Chen Ge stood amidst the unsettling stillness of the dance studio, his mind grappling with the fragmented clues that refused to coalesce into a coherent truth. The mystery of Zhang Ya's red dancing shoes remained elusive, shrouded in the school's haunted history. He carefully righted the three wooden chairs he had toppled, restoring them to their original positions, though their eerie presence lingered like a weight on his chest. Turning away, he surveyed the studio, the wall of mirrors amplifying its vastness, making it feel both cavernous and oppressively empty. The mirrors reflected his solitary figure, a lone intruder in a space that seemed to reject the living. "This place is too clean," he murmured, his voice swallowed by the silence. The absence of clutter or debris struck him as unnatural, suggesting recent maintenance. "Someone's been here, cleaning more than once. I just hope they didn't throw out the dancing shoes." The thought that his quarry might already be lost gnawed at him, heightening his urgency to uncover the studio's secrets.
Stepping away from the mirrors, Chen Ge moved to a corner where the wall was adorned with a collection of certificates, plaques, and a prominent results list, their faded glory a testament to the school's former prestige. His flashlight lingered on the list, and a peculiar detail caught his eye: the name of the first-place winner had been aggressively crossed out with a black marker, rendering it illegible. "A winner's list without the champion?" he whispered, his brow furrowing. Scanning further, he spotted Qian Yujiao's name among the other girls, but Zhang Ya's was conspicuously absent, as if she had been erased from the record. The omission felt deliberate, a piece of the puzzle that hinted at a deeper, darker story. His gaze shifted to a nearby group photo, and his breath caught. The image depicted six girls, five of them clustered together in a joyful embrace, their smiles radiant. The sixth stood apart, isolated in the corner, her figure partially cropped out, leaving only a glimpse of snow-white dance shoes visible at the frame's edge. "They tried to cut her out," Chen Ge muttered, a chill creeping up his spine. "Why no class photo? Why only groups or individuals?" He snapped a picture of the wall with his phone, preserving the evidence before continuing his exploration.
Drawn by an unmarked door along the wall, Chen Ge's curiosity compelled him to investigate. He pushed it open, revealing a small, sparsely furnished room that appeared to be an office. A desk, a dresser, and a single bed dominated the space, their presence incongruous. "A teacher's office with a bed?" he wondered aloud, his voice tinged with suspicion. "Did they work overnight shifts?" The room's purpose eluded him, but he wasted no time, methodically searching for the red dancing shoes. The dresser stood empty, its drawers devoid of anything but dust. The desk yielded only stacks of photocopied certificates, their text proclaiming various accolades. Among them, one caught his attention: a certificate for Qian Yujiao's group, champions of the Swan Lake Citywide Ballet Group Competition, qualifying them for a state-wide event. Yet, like the results list, the certificate listed six names, with the final one crossed out in black ink. "It's the same pattern," Chen Ge noted, his unease deepening. The certificate hadn't been displayed on the wall outside, its exclusion another anomaly in the studio's curated narrative. Finding no further clues, he left the room, his frustration mounting.
As he pulled the door open, his heart lurched. The three wooden chairs, which he had left by the mirrors, now stood closer to the office door, their silent advance chillingly deliberate. "They're moving again," he hissed, his pulse racing. The chairs' relentless pursuit tested his resolve, but he forced himself to focus. "Ignore them," he muttered, clinging to his mission. "Three minutes—if I don't find anything, I'm out of here." Gripping his phone, its flashlight casting a trembling beam, he hurried to the far end of the studio, where a door bore the sign Girls' Dressing Room. A wave of apprehension washed over him. "The dressing room… rumors say it's where Yin energy gathers most in any school," he thought, recalling whispered tales of hauntings tied to such places. "I need to be careful." He eased the door open, its hinges creaking softly, revealing a narrow room lined with steel lockers on both sides. In the center, a long wooden bench stretched like a spine, its presence unremarkable yet ominous in the context of the haunted studio.
Chen Ge stepped inside, his flashlight sweeping over the lockers, their rusted surfaces glinting faintly. The air was stale, heavy with the same cloying scent that permeated the studio, but here it felt more concentrated, as if the room were a reservoir of trapped emotions. His eyes darted to the bench, half-expecting it to shift like the chairs, but it remained still. "The red dancing shoes could be in one of these lockers," he reasoned, his voice steady despite the knot of fear in his chest. He approached the first locker, the mallet ready in one hand, prepared to face whatever spectral force—or worse—might be guarding Zhang Ya's cursed relic in this forsaken dressing room.
