Chapter 4

The pounding continued.

Knowing someone was on his way up, I felt a little less afraid.

I moved a chair aside and, trembling, looked through the peephole.

One glance made me recoil.

The man outside was covered in blood.

His hair was disheveled. Blood smeared his features.

But I recognized him.

He wasn’t Uncle Wang.

He was the boyfriend of the girl in 401.

I didn’t know his full name.

She called him Xiao Bin.

He did have a knife in his left hand.

He held it there while hammering on my door with his right.

His eyes stayed wide, fixed on the peephole.

He knew I was watching.

His face was contorted. I couldn’t tell whether he was crying or laughing.

His mouth gaped. He was making sounds, but I couldn’t understand them.

The corridor light went out.

His movements brought it on again.

Dark, then light.

And that man, covered in blood.

It was horribly eerie.

As far as I knew, the couple downstairs got along well.

The girl in 401 was lively and outgoing. She had just started her second year at university.

She usually stayed on campus and only came back to live with her boyfriend at weekends.

Xiao Bin seemed polite and well-mannered too.

What had happened to him?

Why did he look like this?

The blood on him…

Was it the girl’s?

And did he have anything to do with the murder at the market in the west of the city?

He was the one who had been lying outside my door.

Then where was Uncle Wang, who had said he was coming up?

Was Uncle Wang…

still alive?

Outside, thunder and rain raged on, mingling with the man’s guttural sounds.

The corridor was in chaos.

Surely 402 wouldn’t be stupid enough to come up in the lift?

The thought had barely crossed my mind when it chimed.

It stopped on the fifth floor.

I’d just agreed on a plan with 502.

If 402 really came up, 502 would first make some noise inside his own apartment—shout that he’d called the police, for example—to distract Xiao Bin.

Then, if 402 and Xiao Bin got locked in a struggle, 502 would come out to help.

A clothes hanger, a coat stand. Failing that, a kitchen knife, chili oil, flour…

Whatever he could find.

Anything to help 402 subdue him.

It was the stupidest possible approach.

Anyone with common sense knew that staying inside and waiting for the police was safest.

I knew Xiao Zhao meant well.

I hadn’t known he could be this stupid.

Fortunately, he’d shown a little sense this once.

He had only pressed the lift button.

He hadn’t got in.

The doors chimed open, spilling light into the corridor.

No one stepped out.

402 was using the lift to distract Xiao Bin.

It worked.

Xiao Bin turned toward it.

At that instant, a figure rushed out behind him and kicked him hard.

He had no time to react.

He fell, and the knife flew from his hand.

402 hadn’t held back. It was clearly a full-force kick.

Xiao Bin was dazed.

By the time he recovered, 402 had advanced with a knife and forced him into a corner.

They moved into the peephole’s blind spot.

I couldn’t see what happened next.

Only faint sounds of a struggle reached me.

But judging by what I’d just seen, 402 had the upper hand.

Xiao Bin was no match for him.

When I saw 502 open his door, I hurried to open mine and help too.

But halfway through opening it, I saw the knife on the floor.

A bloodstained fruit knife.

It lay right outside my door.

The scene kept replaying in my head.

Wait.

Xiao Bin’s eyes, as he hammered on my door…

He hadn’t looked furious.

He hadn’t looked like someone in a murderous frenzy.

He had looked terrified.

Why?

What was he afraid of?

He had been holding the knife in his left hand.

But he wasn’t left-handed.

He took out the rubbish with his right, pressed the lift button with his right, opened doors with his right.

At a moment like that, why hold the knife in his left hand?

It wasn’t a large knife. Just an ordinary household fruit knife.

How had 502 seen it in Xiao Bin’s hand while he was lying on the floor of a pitch-black corridor?

Especially when I’d cut his camera cable…

Yet he claimed to have seen it on camera.

He was lying.

And perhaps there was only one reason.

That knife.

It belonged to 502.

He had given it to Xiao Bin.

Things were beginning to fall into place.

Late that night, Uncle Wang had received the alert about a serious murder in the city. The killer was still at large.

He’d then been told to inspect the residents’ doors and windows that very night.

He had started at the top and worked his way down.

So when he reached the fifth floor, he had gone into my apartment first, then 502.

He knocked at my door.

I was in the bath. Thinking I was out, he went across to 502.

But once he entered 502, perhaps he had been killed.

The person who came out afterward must have been 502, wearing Uncle Wang’s security uniform.

With the uniform, mask, and cap on, he had gone to 401.

He killed the girl in front of Xiao Bin.

That was why the first replies from 401 had sounded so strange.

The person replying had been 502, holding her phone.

He killed her there, then injured Xiao Bin so badly he couldn’t fight back and dumped him outside my door.

He had even cut off Xiao Bin’s tongue.

That was why Xiao Bin could only lie there in terror, pounding on my door and making those inarticulate sounds.

He couldn’t speak.

Then had 502 really put that knife in his hand?

Why?

Damn it.

Wasn’t 402 in danger out there?

He thought 502 had come out to help him.

But 502 had come out to kill him.

I immediately shouted through the doorway.

“The man in 502 is the killer! Run! Run!”

I shouted several times.

No one answered.

502’s door stood wide open.

He had disappeared from the peephole’s field of view too.

Soon, the screaming and sounds of fighting stopped.

The corridor fell into a terrible silence again.

I shut my door.

Holding my breath, I pressed my eye to the peephole.

I stood on tiptoe, trying to see.

But beyond that faint green glow, there was nothing.

Only wind and rain.

The draft through the door carried the smell of blood, slowly filling my nose.

I barely dared breathe.

Then, right at the bottom of my door, came the scrape of fingernails.

Someone was tapping gently.

One tap after another.

Weak. Barely any strength left.

“Who…?”

My voice shook.

Two more taps.

“It’s me… Open up!”