Chapter 1: The Sound That Shouldn’t Exist

Qiao Yu’s footsteps echoed through the dim, narrow hallway of the old apartment building, each step tapping softly against the worn wooden floor like a quiet metronome marking time in a forgotten place. The building exhaled the scent of age—dust, faded paint, and something faintly metallic—like the breath of a structure too tired to stand tall. Most people might have found it eerie, but not Qiao Yu. He had always found comfort in these aging, half-forgotten places. There was something beautiful, even sacred, in their imperfection.

Old apartments had a soul.

He loved the creak of the stairs, the frosted glass windows smudged with time, the rust on the mailbox labels. To him, they felt like living archives of lives once lived. Every tile, every scratch on the banister, every water-stained ceiling whispered fragments of stories left behind. Qiao Yu never feared loneliness—if anything, he preferred it. Silence was a form of peace. Solitude, a familiar friend.

But this time… something was different.

On the third night after moving into Unit 302, Qiao Yu encountered something he couldn’t explain.

It was just past midnight. The air was thick with dampness, the kind that clings to your skin. A weak amber glow from the streetlight outside filtered in through the dusty curtains, casting blurry shadows that swayed like ghosts in slow motion. Qiao Yu was organizing his books—his favorite kind of late-night ritual—when he froze.

A sound.

Faint. Soft.

A cry.

At first, he thought he’d imagined it. He stood still, holding a book in mid-air. Then, there it was again—low, almost imperceptible, yet undeniably there. It seeped through the wall from the apartment next door. The sound wasn’t loud. It wasn’t wailing or shrieking. It was worse. It was sorrow in its rawest form—gentle, aching, persistent. The kind of crying that came not from the throat, but from the soul.

He turned his head toward the wall. His breath slowed. He listened.

The sobbing came in broken intervals. A quiet whimper. A stifled sniffle. Then silence. Then again.

It wasn’t just sound—it was grief made audible.

Qiao Yu set the book down and walked slowly to the wall that separated his apartment from the one next door. He pressed his ear against the cool plaster. The crying continued. Still soft. Still deeply human. There was something familiar in the way the voice trembled, like a woman trying to weep without being heard.

“This doesn’t make sense…” he whispered, eyebrows pulling together.

He distinctly remembered what the building manager had told him when he signed the lease.

“That unit next to yours? Been empty for years,” the old man had said, handing over a small bag of tea as a welcome gift. “There was a fire. Nothing big—no one died, thank God—but the room’s been sealed since. Structural damage, they said. Unsafe. No one's lived there since.”

So then… who was crying?

Curiosity battled with caution. Qiao Yu hesitated for a moment, then grabbed his phone. He activated the voice recorder and made his way to the front door. His hand rested on the knob, but he didn’t open it yet. Instead, he leaned against the frame, ear tilted toward the wall, waiting.

The crying persisted. Soft. Rhythmic. Almost hypnotic.

Qiao Yu pressed record.

He stood still for several minutes, the phone in his hand, capturing every sound. Eventually, the crying faded, like a candle dying slowly in the wind. The hallway fell silent again. Qiao Yu turned off the recorder and went back inside, a strange unease nesting inside his chest.

He didn’t listen to the recording right away. He wasn’t ready. Instead, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the memory of the sobs still echoing in his ears.

Something felt wrong. Not frightening—yet—but wrong. As if he had stumbled into a scene he was never meant to witness.

He glanced at his phone. 1:04 AM.

Sleep came slowly, and when it did, it was shallow and filled with vague shadows that flitted just beyond understanding.

The next morning, pale sunlight crept through the curtains. Qiao Yu sat up, rubbing the heaviness from his eyes. He reached for his phone to check the time—and paused.

There was a notification.

An audio file. The one he had recorded the night before.

Except… it had a name now. He hadn’t named it.

“She’s Back.”

He frowned. That couldn’t be right. His phone had no setting to auto-name voice memos. He had never installed anything that could have done it. Yet there it was—clear as day.

A chill prickled across his skin.

He opened the file. The audio began to play.

The crying returned, just as he remembered it—soft, sorrowful, unbearably human. But as he listened, a new sound emerged.

Near the end of the file, layered beneath the crying, there was a whisper. Barely audible. Distorted, but undeniably a voice.

“…stay away from me…”

Qiao Yu’s breath caught in his throat. He replayed it.

“…stay away from me…”

The voice was neither pleading nor threatening. It was... afraid.

His hands trembled slightly. He sat up straighter, heart pounding against his ribcage. A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind. Was someone playing a prank? But how? The apartment was supposed to be sealed. Had someone broken in? Could there be a squatter next door?

Or was it something else?

He dialed the building manager.

“Hello, Mr. Qiao,” the familiar voice answered.

“Hi, uh… quick question,” Qiao Yu began cautiously. “About the unit next to mine—302B—you said no one’s lived there since the fire, right?”

“That’s right. Not a soul. The place is sealed. Why?”

“You’re sure? No maintenance work? No visitors?”

There was a pause. Then the manager replied, a bit more alert now. “Of course I’m sure. I have the keys myself. The door’s been bolted from the inside and out since 2022. Why are you asking?”

Qiao Yu was about to explain when his screen flickered. Another notification.

The audio file was being uploaded to the cloud. Automatically.

He hadn’t touched a thing.

He stared at the screen. Something about this wasn’t just strange—it was… deliberate. Like someone—or something—wanted the recording preserved. Shared.

He ended the call without explanation. He needed time to think. To breathe.

The apartment suddenly felt smaller. The air thicker.

The cry, the whisper, the name of the file—it wasn’t just coincidence. There was a pattern forming, a trail of crumbs leading him somewhere he hadn’t meant to go.

What had started as an odd sound in the night had become something much darker. Something real.

Something he wasn’t ready for.

And yet, ready or not, it had begun.

He didn’t know it yet, but Qiao Yu had already taken the first step into a story far older than he imagined.

And the crying next door?

It was only the beginning.