Chapter 090: A Secret Admirer? Ghosts One After Another

Charlie and Z both jerked at the shoulders, and I caught their reactions out of the corner of my eye. I smiled faintly and repeated myself. “If there is another lie, I’ll turn around and leave. I can’t help people with your kind of status. Wait for someone else to come and save you.”

Charlie looked grim. He waved a hand. “I’m not lying to you. Z really hasn’t slept for two whole days.”

My voice cooled. “Still trying to fool me? You know that’s not what I meant.”

I rose to my feet, ready to take the little spirit and go. I had only taken a few steps when Charlie called after me again. After a brief hesitation, he asked very carefully, “Do you really have a way to make the child spirit stop haunting Z?”

At that moment, I had no wish to explain to Charlie whether this case was man-made or not. I simply nodded. Charlie drew in a long breath, led me back to my seat, and once we were sitting again, he began.

“The man who died in the underground garage was named Zhou Sheng. He was from the Harbor District. I heard he was the son of a wealthy family. If you insist on giving him a label, he’d count as Z’s secret admirer.”

As expected, my guess had been right. Charlie and Z both knew Zhou Sheng, yet they had not told me the truth before; instead, they had claimed he was some deranged fan or stubborn paparazzo. According to the police investigation, if Zhou Sheng had really only followed Z around and forced her to change hotels several times, then with Charlie’s temper, he would surely have called the police long ago.

But Charlie had not done that. Instead, Z had eventually stopped staying in hotels and moved into a residential complex, with bodyguards protecting her. Connecting that with what Zhou Sheng’s parents had said earlier, I guessed that his strange behavior had probably all been tied to Z.

Charlie sighed and said there was a reason he had kept it from me. Zhou Sheng, because his family had money, had once met Z in person and obtained her contact information. After that, he had clung to her relentlessly.

“Zhou Sheng was friends with a lot of people in those circles,” Charlie told me. Money could make the world go round; there was nothing strange about that. He said that for that reason, in the beginning, whenever Zhou Sheng called Z, Z was reluctant to answer, but out of politeness, she still forced herself to chat with him for a while.

But later Zhou Sheng grew increasingly brazen, calling more and more often and constantly asking to meet. Of course, Z kept turning him down with one excuse after another. Two months ago, she finally lost her temper and told him flatly that it was impossible between them, adding that she despised useless rich fools.

And the time Zhou Sheng’s parents said he suddenly began applying himself to learning business had been two months ago.

As Z’s manager, Charlie knew everything about her. Z herself no longer even had the strength to speak, so Charlie had to do the talking for her. He said that time Zhou Sheng had gone a little mad, even going downstairs beneath Z’s building in the middle of the night to call for her.

After Charlie rushed over and discussed it with Z, they decided to keep Zhou Sheng occupied for the time being and find another solution later. Z told Zhou Sheng that she did not want to be with a man who was useless. Zhou Sheng had looked a little dejected, told Z to wait for him, and then left. They had thought Charlie might make a scene afterward, but nothing they feared ever happened.

Z had gone through a scandal two years earlier and could no longer endure another one.

I told them about Zhou Sheng’s sudden determination to learn business, and both of them looked surprised. Charlie murmured, “So he really liked Z?”

Charlie had assumed that the young heir merely wanted to play with a celebrity and show off everywhere. He had never imagined that the man would truly try to improve himself. Regret shadowed Charlie’s face. “No wonder he stopped bothering Z for that month. If I’d known, I never would have said those things to him later. Maybe then he wouldn’t have died.”

I told Charlie to be clear, and he nodded. After gathering his thoughts, he went on.

A month after that incident, Z came to Capital City to film. When Zhou Sheng heard, he called her again. But by then, Z had already begun having dreams frequently, and the scars on her hands were increasing day by day. Both she and Charlie were terribly troubled.

