When the university assigned dorms, I ended up alone in a six-person room because my student ID number was at the end of the list. There were only a handful of people on the top floor; every night felt like a scene from a horror movie. However, being a guy, I adapted quickly. The few of us on the top floor would often huddle together to smoke and play cards. After living like that for a while, it actually felt pretty great. The dorm matron couldn't be bothered to climb all the way up to the top floor, so she couldn't manage us. Plus, with only a dozen or so people on the entire floor, each person basically had four or five rooms to themselves. It was incredibly spacious—nothing like the lower floors where you had to wait in line just to use the latrine. After a few months, I fell in love with the lifestyle.
Of course, not everyone was so bold. There were timid ones who constantly claimed the floor was thick with *yin* energy, saying they always heard footsteps outside around two in the morning. I usually slept soundly and never heard a thing, but they made it sound so vivid, even claiming that those "unclean things" would call out people's names. One particularly brave guy didn't believe in any of that nonsense. One night, he invited his girlfriend over. At two in the morning, they left the door wide open while they went at it, screaming like stuck pigs. The ghosts didn't wake me up, but they certainly did. Afterward, nothing happened. We all joked that if there really was a ghost, she must be a particularly shy virgin, so there was nothing to worry about.
At the start of my sophomore year, since my hometown wasn't a big city, I decided to head back to school early to find some part-time work over the summer, thinking there would be more opportunities here. After filling out the forms and moving back in with my bags, I realized something was a bit off about the dorm.
My first impression was that it was incredibly filthy. Aside from the dust, there were dead insects and spiders everywhere—I swept out more than twenty of them. I didn't think much of it at the time, assuming it was just because the room had been vacant for so long, so I gave it a thorough cleaning. Perhaps I worked too hard on the cleaning, because it wasn't until I showered and lay down that I realized my blanket wasn't enough; the room was exceptionally cold.
How should I put it? The school is in the North, but I’m a Southerner. This cold felt like the winters back home when it snows—the kind of damp chill that seeps into your bones. It was currently July or August, the height of the dog days of summer, yet from the moment I stepped into the dorm, I hadn't even turned on the electric fan.
I felt a bit uneasy then, comforting myself with the thought that the room was just cold because it faced north and stayed in the shade. I even got up specifically to open the window. As soon as the heat from outside rushed in, I regretted it, wondering why I’d let the "air conditioning" out, but I also noticed the room smelled a bit foul. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but if you stay in a smelly place long enough, you stop noticing it. You have to go outside for a bit and come back in to realize how pungent it is. When the hot wind hit my face, it felt incredibly fresh, and only then did I realize there was an indescribable stench in the room—one that felt somewhat familiar.
That night, I experienced my first bout of insomnia, and I thought I heard faint footsteps outside. However, having spent over ten hours on a train, I was exhausted to the point of death, so I remained in a state of half-sleep, half-wakefulness. By the time I woke up, the sun was out, and I was still in one piece. As long as I was alive, I had to go to work. For the next half month, the dorm was quite peaceful.
When I say peaceful, I’m only speaking from my perspective at the time. I couldn't see what was happening in my room, so I thought everything was fine. If I had known, I might have jumped off the roof. Regardless, I spent my days leaving early and returning late to earn a bit of hard-earned money, and this continued until the start of the semester.
My roommates began moving in five days before classes started. As people gradually returned to school, the entire building regained some vitality. That day, after finishing a shift handing out flyers, I returned to the top floor to get my keys, only to see the timid guy—nicknamed Lao Chu—passing by me with a washbasin in hand.
"Your dorm door is open," he told me.
I thought that was impossible. This was the peak season for burglaries; there was no way I’d be that careless. How could I have left the door wide open? My laptop was still in my locker. Still, I felt a flicker of doubt. I carefully retraced my steps from the morning and was certain I’d closed the door, so I feared someone had picked the lock.
But when I pushed the door open, I saw someone lying in my top bunk.
Our dorm had bunk beds, six berths in total. I slept in the bottom bunk closest to the door. The top bunk was usually a mess, cluttered with my shorts and things; I also kept my heavy winter coats up there year-round since I didn't have enough hanging space. I didn't know why this guy had chosen the top bunk, but since I’d used the other beds for storage as well, maybe he thought the one with clothes on it would be easier to clear. Sure enough, he had tossed all my clothes onto my bed.
I felt a bit bad about the mess and figured I’d treat him to a meal once he woke up. But right then, I smelled that familiar, strange odor again.
This time, I remembered what it was.
It was the smell of a very salty, briny sea breeze.
My hometown is a coastal city, and I have relatives who are fishermen. When I was little and went out to sea with them to net fish, the wind blowing from all directions was bitter and salty. Now, the entire dorm smelled exactly like that. I recalled it was similar to when I first returned to school, only much more concentrated now.
And it wasn't just a simple sea breeze; there was also an aquatic musk—the kind of smell emitted by creatures like frogs or snakes that live in the water. Someone who hasn't lived by the water might not be able to distinguish it.
