Section 27 But at first, Wang Fei didn't speak. I only felt him squat down, pick up the flashlight next to me, shine it on me, and then drape a sports jacket from himself over me. After doing all this, he still squatted there looking at my face. I was sure that my face showed no expression, just like he used to when he was my patient. After a long time, I heard Wang Fei chuckle, and he said, “Haha, you were waiting for me to speak first, but I was also waiting for you to speak first. This is really interesting. But I suppose I just don't have the patience, so I spoke first… haha… oh right, you must be very curious about how I managed to do all of this, right?” His last sentence made my eyelid twitch involuntarily. As expected, Wang Fei paused and held the flashlight fixed on my left eye. I guessed he must have noticed this subtle movement on my face, but I still didn't speak. Since he had guessed part of what I was thinking, I saw no need to speak. I just wanted to know what he wanted to find out from me next, or what he wanted me to do. But he didn't seem in a hurry. He continued casually, “Doctors really are very patient, just like when I went to see you for treatment. But aren't you also worried about where Dong Xinjie went?” Hearing that name from him again made my heart feel as if it had been violently pulled again. It probably affected my facial expression, but I promptly opened my eyes wide and fixed my gaze toward him. Though all I could see was a blinding beam of flashlight, I was sure he would be a little puzzled by my gaze. Then I said in a deep voice, “I am indeed very worried, just like you are worried, because you also don't know where your wife went!” Date: 2010-6-21 4:08:00 As soon as the words left my mouth, I saw the flashlight in Wang Fei's hand tremble slightly. I immediately realized that I might have found the most fragile breakthrough point in his psychological defense. That's right. If Wang Fei really was, as I suspected, the previous owner of apartment 602, and had also experienced the same situation I am experiencing now, that is, his wife had mysteriously disappeared like Xinjie.Let's assume that after his wife disappeared, he, like me, searched desperately for her, and even after more than three years couldn't find her. What kind of person would he become? As we have seen, he ultimately became a maniac who killed thirteen innocent lives. Of course, someone as intelligent as him wouldn't kill without reason; I am almost certain that each person he killed had a special significance to him, which might be related to finding his wife. The root cause of all this likely stems from the fact that he could never let go of his wife, the person he cared about most and the most vulnerable part of his heart. These were some speculations I had long ago, honestly, I wasn't entirely confident in them at first. But the sentence I just said in a low voice made his hand visibly tremble, as if it were a sharp knife piercing through his defenses and stabbing deeply into his heart. Of course, Wang Fei couldn't be that fragile; he only hesitated for a few seconds before moving the flashlight away from my face, revealing that same eerie smile, and said: "Haha, my wife has long been dead." My heart skipped a beat, and after briefly considering the truth of his words, I struggled to sit up, looked him in the eyes, and asked, "Since she is already dead, why did you bring us to this air-raid shelter, put me in such a half-dead state, and make me clash with Ling Zhijie? What do you intend to achieve?" "Hey, whether you clash with Officer Ling is your own business; I didn't do anything, didn't I?" Wang Fei indeed did not want to answer my question directly. I sneered and said, "Fine, even if it was our own quarrel, you wouldn't intend to simply watch me wait here to die forever, would you? Be direct—what exactly do you want me to do? Just say it, okay? Don't waste your own time..." Wang Fei sighed, put away that eerie smile, and returned to the expression I knew him by before, appearing serious as he said, "You're right, time is... really too precious to waste. But it's not about what I want to do; it's about what I want to help you with." I did not immediately understand what he meant, and then he continued: "Of course, you have every reason not to trust me, but perhaps you can try to believe in another thing.""Hehe, I don't even believe in Ling Zhijie anymore, what else could you possibly make me believe in?" I said bluntly.
Wang Fei didn't answer immediately. He just smiled, sat down on the ground, lowered his head for a while, and then turned his gaze to the pit beside him. He looked at it for quite a long time. Just as I was about to lose patience, he finally turned back and said:
"Whatever you saw in the 602 apartment, it wasn't a hallucination of your own—it really existed."
The seemingly difficult words he spoke instantly made me recall everything that had happened in my own home, those strange and eerie fragments, things beyond my imagination, floating outside of my worldview. Yes, they really did happen right under my own eyes, yet they made me doubt myself to the point of unprecedented worry about my mental state, subconsciously driving me to deny all of it or to look for some far-fetched reason to explain it.
But in the air-raid shelter, at the brink of death, I suddenly remembered several details:
1. The next day after the incident, the long strand of hair Ling Zhijie found in the bathroom—could it have been something he had prepared in advance? And the lipstick and old-fashioned women's watch, he also had the perfect chance to place them.
