Chapter 4: Strange Neighbor 04

“Huh??”

Yan Jing, who had been about to leap up from the dining table and bolt out the door, froze in place. “What did you say?”

“Haunted,” Yu Bai said, emphasizing the word. “My place is haunted. That’s the sound coming from what seems like a ghost.”

Silence fell instantly on the other end of the line. From afar came the curious voices of Yan Jing’s parents, who had no idea what was going on at the table.

“Why are you rushing off like that? You haven’t finished your meal yet.”

“Is Little Bai calling you? Who’s crying?”

Then came a “pfft.”

Yan Jing, his mouth stuffed full of food, held it in for a moment but ultimately couldn’t, letting out a muffled chuckle that sounded suspiciously like a fart.

“Don’t laugh while you’re eating! How are you so gross?”

“Mom, I didn’t mean to. It’s Little Bai—he says his place is haunted, and the ghost is crying.”

“…”

Yan Jing’s parents fell silent for a moment, then lost it too.

“Pfft.”

“Pfft!”

Yu Bai listened numbly to the rising chorus of fart-like laughs coming from his phone speaker.

Along with some affectionate greetings from the elders.

“When did you get so superstitious, kid?” Yan Mama called out toward the phone, beside herself with laughter. “Come over to our place when you’re free. One visit and you’ll be cured.”

Yu Bai forced a smile. “Sure thing, Auntie. See you next time, Auntie.”

Yan Jing’s family ran a funeral parlor.

A single visit really would cure him.

Twenty minutes later, urgent knocking sounded at the door. Yu Bai got up reluctantly, scowling as he opened it.

“I told you not to come.”

“No way!” Yan Jing immediately slipped inside. “Where? Where? Where’s the ghost crying?”

Yu Bai led him toward the bedroom like a real estate agent showing a property, then stopped deadpan and pointed at the wall in front of them.

“Right here.”

Yan Jing, who had rushed over and was still catching his breath, quickly steadied himself. He tiptoed closer, cupping his ear to listen.

His impressively buff physique paired with the sneaky movements of a thief made for a hilariously comical sight.

Standing behind him, Yu Bai quietly pulled out his phone and snapped an ugly photo for leverage.

Amid his deliberately hushed breathing, Yan Jing really did hear a faint crying sound.

Fainter than the clear wails Yu Bai had heard over the phone earlier, and now intermittent—like the occasional sniffles after crying oneself out.

“Fuck, there really is crying,” Yan Jing said in awe, twisting his head around. “I thought you were messing with me—hey, what are you doing with your phone?”

“Nothing, just replying to a message.” Yu Bai calmly closed the camera app. “When have I ever lied to you?”

Yan Jing eyed him suspiciously.

The two stared at each other for a moment before Yan Jing suddenly grinned. He raised his hand and slapped the wall hard.

The blow from a professional fitness trainer was no joke.

The wall shuddered. Yu Bai shuddered too.

The faint crying from inside the wall stopped instantly.

Yan Jing leaned smugly against the wall. “Where’d you hide the thing making the noise? Where’d you buy it? Such crap quality—it stops after one smack—”

Before he could finish, a piercing, shrill wail erupted right by his ear, blasting through the wall straight into his eardrums.

“Holy crap!!”

Yan Jing’s hair stood on end. He jumped straight up and, in blind panic, ducked behind Yu Bai.

“Fuck, it’s alive!! Aaaah, save me!!!”

Reduced to a human shield by the strong but cowardly fitness coach, Yu Bai took a deep breath. He firmly covered his ears, tormented by the double assault of noise, before speaking calmly. “I told you I wasn’t lying.”

“Sorry, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Face full of terror, Yan Jing clutched at the hem of his shirt, mumbling nonstop.

“What do we do now? Is it really a ghost? I can’t wrap my head around this. You know how many corpses I’ve seen since I was a kid? I used to hang out in the morgue reciting lessons to them. Oh god, what if they were all alive? I don’t want to live anymore…”

“Enough!!”

Yu Bai lowered his hands from his ears and listened carefully to the wall. He also yanked his nearly torn shirt hem back from Yan Jing’s grasp.

“Anyway, you’ve scared the ghost off now.”

After that explosive burst of sobbing, the cries from the wall had faded into the distance. Now they were completely gone.

At those words, Yan Jing’s expression froze, radiating a despair that suggested he might jump off the building any second.

“It’s fine. Maybe it’s not a ghost,” Yu Bai reassured him. “Maybe we’re both just losing our minds.”

Yan Jing’s voice was weak. “That didn’t comfort me at all.”

He stared at the now-silent wall and asked stubbornly, “Does your neighbor have any kids living next door?”

“No.”

Of course, he couldn’t swear that the suspiciously mixed-race adult next door wasn’t a kid in disguise.

“Even if there were, the sound’s coming from the wrong direction. Outside this wall is just the exterior wall—nothing but air, no apartments.”

