty. My shoes lay discarded beside the bed, the 403 locker sealed tight, curtains undisturbed, not a wisp of wind stirring the air.
All twelve monitors remained silent.
Not quite all.
Corridor C's feed moved.
I locked onto the screen. This winding corridor curved around a bend, where a dummy haunted-house prop always stood facing the wall, hunched in silent isolation. Bathed in cold night vision grayscale, every detail looked frozen and still.
The dummy had turned.
It now faced the surveillance camera directly.
Its head wore a blank white plastic mask, featureless—no eyes, no nose, no mouth, just a flat, empty pale surface.
I stared at the live feed for fifteen seconds, watching the timestamp tick second by second, proving this was real-time footage.
Then the dummy moved.
No sudden jerks, no mechanical glitches. It slowly lifted its right hand, slow and deliberate, as if waving at someone watching.
Ice crawled up my spine.
I grabbed the walkie-talkie, fingers trembling, yet had no words to speak. Report what? That an abandoned dummy moved on camera?
Senior Zhou once mentioned motorized props in Zone B, basic automated movements designed to scare guests. This had to be a system glitch, preset motions activating on their own.
Just a technical error.
I exhaled shakily, dropped the radio, and pulled up Corridor C's mechanism control panel.
All triggers marked **Offline**. Motors, air pumps, electromagnetic locks—every device read zero power output.
I checked twice, three times.
No mechanical power running through that corridor.
I looked back at the monitor.
Corridor C stood completely empty.
The dummy was gone.
The corner lay barren, blank gray walls and cold concrete floors, as if the prop had never existed at all.
My hands stiffened on the keyboard. I told myself it was camera angle distortion, night vision light warping my perception.
Then I saw the white mask figure reappear further down Corridor C.
It had moved five meters forward, into the corridor's center.
Impossible. The dummy was bolted to a fixed base, completely immobile. Yet it had shifted, gliding across solid ground without a single sound.
Its blank white mask locked onto the camera lens.
Slowly, a faint curved line etched across the featureless plastic—a faint, cold smile.
My hands shook uncontrollably. This terror felt surreal, dreamlike; I knew I was awake, yet trapped in an inescapable haze.
I fumbled for my phone and dialed Senior Zhou.
The screen read 1:43 AM.
Four rings later, he answered groggily. "What's wrong?"
"Senior Zhou… the dummy in Corridor C moved. The white masked one by the bend."
"What dummy?"
"The faceless white prop."
Silence hung heavy on the line. "All motorized dummies in Zone B were removed for repairs half a year ago. They never came back. There are no dummies in Corridor C."
My throat went dry.
"You're sure you saw something?" His voice sharpened, fully awake now.
I stared at the empty corridor feed. "It's gone now."
"Turn off that feed, switch to Corridor E."
I pulled up Corridor E: a straight, narrow passage ending at a locked fire exit. Gray, barren, ordinary.
"Nothing—wait."
My breath caught.
A trail of wet footprints stained the concrete floor. Dark, reflective splotches in monochrome vision, fresh and damp, stretching from the corridor depths straight toward the exit.
"Wet prints all over Corridor E's floor."
"What do they look like?"
"Not shoe prints. Shapeless, uneven—like something crawling on wet limbs."
I froze mid-sentence.
The footprints didn't stay limited to the ground.
They climbed vertically up the gray walls, half a meter off the floor, then higher, rising over a meter toward the ceiling, ending at a rusted ventilation duct opening high above the fire exit. The metal grate covering the vent had been torn away, leaving an empty square hole.
A horrifying realization settled cold in my bones.
Whatever left those prints had crawled up the walls, slithered into the ceiling vents, and vanished into the dark ductwork.
I glanced upward at my own monitoring room ceiling.
A matching square ventilation vent sat directly above my bed, its grate loose on one side, slightly pried open.
My breath died in my throat.
"Still there?" Senior Zhou called over the line.
"Yes." My voice sounded unnaturally flat, hollow even to my own ears.
"Are the vents connected across the whole building?"
"Yep, but way too narrow for a person to crawl through."
What if it was never human?
I bit back the question.
He promised to review archived footage at dawn, urging me to ignore the anomalies—just dirty camera sensors or light refraction, common urban surveillance errors.
I hung up, leaving the lights on for the rest of the night. Every few minutes, I glanced at the warped ceiling vent, certain something watched me from the dark ducts above, not the ones on screen, but the real vent inches over my head.
