Worried that Manager Lu would wake up and start hallucinating again, I brought a chair to his bedside, sat down, and went to sleep.
In the morning, I was woken up by Manager Lu making a phone call. "h.e.l.lo, Manager Xia, it"s me, Xiao Lu. You said you called in a Celestial Master to catch ghosts when our company was being haunted last time. Can you give me his number? I think I ran into a ghost yesterday! Oh, I"m writing it down, he"s called Ning-tianshi, all right, I"ll get in touch with him."
At first I was annoyed by the noise. My mind was blurred. Hearing the words "Ning-tianshi" woke me at once. I opened my eyes and saw Manager Lu sitting on the bed, looking pensively at his phone.
"Manager Lu, are you OK?" I asked in concern. "Do you remember what happened last night?"
"Of course I remember. Who"s going to forget a ghost girl crawling out of the TV and wrapping her hair around your neck!" His face went pale when he mentioned this.
I felt helpless. It wouldn"t be good to tell him plainly, You were overtired and hallucinated it. After all, he was my boss, and he wasn"t Xia Jin. I could only tactfully say, "Manager Lu, you should be resting more. Don"t stay up late so often, and drink less coffee. You had a stomachache yesterday."
But he ignored my concerns and asked disbelievingly, "You really didn"t see the ghost girl coming out of the TV last night? You really thought I"d put on The Ring? The TV turned itself on, I was writing my a.n.a.lysis the whole time."
I didn"t think so. Yesterday I"d found the remote next to Manager Lu"s ashtray. Probably his attention had been distracted, between smoking and drinking coffee and working on his a.n.a.lysis, so when he"d gone to tap the ash into the tray he"d accidentally touched the remote.
He went on for a while, saw that I didn"t believe him, then said in a stifled voice, "You wait, I"ll prove to you our company is being haunted."
I understood his persistence. After all, last night it was only the two of us. Most of the world didn"t believe in ghosts. If he was the only one who said he had run into a ghost, and I said that the problem was the power supply, everyone would surely say that Manager Lu was going senile at a young age. It was understandable that he wanted me to believe him.
All the same, even if I could understand it, I still thought it was ridiculous. Even a proper Celestial Master like Ning Tiance hadn"t been able to make me believe in ghosts. That this promising young man, raised by the state, was so superst.i.tious, really showed the decline of civilization.
I got cleaned up, then applied myself to my work. Although sleeping sitting up had given me a backache and staying up late so many nights in a row had left me dry-eyed and dizzy, I, Shen Jianguo, a young man who had inherited a tradition of hard work and plain living, wouldn"t be brought down by these troubles.
Manager Lu got up and quickly finished his a.n.a.lysis, then went to submit it to his superiors for approval. I went around with a salesperson instead. There was a technique to being a good salesperson. Being too indifferent could make customers feel ignored, but being too eager would get on their nerves.
In a large shopping mall where a single piece of clothing could cost tens of thousands, the salespeople should be gentle and courteous, making customers feel at home without being overly enthusiastic.
Most of the salespeople were female, but it was also necessary for some to be male. After all, there were many different types of customers to be dealt with, and we had to strive to satisfy all of them.
While I watched the saleswoman I was following quietly persuading customers to grit their teeth and swipe their credit cards, my thoughts drifted to my cla.s.s. Most of my students were rebellious. I should learn from this saleswoman"s gentle promotion technique, promoting knowledge to my students like a product until they couldn"t refuse my teaching.
The wisdom of the ancients hadn"t misled me: everyone has something to teach you.
I worked very hard to learn, but however hard I tried I really was very sleepy. After staying up working overtime with Manager Lu several nights in a row, then on top of that sleeping uncomfortably and giving myself a backache last night, I really was having trouble staying upright.
While I was dazedly walking towards the bathroom, I carelessly stepped into a puddle and slipped.
I was just about to get closely acquainted with the floor when an arm grabbed my waist and scooped me up.
A familiar voice said, "I"ve always though Teacher Shen was indomitable, never failing in strength, never needing anyone to worry about him. I didn"t expect you would be so light."
I was also surprised. I squeezed Xiao Ning"s arm and said, "And I didn"t expect you to be so strong..."
No, I just hadn"t been thinking clearly. Xiao Ning could run thirty kilometers along the highway at night. That clearly showed great physical strength and diligent exercise.
Ning Tiance"s long, slender fingers brushed the corners of my eyes. He sighed. "It"s only been a few days since I saw you. How did you get such heavy black circles around your eyes?"
"Staying up late working overtime." When I saw that the cleaning lady wasn"t around, I left Ning Tiance"s arms and ran to the utility room in the bathroom, took out a mop, and started mopping up the water on the floor. I was tough enough that it didn"t matter if I fell down, but what if a customer fell? Not only would it be an unpleasant experience for the customer, but the cleaning lady would have her salary deducted. As long as I was here, I could clean it up.
"Manager Lu called you?" I asked Xiao Ning as I mopped. "Why are you on your own? Where is he? Didn"t he come with you?"
"Manager Lu and I arranged to meet at three. It"s only two now, I"m the one who"s early. His meeting isn"t over yet," Ning Tiance explained. "I knew you were working here, so I asked the staff, and they said you"d gone to the bathroom. I"d just found you when I saw you slip. Looks like I was just in time."
"It was pretty well-timed." I scratched my head awkwardly, went to put the mop back into the utility room, and washed my hands. "What do you think about all of this?"
Ning Tiance became serious. "Manager Lu didn"t elaborate over the phone. I don"t understand the facts clearly, so I can"t make a final determination."
