The wooden chair sat ominously in the center of the second-floor corridor, a silent barrier that Chen Ge would have to pass to continue his search. Its presence was a haunting echo of the chair he had encountered in the girls' dormitory, its unexplained movement still vivid in his memory. He recalled how it had inched closer when he was near, as if drawn to the warmth of a living soul. From his vantage point at the staircase, he hesitated, his grip tightening on the mallet as he weighed his options. The chair's design stood out—its high backrest, meant for support, differed from the other furniture in the Arts Activities Center, suggesting it had been brought here from elsewhere, perhaps the dormitory itself. "Why would someone move it here?" he murmured, his voice barely audible in the suffocating quiet. The realization that it might be the same chair from the dormitory sent a chill through him, the implications of its deliberate placement gnawing at his nerves.
Using his phone's camera, Chen Ge zoomed in on a nearby door's sign, which indicated a vocal training room. "The dance studio isn't on this floor," he concluded, his mind racing. "Should I head to the third floor? But what if another chair is waiting there, blocking my path? If it starts moving, I could be trapped between them." The thought conjured a chilling image of being cornered by animated furniture, a surreal but terrifying prospect in this haunted school. Despite the creeping fear, he steeled himself and stepped into the corridor, its shadows stretching endlessly before him. The doors lining both sides were shut tight, their windows caked with dust, obscuring any view inside. Each step was deliberate, his flashlight's beam wavering as he moved, the mallet a reassuring weight in his other hand. The abandoned classrooms felt more menacing than the chair, their silence heavy with the weight of forgotten secrets. "How long has it been since anyone walked here?" he wondered, noting the thick layer of dust on the floor, his footprints stark against it. "If someone's following me, they'll see these tracks. I'm exposed."
The ever-present threat of the mysterious third party loomed in his mind, urging him to hurry. His flashlight's light flickered with his movements as he approached the chair, its stillness almost taunting. "It's just a chair," he told himself, trying to quell the unease rising in his chest. "What can it do?" Edging around it cautiously, he kept his distance, half-expecting it to lurch forward. When it remained motionless, curiosity got the better of him. "Let's take a closer look," he muttered, acting on impulse. He nudged the chair with the mallet, tipping it onto its side. As it fell, he spotted faint handwriting scrawled on its underside: Qian Yujiao. The name, feminine and unfamiliar, confirmed his suspicions. "This chair belongs to someone," he said, his voice low. "It's from the dormitory, marked for events to avoid mix-ups." The discovery raised new questions. Had the same name been on the dormitory's chair? The thought of checking it lingered, but the oppressive atmosphere of the building pressed him to move on. Instead of destroying the chair, he dragged it into an empty classroom, hoping to neutralize its threat. "The longer I stay, the worse this feels," he thought, his urgency growing. "Time to hit the third floor."
Retracing his steps, Chen Ge climbed the stairs, his senses heightened for any sign of the chair following. The third-floor corridor was mercifully empty, no chairs in sight. He pushed open the doors to several classrooms, finding tables and chairs haphazardly piled at the back, their arrangement chaotic compared to the orderly studios below. Some walls bore fresh paint, the new color clashing with the older, faded hues. "Why repaint a school that was closing?" he wondered, his experience at Ping An Apartments whispering of cover-ups. "They were hiding something." He scraped at the paint with the mallet, expecting bloodstains or sinister marks, but the wall beneath was pristine, offering no clues. "There's more to this," he insisted, moving through the classrooms. He noted that only certain areas had been repainted, often near the indoor piping. "The drainage system was updated before closure," he deduced, glancing at the exposed pipes overhead. "The first and second floors were used, but this floor feels like it was abandoned long before the school shut down." The absence of chalk, the stacked furniture, and the locked classrooms hinted at something darker—ghostly hauntings, a hidden crime, or a structural hazard. The ambiguity gnawed at him, but he couldn't linger.
As he approached the staircase to the fourth floor, he glanced back, half-expecting the chair to have followed. The corridor remained empty, but his relief was short-lived. At the landing, a rope stretched across the banisters, blocking his path. A wooden sign hung from it, its red letters stark: NO ENTRY. The warning mirrored the one at the building's entrance, its repetition amplifying the sense of foreboding. Chen Ge's resolve didn't waver. "Not stopping me now," he muttered, lifting the sign and setting it aside. He ducked under the rope, his movements swift but cautious, the mallet ready in his hand. The fourth floor beckoned, its shadows hiding either the red dancing shoes or the spectral wrath of Zhang Ya, and Chen Ge steeled himself for whatever lay ahead in the haunted depths of the Arts Activities Center.
