PSP Chapter 8: Mirror

Chen Ge unconsciously leaned against Shen Qingcheng and said in a trembling voice, “Qi Mei came back to find her.”

Shen Qingcheng was speechless. “Yeah, but what are you afraid of? She’s not coming for you.”

“Why aren’t you afraid?!” Chen Ge raised his volume, but when he saw that both of the other men were looking at him, he quieted and withdrew. His tone was anxious. “It can’t be that neither of you noticed it, right…”

“The chat records in the group stopped two months ago, and Zhou Xiaohui also died two months ago. What an interesting coincidence, don’t you think? And everyone was chatting with their real names until an anonymous user suddenly appeared.”

The last message was sent anonymously, and its contents looked like a death notice.

The people in the group photo seemed to be watching them. Chen Ge swallowed, and suddenly, everyone in the photo was smiling, the corners of their mouths stretching to the sides.

He looked at it again and found that the mouth of the person in the photo was getting wider and wider, almost taking up half of their face, and their exposed teeth seemed to be stained with color.

The color… seemed to be red.

The quiet room suddenly seemed to become gloomy, as if something sinister was hiding in the darkness.

Pa¹. Shen Qingcheng clapped Chen Ge on the shoulder. “Why are you so dazed? Hurry up and find Qi Mei’s entrance papers.”

Chen Ge returned to his senses, and he looked at the photo again. It was still a group photo of brightly smiling people. There were no impossibly grinning mouths or bloodstained teeth.

He hurriedly dropped the photo on the table, not even daring to throw it to the ground. “I’m on it!”

Lu Qi followed, standing up. There was no new information left on the computer or the table. “Keep an eye out for Zhou Xiaohui.”

Zhou Xiaohui had mentioned the school in the chat log and indicated that she and Qi Mei were old acquaintances. From her tone as she insulted Qi Mei behind her back, they should have some history.

There were a total of five lockers in the archives. Chen Ge had rummaged through one, leaving four. Lu Qi went over and chose the opposite ones, and they looked through them together.

Chen Qingcheng didn’t move. He raised his eyes and looked around the small space, then put his hands in his pocket. “Ah, treating someone as a good friend on the surface but in actuality scolding them harder than anyone else--this type of person is so vicious…”

He swaggered out the door and spat, “Really, so vicious!”

Chen Ge was puzzled. Why was Shen-ge talking so loudly? Seeing him walk outside, he quickly asked, “Shen-ge, where are you going?”

His voice came from the corridor. “Bathroom!”

The archive room was located in a relatively remote corner on the first floor of the office building. This building was an old building, unlike the entirely new teaching building, a coat of fresh paint the only remodelling it had.

The corridor was very quiet, and anyone walking in it would hear the clear echo of their footsteps. Except for the archive room, which had been violently forced open, the doors to the other offices on both sides of the corridor were all tightly closed.

Shen Qingcheng wandered back and forth across the corridor until he found the bathroom. It was a bit further down than the archives, in the shade.

Shen Qingcheng was very satisfied with the temperature there. In the summer, it felt good to be in a cool place.

No one had used the bathroom for two months. It was very clean, not at all messy or stinky despite the heat.

Standing in front of the urinal and unzipping his pants, Shen Qingcheng was about to begin urinating when he was frightened by the sudden emergence of a dead face from the wall in front of him.

“Fuck!” After years of self cultivation, Shen Qingcheng was quite good-natured², but he couldn’t help but swear.

The face disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. Shen Qingcheng zipped his pants up after urinating, walked over to the sink with a dark expression, and knocked on the mirror on th wall.

“Come out.”

The only thing reflected in the mirror was Shen Qingcheng’s irritated, impatient face.

“Come out!”

In the empty bathroom, a tall, handsome man was speaking to a mirror, looking quite stupid.

Shen Qingcheng’s expression darkened further when he realized that. He touched his hip. He had no peach wood³ sword, no small satchel, no yellow talisman paper.

