The Bloody Palm Prints on the Window

The person in charge of reviewing the speeches was a tall and slender boy in a light-pink shirt, and his somewhat long hair was tied into pigtails.

On his fair face, his lips were dusted cherry pink, and she wore a pair of orange-plated glasses, which hid a pair of eyes like peach blossoms.

‘If he was an actual girl, he would be very pretty,’ Yibei wondered.

He stared at the computer screen, looked up towards Yibei, and asked, “You’re Lu Shiba?”

“Yibei,” he corrected. “Lu. Yi. Bei.”

“I know,” the boy said, rolling his eyes. “But everyone here calls you Lu Shiva. Didn’t you know that?”

‘I didn’t know, and now I don’t want to know,’ he grumbled. Who came up with such a silly name for him? He plans on letting his apparitions stalk this person and scare them when they’re using the toilet.

He reached into his guitar bag and put his printed script on the table, pushing it towards the boy.

With one look, he frowned after reading a few lines. When he finished reading the first page, he adjusted his seating position with a serious look on his face.

Seeing his expression, Yibei could only feel insecure. After all, it was a hastily written speech with no substance to it, but he couldn’t afford to rewrite it.

However, he never expected the boy to begin sobbing.

“H-hey, are you okay?”

“It’s too good,” the boy cried out as he wiped his tears. “Your script… this is very good. The best among the stacks I have over here.”

Yibei couldn’t believe the cliché sob story that made the boy before him cry.

Then again, he is an ordinary boy, not somebody exposed to the horrors of the night.

“God,” the boy said, standing up as he wiped his tears. “You see, I’m in charge of the news agency at the University. I was wondering, after this event is over, do you want to…”

You’re in charge? It’s no wonder most of the articles in the school magazine are sob stories Yibei thought. “No, thank you!”

“Y-you don’t have to tell me now! Please go back home and think about it. I don’t want your literary talent to go to waste.”

“Right… I’ll let you know. I have other things to do on the anniversary, so…”

“I understand! Let’s exchange contact information, or you might run away from me.”

‘Good that you know.’

…

A few minutes later, the boy waved his hand and bid Yibei farewell, “Remember! Text me whenever!”

Yibei nodded awkwardly before taking the stairs as quickly as possible to disappear from sight.

Like many young people today, he dislikes crowded places. He finds it too troublesome, and some may call him autistic.

Sitting alone at home and enjoying your own company is much better! Video games and a cold drink! Who doesn’t like that?

Plus, he didn’t like being forced into cooperative relationships and having to be all smiles while doing so. He just wanted to go home and ignore that. Uh, what was his name again?

The library was closed early because of the celebration.

After leaving the office, he wandered around campus aimlessly before deciding to find an empty study room to rest in.

Air-conditioned, with water and charging ports, as well as free Wi-Fi…

Students with nothing to do could stay there for all of eternity.

The study room is south of the library, which is opposite a very crowded building. Half of the building is dedicated to science and engineering students.

It wasn’t that it was crowded; the total enrolment per year was a thousand students, but only a few dozen students were admitted to Huacheng’s University.

More than half of the building needs to be vacant to accommodate their gruelling course, so the University decided to make some of the vacant space into self-study rooms.

Perhaps because it was the school anniversary, but the study rooms were deserted.

He finally found a suitable room with only one girl sleeping on a table. He parked himself in a corner by the window and sat down, plugging his headphones into his computer.

He browsed through videos related to urban legends and found a particular user with a suspiciously large number of views and a polarising amount of likes and dislikes.

Looking at the selfie of this particular user, he quit within five seconds.

Du Sixian? Isn’t the Night Division going to beat her up for doing this? He thought. ‘No. Maybe they instructed her to do it.’

He closed the tab and logged onto the university forums, finding that the Urban Legend chat group was still up and running.

‘I knew it! Every group reported for porn gets taken down, but this is still standing!’

Thinking about it, he decided to send another report when a notification rang in his ears.

He frowned slightly, clicking on the private message sent to him by [ONE HUNDRED AND 2/3 CATS].

[ONE HUNDRED AND 2/3 CATS: Hello, I know that you were sending reports regarding our group. Your malicious jokes have caused us a lot of trouble. Please stop immediately. Otherwise, we’ll conduct a stricter offline review on you again.]

‘What the…’ his eyes widened. ‘Aren’t reports anonymous? How did they…’

Thinking of the eerie sight he saw in the attic yesterday…

If everything that happened yesterday was because of the cat, and if the “stricter offline review” were to come true, it might end up in his death.

He wanted to be careful, but he also wanted to assert his dominance while facing urban legends. Staring at the report button, he narrowed his eyes.

‘I really want to press it.’

As the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Just as the thought of dying flashed through Lu Yibei’s mind, someone patted his shoulder from behind.

“Jesus, fuck!”

The girl who was sleeping in the room earlier had no idea he would react so violently and immediately shielded herself from him. Coupled with the strange sound she heard, which woke her up, she felt the need to inform him.

“I’m so sorry for scaring you; what is it?”

“I… I think we should leave this room. Something isn’t right.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you hear the strange noise just now? It was, ah!” As she explained herself, she screamed as she pointed out the window.

She saw small, bloody palm prints appearing on the window behind Yibei as if an invisible baby were crawling on the window.

A baby’s laughter echoed through her brain. Her emotions suddenly collapsed as she grabbed her bag and ran straight out of the classroom.

“Man, what’s wrong with her?” He complained as he turned back around, only to see a string of bloodied palm prints right in front of him.

He opened his mouth, ready to shout after the fleeing girl to wait for him, only for the door to the study room to slam shut by an unknown wind.

Bang!

As the door closed, a faint smell of blood wafted into the room, and the door let out a soft click.