"There's nothing there!" Sun Li straightened up, dusted off her knees, and shouted irritably at the corner, "Bai Wei, are you having a nightmare? Are you having a fit of delusions here?"
"Impossible! I clearly saw it!" Bai Wei suddenly ripped off her dirty clothes, revealing a face as pale as paper, her eyes wide and bloodshot. "I saw it clearly! It was right on my shoe! A pale, swollen hand! There was dirt under its fingernails!"
Her description was so detailed that Sun Li and Zhang Xiaoyan's faces paled as well.
"Are you seeing things?!" Zhang Xiaoyan also came over to take a look, pursed her lips, and said with forced composure, "Why aren't you sleeping in the middle of the night? Are you scaring yourself? Are you sick?"
"I'm not sick! I really saw it! There was a... a soapberry water smell on it! The kind that Wang Xiaoya usually uses!" Bai Wei's voice was already trembling with tears.
"Alright, alright," Sun Li interrupted her impatiently, "I think you're just too tired from training during the day and your mind isn't clear. Go to sleep, you have to do morning exercises tomorrow!"
The commotion in the next dormitory quickly alerted Zhang Ruobing, the female instructor on duty at the end of the corridor.
"What's going on?! What's all the noise about in the middle of the night! Don't you want to sleep?!"
Zhang Ruobing, her face grim, draped in a military overcoat, strode into Bai Wei's dormitory. She was already overwhelmed with worry about Wang Xiaoya's case and hadn't slept well for days; being woken up now only fueled her anger.
Upon entering, one sees the dormitory brightly lit, with several female soldiers gathered around, pointing at Bai Wei, who is huddled in the corner, trembling, and complaining all at once.
"Reporting to Instructor Zhang! It's Bai Wei! I don't know what's wrong with her, she's been screaming like a ghost in the middle of the night, saying there's a ghost under her bed, and she almost woke up the whole battalion!" Sun Li blurted out.
“Exactly! We checked, there’s nothing under the bed! I think she’s just deliberately causing trouble to prevent us from sleeping!” Zhang Xiaoyan chimed in.
Zhang Ruobing's brows furrowed into a knot.
She walked to the corner of the wall and looked at Bai Wei's distraught appearance, a complex emotion flashing in her eyes, a mixture of annoyance and doubt.
It's Wang Xiaoya again.
Ever since Wang Xiaoya's death, Bai Wei has become paranoid and erratic. When the special investigation team questioned her, she was the one who appeared the most "grief-stricken," but there was always an unspeakable guilty conscience hidden in that grief.
"Bai Wei! Get up!" Zhang Ruobing yanked off the dirty clothes covering Bai Wei's head and shouted sternly.
Upon seeing Zhang Ruobing, Bai Wei felt as if she had grasped at the last straw. She lunged forward and grabbed Zhang Ruobing's arm, her nails digging deep into the instructor's thick military coat with each effort.
"Instructor... Instructor..." Her teeth were chattering, "It really... really is a ghost! I saw it! I really saw it! It was Wang Xiaoya's hand! She's back! She's back to take my life!"
She was incoherent and rambling, on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Looking at her crazy behavior, Zhang Ruobing's initial doubts were replaced by intense impatience.
"Nonsense!" Zhang Ruobing forcefully shook off her hand and scolded, "There are no ghosts in this world! I think you're just having nightmares because you're too tired from training during the day!"
Unconvinced, she took the flashlight from Sun Li herself, bent down, and carefully shone it under Bai Wei's bed, not even missing the gaps in the bed frame.
So clean that there wasn't a single extra hair.
"Look carefully! Where's the ghost? Where's the hand?" Zhang Ruobing straightened up, shining the blinding flashlight directly into Bai Wei's eyes, her tone stern. "Bai Wei, I'm asking you, have you done something wrong?"
"I didn't! I really didn't!" Bai Wei was blinded by the flashlight beam and could only raise her hand in vain to shield her eyes, screaming.
"If you have nothing to hide, why did you only see Wang Xiaoya's 'ghost'? There are so many people in the whole camp, how come no one else saw it?" Zhang Ruobing's voice was as cold as ice. "I think you didn't see a ghost, you just have a guilty conscience!"
...
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