Chen Ge stood in the girls' dressing room, the unfamiliarity of the space adding to the weight of his mission. It was his first time in such a place, and the intimacy of it—rows of steel lockers, the faint scent of forgotten perfume mingling with decay—felt intrusive, as if he were trespassing on sacred ground. He left the door ajar, a cautious habit born of too many close calls, and approached the nearest locker. With a gentle tug, he opened it, revealing a neatly folded school uniform perched on the top shelf. Its design was distinct, more refined than the standard uniforms of public schools, with delicate stitching and a tailored elegance. The skirt, he noted with a raised eyebrow, was strikingly short, barely reaching knee-length. "A bit bold for a school uniform," he murmured, his fingers rifling through the pockets in search of clues. Finding nothing, he glanced lower and spotted a pair of white dancing shoes tucked at the bottom. "Wrong color," he sighed, closing the locker with a soft clang. A small card above the lock caught his eye, bearing a girl's name in faded ink—a detail that promised to streamline his search.
Using his phone's flashlight, Chen Ge scanned the names on each locker, moving methodically down the row. His hope was to find Zhang Ya's name, a direct lead to her red dancing shoes, but after a thorough check, her name was conspicuously absent. His attention shifted to a solitary locker in the corner, isolated from the others, its surface unmarked and nameless. The isolation struck him as deliberate, a physical manifestation of exclusion. "The owner of this locker was an outcast," he thought, his heart sinking as he opened the door. Inside, a soiled ballet dress lay crumpled on the top shelf, its once-pristine fabric marred by time. The rest of the locker was empty, its barrenness speaking volumes. "No name, ostracized… this has to be Zhang Ya's," he concluded, the answer resonating with a quiet certainty in his mind.
He lifted the ballet dress, revealing five small candy boxes hidden beneath, their wrappings sour with age. "Presents?" Chen Ge wondered aloud, setting the dress on the wooden bench in the center of the room. He examined the boxes, noting their hand-wrapped packaging, each adorned with a different girl's name in similar handwriting. "These were gifts, prepared by one person for the others," he deduced, his fingers tracing the faded ink. The gesture felt personal, tinged with a longing for acceptance that had gone unfulfilled. As he lifted the final box, a photograph slipped out, landing softly on the shelf. It was the complete version of the cropped group photo he'd seen on the studio wall. On the back, in neat script, was written: Congratulations to Room 414 for winning the qualifications to enter the state-wide competition. The front showed six girls, five of them clustered in a jubilant embrace on the right, their faces alight with victory. The sixth stood apart, half a palm's distance away, her tall frame—nearly 1.7 meters—exuding a graceful, almost ethereal presence. Clad in a ballet costume, she resembled the lead of Swan Lake, her beauty and poise setting her apart, even in the static image. "This must be Zhang Ya," Chen Ge whispered, unable to reconcile the gentle elegance of the girl in the photo with the vengeful Red Specter described by the black phone.
The utterance of her name was a mistake, a slip born of distraction, and the room reacted instantly. The steel lockers began to creak and rattle, their doors trembling as if straining against an unseen force, threatening to burst open. From beyond the dressing room, an insistent banging echoed, sharp and rhythmic, like someone—or something—desperately trying to break through the studio door. "Who's there?" Chen Ge called, his voice steady despite the cold sweat prickling his skin. He shoved the photograph into his pocket, his grip tightening on the mallet as he turned toward the half-open door. Peering through the gap, he froze. The three wooden chairs from the studio had moved, now forming a barricade across the entrance, their silent advance a chilling declaration of intent.
"You think I won't smash you to splinters?" Chen Ge growled, his fear morphing into defiance. His back was drenched in sweat, but he refused to be cornered. The dressing room had no other exit; if he didn't clear a path, he'd be trapped. With the mallet raised, he stepped toward the chairs, ready to force his way through. But as his gaze drifted past the blockade, it landed on the wall of mirrors in the dance studio beyond, and his blood ran cold. The mirrors, pristine and unyielding, reflected a scene that shouldn't exist—a distorted, shifting image that defied the empty reality of the room. His heart pounded, the mallet trembling in his hand as he realized the true danger might not be the chairs, but what lurked within the mirrors, waiting to claim him in Zhang Ya's haunted domain.