Yan Jing wracked his not-so-sharp brain cells and recalled, “I remember sound directions are super misleading in these buildings. Back when my upstairs neighbor was renovating on a weekend morning, it sounded like it was right overhead. I took off my shirt and stormed up there to confront him, but it turned out not to be the unit above—it was from the building diagonally across, three floors up. Maybe the crying sounds close, but it’s actually farther away!”

“Yeah, that makes sense. But why’d you take off your shirt before storming up?”

Yan Jing immediately straightened up, puffing out his chest proudly. “More intimidating that way.”

His full pecs rose prominently on his towering, double-door frame of a body.

…Thank goodness he was wearing a shirt this time.

Yu Bai silently looked away, wishing he could rinse his eyes with eyedrops.

“But this building only goes up to the twelfth floor. Above that, it’s just the rooftop.”

“Rooftop?” Yan Jing’s eyes lit up with sudden realization. “It has to be a little girl who ran up there to cry!”

“Think about it—she got wronged at school, her parents don’t care, so late at night she sneaks up to the rooftop for a secret cry. Then my slap was so hard it shook the whole floor and scared her. Totally reasonable, right?!”

It was reasonably plausible.

Though that slap probably wouldn’t have shaken anyone on the rooftop.

Still, it was a new possibility at least.

Yu Bai listened, then immediately turned and headed out. “If that’s the case, she might still be up there.”

Yan Jing hurried after him.

Yu Bai passed through the hallway and glanced at the elevators. The one that had broken down that afternoon was still out of service, its display screen dark above the buttons. The other showed it was stopped on the first floor.

There was no elevator to the rooftop—just a staircase leading up from the twelfth floor. Anyone going there had to pass through this hallway.

It had only been about a minute since the crying stopped. A little girl coming down from the rooftop wouldn’t have moved that fast.

And Yu Bai hadn’t heard any obvious footsteps in the hallway earlier. Running would have made a lot of noise.

He stepped into the stairwell and peered down over the railing. The spiraling stairs below were dead silent—no sign of anyone.

Either the little girl was still up on the rooftop, or she didn’t exist at all.

The two climbed through the unlit stairwell. Yan Jing moved faster, shoving open the rooftop door first.

“I bet she’s huddled in some corner sniffling right now—”

The door swung open, and moonlight poured down, illuminating the pitch-black stairs and their dim surroundings.

The rooftop was utterly still. No crying at all—just the distant, muffled hum of city noise.

No sign of anyone, only bits of windblown trash skittering occasionally.

But Yu Bai and Yan Jing paid it no mind. Their gazes locked straight ahead in the same direction.

Yan Jing’s eyes widened. “…What the hell is that?”

Yu Bai adjusted his glasses. “…It’s huge.”

At the far edge of the rooftop sat a massive spherical object, roughly the size of a gym yoga ball. It lurked in the shadows, indistinct.

The two exchanged a glance and spoke almost in unison.

“It’s a yoga ball.”

“No, it’s not.”

Yan Jing was utterly confident. “Definitely is.”

Yu Bai held up a finger. “Bet you go downstairs and grab takeout.”

“You’re on!”

Yan Jing hooked his pinky with Yu Bai’s right away.

“I’m gonna win. I’ll order a case of mineral water for you to carry down…”

As they drew closer, Yan Jing’s voice trailed off and stiffened.

“Fuck, why is it so big—”

Yu Bai was equally stunned. He instinctively took off his useless plain-glass glasses to eyeball this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle with the naked eye.

It was a watermelon.

Covered in wavy green stripes.

The size of a yoga ball.

A watermelon???

“That’s way too big! Why the hell is there a giant watermelon on your roof?”

“Can you carry it?”

“Of course I… Wait, no—we bet on takeout. Does this count as your takeout?!”

“Sure does,” Yu Bai said calmly. “See that? There’s a flowerpot right next to it.”

The enormous watermelon had landed directly on the ground, but a vine connected to it stretched from an old flowerpot nearby.

“I see it. It’s your flowerpot? You didn’t grow this watermelon, did you!”

“Nope. I don’t know who planted it, but I know whose flowerpot it is.”

It was the flowerpot left behind by the previous tenant of Room 1205, where Yu Bai lived.

When Yu Bai had rented the place, the agent had already told him about the previous tenant: an old grandma who had lived there for over a decade and had passed away in the hospital from illness.

Once the apartment was vacated, her son had put it up for rent.

When Yu Bai met the landlord to sign the contract, the landlord had mentioned that his mother used to grow some flowers and plants up on the rooftop. They were still there, and if Yu Bai liked them, he could take over caring for them.

After moving in, Yu Bai had gone up to the rooftop once and taken a look. The plants had long since withered from neglect, so he let the matter drop.

Yan Jing listened, then murmured in a daze, “So there was no watermelon here a month ago?”

