Chapter 8: Disappearing Household
I have seen that face for almost 20 years, watching it become like its current appearance. It wasn't handsome or ugly with proper facial features, a very spiritual look. But the reflection I saw from the water stain was a bit strange, the face was distorted with a pale face, a shadow surrounding its head, and seemed to have very long hair.
*snap!*
"What are you making that stupid face for, Lin Qi?"
"Ss!" I took a deep breath and touched my painful back. When I looked up, I saw Guo Yujie's slender legs.
This woman is beautiful, has a good figure and a good personality, generous, but is like a tomboy. She does not have any concept on the distance between men and women and liked to move her hands and feet, but being her friend was a good thing since I was able to take advantage of her good deeds, so I have not yet suffered much. And also this woman has another unique feature which overshadows all her other features—— she has an uncanny ability…
Hiss! I felt my back hurting again and quickly picked up the broken pieces of the teacup and threw them out. I went to get a mop.
Guo Yujie took advantage of this and sat down on my seat. The mouse was clicked down a couple of times. "Are you looking at that something something office thing?"
"Qingye Supernatural Office." I filled in the blanks for her.
"How was it? Is it a ghost story? Was it scary?" Guo Yujie was still clicking on the mouse. "Wow. There are so much audio files! That was inside that U-disk? What's written in this file?"
I stood in the corner of the office and didn't answer Guo Yujie's question.
Scary?
It wasn't like a horror movie. After all, there was no pictures. That pale black-haired face wasn't seen by the people of Qingye. But you can't say it wasn't scary… Fang Guoying's voice was very disturbing especially the last call which seemed to be a death shout to bring out his soul. He was so scared, so scared that he collapsed. To me I'm far from that, it's like a jumpscare in horror movies, after your heartbeat accelerates, it will be over. Time to time, you might recall a moment, but it's not that scary.
What I can't get over is the last file.
Qingye Supernatural Office said that it did not find that ghost face, did not solve the problem surrounding the face and could not determine whether it will reappear again or not.
I might that never go to that Forest Park ever again.
"Hey, Lin Qi, are you listening to me?" Guo Yujie turned to look at me.
"You have too much questions." I said half-heartedly and dragged the mop on the stains on the ground.
"Is it scary?" Guo Yujie picked one out of her numerous questions.
"It's alright." I continued to answer her question half-heartedly.
"This office is strange. They seemed to like using audio files so much, why keep so much paper documents?" Guo Yujie's attention shifts and flipped through one of the several folders that I had put on the desk.
There will be several USB flash drives in those folders and the USB flash drives will be labeled with the event number. That is to say, each event will have a paper file and a USB flash drive full of audio files. This was strange and makes people feel puzzled.
"Probably to save time." I guessed.
"Save time, then you might as well just record everything." Guo Yujie let go the file folder and closed it.
Messy footsteps were suddenly heard outside the office. In a short time, one fat and one thin figure appeared at the door of the office and crazily broke into the not so wide door of the office.
"Qi Ge, Guo Jie." The fatty greeted them breathlessly.
The thin one went straight to a chair and sighed deeply.
"What's up with you two?" Guo Yujie asked curiously.
"We were searching for that something something office whatever that is?" The thin one snorted.
"Qingye Supernatural Office." I filled in the blanks again.
The fat one sat down, too as the chair creaked again and again.
"How was it?" Guo Yujie took in the joy from seeing the results of the search from the other two and knowingly asked.
"Search, my ass!" The thin one continued to fume.
"We went to search for the community's guard, first." Fatty wiped his sweat and continued to answer Guo Yujie's question. "The guard was a newcomer and had never seen the office's people and allowed me to see their captain. The captain also lived in this small community on the 3rd floor in No. 9. We went there and he said that he seen the people from the office. They were all youngsters, men and women. Asked for some names and said he didn't know. And said we could ask the neighborhood's committee."
"Didn't we asked them already?" Guo Yujie interjected.
"Yeah we did, but the guard said that former director of the committee also lived in this community. He knew them, so he took us to meet the former director." Fatty looked bitter.
"The 4th floor, No. 17!" The thin one looked exhausted.
"And the results?" Guo Yujie seemed interested.
"That person had a cerebral infarction last month and now doesn't even recognize his own family." Fatty sighed.
"That aunt was too enthusiastic. She told us that there were some families here who met evil and went to that office and even told us their address." The thin one pointed at Guo Yujie. "No. 31, 6th floor!"
"Hahahaha!" Guo Yujie laughed as the two held up their fingers to count how much floors they had climbed.
"What did the person say?" I asked.
"They said that they didn't go and went to the temple and burned incense instead." The thin one sighed.
"Later we can only use old methods to find the people of the office." The fatty continued.
The community, the two were talking about was called "Gongnong Liu Cun" (which literally translates to 6 villages of workers and peasants). Just by hearing the name, you can tell it was an old residential area. There are 6 floors in the building and have 4 households on each floor. The building holds 24 households which compared to the modern apartment today, wasn't much people. But this was an old community, many households lived here and then sold or rented out houses. The people who lived here changed for a while.
Even if things get more complicated, we must do our jobs. Who is the person that said we were responsible for the demolition of this place?
Right now, we have made a prototype and are now in the process of checking the bottom and any potential property owners who do not want to move. The mediation and communication work is done before the demolition which is the purpose of our demolition office. We are all transferred to the office to act like a minor role in a film and to touch and check, to act on hearsay evidence, like a group of paparazzi. However, this really allows us to find a few property owners who do not want to move out.
For example, this Qingye Supernatural Office in No.6 of 6th floor in Gongnong Liu Cun. The whole floor is their office. On the door, hangs a sign: "Qingye Supernatural Office." It looked like a group of two mentally ill people playing house.
What did the people do here? Our office does not care as long as they agree to the demolition of this place, but the problem is that we can't find the people. This place seemed to have been deserted for a long time.
It doesn't matter if the place is empty. The Housing Authority just has to adjust the information and find out who the property owner is and contact them.
Who would have thought that this place has never went through a transaction record. The Housing Authority do not have their data. Only 30 years ago, they found out that the file had been defaced. Whoever owned that place was no clear.
This is the worst situation for our demolition office. To get a name, all kinds of modern informationization methods can be used. Can't find someone, there are always solutions. Unfortunately we don't even know the name, then we can only be caught unprepared.
The two who were climbing the stairs must've been annoyed, aha.
Next Chapter - coming soon ;)