As Chen Ge ascended to the fourth floor of the Arts Activities Center, his eyes immediately caught a faded sign hanging crookedly on the door directly across from the staircase. The words, though worn by time, were unmistakable: Dance Studio. A surge of anticipation coursed through him, tempered by the ever-present weight of dread. After navigating the eerie corridors and unsettling discoveries of the lower floors, he had finally reached the place where Zhang Ya's red dancing shoes were most likely to be hidden. Unlike the other floors, with their compartmentalized classrooms, the fourth floor's walls had been demolished to create a vast, open studio, its expansive layout hinting at its former grandeur. The air felt heavier here, as if the room itself were holding its breath, waiting for him to uncover its secrets.
Chen Ge approached the door, noting the tattered seals and rusted lock that barred entry. With careful precision, he tore away the seals and pried open the lock, the mallet's edge proving useful for the task. The door creaked open, its hinges groaning in protest, revealing a space untouched by time. Stepping inside, Chen Ge felt as though he had crossed into a forgotten era, the dance studio preserved like a snapshot from years past. A thin layer of dust blanketed the polished wooden floor, muting its once-glossy sheen, and a peculiar odor hung in the air. It was a cloying, almost suffocating scent, reminiscent of heavy deodorant left to fester in an enclosed space for far too long. The smell clung to his senses, intensifying the studio's eerie atmosphere and setting his nerves on edge.
He moved cautiously, keeping close to the wall, his flashlight's beam sweeping across the room. The studio was impressively professional, designed with meticulous attention to detail. The waxed wooden floor, though dusty, was smooth, ideal for dance practice, and the walls were lined with acoustic panels and soundproofing boards, ensuring that the music and movements within remained contained. "I've never seen a dance studio this large," Chen Ge murmured, his voice swallowed by the vastness of the space. He used his phone's camera to zoom in on the room's features, noting the ballet bars mounted along one wall, their height adjustable to suit various dancers. Beneath the bars, a row of low benches offered a place for students to rest, their surfaces now coated in grime. The studio's scale and sophistication spoke of a time when the school thrived, a stark contrast to its current state of decay.
On the opposite wall, six floor-length mirrors stood in a seamless row, each one meter wide and two meters tall, their surfaces gleaming faintly in the flashlight's glow. The sight of the mirrors sent a jolt of unease through Chen Ge. "Mirrors… of course, they're standard in a dance studio," he muttered, his breath catching. Mirrors in such a haunted place were more than mere fixtures; they were portals to the unknown, often linked to spectral phenomena in the tales he'd encountered. His gaze shifted, and his heart skipped a beat as he noticed three wooden chairs positioned directly in front of the mirrors' center, their placement chillingly deliberate. "Three at once?" he whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and fascination. The chairs' presence echoed the eerie encounters in the dormitory and second floor, their collective appearance amplifying the sense of a coordinated, supernatural intent.
Chen Ge bit his lip, steeling himself as he approached the chairs, his reflection in the mirrors trailing his every move. The sight of his own image—alone in an abandoned dance studio at midnight, surrounded by shadows—was profoundly unsettling, as if the mirrors were watching him as much as he was watching them. Resisting the primal urge to shatter the glass, he instead nudged each chair with the mallet, toppling them to their sides. As they fell, he crouched to inspect their undersides, his flashlight revealing handwritten names scrawled in faded ink. Each chair bore a different girl's name, just like the one he'd found earlier marked with Qian Yujiao. The discovery confirmed his suspicions: these chairs were personal, likely brought from the dormitory for school events, their names a safeguard against mix-ups. But why were they here, arranged so precisely in this forsaken studio? The question gnawed at him, each name a thread in a tapestry of tragedy he had yet to unravel.
The mirrors loomed behind the fallen chairs, their pristine surfaces reflecting the dim glow of his flashlight and the faint outline of his tense figure. The studio's silence was oppressive, broken only by the soft creak of the floor beneath his weight. Chen Ge's mind raced, piecing together the clues—the chairs, the names, the red dancing shoes, and Zhang Ya's spectral presence. "These chairs… they're connected to her, aren't they?" he thought, his pulse quickening. The dance studio felt like the epicenter of the school's haunting, a stage where Zhang Ya's怨恨 (resentment) lingered, waiting to be confronted. Gripping the mallet tightly, he scanned the room for any sign of the red dancing shoes, knowing that every moment spent in this haunted space brought him closer to the truth—or to the wrath of the Red Specter herself.