CHAPTER 4

It had been more than a week since Xiao Zhan began haunting Yibo's apartment not that he was calling it that. Haunting sounded too deliberate. Too aggressive. What he was doing felt more like....hovering. Politely.

He still didn't remember his name. Or where he came from. Just a few flashes now and then -always the same one. A staircase. His own breath catching. The feeling of falling. That sick weightlessness right before everything cut to black.

Aside from that, his afterlife so far had mostly consisted of Yibo's rules.

"No flickering lights past 9 p.m."

"Don't hover outside the bathroom."

"Don't float near corners."

"Don't look like you're dead."

Which, for a ghost, was oddly restrictive.

Xiao Zhan found it adorable.

Yibo, the grandson of a shaman, spooked by dim lighting and ghostly aesthetics. The man lit incense like it was mosquito season and glared every time Xiao Zhan accidentally drifted too slow in a dark hallway.

It was kind of cute.

Xiao Zhan didn't say that out loud.

Still, he liked being around him. Yibo wasn't afraid. Not of him, anyway. And he didn't talk much, which Xiao Zhan appreciated. He could sit on the couch with him, watch him scribble into his notebook, or cook slightly burnt noodles, and feel....steady. Less invisible.

Things had started to feel almost peaceful.

Until the crying started.

______________________________

It was late-past midnight. The apartment was dim, lit only by the soft blue flicker of Yibo's laptop. Xiao Zhan was floating by the bookshelf, lazily poking a stack of notes he couldn't read.

And then he heard it.

A soft, choked sob. Faint, but sharp. Like a child crying behind a wall.

He turned slowly.

"Yibo?" he called out, floating toward the kitchen.

Yibo was crouched on the floor with a salt circle in progress, glancing up with the expression of a man already bracing for hell.

"Don't move." Yibo said. "Don't speak. Don't acknowledge anything."

Xiao Zhan blinked. "Is something—"

The lights flickered.

Xiao Zhan froze.

The crying grew louder. Uneven, broken. It echoed from the hallway outside the apartment door.

"Crap." Yibo muttered, already digging through a drawer. "Why tonight. Why tonight."

Xiao Zhan peeked past the entryway. The hallway beyond the door seemed...wrong. The light was off. The air felt thick. The shadows didn't move quite right.

A soft dragging noise scraped against the wall outside.

And then came the knock.

Three slow, deliberate taps on the door.

Yibo flinched. "Don't open it."

"I wasn't going to!" Xiao Zhan hissed.

Then came the crying again-closer, like it had crossed through the door without waiting for permission.

Xiao Zhan turned-and there she was.

Small. Barefoot. Head bowed. Dressed in a thin white gown that looked soaked at the bottom. Her hair was long, black, stuck to her face like wet string. She stood in the far corner of the living room.

Not moving.

Just existing wrong.

"Yibo." Xiao Zhan whispered, backing up. "Yibo she's—she's in here—"

"Don't look at her." Yibo said through clenched teeth.

Too late.

She lifted her head.

Xiao Zhan's breath caught.

Her face was blank-eyes nothing but hollow sockets, like someone had gouged them out and left them empty. Her mouth stretched wide, too wide, lips cracked and wet with something that didn't look like water.

Then she screamed.

The lights exploded.

Xiao Zhan screamed, too. "YIBO SHE HAS NO EYES—"

Yibo grabbed him by the arm. "MOVE!"

They ran-well, Yibo ran. Xiao Zhan floated in full-bodied panic, gliding sideways and knocking over a chair with his footless terror.

Behind them came the dragging, the scream, the crackle of power shorting out.

"She's following us—WHY IS SHI IN THE HOUSE?!"

"You opened the hallway! She saw you!"

"YOU SAID NOT TO MOVE-YOU NEVER SAID DON'T LOOK! "

"I THOUGHT THAT WAS IMPLIED!"

They made it to the bedroom. Yibo slammed the door shut and immediately started throwing salt in lines across the threshold.

Xiao Zhan floated backwards into the corner of the ceiling, completely violating Yibo's "no hovering near corners" rule.

He was shaking.

"Why is she here?" he whispered.

"Residual haunt." Yibo said, pressing a talisman to the wall with a little too much urgency.

"....What's a residual haunt?"

Yibo didn't look up. "Ghosts that don't know they're ghosts. They don't think. They don't target people. They're like broken recordings. Just repeating whatever happened to them."

"Like a cursed rerun?"

"Exactly."

Xiao Zhan peeked through his fingers. "So why did she look at me?"

"Because you're open."

Xiao Zhan sat up slightly. "What does that mean?"

Yibo sighed and finally glanced at him. "It means you're half-in, half-out. You're not fully dead, so your spirit isn't locked down. You're leaking energy all over the place."

"....Leaking?"

"Like spiritual Wi-Fi. And you forgot to set a password."

Xiao Zhan stared at him. "So I'm a haunted hotspot?"

Yibo shrugged. "Basically. You glow. They notice."

"That's rude."

"You're a ghost," Yibo said. "Rude is the baseline."

Xiao Zhan laid back down with a groan. "I didn't sign up for this."

"You literally didn't. That's the problem."

"....So how do I close myself?"

Yibo paused. "Stay near me. Your energy stabilizes around mine. Think of me as a grounding wire."

Xiao Zhan blinked at him. "So you're my spiritual anchor."

"I hate that you phrased it like that."

"I'm putting it in a poem later."

"Absolutely not."

______________________________

After the eyeless child, Xiao Zhan stopped laughing at Yibo's fears.

He used to think it was kind of cute-how someone from a shaman bloodline still slept with a light on and didn't trust corners. The incense, the talismans, the weird muttering in the kitchen after dark-he'd chalked it all up to Yibo being overly cautious. A tightly wound grump in a hoodie who was fun to tease.

But after hearing that girl's scream, seeing her empty sockets, the way the air warped around her—

Yeah. No more jokes.

Yibo knew what he was doing. Knew how to act fast, how to react, when to run, and when to shut up. He wasn't a scaredy cat-he was smart. Methodical. Bright, in ways that surprised Xiao Zhan.

And that surprised him more than he expected.

Now, when Yibo worked a ritual, Xiao Zhan watched closely. When he laid out charms or recited under his breath, Xiao Zhan paid attention. He started learning how to tell when the air got too still. When the lights flickered in a pattern. When the shadows curved the wrong way.

Every day with Yibo was like living inside a horror movie-and somehow, Xiao Zhan found himself not minding it.

Not because it wasn't terrifying. It was.

But because Yibo made him feel safe.

....Even if he was also the one dragging him directly into every scene of supernatural terror like it was part of his class schedule.

Xiao Zhan had long since lost count of how many ghost types they'd encountered. Some flickered like static. Some cried without faces. Some tried to speak but only mouthed words backwards. Some hovered. Some crawled. Some dripped.

He was learning a lot. Against his will.

So when Yibo slowed his pace in the corridor after class that day, Xiao Zhan knew something was about to happen.

The hall was empty, echoey. The kind of silence that made your heartbeat sound too loud. Only a few lights were still on overhead, buzzing faintly like they were losing power.

Yibo kept walking, hands in his pockets. Calm. Always calm.

Xiao Zhan followed, hovering a few steps behind, feeling the air thicken.

Then—

A sound.

Dragging.

Wet. Soft.

Fabric scraping the floor.

Xiao Zhan frowned. "Did you hear—"

"Don't talk."

And just like that, it began again.

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