Chapter 2: The Truth Behind the Wall

Qiao Yu sat motionless at his desk, eyes locked onto the screen, where the recording from the previous night remained open like a wound that refused to close. The sound of the woman’s sobs filled his headphones again—low, restrained, yet soaked in sorrow so real it seemed to seep into the marrow of his bones.

But it wasn’t the crying that disturbed him most.

It was the whisper at the end.

“Stay away from me.”

Just four words, blurred and faint, barely audible under the weight of static—but their impact was profound, as if someone had spoken them directly into his soul. Fear stirred inside him like smoke curling in a sealed jar—formless, creeping, and impossible to ignore.

Qiao Yu’s fingers danced across the keyboard, preparing to upload the audio file to an online forum that specialized in audio anomalies and paranormal phenomena. Maybe someone out there—some sound technician, or maybe even a skeptic—could offer a rational explanation. Echoes. Radio interference. Malfunctioning hardware. Anything.

But as he hovered over the “submit” button, something within him resisted.

A whisper of caution.

This might not be safe.

He pulled his hand back.

Outside the window, the world was cloaked in a dull gray haze. The overcast sky pressed down like a lid over the city, muting its pulse. There was no wind, no bird song, not even the distant hum of traffic. Just stillness. The kind that made your ears ring.

Even inside the apartment building, the atmosphere had changed. The air felt heavier, as though saturated with something unseen. Every sound—every creak of wood, every hiss of plumbing—seemed amplified, distorted.

Then his eyes flicked to the phone lying beside him. The file was still there.

She’s Back.

Four words.

It was just a filename. Just a string of text. And yet it cut deeper than any scream could. It didn’t say “Unknown Cry” or “Audio\_001.” It said she. As if the entity had a name. An identity. A history.

Who was she?

And why was she back?

Qiao Yu inhaled deeply, trying to clear his thoughts. No one could draw conclusions from one strange recording. Sound, after all, was notoriously deceptive. It could echo. Bounce. Distort. Perception was fragile—people heard voices in white noise all the time. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe he was letting paranoia write the narrative.

But that file name...

That voice...

He needed more information. Something tangible.

He opened his contacts and dialed the building manager again, determined to get a clearer answer about the apartment next door. After three rings, the call went to voicemail.

No response.

He frowned. It wasn’t like the manager to miss calls in the morning. Still, he told himself to wait a bit longer. Maybe the old man had stepped out for breakfast.

As he set the phone down, something clicked in his memory. He turned sharply and reached for a folder on his bookshelf—the one where he had kept photos from the day he moved in. He opened it and began flipping through the images.

Each picture showed the same theme: faded corridors, dim lighting, walls bearing water stains like bruises. Dusty floors. Torn notices still clinging stubbornly to their pins. In one frame, a vending machine stood lifeless in a corner. In another, a hallway stretched into shadow, as if daring anyone to walk its length.

Then he found the photo.

His fingers froze over the image.

It was taken at the far end of the hallway on his floor. There, slightly off-center in the frame, stood a door—worn, paint-chipped, with a rusting metal handle and a crooked number plate barely clinging to the wood.

Apartment 304.

That was it. The “sealed” apartment.

But now, looking closer, he saw something strange.

The doorframe bore scratches—long, shallow marks near the lock. Something had pressed against it, hard. Either the door had been forced open, or something inside had pushed out. The wood was splintered, and the frame slightly warped.

“Was this door... ever really sealed?” Qiao Yu murmured to himself.

Dread prickled at the back of his neck.

He looked again at the edge of the photo. A dark smear stained the lower right corner of the wall, trailing along the floorboards—almost like soot, or something burned. But what caught his eye wasn’t the stain itself. It was the shadow beside it. Faint. Angular. Wrong.

It appeared to waver in the still photo. As if it didn’t belong.

Suddenly, the fire came to mind.

The manager had mentioned it in passing: a small accident, no casualties, nothing serious. But now, that version of the story felt... curated. Sanitized. Qiao Yu’s instincts screamed otherwise.

What if the fire hadn’t been so innocent?

What if there had been secrets—ones that someone worked hard to bury?

He leaned back, tension tightening across his shoulders.

The crying. The door. The recording.

They were pieces of the same puzzle.

And Qiao Yu was no longer content with waiting for the picture to complete itself.

“I need to see it for myself,” he whispered.

With sudden determination, he grabbed his coat and rushed out of the apartment. His steps were brisk, focused. He wasn’t a curious tenant anymore—he was a man on the brink of uncovering something that had festered behind walls and silence for too long.

The building’s management office sat at the rear of the complex, tucked behind a dull aluminum door that buzzed faintly with an old fluorescent bulb. As he pushed it open, the scent of instant noodles and old paper greeted him.

The manager looked up from behind the desk, startled by Qiao Yu’s entrance.

“Mr. Qiao?” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Is something wrong?”

Qiao Yu didn’t hesitate.

“I want to see that apartment. The sealed one. 304.”

The manager blinked. His smile faltered. “You know that’s not possible. The unit’s uninhabitable. It hasn’t been touched since the fire.”

“I know,” Qiao Yu replied calmly. “But I heard something. Last night. A woman. Crying. In that room.”

Silence.

The old man’s expression didn’t shift immediately. But something passed over his face—a flicker of something too quick to name. Then came the dismissal, too quick, too clean.

“That’s impossible. You must’ve misheard. No one’s been in there for years.”

Too quick, Qiao Yu thought. Too practiced.

“I recorded it,” he said. “You want to hear it?”

The manager hesitated for the briefest of moments—then lowered his gaze.

“I don’t think you should go in there, Mr. Qiao. Some things… some truths… aren’t ours to uncover. Even if you hear them.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

“What happened in that fire?” Qiao Yu asked softly. “You said there were no casualties. That true?”

The manager looked away, jaw tightening. For a long time, he said nothing. Then, at last, he exhaled.

“There was someone inside. A woman. She died before the firefighters arrived. Burned beyond recognition. The blaze was... unnatural. Too intense, too fast. It wasn’t like anything we’d ever seen. But no official report mentioned her. Her family never came forward. It was like she didn’t exist.”

Qiao Yu’s mouth went dry.

“Why lie about it?” he asked.

“Because something about that room changed after the fire,” the manager replied. “The damage wasn’t just structural. Strange things started happening. Objects moving. Whispers. Cold spots. And always—always—that crying.”

He leaned forward, voice low.

“And then there was the tape recorder.”

Qiao Yu’s pulse quickened.

“The what?”

“The only thing that survived the fire without a scratch,” the old man said. “An old cassette recorder. We thought it was junk. But when someone tried to play the tape inside… all it recorded was sobbing. No music. No voices. Just that woman. Crying. And then—silence. But the tape kept spinning. As if it wanted to record something more.”

Qiao Yu could barely breathe.

The whisper in his recording. The file name.

“She’s Back.”

It wasn’t random. It wasn’t a glitch.

It was a message. A warning.

Or a memory refusing to fade.

He wasn’t imagining things. He wasn’t alone.

And somewhere beyond the wall, in a room that should’ve remained sealed forever—she was still there.

Waiting.