I'd never sleepwalked a day in my life.
Not once.
But the second I'd crashed in that master bedroom last night, I'd started wandering around like a mindless zombie in my sleep.
And tonight? Tonight, I'd shared the room with Meng Yifan—and he'd sleepwalked too.
I wasn't a man who believed in ghosts or curses. But even I couldn't deny it now.
This house was wrong.
Deeply, inexplicably wrong.
Add the fact that those cement footprints had reappeared out of thin air, and my first thought was crystal clear: Run.
Get out of this house, and never look back.
But Meng Yifan was still stuck in his sleepwalking trance, his eyes closed tight, his body rigid as a board. He hadn't the faintest clue where he was or what was happening.
I swallowed hard, my throat dry as sandpaper, and called his name—softly, so I wouldn't startle him. I'd heard horror stories about waking a sleepwalker abruptly; how it could scramble their brains, leave them catatonic. I wasn't about to take that risk.
Thankfully, my quiet voice cut through his stupor. His eyes fluttered open, dazed and confused, and the TV remote slipped from his limp fingers, clattering to the floor.
His gaze darted around the living room, taking in the flickering TV, the empty space around us—and then it landed on the floor, right by the master bedroom door.
He saw them.
He saw those godforsaken cement footprints, clear as day, stretching from the front door to the bedroom.
"Holy SHIT!"
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!"
He let out two strangled yells, scrambled off the sofa, and ran.
Didn't even glance back at me. Didn't stop to see if I was coming. Just bolted for the front door, tripping over his own feet as he tore out of the house.
"Meng Yifan! Wait for me, you coward!"
I was right on his heels, my heart hammering so hard it felt like it would burst through my ribs. I grabbed my phone off the coffee table without looking and sprinted out the door, slamming it shut behind me.
We flew down the stairs, taking them two at a time, our shoes slapping against the concrete. We didn't stop running until we'd burst out of the residential complex, gasping for air, our lungs burning like fire.
When I finally collapsed against a tree, I noticed Meng Yifan was missing a slipper.
The street was empty, save for the distant sweep-sweep-sweep of a street cleaner's broom. The sky was still pitch-black, the first hints of dawn hours away.
Meng Yifan and I huddled together under the tree, our arms wrapped around our knees, our bodies shaking like leaves in a storm.
"How… how is this possible?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "I was in bed. I was asleep in the master bedroom. How did I end up here?"
He was taking it harder than I was. Meng Yifan was the tough one, the guy who laughed at ghost stories, who'd once spent a night in a haunted house just to prove it was a hoax. But this? This had broken him.
I took a shaky breath, trying to steady my voice. "Meng… do you think something happened in that house? Something bad?"
He shot me a glare that was equal parts fear and fury. "It was your sale! You tell me! I'm the one who's asking you!"
I threw my hands up in frustration. "I checked! I asked the seller point-blank if anyone had died there, if anything weird had ever gone down. He swore up and down it was a clean house! And the cops investigated it too—they said there were no homicide reports, no nothing! Are you telling me the cops were lying?"
A thought hit me then, cold and sharp as a knife. The old lady from the complex—the one who'd warned me to leave the house alone. She'd said something about the house being sold twice before. The current seller had bought it fifteen years ago… and never lived in it. Just left it sitting empty, gathering dust, for a decade and a half.
Why would anyone do that?
If the house was fine, why not rent it out? He could've made a killing in rent over those years—easily enough to pay off the mortgage twice over.
But he hadn't. He'd let it rot.
Meng Yifan must've been thinking the same thing, because he went deathly quiet, his face ashen. We didn't need to say it out loud. We both knew the truth now.
That house wasn't just "weird".
It was tainted.
"This is a disaster," Meng Yifan groaned, burying his face in his hands. "A total, unmitigated disaster."
I knew exactly what he meant. The couple who'd bought the house would demand a refund—at the very least. And we couldn't hide what had happened. We'd installed cameras to prove the house was fine, remember? We had to show them the footage.
But what would we say when we did? That we'd both sleepwalked? That we'd seen footprints that vanished into thin air? That we'd bolted out of the house like scared kids? They'd think we were insane. Or worse—they'd sue us for fraud, for selling them a cursed property. And if that happened, we'd lose everything—the store, our savings, our reputations.
"This house is definitely cursed," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "You saw those footprints, right? You can't say I was hallucinating now."
At the mention of the footprints, Meng Yifan paled even further, his lips trembling. "I never sleepwalked before," he muttered. "Never. How did this happen? One second I was in bed, the next… the next I was on the sofa, holding the remote, and those footprints… they were there."
