"Has there been any incident of a child being lost in the community?" Qiao Yan asked Xie Quan, who shook his head.
"I don't know. I haven't been here long." The night wind was a little chilly. Xie Quan touched his cheek with the back of his hand. It was indeed icy cold. "I haven't seen any children since I moved in. Only the one from the Zhang family."
Although Qiao Yan had some doubts about the Zhang family of three, they were just her guesses. They were all fine now, so how could they be involved with ghosts and the like?
On the way, Xie Quan took off his denim jacket and gave it to her. Qiao Yan did not refuse, after all, she was indeed a little cold.
The iron gate of Master Yu's shop was closed and was being knocked on loudly by two people. However, no one else seemed to hear the noise. Only Master Yu got up from the bed and turned on the light.
He opened the window a little and looked out. He saw that the two people downstairs did not show much surprise, but closed the window, guessing that they were about to come downstairs.
Qiao Yan and Xie Quan waited for him to open the door and invite them in.
"What's the matter with you that requires you to disturb my sleep at this time of night?" Master Yu gave each of them a cup of cold tea and yawned violently.
"Master Yu, that day I asked you to be careful on the road, and you replied 'You too'. Don't you really know why we came to see you now?" Qiao Yan didn't drink the cold tea, and her eyes fell directly on Master Yu.
She didn't want to beat around the bush and waste time, so she asked directly, "I hope you can tell us everything you know about Sunset Red Apartments. We seem to have been in trouble these past few days."
Master Yu held the teacup in silence for a while, then drank the cold tea in one gulp. Then he sighed, "What's the big deal? This is just... fate..."
Master Yu's words reminded Qiao Yan of the note. She still remembered the two words written on it: "Destiny".
As Master Yu spoke, he looked at Xie Quan and asked him, "How long have you been here?"
"I just moved in at the beginning of the year." Xie Quan blinked, not understanding why he asked this.
"Really?" Master Yu closed his eyes. "But this has been my second six years of knowing you."
"What?!" Xie Quan was stunned: "Are you kidding? I've only known you for a short time..."
"You all think so." Master Yu waved his hand, then retracted his four fingers, leaving only one index finger, pointing to his eyes: "But I'm not. Although what I can see is not much, I still know something."
As he spoke, he took out a cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and without lighting it, just bit it, looking at the table and slowly recounting the past twelve years.
Master Yu has been doing this rough business in this area for a long time. He knows many people here and has witnessed the former bustle of this area.
But as the old replaced the new, and new cities were built, people moved out, and the old places gradually became deserted. The aging of a place often means that people will invest less and less in various resources in it, and soon, the public security there will be much worse.
One day twelve years ago, the nearby police station received a report of a missing child case.
Most of the cameras in this area are damaged, and only a few are still functioning properly. Moreover, most of the images are not clear, so the police can find very few clues.
The missing child has never been found. It is said that the child was taken out to play by his father in the afternoon. The father received a work call halfway through, and the child disappeared the next moment. The child's mother cried so much that her eyes were almost blinded within a few days. It is said that the two quarreled more and more frequently at home, and many neighbors have heard their quarrels.
The child has not been found and his life or death is still unknown, which has left the police helpless.
"Some say the child was murdered and the body destroyed, others say she was abducted and sold to a remote mountain village. There's a lot of different stories out there." Master Yu held his cigarette between two fingers and sighed, "In short, they never found her. In the end, everyone just assumed the child was gone, and the family was completely destroyed."
He had met that family once before when he was changing the locks, and the child had even greeted him at that time. Who knows...
"The next time I heard about them was one early morning." Master Yu's fingers, holding a cigarette, trembled slightly. "The child's mother had a mental breakdown and hanged herself with a red rope in front of the child's father's house in the middle of the night."
"Don't they live together?" Xie Quan asked.
"After the child's accident, they cried and argued every day, and couldn't live a normal life. In the end, although they didn't divorce, they separated." Master Yu shook his head. "It wasn't far away, though. The man rented the house next door, and the woman still lived in the original house they bought. After all, they still had love. What a beautiful family they were back then, a rare couple that got married in the same neighborhood."
"So, fate plays tricks on us. It's all destiny."
"I originally thought that with time, this matter would eventually come to an end. But the following year, the year you moved in, things started happening. This place was haunted."
Because of his special physique, Master Yu did not forget and repeat himself like other people. He clearly saw the traces on the horizon that looked like they were cut. No matter how hard they tried, no one could get out of there, but they knew nothing about it and thought they were living a normal life.
"Besides me, there's another person who knows about this," Master Yu said, "but he's dead."
Qiao Yan and Xie Quan looked at each other, and Xie Quan took out the photos in his pocket: "Master Yu, are they the couple who lost their child you mentioned?"
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