Chapter 4 — The Midnight Message

Then I turned off the private message interface and tightened the phone in my hand. Tieu Ly is fine, others are fine, I don't believe it. Furthermore, I can't be sure whether the person standing outside the door is really Tieu Ly or not. Now just try until morning. Gradually there was no more movement outside the door. I breathed a sigh of relief and opened my phone. I placed my ear on the door panel and listened for a moment, the tip of my nose pressed against the cold door surface, my breathing was very light. Tieu Ly was probably gone, or... I just let that possibility flash in my mind and then extinguished it. Don't care anymore. I retreated to the bedroom and turned on my phone. In the group chat, things have changed. Messages from screen to screen pass very quickly.

“The police are really here. I just saw two policemen entering the area.”

“Thank goodness, I can finally sleep.”

“I told you, one suspect can cause no big stir.”

"Just now, Ms. Tran said she called the police. Ms. Tran is so powerful!"

Then there was a voice message from Tieu Nha, opening it was her voice: "Oh my god, I was in a deep sleep. I was woken up upstairs just now and saw the group. Don't worry everyone, how could I really let the murderer die?" Below was immediately a string: "Tieu Nha is good."

"If you're afraid of the shadow, you're afraid of the wind. If you're afraid of the shadow, you're afraid of the wind."

She said she's still there. In the other video, the door lock is clearly locked, the indicator light changes from green to red, which is a completely closed state. Furthermore, you need to enter a six-digit password. Firstly, at that time she was in the house, especially putting on her shoes to go out and take a video of locking the door, which didn't feel like her style. Second, why did she run out and lock the door for no reason after receiving the food? She is someone who listens to Ms. Tran very much. I listened to those voice messages again. Tieu Nha's voice sounds exactly like hers. Intonation, final sounds, sometimes reveal that type of word release. But what Tieu Ly said before was not wrong, the text message she sent tonight was indeed very slightly different from before. Things so small like that normally go unnoticed. I remember the dark shadow passing through the glass window at the end of the video. Although the pixels are so blurry that nothing can be seen clearly, that dark patch keeps encrusted at the edge of the frame, stopping in the same frame as the moment the door lock indicator light turns off. The police are here. Two policemen. The access control door in the first floor lobby is now completely closed. They are currently stopping outside the iron gate, looking for management, contacting security, waiting for ten or twenty minutes. The phone was still clasped in my hand, and Ms. Tran's voice message popped up again.

"The police want me to open the door for them. But I'm very scared, it's dark outside, I'm on the first floor alone, what if the person who opens the door is a bad guy?"

At the end of that voice message, there was also a bit of a crying voice as if it were nothing. The group immediately overflowed with words of comfort.

"Don't be afraid, Ms. Tran."

“With the police right outside the door, there are no bad guys.”

“You just need to open the door a little and take a look.”

“If it really doesn't work, let the police figure it out themselves.”

Ms. 402 even sent a sentence: "The police officer has his own tools, just pry it open, no need for me to take risks." I looked at that message and laughed coldly in my heart. The police have tools, they have lock-picking pliers, they have hydraulic scissors, dealing with an access control door of a unit basically doesn't take five minutes. But they just let the head of the household open it. Five They received a call to report to the police so they came here. There was no search warrant, no breaking down procedures. In a situation where it is not yet confirmed that violent crime is actually occurring in the building, they will not proactively vandalize public facilities. They want the head of the household to open the door himself to avoid procedural problems. In other words, the police themselves weren't sure if there was anything going on in this building. They only came for one trip. I was just about to put the phone down when suddenly there was a clear "click" sound from downstairs. That sound was transmitted ten floors away, and it must have been very weak. But the dawn was so quiet, so quiet that every sound seemed to happen right next to my ears. It was the sound of unlocking the access control door in the unit. The moment the electronic lock popped out, the metal spring leaf returned to its position, followed by a dull friction sound as the large door was pushed open and the floor hinges pulled back. Someone opened the door downstairs. It wasn't Ms. Tran, it was the head of a household near the first floor who was called down by the police. I held my breath and walked to the window, pulled open a crack and looked down. Under the streetlight, the glass door was actually slightly open. The sensor light in the door lights up, but no one is visible. The silhouettes of the two policemen were also not in sight, they must have entered already. I breathed a sigh of relief. The police are in. Is the good show about to end? But a shrill scream tore through the early morning. That sound came from somewhere downstairs, sharp, short, echoing repeatedly in the hallway.

“What's that sound?”, “Who's screaming?”, “What floor?”, “Where are the police?”