After receiving Zhou Sheng’s call, Charlie snatched the phone and cursed him out thoroughly, saying that he and Z would never be possible. After that, Z changed her number. Unexpectedly, Zhou Sheng actually came to Capital City, found Z, and followed her repeatedly as she kept changing hotels.

Capital City had no shortage of reporters, and everyone knew Z was there filming. Charlie said that perhaps Zhou Sheng really did like Z, which was why he did not make a huge commotion as before or keep trying to force a meeting, so as not to affect her. Later, they moved into that residential complex. After Zhou Sheng found out, he tried several times to get upstairs and approach Z, until Charlie finally lost his temper and had the bodyguards beat him up.

Not long before that, Wu Qingshan had gone missing, and Z and Charlie both felt even more uneasy, afraid there would be no one left who could keep the child spirit in check. Added to that, Zhou Sheng’s constant harassment, Z finally met with him directly. She made her words brutally clear: there was absolutely no possibility between them, and she begged him to let her go.

In the days that followed, Zhou Sheng indeed no longer went looking for Z, but he took to drinking in the underground garage and refused to leave.

I thought of that eerie surveillance footage. Zhou Sheng had been so frightened, and yet he still insisted on going into the garage. That place was the one closest to Z. Zhou Sheng’s mother had once said that he had very oddly asked what kind of wife they liked. After she replied that he must marry a proper woman, he said nothing more.

Perhaps Zhou Sheng had truly intended to marry actress Z, which was why he had asked such a question. The match his father wanted, of equal family background, could be considered satisfied, but in traditional eyes, actress Z was not a proper woman. The scandal two years earlier had spread Z’s intimate photos all over the Harbor District. Zhou Sheng was probably afraid his parents would not be able to accept it all at once, and in the end said nothing to them.

Besides Zhou Sheng himself, neither his parents nor his friends knew he was pursuing Z. If he had not truly liked Z, but had only wanted to toy with a celebrity and boast about it, as Charlie had first suspected, then the whole world would have known long ago.

Charlie lowered his head, his face full of remorse. “We never thought it would be this serious. If we had known, we would never have said those things to him.”

Charlie said that before Zhou Sheng died, he had kept it from us because he did not want to damage Z’s reputation. Especially since, at that time, Zhou Sheng already looked like a vagrant, if the media got hold of anything, it would have had a devastating effect on Z’s name. And after Zhou Sheng died, Charlie became even less willing to tell us, afraid the press would say that Z had indirectly caused someone’s death.

Charlie apologized to me and asked me to understand a manager’s concerns. He no longer knew what to do and begged me to help them.

I asked Charlie whether Zhou Sheng had said anything strange when he met them. Charlie shook his head and said no.

I shrugged. “Fine. Go on. And remember, do not hide anything from me.”

“I swear,” Charlie said. “I won’t lie again.”

Then he resumed where I had interrupted him.

Charlie told me that over the past two days, Z’s mental state had grown worse and worse, and it had made him increasingly jumpy as well. Whether it was a psychological effect or not, whenever Z said someone was knocking at the door, Charlie would hear it too. But when they opened the door, only the bodyguards were outside, and they said no one had knocked.

Z also often said someone was standing outside the window. But they were on the upper floors of a building more than ten stories high. Charlie felt his scalp tighten with cold fear. He slowly went over and drew back the curtains. Only after the curtains were fully open did he finally breathe easier; there was nothing outside. But just as he was pulling them shut again, Z screamed that there was a dark shadow outside.

Charlie turned his head and, sure enough, saw a shadow flash past.

By the time he reached that point, his voice was almost breaking. “I don’t know whether we were too nervous and started seeing things, but this has happened more than once. I’m beginning to think we’ve really run into something unclean.”

Charlie told me that after changing locations, the underground garage was brightly lit. Yet he and Z would often see, in the car’s side mirror, a child standing behind them. Every time they got out of the car, the child would vanish without a trace.

As Charlie said this, Z suddenly screamed again. She pointed toward a spot, and I turned my head. It was a small grove of trees behind the film studio.

“There’s a child there!”