The girl, covered in blood, leaned against the wall without moving, her eyes closed.

Even as the beam of my flashlight shone directly on her face, she showed no reaction, as though she had fallen unconscious.

For a moment, I was utterly stunned.

The vengeful spirit said to haunt this abandoned construction site at night—was its true form a girl?

No, aside from being "covered in blood," this girl had almost nothing in common with the vengeful ghost I had heard about.

So, this is a living human being? But why is she so gravely injured, and why is she wearing a hospital gown in such a desolate place?

Now isn’t the time to ponder these questions. Since she is a seriously injured living person, what I should do next is obvious.

I quickly walked up to her and squatted down, using my limited knowledge to check her vital signs while pulling out my phone to call for emergency services.

At the same time, I carefully observed her appearance.

She looked to be only thirteen or fourteen, about the age of a middle schooler. Despite the bloodstains on her cheeks, it was clear that she possessed delicate and youthful beauty. Her flawless, porcelain-like skin appeared almost dazzling under the flashlight. Her head tilted slightly in a pitiable manner, with her medium-length black hair cascading over one shoulder.

The blue-and-white striped hospital gown she was wearing had been severely torn in many places, with dark red blood seeping through. These injuries were absolutely not the kind caused by accidentally tripping on the road or falling down stairs—they were clear evidence of fatal violence. There must have been a cold-blooded and ruthless assailant wielding a sharp weapon.

The blood was very fresh, meaning she could only have been injured nearby.

The attacker was still in the area!

I kept my eyes and ears on high alert, but I couldn’t detect any signs of another presence. Still, I didn’t let down my guard.

It seemed I would need to make another call, this time to the police.

However, I didn’t expect that I wouldn’t even get the chance to make the emergency call. Just as I was about to press the dial button, the girl suddenly raised her arm and grabbed my wrist holding the phone with surprising force—completely disproportionate to her frail appearance.

She weakly opened her eyes, her consciousness seemingly unclear. I couldn’t even tell if she had fully registered my face.

“Don’t call the police…” she murmured feebly, her voice barely audible.

After saying this, her eyes closed again, but her hand stubbornly remained on my wrist. No matter how much I called out to her, she wouldn’t wake up.

Don’t call the police? Why?

I couldn’t comply with her request. Regardless of whether I called the police or not, I had to call for emergency medical assistance. I wasn’t cold-hearted enough to leave a stranger to die. And given her condition, the hospital would inevitably notify the authorities.

Initially, that was exactly what I intended to do.

But soon, I realized there was no need to even make the emergency call.

As I removed her hand, the motion caused her hospital gown to shift slightly, revealing the skin beneath a tear in the fabric.

That skin appeared completely unscathed.

Immediately sensing something was off, I cast aside any concerns about propriety and began examining her injuries directly.

What I discovered left me stunned—beneath her clothes, I felt something entirely foreign: a hard, cold object. Pulling up the edge of her garment to take a closer look, I found tucked inside a chillingly ominous item.

The sinister aura emanating from it transformed into an icy shock that surged straight to the top of my head.

It’s a handgun!

I incredulously pulled the handgun out and examined it over and over again. Even as an amateur, I could tell without a doubt that this was a real gun!

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Moreover, based on my earlier inspection of the girl, she genuinely appeared to be completely unharmed.

If that’s the case, why had she fallen into what seemed like a coma from excessive blood loss?

Could it be that she was simply tired and decided to take a nap?

And whose blood was on her? If it wasn’t hers, could it actually be animal blood? That’s absurd. Someone carrying a real gun—how could I believe the blood soaking her body was fake?

I had to revise my assumptions. Initially, I thought this was a criminal incident, with her as the victim. But the truth might be entirely different from my preconceived impression.

I had to call the police.

Even assuming she herself was innocent, allowing a firearm to circulate among civilians was unquestionably against moral and ethical principles.

However, I couldn’t ignore the alluring radiance surrounding this enigmatic girl—a brilliance filled with potential for drama, something utterly beyond my experiences, my life, and my ability to predict.

A mysterious, blood-soaked girl lying in the ruins—never in my life had I encountered something so profoundly surreal.

In this moment, my curiosity overpowered my sense of morality.

I decided to take her with me.

No sooner thought than done.

---

Having decided on a course of action, I immediately took off my jacket and wrapped the oversized garment around the girl. Then, I carried her in my arms.