I didn't tell him the rest—the soft click-clack of high heels I'd heard in my half-asleep state, the faint scraping sound like someone was plastering a wall. And I definitely didn't tell him about the difference in the footprints this time.
Last night, the prints had pointed toward the master bedroom—heel first, toe second. Like whoever had left them was going into the room.
But tonight? Tonight, the prints were reversed. Toe first, heel second. Like whoever had left them was coming out.
We huddled under that tree until the sky turned pale pink, until the first birds started chirping. Neither of us spoke. We were both too busy replaying the night's horrors in our heads.
Finally, Meng Yifan sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. "We can't just hide here forever. Call the store—get Xiao Xie and Xiao Li to meet us here. We need backup. We need to go back and check that house again."
The thought of stepping foot inside that apartment made my blood run cold. But he was right. We couldn't run from this. Not if we wanted to save our business—and our asses.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the numbers of our two newest employees. Xie Peng and Li Xingyang—fresh out of college, eager to please, and still naive enough to believe the world made sense.
They sounded confused when they answered the phone, their voices thick with sleep, but they agreed to come right away. Meng Yifan promised to cover their taxi fares, which helped sweeten the deal.
Thirty minutes later, they showed up, clutching paper bags of breakfast—steamed buns and soy milk, still warm. Bless their young, innocent hearts.
"Boss Meng! Boss Chen!" Xie Peng grinned, holding out a bag to me. "Did we get a new client? Is this a house viewing? At this hour?"
Meng Yifan's face was still pale, his eyes bloodshot. He didn't bother beating around the bush. "No client. No viewing. The house Chen sold half a year ago… it's not clean."
Xie Peng and Li Xingyang blinked, staring at us like we'd grown two heads.
Li Xingyang frowned, confused. "Not clean? Should we call a cleaning service? We can get a discount with the company we used last time—"
"It's not dirty," Meng Yifan snapped, cutting him off. "It's haunted. Fucking haunted."
The two kids stared at us, their mouths hanging open. They clearly thought we'd lost our minds—two grown men, scared out of their wits, rambling about ghosts at dawn.
I couldn't blame them. If I hadn't lived through it, I wouldn't have believed it either.
We didn't bother trying to explain further. We just herded them toward the residential complex, toward that cursed apartment building.
The four of us filed into the house, the door creaking open easily—we'd forgotten to lock it in our mad dash to escape. We checked every room, top to bottom. The master bedroom. The guest room. The bathroom. The kitchen.
But it was just a house.
A nice house, sure. Opulent decor, spacious rooms, quiet as a tomb. But there was nothing weird about it. No cold spots. No strange noises. No floating objects.
And the floor? Spotless. Not a trace of cement. Not a single footprint.
It was like last night's horrors had never happened.
"Well," Xie Peng said, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Looks pretty normal to me, guys. Maybe it was just a bad dream?"
Meng Yifan shot him a glare that could've killed. "Shut up and help us with the footage."
The four of us crowded around my laptop, pulling up the camera feeds from last night. We skipped ahead to eleven o'clock, when Meng Yifan and I had crashed in the master bedroom, and hit play, cranking the speed up to 10x.
We watched as the hours ticked by, as the room stayed quiet, as nothing happened. I felt my cheeks burning with embarrassment—what if we had imagined it? What if we were losing our minds?
Then the footage hit midnight.
The knocking started.
I didn't even flinch. I'd heard it twice now. I hit the speed up button again, eager to get to the part where Meng Yifan had opened the door, where that girl in black had stood outside, pointing at the master bedroom.
But then—
I hit pause.
My finger froze on the spacebar. My blood turned to ice in my veins. A cold sweat broke out across my forehead, dripping down my neck.
Meng Yifan saw my face, saw the terror in my eyes, and his own blood ran cold. "What? What is it?"
I didn't answer. I just stared at the screen, my mouth agape, my body shaking like a leaf.
Meng Yifan leaned in, squinting at the laptop—and then he saw it too.
His face went white as a sheet. He let out a strangled gasp, stumbling backward, nearly tripping over Xie Peng's feet.
Xie Peng and Li Xingyang leaned in, confused, staring at the screen.
The footage showed the front door, clear as day.
It showed Meng Yifan yanking the door open, his face twisted in irritation.
It showed me standing behind him, peeking over his shoulder, my heart in my throat.
But outside the door?
There was no one.
No girl in black. No long hair. No red high heels. No pale hand pointing at the master bedroom.
The hallway was empty.
Deserted.
Absolutely, completely empty.
And there we were—Meng Yifan and me—two grown men, staring at thin air, talking to no one at all.