Ye Chen did not go to the abandoned high school because he was brave.
He went because staying away had started to feel worse.
In Linjiang City, time passed in uneven blocks. Days slipped by unnoticed, while nights stretched long and thin. Ye Chen slept little. When he did, his dreams were shallow and broken, full of places he had never been and rules he somehow understood without being told.
He lived alone in a narrow apartment above a closed repair shop. The building smelled of damp concrete and old wiring. Sometimes water dripped through the ceiling for hours and then stopped without explanation. He never called the landlord. No one ever came anyway.
At night, Ye Chen sat by the window and watched the streetlight flicker. When it went dark, the street outside became a shape without detail. Cars passed less often. Footsteps became rare.
Silence returned.
That silence reminded him of the hospital room.
The night his sister died, the room was quiet in the same way. Machines hummed softly. Nurses spoke in careful voices. His sister lay still, her eyes open but unfocused. She kept trying to speak.
"It knew," she whispered.
Ye Chen leaned closer. Asked her what she meant.
She looked at him, finally focused, fear clear and sharp in her eyes.
"It watched first," she said. "Then it waited."
That was the last full sentence she ever spoke.
Later, when Ye Chen told the police, they wrote it down and moved on. Stress, shock, confusion. They told him people say strange things when they are dying.
Ye Chen learned that night that truth did not matter if it was inconvenient.
After that, he stopped trusting official answers.
He spent his nights online, reading stories people posted and then deleted. He learned which forums vanished quickly and which stayed hidden. He learned the language people used when they were afraid of being believed.
He noticed patterns.
Certain places appeared again and again. Not always deadly. Just wrong. Places where people felt watched. Places where time behaved strangely. Places with rules that only became clear after someone broke them.
The abandoned high school appeared more often than any other.
Seven deaths. Three months.
Each report was short. Too short. Same phrases repeated. No signs of struggle. Cause unclear. Investigation closed.
Ye Chen printed everything and spread the pages across his floor. He circled times, locations, details people thought were meaningless.
Every victim entered the school after eleven at night.
Every victim stayed past midnight.
None left.
There were warnings. Not official ones. The kind passed quietly between people who lived nearby.
Do not cut through the yard at night.Do not film inside.Do not answer messages you did not expect.Do not stay after twelve.
Ye Chen wondered who learned these rules first.
He wondered how many people died before anyone noticed.
On the night he decided to go, Ye Chen packed lightly. Phone. Flashlight. Notebook. Pen. He did not bring a weapon. He did not believe it would matter.
As he walked through the city, he noticed how empty the streets were. Not unusually empty. Just enough that it felt intentional. Shops were closed. Windows dark. Even stray cats were gone.
When he reached the school gate, he stopped.
The gate stood half open, as it always did in photos. Rust ate through the hinges. The metal bars bent inward slightly, like something had pushed through many times.
The sign above was broken. The school name had fallen away. Only High School remained.
Ye Chen checked the time.
Eleven thirty eight.
For a moment, he considered turning back.
The thought felt foreign, like an idea placed there by someone else.
He stepped inside.
The gate closed behind him without sound.
Ye Chen turned immediately.
The street was still there. The city still existed. But the distance between him and the gate felt wrong. Too far. As if space itself had stretched.
He swallowed and walked forward.
The air grew colder with each step. Not sharply. Slowly. Patiently. His breath fogged faintly.
The school grounds were silent. No wind. No insects. The building ahead seemed larger than it should have been, its shape unclear at the edges.
The doors opened easily.
Inside, the lobby smelled of dust and metal. Old metal. The kind that stayed on your tongue. The floor was coated in dust except for wide marks that crossed the tiles again and again.
Dragged. Always dragged in the same direction.
Ye Chen wrote that down.
The walls were clean. Too clean. The kind of clean that came from being wiped regularly, not abandoned.
Someone had scratched words into the wall near the stairs.
LEAVE BEFORE TWELVE
The letters were uneven. Some deep. Some shallow. Multiple hands. Multiple times.
Ye Chen checked his phone.
Eleven forty seven.
The stairs creaked under his weight. Each sound echoed longer than expected, repeating softly even after he stopped moving. He paused halfway up and listened.
The echo faded slowly.
Not naturally.
As if the building decided when it should end.
On the second floor, one classroom door was open.
Inside, the desks were arranged neatly. Chairs pushed in. A thin layer of dust covered everything except the blackboard.
Words were written there in faint chalk.
DO NOT STAY AFTER MIDNIGHT
The letters were careful. Calm. Not rushed.
Ye Chen felt a tightness in his chest.
His phone vibrated.
No signal. No number.
You should not be here.
He stared at the screen for a long time.
Then he put the phone in his pocket and continued.
The third floor was darker. The lights flickered once, then stayed off. The temperature dropped further. Ye Chen could feel it in his joints.
A sound came from above.
Not footsteps.
Something shifting its weight.
Ye Chen stopped breathing for a moment and listened.
The sound stopped.
Waiting.
At eleven fifty nine, Ye Chen reached the fourth floor.
The hallway lights turned on all at once.
The silence became absolute.
His phone buzzed again.
Midnight.
The music room door opened slowly.
Warm light spilled out.
Ye Chen stepped inside.
The door closed behind him.
The room was clean. Too clean. Chairs stacked neatly. A piano sat in the center, polished and smooth. On top of it lay phones, keys, wallets, watches.
Personal things. Carefully arranged.
Ye Chen felt a presence behind him.
Not approaching.
Already there.
A reflection appeared on the piano surface. Tall. Thin. Its shape shifted slightly, like it had not decided how it should look.
It did not touch him.
It did not need to.
Understanding pressed into his mind slowly.
This place watched.This place learned.This place waited.
People who noticed the rules sometimes left.
People who ignored them stayed.
Ye Chen felt memories surface that were not his. Fear. Confusion. Regret. The moment people realized midnight mattered.
The thing behind him did not speak.
It did not explain.
It showed.
Ye Chen understood then why no one survived.
Because knowing was the last thing you learned.
And once you knew, leaving was no longer allowed.