I’m not someone who usually has much interaction with the opposite sex, nor am I immune to their charm. Holding this girl’s soft body, I couldn’t help but let my imagination run wild. Normally, just physical contact with a girl wouldn’t be enough to send my thoughts astray. But at this moment, this mysterious young lady possessed a fatal allure—like a poisonous flower.

She was so enigmatic, so dangerous, radiating the potential to unravel everything in my life up to this point.

Was it really necessary to take her back with me? Even if I followed her request and refrained from calling the police, I could just as easily leave her here.

But my curiosity—it was overwhelming, irresistible. Why was she in such a disheveled and bloodstained state? Why was she carrying an illegal firearm? What kind of extraordinary story lay hidden within her?

I had to find out.

I carried her out of the abandoned construction site.

The rented apartment I lived in off-campus and the abandoned construction site shared one thing in common: both were near Xian Shui University, where I studied. The distance from the site to my place wasn’t very far.

The problem was, while I could avoid being seen by others by taking a shortcut through small paths for the first half of the journey, completing the trip without being spotted was nearly impossible. There was always the risk of being seen by pedestrians, captured by surveillance cameras, or stopped and questioned by the security guard at the entrance to my apartment complex.

Because of this, when I reached the halfway point, I hid the girl in a nearby patch of tall grass and hurried home as fast as I could. I retrieved a large suitcase I had used for moving my luggage in the past and immediately rushed back to where I had left her.

On my way back, I was riddled with anxiety, fearing she might have already woken up and left on her own while I was gone, or worse, that someone passing by had stumbled upon her by sheer chance in such a short span of time.

Thankfully, my luck hadn’t sunk to that level of misfortune.

I took the girl out of the grass. She was petite, and curling her arms and legs up to fit into the large suitcase wasn’t difficult. At first, I worried this might just be my naive assumption, but it turned out she really could fit inside.

Heaven knows! When I bought this suitcase, I never imagined there would come a day when I’d end up acting like some depraved criminal in adult thrillers, stuffing an underage girl into a suitcase for transport.

My heart pounded wildly, and my mind wandered. But what captivated me even more than those indecent thoughts was the sheer surrealness of the experience and the fact that I was carrying out such an unthinkable act.

Yes, this was unquestionably strange, something that would never happen in a normal life.

What might happen next?

As I entered the residential complex where I lived, I glanced back at the security booth as I passed.

The guard was idly playing on his phone, not even sparing a glance at me—this suspicious figure dragging a large suitcase back and forth in the middle of the night. None of the passersby I encountered along the way paid any attention to me either.

No matter how extraordinary tonight felt to me, for everyone else, it was just another ordinary day.

---

I dragged the large suitcase back to my home.

Fortunately, I live alone off-campus as a university student, or I wouldn't know how to explain this situation to my parents.

I took the girl out of the suitcase. Clearly, the inside of the suitcase was not a comfortable means of transport, and even the deeply unconscious girl frowned uncomfortably, as if she was feeling it subconsciously.

I was lucky that the bumpy ride didn’t wake her up. No matter how indifferent the security guard was, if a minor’s cries for help suddenly came from the suitcase, I would have been in a very awkward situation.

I tried once again to wake her up, but once again, I failed—she couldn’t wake up for now. So, I decided to let her rest for a while longer.

I carried her to my bedroom and laid her down on the bed.

Although it wasn’t ideal from a hygiene standpoint to leave her in her bloodstained clothes, and the sheets and blankets were also stained, I didn’t plan to change her clothes myself. I would let her change them when she woke up. If she hadn’t woken up by tomorrow, I would help her then.

For tonight, I decided to sleep on the couch in the living room and let her have the bed. It wasn’t out of any sense of gentlemanly courtesy, but because if she slept in the living room, I might not notice if she woke up and left. If she stayed in the bedroom, she would have to pass through the living room to leave, which would alert me.

Just to be cautious, I carefully placed an empty soda can on the bedroom door handle. The handle wasn’t spherical but bar-shaped, so I could balance the can on it quite stably. If she turned the handle from inside the bedroom, the can would surely fall and make a noticeable sound.

Would she be a witch bringing destruction to my life, or something else entirely? Before leaving the bedroom, I looked at her sleeping face, unable to suppress the heat building inside me. I could even feel the lively pulse in the veins behind my ears.

I really wonder what will happen tomorrow.