Chapter 2

Looking at the cultured, elegant woman before me, then thinking of her scruffy-bearded, lecherous husband, I couldn’t help reflecting:

What a flower wasted on a dung heap.

After saying goodbye, she carried the cat upstairs.

I returned to my room and lay down again.

Pretending to play with my phone, I actually opened a surveillance app.

Before long, a woman in white appeared on the screen, holding a black cat.

The woman was the landlady who’d just stood outside my door.

The live feed on my phone showed the inside of the landlords’ home upstairs.

Yes. I’d installed cameras in their house long ago.

7

I put on my earphones and kept watching.

Once the landlady went upstairs and entered her room, she immediately locked the door carefully.

Then she did something odd.

She pressed her eye to the peephole and stared for a long time.

She seemed to be watching what was happening outside.

Suddenly, the woman on the screen jerked backward.

Then she rushed to bed and pulled the covers over her head.

Apparently, she’d seen something terrifying through the peephole.

The landlord wasn’t in the room.

From my long observation of the couple, he should be working a night shift as a supervisor at some warehouse, returning in the morning.

She hid under the covers for a long time.

About ten minutes later, she finally emerged.

Then she sat at the desk.

She took a little notebook from a drawer and began to write.

It was her habit. She wrote every night.

I guessed it was a diary.

The angle and distance made it impossible to read exactly what she wrote.

Half an hour later, she put down her pen, closed the notebook, and went to bed.

After all that, I was wide awake.

I couldn’t be bothered trying to sleep again.

I decided to keep watching the cameras, standing guard over the sleeping woman upstairs.

The long night might be sleepless, but I rather enjoyed the process.

It wasn’t my first time.

8

After a peaceful night, the woman upstairs was back to normal.

Early the next morning, she got up to prepare a generous breakfast.

As usual, she left for work at seven sharp.

At eight thirty, the landlord returned from his shift, just as he always did.

Actually, I rather envied him.

Home from work, and breakfast prepared by his wife was already waiting.

With such a devoted wife, what more could a man want?

After eating, he sat at the computer.

He deftly switched it on, entered the password, and began watching the surveillance feed from my room.

His wife knew nothing about his spying on the tenant downstairs.

That puzzled me.

With a wife so beautiful and caring, why did he still do this?

Perhaps… it was simply male nature.

I rolled over on the bed, adjusting my position slightly.

I had to make sure the camera inside the chandelier couldn’t capture my phone screen.

Apart from the upstairs bathroom, my cameras covered practically every corner of the landlords’ home.

Through the feed on my phone, I could even see the landlord’s monitor showing me lying in bed with my phone.

9

I kept enlarging the surveillance image.

Seeing myself lying in bed on the landlord’s computer screen, I couldn’t help a faint smile.

I could even clearly make out my own secretly smiling face.

Modern high-definition cameras really were something.

I kept watching the feed.

Then I pretended to stretch and toyed with a few strands of hair.

I’d originally intended to make a series of seductive movements, just to tease the landlord.

But at that moment, through the surveillance image on his monitor, I suddenly noticed the wardrobe door behind me seemed to slide slightly.

Through the gap, I vaguely saw a hand…

Suddenly draw back inside!

10

My scalp prickled.

There was someone hiding in the wardrobe behind me!

I let out a breath and did my best to stay calm.

I couldn’t let the landlord upstairs notice anything unusual about my reaction.

And I certainly couldn’t let whoever was in the wardrobe know I’d discovered him.

But the landlord seemed to have spotted the movement too.

He stared intently at his monitor.

Then he quickly worked the mouse, slowly zooming in on the wardrobe’s gap.

As the image grew larger, something gradually emerged…

A blurry human eye!

11

The person in the wardrobe was watching me through the gap!

The landlord began reviewing the footage.

I immediately thought back over everything too.

Yesterday afternoon, when I cleaned the room, nobody had been inside the wardrobe.

That meant someone could only have sneaked in at night, while I was out disposing of the body.

The footage he replayed soon confirmed my guess.

Last night, at about ten thirty, I’d pulled my suitcase out.

I hadn’t returned until midnight.

About ten minutes before I came back, someone in black, wearing a baseball cap and a mask, stealthily opened my door and entered.