He glanced at his white, tender fingertips, reluctant and unwilling.

After several moments of deliberation and hesitation, he finally made up his mind and bit his fingertips after a quick rinse.

“Si⁴…”

Mom, it hurts.

The blood that was painstakingly produced shouldn’t be wasted.

Shen Qingcheng used his blood-stained fingers to draw an unknown symbol on the clean mirror. As the blood met the mirror, it slowly seeped in, and no trace was left behind.

The Shen Qingcheng reached into the mirror.

Just like Lu Qi had reached through the wooden door, Shen Qingcheng reached through the mirror. The only difference was that the door had had a big hole in it, but the mirror was perfectly intact.

Even as Shen Qingcheng’s entire side disappeared, to the point that only his other arm was out, the mirror showed no signs of shattering.

With a sullen expression, he turned inside the mirror, eyes narrowed, and sneered, “Fucking dog⁵, let me see just where you plan to run!”

As his words fell, he pulled out an insubstantial white shadow from the mirror.

The shadow was thrown to the ground, where it rolled around, whimpering miserably. Its hair was disheveled, and it shivered and shrank into the corner.

Her snow-white mourning clothes were stained with red spots, and as soon as the red touched her flesh, a mass of black dots appeared. She was afraid of the red, and even more afraid of the person who had dyed her clothes that color.

When Shen Qingcheng saw that her ghostly figure was no longer solid, his mood improved. Such a young ghost actually dared try to scare him?

He adjusted his trousers, and said leisurely, “Move your hair so I can see you.”

The female ghost shivered more, lifting her hair to reveal a bloodless, round face and small eyes, exactly as in the photo.

One of the main characters, Zhou Xiaohui.

Zhou Xiaohui was a staff member of the archives. It was normal for her to linger nearby after death. Shen Qingcheng knew this, and he said with disgust, “Forget it. Put your hair back down.”

“...”

Zhou Xiaohui let her hair fall. Her eyes, covered by her hair, gleamed red. Damn men who only ever looked at faces!

She’d kill them all!

Pa. Shen Qingcheng set a foot on her. “Tell me, how did Qi Mei die? How did her son die? What’s your relationship with her?”

Who could’ve guessed that Zhou Xiaohui, who had seemed quite timid before, suddenly became violent after hearing Qi Mei’s name? She rushed toward Shen Qingcheng with a fierce grin.

“Qi Mei, you bitch, how dare you kill me!”

I was asking who killed Qi Mei, not who killed you.

Shen Qingcheng’s face gained black lines⁶. Just as he was about to restrain her, he heard a movement outside. Immediately stepping back and acting afraid, he shouted at the top of his voice, “Help me~”

Because Shen Meiren had been gone so long without returning, Lu Qi and Chen Ge had chosen to come out to find him, and they heard the voice. Before Chen Ge could react, he saw the man beside him rush into the bathroom with a knife.

When Chen Ge, two steps behind, finally entered, the battle was already over. He looked around the bathroom, finding nothing special.

“Shen-ge?” He was about to ask what had happened when he turned his head and saw Shen-ge leaning “weakly” on Lu-ge’s shoulder.

Lu-ge didn’t turn away coldly, actually asking patiently, “Are you injured?”

Shen Qingcheng stretched out his injured index finger tremblingly. “It hurts. I need you to huhu⁷.”

Lu-ge shook him off with a chilly expression.

Yeah, this felt more normal. Chen Ge let out a sigh of relief.

TLN:

¹ Hit onomatopoeia.

² As in he doesn’t have much of a temper. i really don’t know if you could consider him cooperative or not…

³ Peach wood is considered sacred wood, and is said to ward off evils and disasters. It is the most widely used material for killing evil spirits and/or ghosts.

⁴ Hiss of pain onomatopoeia.

⁵ Not an actual dog, just a derogatory way to refer to it.

⁶

Source

⁷ Blowing onomatopoeia. For context, in China you blow on injuries to “heal” them the same way in other countries you might "kiss a booboo better".