I figured I must have encountered a fellow townsman with a strong constitution. Either he had lived on a boat for a long time and couldn't wash the scent off, or he had brought a lot of seafood with him. But with the weather this hot, I didn't know how he’d managed it. Seafood is all about the "fresh" factor; after a long journey, it would likely all be dried goods.
I set my backpack down, stripped off my T-shirt, and took my basin outside to wash up. When I returned, he was still asleep, his posture completely motionless. I looked at him a few more times out of curiosity. I’m a clumsy person who makes a lot of noise, and I used to get scolded by roommates for it, but he was sleeping so deeply he didn't even seem to be breathing...
The thought made my skin crawl. *Not even breathing.*
I’m of average height, just tall enough to reach the top bunk. Standing by the door looking at him, I could only see a heap of blankets through the mosquito net. I couldn't tell if there was actually a person underneath. He was completely covered, not even a strand of hair showing. I figured either my roommate was very thin—the kind of thin where the blankets look flat and you can't tell a body from a fold—or he had simply gone out. I must have been out of my mind, because for some reason, I reached through the curtain and felt inside the blanket.
I did indeed touch something, and the moment I did, I knew something was wrong. Human skin couldn't possibly be that cold and slippery, or that soft and oily. I screamed right then and there and yanked the blanket back. From the corner I lifted, I saw a brownish-yellow arm lying across the blue-and-white striped sheet. The muscle clung to the bone in distinct ridges, looking a bit like cured meat, its surface coated in a layer of white, frost-like grease.
I lost it. I knocked over my washbasin and tried to run but slipped. Finally, I scrambled out on all fours, screaming the entire time.
At that hour, the few people who had returned early were showering in the washroom. Hearing my pathetic wails, they came running out, their flip-flops pitter-pattering on the floor. People from the fourth floor even ran up to see what was happening. When I saw them, I was nearly in tears. They quickly pulled me up and stood in front of me. I told them something terrible had happened, that I didn't know what was in my room, and that they should call the police. They asked for a reason—what exactly was it, what had happened? I truly couldn't say. My friends each went back to their rooms to grab baseball bats, mops, and whatever else they could find before nudging my door open.
The bravest of them—the one who messed around with his girlfriend at 2 AM, named Pi Zhang—walked in nonchalantly.
Then he walked out with a dark expression. "You idiot, you're screaming just because you saw a handsome guy? Are you a girl? Such a fangirl."
My head spun; I had no idea what he was talking about.
Pi Zhang waved the others off. "Break it up, break it up. A new guy moved into his room. Let's go grab a drink in a couple of days."
The others tossed their towels over their shoulders and dispersed in their flip-flops, giving me dissatisfied glares as they left.
When I went back in, I saw my roommate sitting on my bed putting on his shoes. He was quite pale with long limbs. There was a desk in front of my bed, and he looked like he was struggling to fit in the cramped space. When he stood up, I realized he was at least a head taller than me. I’m a standard 175 centimeters. A full head taller than me—think about that.
After putting on his shoes, he walked over and asked me very seriously, "Why did you scream just now?"
My brain buzzed, and I didn't know how to answer him. He stared at me for a moment, tilted his head as if he didn't understand me, and walked out on his own.
I didn't have much of a reaction to his face; I kept staring at his arm. He was wearing a twenty-yuan basketball T-shirt from the East Gate market. His exposed arms were slightly tanned, with white marks on his wrists where he’d worn sweatbands while out in the sun. The right arm I had seen when I pulled back the blanket was absolutely not this one.
Once he went downstairs, I climbed up to the top bunk like a madman.
The top bunk still reeked of salted fish—one whiff was enough to make me faint—and I discovered a human-shaped stain on the sheet. The stain looked somewhat greasy. I touched it; it had the same slippery, oily feel that still lingered on my fingertips.
I sat there in a daze for half an hour, refusing to believe I had misseen things. Even if I was slightly nearsighted, I wouldn't hallucinate a living person into something else. Humans are sensitive to color.
Moreover, I couldn't stand the smell.
That very day, I requested a room change.
The procedure for changing rooms was tedious. Worse, I had a history with the matron downstairs. The water pressure in this high-rise was like a weak trickle, and the water often cut out for no reason. Once, I was rinsing off in the washroom when the water stopped just as I finished lathering up. In a fit of rage, I twisted open the fire hydrant. That blast of water on my body—one word: glorious. Then, a flood cascaded down from the top floor. Once I finished my shower, I didn't care about the mess and just left; they couldn't catch me anyway. But the matron had disliked me for a long time, and it wasn't slander for her to pin that incident on me. She always looked at me with sheer malice after that.
When I asked to change rooms, she mocked me with snide remarks and brought up the department heads to shut me down. I was annoyed to death, so I simply moved in with Lao Chu. Lao Chu always said our room was eerie, so he wouldn't laugh at me. I truly felt that roommate of mine was a bit strange, and I didn't want to have too much contact with him.
But very soon, I was forced to move back.
Because Lao Chu died.
***