The dread lingered until sunrise. I opened Locker 403 for water, brushing against an old hard drive labeled: **Night Shift Backup — 2023.04.05**.
April 5th.
I checked my calendar: October 17th.
I tucked the drive back neatly, locked the locker, and watched dawn spill over the abandoned park.
## Chapter 3
Wanwan arrived for her day shift as I replayed Corridor C's midnight footage.
I dragged the timestamp to 1:40 AM. Empty corridors, blank corners, nothing out of the ordinary.
1:41 AM: A faint shadow flickered across the frame, cast from off-screen, as if something blocked a hidden light source. No moving lights existed in that sealed corridor.
The blur lasted only four frames, then vanished.
I rewatched the clip dozens of times. The shadow's outline remained indistinct, elongated and twisted, far too warped for any human silhouette—thin, branching, inhuman proportions.
I pictured Corridor C's layout: horror posters lining the left wall, a massive black acrylic illusion panel around the right bend.
Light reflection off the panel, I reasoned.
A logical explanation, yet it did nothing to calm my nerves. That acrylic wall stood exactly where the faceless dummy had materialized.
Wanwan pushed open the door, frowning at my exhausted expression. "Brother Lin, didn't you sleep at all?"
"I rested a little."
She noticed I still wore last night's clothes but said nothing.
I stood to let her take over the console. She scanned system notifications, her brows tightening.
"After-hours staff passage breach?" She pointed to a pop-up alert. "11:11 PM, manual lock twist from the inside, no card scan authorization."
I stared at the timestamp: two eleven AM, thirty minutes after my panicked phone call.
"What's behind that door?"
"Backyard parking lot and garbage dump. The lock only logs entries, it never fully seals. Stray cats probably pried it open."
A reasonable answer. A stray cat wandering inside, leaving wet prints, scaling walls, vanishing into vents.
But those prints belonged to something far larger than a cat.
I kept the thought to myself, forcing a faint smile. "Must be strays."
I headed to the restroom to splash cold water on my face.
My reflection in the mirror looked ghastly: sunken dark eyes, pale chapped lips, messy unkempt hair. Yet what unsettled me most was my expression—raw, lingering terror masked behind exhaustion, diluted but still present, like ink dissolved in water.
I stared into my own eyes.
My gaze shifted left.
My reflection's eyes stayed fixed forward.
My blood ran cold.
I locked onto the thin mirrored glass, sweat beading on my forehead, stinging my eyes. I dared not blink.
My reflection mimicked my posture perfectly, identical in every way—except for that split second, its gaze had drifted past me, fixed on something behind my back.
Something stood right behind me.
I spun around violently.
Empty restroom. A yellowed *Staff Only* notice taped to the door, dirty rags piled beside the mop sink, nothing else.
I dried my face and stepped back into the corridor.
A middle-aged cleaner knelt by the baseboards, mopping slowly in a dark blue uniform. She looked up at my footsteps, plain weathered features blank and dull.
"You're the new night guard?"
"Yes."
"Alright." She resumed scrubbing the walls, movements slow and mechanical, dragging out every second.
I paused mid-step. "Ma'am… has anything terrible happened in this building before?"
She never lifted her head. "What kind of terrible thing?"
"Something unnatural."
She finished scrubbing one wall section, pushing herself upright with stiff knees, folding her rag into a neat square. Her hollow eyes locked onto mine.
"Young man." Her tone was calm, mundane, like commenting on a leaky faucet. "If you hear laughter at night, never answer it. Never turn around."
"What?"
"Ignore the laughter, pretend you heard nothing. Don't respond." She hung her rag on the mop rack and walked away without another word.
I watched her vanish around Corridor C's bend.
I returned to the monitoring room to find Wanwan eating lunch. She frowned at my pale face.
"Who was that cleaner in the corridor?"
"Aunt Fang?" She blinked in surprise. "She resigned three months ago. Poor health, couldn't keep up. HR never hired a replacement—this position's been empty ever since."
I froze.
"You're certain you saw her?" Wanwan set down her chopsticks, voice lowering.
"Dark blue uniform, short hair, freckles across her cheeks, never meeting eyes while speaking."
Wanwan fell silent, rummaging through a desk drawer to pull out a crumpled staff registration form, unfolding it for me to see.
