Today is the 15th day of the seventh lunar month. Legend has it that on this day, the gates of the underworld will open and all ghosts can come to the world to take a walk. If you are lucky, you can bring back the things your family burned for you to enjoy. Some people also say that if you put two green leaves on your eyes on this day, you can see your deceased relatives.
The story I want to tell happened on a Ghost Festival many years ago.
In the summer of 1998, I failed the college entrance examination and had to go to a cram school for another year. Unfortunately, my test scores were not up to par with the country's training. I didn't even reach the cram school line for key high schools. I had to go to a regular high school in the suburbs for "further study". I rented a bungalow near the school. It only took 20 minutes to ride a bicycle to school. The room was very small, with a bed and a desk. If I came back to put the bicycle in the house, there would be basically no space. Because it was in the suburbs, there were frequent power outages here. Fortunately, the school required evening self-study every day, so I could chat with others when the power went out at night.
On this day, the weather was particularly stuffy, and there seemed to be a lot of people in the evening study classroom, and there seemed to be quite a few strangers. This was not surprising. The management of our school was not very strict, and some people brought their boyfriends or girlfriends to "discuss and study" together, so there were often strangers in the classroom.
Eh? The guys I usually chat with are not here, that's so boring. I flipped through the book for a while, then started to be in a daze. It's strange, there seems to be no one talking in the study room today. If these guys had studied so hard earlier, would they have to come here and suffer for another year? It's really unbearable.
"It's so hot, it will definitely rain tonight." I found a girl who looked pretty good and started a conversation. Oh? No response, which was strange. I have always been quite confident in my voice, but this beautiful girl was too disrespectful.
"Haha, I haven't seen you before. You are not from our school, right?" I sat opposite her. She still kept her head down. It seems that dealing with beautiful women is not easy. She didn't answer me and was quietly doing history exercises.
"Classmate, the era you filled in is wrong." I took a pen and made a mark on her exercise book.
"Thank you." She finally raised her head.
Wow! What a beautiful girl. I finally saw her face clearly. It would not be an exaggeration to use any gorgeous words to describe the beauty in front of me. Thin lips, small nose, curved eyebrows, eyes… Although she is very beautiful, she seems to have an indescribable feeling. Fortunately, this is perfect enough.
I was looking at her in a daze. She seemed a little flustered. Her hand shook and the eraser fell to the ground. We tried to pick up the eraser almost at the same time. I touched her hand accidentally. It was so cold. She retracted her hand. I put the eraser on the table. Then I realized that this girl's skin was very white, and you couldn't even see any blood color. It might be because of the fluorescent lights in the classroom. I didn't think much about it and smiled at her. She finally rewarded my efforts and gave me a faint smile.
At this moment, I suddenly felt a chill on my back, so chilling that I felt like all the pores on my body were opening. I couldn't help but look back, and immediately, I found the source of the chill. A boy in the front row was looking at me. I will never forget his look at that time, which was full of resentment and viciousness. My chest seemed to be pressed down by a huge rock, and I even found it difficult to breathe. He stood up and walked to my side, but those creepy eyes kept staring at me. I tried desperately to get rid of his gaze, but for some reason, I couldn't take my eyes off his eyes even with all my strength.
"She's mine!" he said in a slow and weak tone.
I opened my mouth and wanted to say something, but I couldn't hear the words I said.
"Forget it, let him go," the girl said lightly.
The boy's eyes finally left my sight. I felt relieved and quickly left the table. I took a few deep breaths and looked back at the girl, who sighed softly.
I sat at the end of the classroom and never dared to look up at the boy again. After reading a few more comics, I looked at the watch and it was already past 11 o'clock. People left the study room one after another, and there were not many hardworking students left. I noticed that the boy was gone and the girl's seat was also empty. I guess she had gone home.
Thinking of what happened just now, I couldn’t help but mutter, “It’s really hell.”
After packing up my things, I left the classroom and went downstairs with my bag on my back. When I went to the parking shed to pick up my bicycle, I greeted the gatekeeper as usual. It was strange that the kind old man I saw every day was not here today, and the man who opened the door for me was someone I had never seen before. I pushed the bike with doubt, pedaled a few steps, and set off.
