My House of Horrors

“Did you see the white shadow?” When the woman exited the bedroom, her expression slowly changed. Her lashes quivered lightly, and with the lack of color in her face, she looked like a real damsel in distress.

“No.” Gu Feiyu’s eyes landed on the woman who had removed the mask, and an awkwardness appeared on his face before he silently moved his face away.

“Take a seat. I have a feeling the appearance of the white shadow might have a story behind it.” The woman asked for Gu Feiyu to sit on the sofa. Probably tired from wearing the high heels, she removed them and walked into the kitchen barefooted.

Both of his hands gripping the police baton, Gu Feiyu was obviously nervous. He looked very agitated, and his legs shook unnaturally. The woman took two opened bottles of drinks from the fridge and placed them on the coffee table. “Thank you for your help today.”

“Just doing my job.” Gu Feiyu was embarrassed.

“No, I should really thank you. If not for you, I wouldn’t have known what to do. After my elder sister’s disappearance, I’m all alone in Jiujiang. I don’t have much savings. I’m waiting for this place to get sold, and I’ll be moving away forever.” The woman sat across from the security guard. She looked like she was still scared. She curled her legs around the edge of the sofa, and her hands massaged them gently.

“Leaving is not a bad idea.” Gu Feiyu nodded, and his gaze that went to the woman was colored with pity. “But you don’t need to feel so depressed. Your sister is just missing, perhaps she might return one day.”

“Things are not as simple as you think. I share a very good relationship with my sister. After all, we grew up together. She would share everything with me and tell me every one of her secrets, but one day, she just disappeared. I suspect that she’s already…” The woman choked on her words. It felt like she had forced herself through that revelation; she was opening up before a stranger.

Her frame was small, and her limbs were thin; she gave off a sense of fragility. When she started to cry, the heart of every man would go to her. Gu Feiyu was all flustered, and he did not know what to do. After some time, he put down the baton and passed the tissue box on the table to the woman. The woman accepted a tissue, but afraid of ruining her make-up, she just used to it to dab around her eyes. “When I came back from work and saw the white shadow, I was shocked beyond words. Do you think the white shadow has taken my sister?”

Her voice was laced with despair. “Now that I’ve seen the white shadow, will I be taken next?”

“You won’t.” The woman was so focus on her sadness that she did not notice that her skirt was wide open. Gu Feiyu saw this and immediately moved his eyes away.

“I hope you’re right.” The woman picked up the drink before her and lightly touched the bottle in front of Gu Feiyu. “I’m so sorry to drop this on you.”

She raised the bottle to her mouth, and it was then that Gu Feiyu recovered. Out of politeness, he also took a sip from the bottle.

“I think you shouldn’t be that pessimistic. These few days, there were many individuals who have come to ask about your sister, so I’m sure she’s still alive. Perhaps there’s some reason that prevented her from coming to see you.”

The drink just came out from the fridge, so it was cool. It tasted so good that Gu Feiyu naturally took another sip. “Your sister probably has her reasons for going away. In any case, I don’t believe in that talk of ghosts. She probably made some mistake and came up with that excuse to hide from the law. Actually, I feel sorry for her. She couldn’t even see the person that loves her the most in the world; what is the meaning of being alive then?”

“You don’t understand her. None of you have ever tried to understand her.” The woman’s expression filled with sadness, but her tone had a small change to it. “She is the best older sister one can ever ask for. She was willing to share her most precious thing with me.”

Gu Feiyu suddenly felt very tired. He hugged the baton and leaned against the sofa. “Looks like you two do share a very good relationship.”

The woman seemed to go down her memory, but her gaze had never left the half-empty bottle that was on the table. “When I saw small, people liked to bully me, and my sister would be the first one to jump out to defend me. As we grew older, our personalities started to form and differ from each other. I was selfish and prone to throw temper tantrums, but no matter what I did, my sister would always forgive me. She was perfect, beautiful, graceful, and had a great smile.

“At the time, I didn’t appreciate it. The more she was tolerant toward me, the more I hated her. I hated everything she liked. She liked white, so I liked black. I had to be different from her. This continued for several months until that incident happened.”

Studying the guard, the woman continued after a long time. “Even though I hate to admit it, we fell in love with the same thing.

“In our neighborhood, there was this handsome boy who fell in love with my sister. He liked to listen to music and compose pieces. He was a wonderful singer, too. Whenever they went on their dates, my heart twisted like it was cut with a thousand knives. I could not allow the thing that I loved to become someone else’s.

“I look similar to my sister, so I started to put on her make-up and wear her clothes. Initially, the dates were successful, but slowly, the boy discovered my secret. After all, I was not my sister, and we have completely different personalities. I cried and begged him to stay, but he only loved my sister.”

The veins on the woman’s arms were scary, but Gu Feiyu sitting opposite from her did not seem to notice this. His eyes kept closing like he was too tired from the long evening patrol.

“For him, I gave up my pride to beg my elder sister, but the sister who claimed she loved me went silent this time. We did not speak for an entire week. In the end, it was sister who compromised. She said that she would call the boy over and had him choose.

“When the boy got my sister’s invitation, he was so happy. He even went out to buy a new shirt and fresh flowers. He also spent the whole night recording my sister’s favorite song. When he arrived, the boy confessed directly to my sister, but she did not accept it immediately. Instead she called me out and told the boy to make the choice.

“My sister was wearing her favorite white dress, so I wore black. She asked the boy, ‘Honey, white or black, which color do you prefer?’

“I’ve never prayed for something so hard in my life before, but it only took several seconds for my hope to be shattered. The boy didn’t hesitate at all and chose my sister.”

Her nails cut into her flesh. Even after so many years, the woman still felt the sting of betrayal. Her breathing became ragged, and it only calmed down after a long time. “I felt my heart being torn open. Words cannot describe the pain. I just wanted to leave and go somewhere people could not find me.

“Elder sister saw the pain I was in. She seemed to have already expected this ending. At my lowest point in life, it was again my sister who stepped forth to help me. She fed the boy a bottle of water and then removed her white dress before walking into the kitchen to retrieve a cleaver.

“She told me that other than white and black, there was another choice that was fairest to all.”

The woman stopped talking and pulling out a cleaver from underneath the sofa. She used the tissue that Gu Feiyu had given her to wipe away the make-up on her face. As if remembering the things that happened so many years ago, the woman held the cleaver high as she moved toward the immobile Gu Feiyu. The wig fell off her head, and the completely hairless face leaned close to Gu Feiyu’s ear.

“Honey, black, white, and red, which color do you prefer?”