I told Ning-tianshi what had happened last night. "Personally, I think that he was overtired and having hallucinations. Feeling like you"re suffocating can"t mean anything good, you should advise him to go to the hospital."
Ning Tiance looked at me with a kindly expression. "You were there at the time."
"Yes." I nodded.
"Every time you looked, the ghost girl was in the well. As soon as you turned away, Manager Lu started screaming that she was coming out of the TV?" Ning Tiance asked.
"Right, it was just like that."
Xiao Ning rubbed his chin with his thumb and index finger, muttered to himself, then said, "Strange. It could be that Manager Lu has done some shameful deed."
"You mean his illness has a psychological origin?"
"No, I mean, if he still felt suffocated while you were there, he must have done something he shouldn"t have done."
I was overcome by this flattery. "I"m just an ordinary employee, not a doctor. I"d be at a loss if something went wrong with him."
"No, your Yang energy is so strong that ghosts don"t dare to act in front of you. They run a serious risk if they do."
It seemed that Xiao Ning still suspected there was a ghost in the TV. I"d better take him to have a look.
After explaining matters to the staff, I took Xiao Ning to Manager Lu"s office.
I"d kicked down the door of his office, so we didn"t need a key. After I asked for permission over WeChat, I took Ning Tiance to Manager Lu"s work station.
At Manager Lu"s orders, no one had come to clean the office for him. Everything remained just as it had been last night.
Ning Tiance looked at the lights, then plugged in the TV. He pulled back his hand and frowned. "This socket is leaking electricity?"
"That"s right." I nodded firmly. "Last night when the lightbulbs burned out, it must have had something to do with the leak. There"s definitely something wrong here."
I stood on Manager Lu"s desk to take down the lightbulbs, borrowed a voltage tester from the handyman and checked: the lightbulbs had burned out.
Ning Tiance was puzzled. "So it really was human interference, not a ghost?"
I opened the cover of the outlet and found that there were two wires screwed together. It was very skillfully done. It could make the lights short out without affecting the TV.
"A professional." I shook my head and said, "It looks like it wasn"t just in his head. Someone wants to hurt Manager Lu."
He"d just had a cup of coffee before hallucinating last night. I"d brought the coffee from the office"s drinks machine. Last night, Manager Lu and I were the only ones working overtime, and Manager Lu had a habit of drinking coffee at night. You could be sure that he would drink it.
I plugged the TV into a different outlet and looked at the playback record.
"One truth prevails," I said like Detective Conan delivering an a.n.a.lysis. "Someone connected to the Wifi in Manager Lu"s office and used it to play The Ring on the TV. Combined with the lights going out and the hallucinogen in the coffee, this caused Manager Lu to have his hallucinations. Let"s call the police."
Ning Tiance took out his compa.s.s… of evil and circled the TV with it. Puzzled, he said, "There really is no Yin energy."
I wanted to call the police right away, but Ning Tiance didn"t agree. I could only stay with him and wait until Manager Lu returned so we could tell him our a.n.a.lyses.
As expected, Manager Lu believed my version. "Someone wants to hurt me? Then let"s call the police."
Xiao Ning still didn"t believe it. He shook his head, saying, "No, it"s not possible. Everything points to it being a ghost, how could there be a human involved?"
I felt sorry for Xiao Ning. He"d been raised the Maoshan Sect receiving a Daoist education, being trained to rid the world of evil. His first time out on an official a.s.signment, he"d gone to H City to get work, but the waters were deep in the big city, and he hadn"t found it. Then it was one hit after another, his world view constantly being challenged.
When a person was establishing a new world view after his old one had collapsed, his family and friends had to look out for him, paying attention to his emotional state. During this period of change he would be vulnerable to damaging information, his thoughts gradually becoming more extreme. This was just how characters in TV shows going evil worked.
I did want Xiao Ning to slowly come around to believing in science, but I didn"t want it to happen so fast.
In the end, Manager Lu chose to call the police, and the police brought us in to give statements. We left Xiao Ning in the office, staring into s.p.a.ce.
I was very worried about him. On the way to the police bureau, I sent him several comforting messages. Xiao Ning didn"t reply.
The whole time I was giving evidence at the police bureau, I was burning with impatience to get back and comfort Ning Tiance.
It was almost midnight by the time the preliminary investigation was done. I had come with Manager Lu, so I asked him to drive me. I quickly told him the address of Xiao Ning"s hotel.
After last night"s experience, Manager Lu and I were on quite friendly terms. He agreed to drop me off near the hotel. When we left the police bureau I was so nervous that I left my phone in the inquiry room. A police comrade gave Manager Lu a call, asking me to come back and pick it up .
"You go get it, I"ll wait for you in the parking lot," Manager Lu said.
When we"d arrived there hadn"t been any parking near the police bureau, so Manager Lu had parked his car in the underground parking lot a block away. After I picked up my phone I ran all the way to the lot. Manager Lu"s car was waiting for me.
I pulled open the pa.s.senger"s side door and got in. I gasped, "Thank you, Manager Lu."
Manager Lu didn"t speak. He put a soft, white hand onto the gearshift.
Manager Lu"s hands... looked like this?
I turned my head. It wasn"t Manager Lu sitting in the driver"s seat at all. It was Mu Huaitong in her red clothes.
Whipping my head around, I saw Manager Lu lying on the back seat, out cold.
I looked at Mu Huaitong. Mu Huaitong smiled sweetly at me. "Hi, Teacher Shen. Bye, Teacher Shen."
Then she opened the door and ran for it. The sound of her high heels echoed through the parking lot.
I yelled, "Stop! Don"t move! Come back here."
Mu Huaitong stopped, looked back, and continued to smile sweetly at me.