“Right. Just weeds and trash.”

Yan Jing fell silent for a moment before asking, “But a watermelon this big couldn’t have grown in just a month, right?”

Yu Bai shook his head.

“Unless agricultural technology made some massive breakthrough in the past month, it shouldn’t be possible.”

“That’s great!”

Yan Jing suddenly perked up.

“Then it could still be a yoga ball! Maybe someone painted it to look like a watermelon, right? Right?”

Before the words “Yeah, right” could even leave his mouth, Yu Bai watched in horror as his brawny dimwit of a friend reached out toward the mysterious giant watermelon.

“Let me see if it’s really a melon or just a ball.” Yan Jing bent down and stretched out a large hand. “Don’t worry, I won’t use any force this time. I’ll just touch it!”

“Don’t touch it—”

Yu Bai’s warning was drowned out by a sharp, crisp cracking sound.

Beneath Yan Jing’s palm, the giant spherical object split open like it had been struck by an earthquake, a long fissure revealing the deep red flesh inside.

A rich, clear, sweet aroma wafted into the air.

It was undoubtedly a genuine massive watermelon.

“. . . Uh.”

Yan Jing withdrew his hand with an awkward chuckle and took a deep breath. “Haha, this melon looks amazing.”

It did look amazing—ripe enough to split open at the lightest touch. Just the scent alone was enough to imagine how sweet it would taste.

And it tasted just as sweet.

Yu Bai swore up and down that he hadn’t been tempted by the aroma. It was Yan Jing who had insisted he try a bite.

“No one’s going to poison a watermelon this big, and I opened it myself anyway.”

Yan Jing sat on the edge of the rooftop, cradling a huge chunk he’d torn off with his bare hands and devouring it with great relish.

“Man, it’s delicious. Every bite is as sweet as honey. It’s so huge you couldn’t finish it alone. I’ll take some back for my parents later.”

Yu Bai sat beside him on the rooftop edge, holding the rind of the piece he’d just finished. His mood was a little gloomy.

“Do you even remember why we came up to the rooftop?”

“Huh?”

Yan Jing blinked in confusion.

“Let me think . . . Oh, right—to find the little girl. We didn’t see her, though!”

As he spoke, he responsibly spat the watermelon seeds into the old flower pot, stacked the rinds into a little pile to take away later, then deftly tore off two more pieces.

“You’re done already? Here, have another.”

Yu Bai gave up struggling. “Fine, just focus on eating.”

The mystery of the crying from inside the wall remained unsolved, and now there was a new one: the giant watermelon on the rooftop.

Yu Bai’s life had always been full of ups and downs and excitement before, but every event had at least had a reasonable explanation.

Why had things suddenly turned so bizarre lately?

It had started with the inexplicable tapping from inside the wall, then Little Star, followed by the strange neighbor, the crying from the wall, and now the rooftop watermelon.

A string of odd little incidents, all popping up one after another since two days ago.

. . . Wait. According to what he’d overheard from the agent earlier, the neighbor next door had moved in just two or three days ago.

Could all these things be connected to him?

Yu Bai cradled his watermelon as he carefully reviewed the past month’s events. The strange neighbor’s arrival was the only variable.

But how could he verify it?

Yu Bai pondered the question seriously. The sweet scent lingered around him, and he couldn’t help taking another bite of the vibrant red fruit.

Half an hour later.

Panting and clutching his side, Yan Jing stood up straight at the door of Room 1205 and whispered toward the inside, “We really doing this?”

Yu Bai finished writing the final character at the desk, set down his pen, and rose to his feet.

“Yeah. Did you put it down okay?”

“All set.” Yan Jing walked into the apartment, glancing back over his shoulder every few steps, reluctant to tear his eyes away. “You think this’ll work? What a waste if it doesn’t.”

“I think it will.”

Yu Bai picked up the freshly written note and headed out, showing it to Yan Jing along the way.

“What would a normal person do if they saw this?”

“They’d probably come knock and ask what the hell’s wrong with you,” Yan Jing answered honestly. “Or maybe leave the gift back at your door, since they wouldn’t know if we’d poisoned it.”

“Exactly. So we’ll see how he reacts.”

Yu Bai stuck the note to the door of Room 1204 next door. He glanced at the light spilling from the door crack, then rapped his knuckles against it.

“. . . That’ll tell us if he’s normal or not.”

The moment he heard footsteps approaching inside the neighbor’s apartment, Yu Bai hurried back to his own place, gently closing the door behind him. He held his breath and waited.

In the silent nighttime hallway, the light from Room 1204 cast a flat, oval shadow on the floor by the door.

There sat half a giant watermelon, its flesh plump and ruby-red, giving off a fragrant sweetness.

And on the door was a huge note the size of an A4 sheet.

It read:

This is a watermelon. Very sweet. For you.

—Room 1205 Neighbor 🙂