Putting the footage together with the facts, he was either a skilled lock-picker or had a key.

Because when I returned, the lock was intact, with no sign of forced entry.

Once inside, the man in black began rummaging around.

Most likely a thief.

My very first night here, and I’d already had a break-in.

Unbelievable bad luck.

But the thief seemed even unluckier.

He’d barely entered before I finished disposing of the body and came home.

All my windows had security bars.

He couldn’t climb out.

So, hearing my key in the lock, he’d had no choice but to scramble into the wardrobe.

Watching that, I gave a bitter little laugh.

Were thieves these days all so unprofessional?

Didn’t they scout the place before making their move?

At least prepare an escape route.

12

The landlord upstairs kept watching.

And in the footage that followed, I noticed something unusual.

The first thing I’d done after returning last night was take a shower.

He quickly switched to the bathroom camera.

Unfortunately for him, I’d deliberately blocked the camera hidden in the socket with a shampoo bottle.

His monitor was pitch-black.

He sighed helplessly.

Then he had no choice but to return to the bedroom view.

At that very moment, the man in black came out of the wardrobe.

He intended to slip away while I showered.

But just as he reached the door and prepared to open it, he stopped.

Then he pressed his ear against it.

He seemed to hear something outside.

Next, he looked through the peephole.

I watched him shudder and stumble back several paces.

The sight suddenly reminded me of the landlady last night, after she’d gone home.

Both seemed to have been terrified by something outside their doors!

13

From the footage, the man in black was clearly badly frightened.

He looked frantic.

So frightened that he abandoned this chance to escape and hid in the wardrobe again.

When I came out of the shower, I had no idea anyone was in the room.

I lay in bed, played with my phone, then switched off the light and slept.

The feed on the landlord’s monitor darkened too.

By the moonlight outside the window, the outlines of the room remained just visible.

Not long after I fell asleep, the wardrobe door gently opened again.

The man in black was making a second escape attempt.

But just as he put one foot outside…

A dark shape suddenly shot through the window.

It was the landlady’s black cat.

Holding the recorder in its mouth, it crawled beneath my bed.

Then came the scene where the voice from the recorder woke me.

The man in black had to retreat into the wardrobe once more.

Next, the landlady knocked, looking for her cat.

After she left, I lay in bed watching the feed all night.

The person in the wardrobe never had another chance to escape.

Holding my breath, I listened for movement.

It was quiet inside. I could only just hear a few tiny scraping sounds.

He certainly knew how to be patient.

14

Upstairs, the landlord continued replaying the recording.

I was about to get up and use the bathroom when something he did caught my attention.

Sitting at his computer, he suddenly turned toward the door.

He seemed to hear something.

I deliberately increased my earphone volume.

Still nothing unusual.

Then I saw him switch off the computer and slowly approach the door.

Reaching it, he copied what the landlady and the man in black had done last night.

He pressed his eye to the peephole.

But with one glance, his legs gave way and he collapsed.

Something outside seemed to have terrified him too.

Suddenly, he clamped both hands around his own throat.

Then he fell to the floor, struggling wildly.

He squeezed until his face turned red and he could barely breathe.

His twisted, ferocious expression looked exactly like a man possessed.

I couldn’t help shuddering.

This… was too uncanny.

He kept convulsing and struggling on the floor.

His hands never left his throat.

Finally, amid violent spasms, he crawled and rolled into the bathroom.

Before long, all movement stopped.

His strange behavior aroused my intense curiosity.

Honestly, at that moment I wanted to rush straight upstairs.

I desperately wanted to know what he’d seen through the peephole.

But I knew curiosity could get you killed.

If I had time to spare, better to play with the man hiding in my wardrobe.

15

I turned off my phone, yawned, and stretched again.

After looking at it so long, I really was exhausted.

Rubbing my eyes, I got up, washed, brushed my teeth, made breakfast, and ate.

Then I cleaned, watered the flowers, read, listened to music, and did yoga.

I went through the whole routine without a break.

In short, I wasn’t going out today.

I was keeping watch over my wardrobe.

I wanted to see how long the man in black intended to hide.

Now it was a contest.

Let’s see who could outlast whom.

…

Near noon, the sky suddenly darkened.

It looked like rain.