I arrived to the ghost house just in time. Yan"er was the first to see me when I entered, she smiled and greeted me. I took a quick glance around and noticed sister Hua was nowhere to be seen, so I asked, "Yan"er, where is sister Hua?"
Yan"er did not answer my question, but instead sniffed in my direction and her eyes showed a bit of confusion. I was frightened by Yan"er"s actions and leaned back startled, "Yan"er, what are you doing?"
Yan"er, however, did not pay any attention to what I had just said. She tilted her head, thought for a minute, and walked slowly to one of the chairs and sat down. I held my hand to my chest. Yan"er was acting very strange today.
"Brother, you…you are so smelly." Xiao Lingdang had just drifted in, she flew away before she even completed her sentence.
I was stunned, and smelt my body, there was just a faint smell of sweat, why were they being so mean? Xiao Lingdang refused to stay near me and stood in the distance with her hand covering her nose. I wanted to say something confrontational, but decided there was no benefit to it.
Walking to the bar counter, I stared at Lulu"s cold face, "How is it going, Lulu, where is sister Hua?"
Lulu covered her nose in disgust and looked me up and down, "Where have you been?"
Lulu"s expression made me felt like I had fallen into a cesspool earlier that day. I was extremely upset. I had been working hard these past few days days, but it seemed the ghosts just kept coming and coming. Sure enough, work was not going to be easy today.
Since I didn"t say anything in response to her question, she asked again, "Where have you been?" With a hint of impatience but still with caring tone. It honestly made me feel better. Well, it was unnecessary to thought about this for now. For what Lulu"s inquired remind me about something happened on me.
Even though I was being honest and I told her everything about what had happened earlier, Lulu didn"t believe a word I said. She asked me again, as if I had been intentionally deceiving her. I repeated everything I had just said, but I could tell that she still doubted what I was telling her.
"Lulu, what"s wrong?" I asked.
Lulu and Yan"er were completely ignoring me.
That was when Sister Hua pa.s.sed by me and loudly claimed, " Wooohh, you"re smelly, go home, you are way too smelly!"
I turned back to look at Sister Hua"s disgusted expression and immediately felt happy. This was actually a great thing for me. I quickly thanked sister Hua, promised her to go home and take a nice shower.
Sister Hua covered her nose and said with a strange tone, " Go home, do not hang around here if you want to live."
I nodded. Even though what sister Hua had just said was very strange, I just thought she meant she"d give me a bunch of extra work to do. I didn"t think too much of it and proceeded to greet Lulu. She didn"t say anything back to me, so I left without saying anything more. Since all the guests were keeping their distance with me the entire way out of the house, I realized I must actually be smelling really bad.
The way people were avoiding me, it felt like I was a bully walking around a playground.
As I walked towards the door, a strong force dragged me back to the bar counter, as I saw the world warp around me, I fainted. When I awoke, I found myself in a room on the second floor. I usually never went up to this floor, so I was a bit disoriented.
Lulu was standing there, just looking at me. I gave her a forced smile and said, "Lulu, I know I smell bad. I"m going home to wash now. What happened, why did you bring me up here?"
Lulu didn"t speak, she moved towards me one step at a time. I could do nothing but step back until my back touched the wall behind me. There was no room for me to step back any further, but Lulu was still getting closer step by step.
I had no idea what Lulu was going to do, and I was a little scared. Lulu"s head came in closer causing me to retreat a bit more and close my eyes.
After a few seconds, nothing really happened. I opened my eyes a bit and looked, Lulu was sniffing me like a puppy.
I reached out and touched Lulu"s hair with my hand, this caused Lulu to suddenly snap out of it. We looked at each other strangely, a lock of her hair in my hand. I was too embarra.s.sed to know what I should do next.
Lulu shook her head, pulled her hair out of my hand and turned her back to me. She sat down at the table, speaking with a slightly gentler voice, "Ok, you can go now."
I was completely puzzled, but I preferred to leave if Lulu was telling me to do so. She gave me a red bracelet and said to me before I left the room, "Put this on."
I took the bracelet, which seemed to made of jade. I had never seen red jade before now. I glanced at Lulu who did not really explain anything but repeated what she had just said, "Put it on."
I put the bracelet on, and carefully left the room and closed the door. I rushed down the stairs and met with sister Hua as she was entertaining guests. She focused on the red jade bracelet on my arm, and gave me a strange smile, "Keep it safe."
I nodded and prepared to go home. I had no information about why the ghosts in the ghost house were acting so odd today. On my way out of the ghost house, all the guests were still trying to keep away from me. The only thing I could clearly notice was that as long as the ghosts (especially female ghosts) saw my bracelet, they would smile weirdly. Fears speeded up my pace, I did not want to stay one more minute in the ghost house after what had just happened.
It was already 12 o "clock. I had to walk past Kaoshan street to find a taxi. It was nearly impossible to find a taxi on Kaoshan street at night.
While waiting for the taxi, I realized that I was definitely smelly. Random ghosts Just walking in the street would try to keep away from me, just like the ghosts in the ghost house had done.
I tried to think back to all the places I"d been today. The only thing I had been around that was smelly was that dark red liquid oozing from the brick.
Finally, a taxi stopped for me. The driver was a middle-aged man, I guessed he was probably going to be a talkative one. Sure enough, he spoke to me from the moment he started driving, "News spreads quick, huh? So are you off to find the treasure?"
I paused for a moment, what he was talking about? Treasure? Did I just time travel?
The driver saw that I had nothing to say about his statement and gave me a forced smile before focusing on driving once more. The quiet road was filled with many kinds of vehicles, police cars, fire trucks, and private cars. They were heading out of the city, while only few cars were heading towards the city.
Finally, I couldn"t control my curiosity and asked, "Sir, what happened here? There are so many cars."
The driver looked at me astonished, "You really don"t know? Then why are you heading in that direction?"