2. When I saw the white human face in the pipes of the bathroom ceiling, Ling Zhijie happened to walk away. According to him, it was because I had been trying too long to get the tool, so he went upstairs. But I was on the balcony at that time—why didn't he call me? Moreover, he said he didn't even see me there… At the time, I just thought it was a bit strange and didn't think too much about it. Looking back now, could it have been that Ling Zhijie deliberately confused me?
3. When I was about to open the fridge in 702, Ling Zhijie's phone rang—how could that be such a coincidence?
4. In the air-raid shelter, the time Ling Zhijie told me and the time I experienced myself differed so much that it even made me think of the extremely sci-fi possibility of a time-space distortion."So, thinking in reverse, if Ling Zhijie was also lying, then it could be explained: the '40 seconds' he mentioned was just to confuse me, while the actual time that passed was the same as I perceived it. He merely used some words to create this illusion, trapping me in my own crazy imagination and guesses…
It was precisely these four detailed points that made me lose trust in Ling Zhijie like never before, to the point of a final break.
Afterward, Wang Fei appeared, and I immediately felt regret about what I had said to myself and Ling Zhijie, thinking that all of this was being manipulated by Wang Fei behind the scenes…
But now, Wang Fei actually told me that he had no ulterior motive, that he just wanted to help me, and even told me that everything I saw in that 602 apartment was real…
Obviously, I couldn't believe Wang Fei. Even if he was the same person living in 602 three years ago, and had gone through the same strange events, I still could not trust him. I was still very certain that he had his own hidden motives; it's just that this motive was buried too deep to uncover easily.
I quickly organized my thoughts and then replied to him, ‘Heh, are you asking if I trust my own eyes? Honestly, I don't trust anything right now; everything feels fake… By the way, you also lived in 602, so tell me, what did you see? How did you come to believe it?'
Date: 2010-6-4 16:47:00
Three years ago, on a similarly cold winter night, in the same master bedroom of 602. The difference was the interior decoration, and the person lying on the bed.
Around 3 a.m., Wang Fei woke up in his sleep and, out of habit, reached beside him, realizing his wife wasn't there. At first, he thought she had gone to the bathroom, but then he reconsidered—because the bedside lamp wasn't on, which was unlike her habit. He knew she was afraid of the dark, very afraid. If his wife got up at night, she would not only wake him up but also turn on all the lights in the bedroom, even open the bedroom door, so that she could hear Wang Fei at any time while going to the bathroom.
But at that moment, the bedroom was pitch dark, the door wasn't open, and yet his wife was no longer on the bed. Just as Wang Fei was feeling puzzled, he vaguely heard some very faint sounds of water coming from the direction of the living room.He hurriedly got up, turned on the bedside lamp, put on a coat, opened the bedroom door, and walked into the living room, but suddenly noticed that the sound of water had moved to the bathroom, though the bathroom door was closed. Was his wife really in the bathroom? That hardly seemed like her habit. Thinking this, Wang Fei raised his hand and gently knocked on the bathroom door, calling his wife's name several times, asking if she was inside.
But there was no response. The sound of water continued, seemingly coming from the shower.
By this point, Wang Fei was extremely astonished. Even if his wife was in the bathroom, what she was doing was utterly outrageous—getting out of bed at past 3 a.m. and silently running to the bathroom to take a shower?
He immediately realized something was wrong, so he gently twisted the bathroom door handle—and found it wasn't locked. He quietly opened a crack while calling his wife's name again, but the sound of water didn't stop; instead, it grew clearer. Even stranger, he realized the bathroom light wasn't on, nor was the heater turned on (mind you, it was the dead of winter; who showers without the heater on?).
Wang Fei felt for the switch by the door and turned on the bathroom light and all four heater lights. The pale light illuminated the entire bathroom, and Wang Fei called his wife's name again.
But all that responded was the continuous sound of the shower.
Through the glass door of the shower, he could see someone bathing inside, but as he got a clear view of the figure, Wang Fei immediately became alert.
Because he could tell the person inside was definitely not his wife, and he couldn't even be sure if it was a “human.” The silhouette in the shower looked like a giant carrot planted in the floor, with no curvature in the middle, only slightly smaller at the top, gradually widening downward…
Moreover, the figure was bizarre. It did not react at all to Wang Fei suddenly opening the door or calling out, nor even to the sudden bright light from the heater. It just swayed slightly behind the glass shower door, as if it were really showering.
Wang Fei stepped back into the living room and grabbed a kitchen knife before returning to the bathroom. During this whole process, the sound of water from the shower continued uninterrupted.Wang Fei tightly held the knife handle in his right hand and slowly pulled open the glass door of the shower with his left hand.