Name: Fang Yumei
Role: Cleaner
Status: Resigned
The attached photo matched the woman I'd seen perfectly.
"Must be poor lighting tricking my eyes." I forced a dismissive laugh.
Wanwan stared at me, unspoken worry in her eyes, hesitating before speaking at last.
"Brother Lin… never step outside alone on night duty. Especially if someone knocks on your door."
"Why?"
"Sometimes, you'll answer a knock to an empty corridor. No one there." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But the second you lock the door again… you'll realize the knocker is already inside the room with you."
Thick silence swallowed the small monitoring room.
The air conditioner's outdoor unit droned loudly, cold seeping through the concrete walls.
Wanwan grabbed her bag to leave for afternoon classes, pausing at the door to set a small jade pendant on the console, strung on frayed red cord.
"Take this." She pushed it toward me. "My grandma blessed it for protection. I've worn it for years."
I tried to refuse, but she left in a hurry.
I left the lucky charm untouched on the desk.
## Chapter 4
The seventh night shift arrived.
My body had adjusted to the reversed sleep schedule, sleeping four to five hours through the day with a clear enough mind. I finished Wanwan's dumplings, stocked up on instant noodles and sausages from the convenience store, numbly settling into this isolated routine.
Senior Zhou visited during the day, inspecting Corridor C's cameras and control systems, finding zero malfunctions. He dismissed my sightings as optical illusions from poor night vision lighting, warning me not to dig through archived hard drives in Locker 403.
"Old event footage, boring monitoring logs. Keep your hands off them."
The locker clicked shut as he left.
I stared at the lock. I held the only key. He had no way to relock it.
Yet I'd clearly heard the lock cylinder twist.
Old building creaks, I told myself. Metal expanding and contracting with temperature shifts.
Night fell fast, temperatures plummeting. I sealed all windows and doors, wrapping a thick blanket around my shoulders to watch the monitors. The first half of the shift stayed dead quiet, empty corridors frozen on screen.
Shortly before midnight, my phone buzzed. Wanwan's message: *Any trouble tonight?*
I replied: *All quiet.*
As I sent the text, a faint glint caught the top-left corner of Corridor A's camera lens—a tiny reflective spot, pressed directly against the glass.
I zoomed in. The reflection vanished.
A chilling thought struck me: that spot lined up perfectly with the monitoring room's outer corridor, right outside my door.
Eye level with someone pressing their face flat against the wooden door.
I set down my phone, glancing at my sealed entrance. Dim yellow corridor light seeped through the thin door crack, smooth and unbroken, no shadows lingering outside.
I tiptoed to the door, pressing my eye to the peephole.
Empty hallway. Pale gray walls, dim floor lamps, nothing out of place.
I turned to walk back.
Breathing sounded right behind me.
Soft, slow, controlled inhales and exhales, deliberate and quiet, pressed flush against the other side of my door, echoing through solid wood in the silent room.
I stiffened in place.
The gentle breathing faded into a slow scraping sound, long nails dragging lightly across the door's wooden surface.
A slow, dragging scratch from left to right.
The noise stopped near the door handle.
A woman's voice whispered through the crack, clear and breathy.
"Are you watching?"
I remembered Aunt Fang's warning.
Never answer laughter. Never respond.
I stepped backward silently, returning to the camp bed, grabbing Wanwan's jade protection charm from under a notebook, clutching it tight in my palm. Cold smooth jade grounded my racing heart.
No more sounds came from the hallway.
I sat motionless for twenty minutes, staring at the door, the faint yellow crack of light undisturbed.
Exhaustion overwhelmed me past one AM. I laid down fully clothed, the jade pendant digging into my palm, refusing to let go.
Half-asleep, I felt a presence materialize inside the room.
No door creak, no footsteps, no sound at all—just the sudden, heavy weight of another being sharing the small space.
I kept my eyes squeezed shut, breath shallow and rapid, too terrified to move.
A voice materialized from thin air, surrounding me from every direction, no clear source.
"You saw me."
Not a question. A cold, certain statement.
I jolted awake.
Morning sunlight spilled through the curtain gap, golden and bright. The air conditioner humd normally, distant mop sounds echoing from the corridors.
I uncurled my fist, the jade charm resting safely in my grasp.
A dream. Just a nightmare.
I dressed and headed to the restroom, passing a new male cleaner wiping wall posters. I asked about Aunt Fang, and he stared blankly, never hearing her name.
