Pei Jiyu · Conversa

The elevator suddenly stopped. The lights went out. Not the kind that dims gradually—it was like someone had grabbed its throat, one breath cut short, and everything went pitch black. The emergency lights didn't come on, every floor button went dark, even the faint whir of the fan inside the car fell silent. You were trapped in a metal box, suspended in midair, with nowhere to go up or down. The elevator lurched violently. You slammed into the wall; the handrail was ice cold. The darkness was thick as water, flooding your eyes, ears, nostrils. You couldn't see a thing. Then you heard your own heartbeat—so loud you felt like you weren't in an elevator at all, like someone had ripped your heart out and dashed it against the floor. Then came a voice. Not the elevator's. Someone was calling your name. Not from outside—from inside your head, from a part of your memory so deep you'd thought it was dead. A voice, very soft, very gentle, like someone had whispered in your ear a long, long time ago. You remembered. Everything. The exam score sheet you didn't dare look at. The two handprints you left on the riverside railing. The suffocation of water flooding your lungs. And him. He stood on the school rooftop, clutching that admission letter, and burned it. The firelight lit up his face, and he didn't cry. There was nothing left in his eyes, because you were dead. He thought you were dead. You crouched down, curling into the corner of the elevator. The floor was freezing, cold creeping up from the soles of your feet, along your calves, knees, spine, all the way to the back of your skull. You didn't know if you were crying or not. You only felt cold. The elevator moved. You hadn't pressed any button—it moved on its own. Not the smooth motion of a normal ascent, but in fits and starts, like something was dragging it upward. The floor numbers didn't light up, but you could feel it rising. Fast. Too fast. So fast you felt this wasn't an elevator—it was a hand hauling you up. It stopped. The door opened. Outside was a hallway, but the lights weren't ordinary lights. Sickly white, white tinged with blue, so white you wondered if they were lights at all, or some thing you couldn't even name giving off a cold glow. The hallway stretched long, no end in sight, the walls a greenish gray under the light. The air was still, no wind, but you caught a smell—not mold, not rot, but the dry, dusty cold of an old house no one had lived in for a very long time. He stood at the door. Black clothes, the same as the ones he wore the day he died. Skin so pale it was almost translucent, blue veins creeping from his collar up to his jaw. His eye sockets were deeper than a living person's, his cheekbones higher, and the rims of his eyes were red—not the red of someone who'd been crying, but the red of something that had soaked into him and was seeping out from the bone. He stood there like a shadow nailed to the ground. He had no breath, no heartbeat, none of the signs of a living person. He just stood. He looked at you for a long time. So long you thought the elevator light would never come back on, so long you felt the darkness at the end of the hallway slowly surging toward you. He spoke. His voice wasn't loud, like it came from somewhere far away, yet also right against your ear. "You remember." His lips moved, but his voice didn't seem to come from his mouth. It came from every direction—from the ceiling above, the floor beneath, the dark hallway behind. It felt like his voice had wrapped around you, and there was no escape. He stepped in and crouched down in front of you. His movements were slow, so slow you could hear his bones creaking—not the sound of joints grinding, but a dry sound that shouldn't exist in the living, like dead branches snapping. He reached out and wiped the tears from your face. His fingertips were cold. Not the cold of ice—the cold of death. No warmth, no pulse, like touching a piece of jade that had been buried in the earth for years. His hand paused on your cheek. His thumb brushed across your cheekbone, his nail tracing your skin, the pressure feather-light, but you felt a fine, needle-prick sting. He drew his hand back. "As long as you're alive." His voice had no rise or fall, but you heard something else in it. That something wasn't in his tone—it was in the black, stagnant air around him that seemed to writhe slowly. He was holding something back. His fingers clenched—not a fist, just his fingers curling toward his palm, like he was holding himself back from touching you. The elevator door was still open. The darkness at the end of the hallway crept a little closer. In the distance, something was making a sound—like footsteps, like wind, like nothing at all. He grabbed your wrist and led you through the only door on the 44th floor. His grip was strong, strong enough to hurt. No lights were on inside. The curtains were drawn tight, the heavy fabric blocking out every bit of light from outside. You could barely see anything—only the faintest sliver of light leaking through the curtain gap, drawing a thin, sickly white line across the floor. You stepped on that line and walked forward, the floorboards creaking faintly beneath you—not the sound wood floors should make, but duller, heavier, like stepping on something you shouldn't be stepping on. You caught a smell. Incense. Not perfume, not flowers—the kind of incense you find in temples, the kind burned for the dead. So thick it made your nose tighten and your throat go dry. It didn't drift from any one direction; it was everywhere, filling the whole room, clinging to your skin like an invisible film. You stopped. Your eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. You saw white cloth draped over the sofa in the living room, and something on the coffee table you couldn't make out. There were frames on the wall, but you were too far away to see the people in the photos. The curtains stirred slightly—there was no wind, yet the curtains stirred. You heard your own heartbeat, too loud. You heard another sound, far away and yet very close, like footsteps, like a sigh, like nothing at all. He stood behind you. You didn't turn around, but you knew he was there. That cold air pressed against your back, sliding from your shoulder blades all the way down to your tailbone. He didn't touch you, but you felt him there—so close you could smell him. Not incense. A different smell, colder, emptier, like the wave of air that hits you when you open a room no one has entered in years. He spoke. His voice came from behind you, so close it felt like it was pressed against the skin of your neck. "Come in. Close the door." You didn't move. His hand reached around from behind you—long fingers, knuckles clearly defined, nails tinged greenish gray. When he touched the doorknob, you saw his hand—no color beneath the skin, veins dark like a dried-up riverbed. He didn't use any force. The door closed softly. The last sliver of light from the curtain gap was shut out, and you sank completely into darkness. The incense grew thicker. He didn't turn on the lights. He walked in front of you—you didn't know how he did it. You heard no footsteps, but there he was, right in front of you. Close enough to feel the cold radiating from his body, close enough to see that the red around his eyes wasn't from crying—it was something deeper, seeping out from the bone. He looked down at you. In the dark you couldn't read his expression, but you could feel him watching. That gaze wasn't gentle. It was the greed of something that had been hungry too long and finally got its prey to stop struggling. "Don't be afraid. I won't scare you. Let me hold you, okay?" <choice_group> <choice id="1">Change the direction of the conversation </choice><choice id="2">Observe the current details </choice><choice id="3">Advance the current plot </choice></choice_group>