The Beginning

A familiar voice suddenly came from the doorway.

“Irene!”

A brown-haired girl clutching her books ran in quickly. It was Lucy.

She had clearly just come from another classroom, but as soon as she reached the door, her eyes fell on Ryan in the back row.

Her footsteps instantly halted.

“Huh?”

“Mr. Ryan?”

Irene turned around.

“Lucy?”

Lucy blinked, then looked at the black formal uniform Ryan was wearing. The expression on her face gradually grew animated.

“What are you doing here?”

Ryan replied calmly, “Accompanying Irene to her parent-teacher meeting.”

Lucy stared blankly for a moment, then looked at the uniform again, suddenly unable to help but burst out laughing.

“No, wait.”

“I just find this a bit strange.”

Irene said crossly, “What’s so strange about it?”

Lucy tilted her head and thought for a long time.

“I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“It just feels different from before.”

As she said this, scenes from that night involuntarily surfaced in her mind—the dim room, the flickering candlelight, the air that had suddenly turned freezing cold, and that blurry shadow appearing at the doorway.

All the girls had been terrified out of their wits. Irene had even been on the verge of tears.

Only Ryan had remained exceptionally calm from beginning to end, staring intently at a certain spot in the darkness.

Then, he had said in a tone she had never heard from him before, “Don’t speak. Nobody make a sound.”

That voice had been terrifyingly low, as if even the air itself had been frozen solid. Even now, Lucy still remembered the feeling of that moment.

Thinking back on it later, she even felt that the most terrifying thing that night might not have been the wraith, but Ryan, who had suddenly seemed like a completely different person.

Thinking of this, Lucy couldn’t help but steal another glance at Ryan.

She found that he was actually wearing a formal civil servant uniform now, with the archive badge pinned to his chest.

He looked like an entirely different person from the tenant who had been so sick he could barely walk a few months ago. The contrast was simply too stark.

“What is it?” Irene looked at her suspiciously.

Lucy snapped out of it and immediately shook her head. “It’s nothing. I just suddenly felt like Mr. Ryan has changed a lot.”

Hearing this, Irene subconsciously looked to the side.

In fact, she had been feeling the same way lately.

When he first moved into the apartment, Ryan had been pale, coughing frequently, and had no energy when he walked.

But now, although he was still thin, he stood noticeably taller and straighter. Especially when he wore his formal uniform, he truly looked like a proper government official.

Lucy suddenly leaned in close and lowered her voice.

“Seriously though.”

“What actually happened during that séance game that night?”

Irene instantly stiffened. “Don’t bring that up!”

“Why?”

“Because I still have nightmares about it at night!”

Lucy burst out laughing.

“Coward.”

“You were clearly holding onto me the tightest back then.”

“That’s because you screamed first!”

“Nonsense!”

“It was definitely you!”

The two girls immediately began exposing each other’s embarrassing moments.

Ryan stood nearby, silently adjusting his glasses. He decided to pretend he hadn’t heard a thing.

Just then, the classroom door opened once more, and the female teacher walked in carrying a stack of files.

“Dear parents.”

“There is a career presentation at one-thirty this afternoon.”

“Senior students, please make your way to the auditorium on time.”

At this point, she suddenly looked at Ryan, a polite smile appearing on her face.

“Mr. Ryan.”

“Could you please head over early to prepare?”

The classroom fell silent for a brief moment. Lucy and Irene both froze at the same time.

“Prepare what?”

The female teacher looked slightly confused. “The career presentation, of course. Isn’t Mr. Ryan here on behalf of the Central Archive?”

The air fell silent for two seconds.

Lucy slowly turned her head to look at Ryan. Irene also looked at Ryan.

Ryan remained silent for a moment. “You could say that.”

In the next second, Lucy’s eyes went wide.

“Wait—”

“The person speaking on stage today is you?!”

“We’re doomed, we’re doomed.” Lucy clutched her books, looking like she was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. “Irene, your tenant is actually the speaker.”

Irene completely lost the desire to pay her any attention. She reached out, trying to push her away. “Get out of here.”

“No way.” Lucy immediately dodged, her face full of mischievous grins. “I still have to listen to the speech in a bit.”

Several girls nearby burst into giggles.

Ryan stood to the side, silently adjusting his glasses. He suddenly felt that the ghouls of East Port were far less difficult to deal with than these sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls. At least ghouls wouldn’t gather around you to pry.

Just then, a bell rang out from the far end of the corridor.

The students who were still chatting instantly quieted down. Several female teachers also began organizing them.

“The career presentation will begin in ten minutes.”

“Senior students, please head to the auditorium.”

“Please maintain silence.”

The crowd began to move. Irene finally managed to shake off her teasing friends and led Ryan all the way toward the auditorium.

On the way, Lucy still followed beside them, stealing glances at Ryan from time to time.

To be precise, ever since that séance game, she had always been a little afraid of this tenant. That night, she and Irene had originally just been curious, but they had ended up being terrified to the point of nearly crying. Especially those bizarre phenomena that occurred at the end—even thinking about it now made her scalp tingle.

Lucy lowered her voice. “Irene.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think Mr. Ryan might actually be some kind of occult professor?”

Irene rolled her eyes. “Would a professor live in a slum attic?”

“Well, maybe a destitute professor.”

“...”

Irene couldn’t be bothered to respond to her.

Soon, they arrived at the auditorium. The small auditorium of Harrington Girls’ Academy was clearly much more respectable than the schools in the East End.

High ceilings, bright stained-glass windows, and photographs of past outstanding graduates hanging on both walls. The wooden benches were polished to a shine, and the air still carried the faint scent of wood wax and ink.

A few teachers were already seated in the front row, while students poured in from the back in succession. There were about a hundred of them, all wearing deep blue school uniforms. The scene was surprisingly grand.

Ryan stood backstage, quietly observing the auditorium.

It was completely different from St. Blaise Boys’ Public School. No one here was shouting or making a racket, and no one was smoking in the back row. Even their conversations were kept in very low whispers. The girls held notebooks, waiting attentively for it to begin.

And this silence, on the contrary, made Ryan feel a little uncomfortable.

The people he had interacted with the most before were dockworkers, factory apprentices, and the gloomy clerks of the archive. He had rarely interacted with so many students who had not yet entered society, especially female students.

At this moment, in the front row, the principal and several teachers conversed in low voices.

After a while, the auditorium doors slowly closed. The murmurs gradually faded, and the entire hall fell silent.

The female teacher walked up to the podium and lightly tapped the desk.

“Thank you, everyone, for attending today’s career presentation.”

“I believe you all know”

“that graduation is not the end,”

“but the beginning of another stage of life.”

The audience was extremely quiet.

“Therefore, the school has specially invited several practitioners from different fields to introduce the real working environment and future development directions to everyone.”

At this point, she turned sideways and looked toward the backstage.

“Please welcome the formal clerk of the East End Central Archive—Mr. Ryan.”

Applause rang out. It wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, but filled more with curiosity. After all, everyone had originally expected a forty- or fifty-year-old official to step up.

Instead, the person who walked up to the podium was a young man in his early twenties.

For a moment, quite a few students were stunned.

Lucy’s eyes went even wider. “He actually went up there...”

Irene was also in a daze. Clearly, just a few months ago, when Ryan had first moved into the rented room, he had coughed as if he might die at any moment. Yet now, he was already standing on the auditorium stage.

Ryan walked to the front of the podium and looked down.

Over a hundred pairs of eyes were staring at him. Some with curiosity, some with expectation, some with nervousness, and some with confusion.