Back in the monitoring room, I unlocked Locker 403 and pulled out the April 5th hard drive.
I connected it to the computer and opened the archived footage.
Files sorted by two-hour segments, spanning ten PM to six AM. I clicked the midnight to two AM recording.
Corridor C's feed loaded: grainy monochrome, empty bend, blank walls, nothing unusual.
1:00 AM: clear.
1:10 AM: clear.
1:20 AM: clear.
My mouse froze at 1:33:41.
A white figure dropped from the ceiling, landing silently in the center of Corridor C.
Human-shaped, yet distorted—limbs too long, torso stunted, inhuman proportions. It lay motionless on the concrete for two seconds before contorting upward, joints bending backward in impossible angles, lifting its twisted body off the ground.
It faced the surveillance camera directly.
Blank white featureless mask.
For ten endless seconds, it stood perfectly still, a frozen pale silhouette.
Then it slowly raised its right hand, waving at the lens, deliberate and unhurried.
A faint curved smile bloomed across its blank mask.
April 5th. Qingming Festival, the day of the dead.
A woman trapped, laughing alone in the haunted house corridors.
I paused the footage, locking onto that cold painted smile.
I reached for my phone, dialing Wanwan instead of Senior Zhou.
She answered on the sixth ring, voice hushed in a quiet room.
"Brother Lin?"
"Wanwan, tell me the truth. Were you working here last April fifth?"
Long heavy silence.
"No."
"But you know what happened that night."
Another beat of silence, thick and suffocating.
"I didn't quit because of classes." Her voice dropped to a trembling whisper. "I worked the night shift here last spring, same as you now. That Qingming night, a female guest wandered into the haunted house alone. Cameras captured her standing frozen in Corridor C for hours… laughing nonstop until dawn."
"What happened to her?"
"Her family took her away. Locked in a psychiatric hospital ever since. She never stopped repeating one sentence."
"What sentence?"
*"The corridor figure smiled at me. I have to smile back. Otherwise, it will come inside."*
The corridor figure smiled at me. I have to smile back. Otherwise, it will come inside.
I recalled the whispered line from my half-asleep nightmare:
*You saw me.*
My phone slipped from trembling fingers, cracking the screen as it hit the bed. Wanwan's panicked voice muffled through the speakers.
I picked it up, glancing at the twelve live surveillance feeds. Bright morning light flooded every corridor, visitors preparing for opening hours, everything normal.
Except Corridor C.
A woman stood at the bend, wearing a faded dark blue cleaner's uniform, short hair, faint freckles across her cheeks, empty hollow eyes fixed on the camera.
Her lips moved silently.
I read her lips clearly.
*"I am not Fang Yumei."*
She smiled then.
Not a natural expression. Her eyes remained cold and vacant, cheeks rigid, only her mouth stretched upward by an invisible force, tugged into a sharp, inhuman curve—exactly matching the white masked figure's frozen grin in the old footage.
I hung up on Wanwan and dialed emergency services.
"Police hotline, how may I help?"
I stared at the grinning woman on screen.
How do you explain ghosts, cursed corridors, and smiling hollow shells?
"Nothing." I whispered. "Wrong number."
I locked my phone and walked slowly to Locker 403, rummaging past labeled hard drives to the very bottom shelf, grabbing an unmarked drive.
A tiny hand-drawn symbol etched into its surface: a circle holding a curved smiling mouth.
I plugged it into the computer.
System alert: *Drive requires formatting*.
I ignored the prompt, checking file properties: zero storage, zero usage, an unknown file extension stamped at the end of its data tag:
**.laf**
No recognizable video format on earth.
I disconnected the drive, tucking it back into the locker's darkest corner, locking the door tight.
I looped Wanwan's jade pendant around my neck.
Day seven of my night shift trial.
Senior Zhou promised a one-month probation period.
I had no idea if I would survive until the end.
I passed Corridor C after clocking out. A uniformed cleaner's back hunched by the baseboards, mopping silently.
She never turned around.
As I walked past, she murmured softly.
"See you tonight."
I never slowed down.
I pushed through the exit door, harsh sunlight burning my skin, artificial warmth masking the cold lingering in my bones.
I glanced back one final time at the gray haunted house corridors, dark and endless in the distance.
No one stood there.
Yet distant feminine laughter drifted down empty hallways, winding through every sealed corridor, echoing far too close.
See you tonight.