It had indeed begun to rain outside. I never carry an umbrella with me, so I took off my shirt and wrapped it around the handlebars of my bike. The cold raindrops felt so good on my body. It was especially quiet tonight, and there were few cars on the road. I simply left the sidewalk and rode my bike to the middle of the road. The street lights were a little dim, and suddenly I saw two figures in the distance, a man and a woman, sharing a white umbrella, looking quite affectionate. As they got closer, I recognized them as the boy and girl I had just met in the classroom.
"Hmph, a fresh flower is stuck in cow dung and walking in the middle of the road. Isn't it afraid of being hit by a car?" Thinking of the embarrassing look just now, I couldn't help but feel a little annoyed, so I thought of a way to retaliate.
I stepped on the pedals hard a few times, and when I passed by them, I suddenly reached out and knocked the boy's umbrella away, then walked away with a burst of laughter. While riding my bike, I looked back and saw the boy hurriedly picking up the umbrella to protect the girl from the rain, feeling very proud. Just as the boy was picking up the umbrella, suddenly a truck came speeding from behind, and the strong headlights shone into my eyes. I hurriedly turned the car to the side, and the truck drove past with a whoosh. I hurriedly looked back at them, but I only saw the white umbrella on the side of the road, and the boy and girl were gone. "Strange, they must have walked on the sidewalk next to them. I returned to the place where I had just played the prank, but still didn't see them, so I picked up the umbrella from the ground.
"I'll give it back to them next time we meet. They almost got hit by a car." I felt a little guilty.
There is a store near my home. Every night when I pass by it, I always buy some things to take back for supper. Although it was raining today, I still walked into the store as usual and bought some things. I found that the TV in the store was playing Andy Lau's concert, so I watched TV and chatted with the girl selling things with great interest. When the concert ended, it was almost 0 o'clock. I walked out of the store humming a song and found that my bicycle was gone.
"Damn, what happened today? I encountered so many bad luck!" I returned to my cabin cursing. Damn, the power was out again. After washing up in the dark, I closed the door and prepared to go to bed.
It was still raining outside, I lay on the bed and fell asleep quickly…
Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and the door was blown open by the strong wind. I jumped up from the bed and saw the boy in the study room standing in front of me. Lightning shone into the room. His face was as white as snow. He stretched out his hand to grab me. I had no ability to resist. I felt that I had strength all over my body but was powerless. He still looked at me with that terrifying look. I felt my heart pounding. My heart's endurance had reached its limit, and my consciousness gradually became blurred…
Slowly, I woke up. Was it a dream? The door was still open. It was already daybreak. It seemed like class time had passed. I looked at the clock. The alarm on the desk stopped at 0:00 AM.
I came to school full of doubts. During the break, the police came to say they found my bike. They found me from the license plate number. When I went to pick up the bike, they told me that the thief had died on the roadside. They showed me photos of the scene, but the strange thing was that none of the photos showed the dead man. After I went back, I told my friends everything that happened and how to get rid of the ghost . But they said that the study room was not open last night. I looked at the blackboard in the communication room, and it clearly said: "Tonight, due to the power outage in the school, the study room is cancelled."
I told them about the boys and girls I had met, but no one had any impression of them.
The story should have ended here.
A year passed, and I was admitted to a university. On the day before leaving, I talked to the old man who was the gatekeeper of the school about what happened a year ago. The old man told me that a few years ago, a boy and a girl were in love and lived together. After the school found out, they were expelled two months before the college entrance examination. However, they still signed up for the exam in other places and were both admitted to famous universities. On this day of that year, they had a car accident and died. The boy's family lived next to the school.
After hearing this, I was sure that my experience was not that simple, so I decided to visit the boy's family and bring the umbrella with me.
It didn't take me long to find the place I was looking for. A lady in her forties opened the door for me. Before I could tell her why I was there, she burst into tears. She told me that her son and the girl were hit and killed by a truck on the road next to the school. It was raining that night and they were holding a white umbrella.
"Umbrella?" I suddenly found that the umbrella next to me was gone!
"Yes, a white umbrella, here." She took an umbrella from the side.
Then she stared at me with a weird smile on her face, and then she slowly said, "This is it. My son always comes to get this umbrella when he goes home to visit his family during the Ghost Festival every year."
I suddenly felt a piercing coldness on my back, just like the one I felt in the study room a year ago. Something was slowly approaching from behind me. I sat on the sofa in a daze, unable to move. I could only see a calendar on the opposite wall, with bright red words on it: July 15th…