The girl in bed four was exceptionally beauty-conscious, despite her modest family background. She saved wherever she could, spending her accumulated money on makeup.
There was nothing wrong with loving beauty, yet the more beautiful she became, the more uncomfortable it made her roommates.
Once the footsteps outside had faded, Han Fei pried open the locked cabinet on bed one, uncovering a diary from a pile of old clothes.
It detailed how three girls turned into devils out of jealousy.
In the beginning, they were all ordinary children, no different from one another. But living together, their true characters slowly began to show over time.
The girl in bed four was very gentle; she was comparatively tall among girls her age and always wore a smile on her face.
It all seemed to start with makeup—the girl from bed four scrimped and saved to buy a cheap set of cosmetics, learning from online makeup tutorials.
Usually, Teacher Ma was strict, so she dared not wear makeup, only applying a light makeup when going out on weekends.
Whenever they went out, the girl was always the most popular.
In truth, her makeup skills were poor, but she was well-liked mainly because of her pleasant personality.
Many thought the girl looked good, but her roommates believed her popularity was due to her makeup skills.
They were all young, initially harboring simplistic thoughts.
The girls in the room would occasionally borrow makeup from the girl in bed four, who rarely refused and would even offer to do their makeup.
Yet, despite everyone wearing makeup, the girl from bed four remained the most popular when they went out.
Once or twice was nothing, but gradually, the other girls in the room felt convinced the girl from bed four purposely did their makeup poorly to make herself look better by comparison.
The roommates were reluctant to go out with her, but they occasionally still borrowed her makeup.
Opportunities for students to do makeup were rare, yet that one set of cosmetics couldn’t withstand usage by four people.
One day, the girl in bed three used the makeup of the girl in bed four without permission, which led to a quarrel after the girl in bed four found out, despite her usually good temper.
Although they made up the next day, it was merely a façade.
The girls in the dorm began to target the girl from bed four, leaving her out when they went out; they would stop talking and busy themselves with other things as soon as she spoke; they spread rumors about her, saying her cosmetics were gifts from unknown people, and that she often returned to the dorm late on weekends.
The girl in bed four didn’t know how to defend herself, realizing that her friends seemed to be distancing themselves from her, even the most upright and kind Teacher Ma looked at her strangely.
She tried to seek help from the teacher, but after the teacher scolded the other girls in the dorm, they hated her even more.
They intensified their ridicule of her, using various forms of covert hostility.
The other girls couldn’t explain why they hated her; eventually, many did so just for the sake of hatred.
The girl in bed four was inherently gentle, and the continuous isolation made her increasingly introverted, until she eventually began to despise school.
Her parents were ordinary people, struggling to make ends meet; when they inquired about the situation at school and first heard from teachers and classmates that their daughter liked makeup and often returned to the dorm late on weekends, they were shocked and outraged.
Instead of improving her academic performance, she had been scrimping and saving to buy cosmetics. Her father, prone to outbursts, nearly resorted to violence at the school.
They didn’t agree to their daughter’s idea to take a break from school, insisting she continue her education there.
Things only worsened afterward; in the eyes of the girls in dorm 304, the girl in bed four was irritating no matter what she did; her mere presence made them uncomfortable.
Finding they couldn’t drive the girl from bed four away, they gradually began to resort to more secretive and extreme measures.
They started with ruining the girl’s belongings, dirtying her clothes, then progressed to pouring glue into her cosmetics and spreading it on her contact lenses.
And this was not the limit of their evil; Han Fei even read in the last few diary entries that someone had ground up birth control pills, obtained from who knows where, and poured them into the girl’s thermos and water cup.
The malice fermented, devouring the three girls in the dorm, and drove the girl from bed four to a desperate plight.
One weekend evening, the three girls in the dorm realized the girl from bed four hadn’t returned; they chuckled, preparing to spread rumors.
One of them deliberately blocked the door with a table and propped the door shut with a broom, ensuring that even if the girl had the dorm key, she couldn’t enter.
They had all agreed that no one would get out of bed to open the door that night.
It was past eleven at night, and the girl from bed four still hadn’t returned.
The other three girls giggled, holding their phones as they filmed a video of the empty number four bed, planning to spread rumors by morning.
They excitedly speculated about why the girl from bed number four didn’t return at night, using various malicious assumptions to satisfy their already twisted hearts.
Around three in the morning, strange sounds of footsteps and dripping water came from the hallway.
Soon noises came from the lock on the door of room 304 as someone was trying to unlock it with a key.
The person on the other side tried for a long time but couldn’t manage to open the door; all three girls in the room had woken up and were muffling their giggles.
The key ultimately failed to open the door, and the footsteps slowly moved away from room 304. They lingered in the hallway for a long time before returning to the door of room 304 to try again.
After several attempts, the noises ceased.
Early the next morning, the three girls excitedly brought their video on their phones to the classroom, sharing it mysteriously with their classmates.
They said the girl from bed number four hadn’t returned all night and must have been up to something awful.
The classmates turned the girl from bed number four into a topic of conversation, laughing and joking without any regard for her feelings. In their eyes, as long as trouble didn’t touch them, they were fine.
Everything changed when the class advisor entered the classroom and with a stern expression, called the girls from room 304 outside.
From the teacher, the three girls learned devastating news—the girl from bed number four had jumped into the river and died, with the time of death being 11 PM the previous night.
At the riverbank, there were traces of the girl pacing back and forth. In her final moments, she had tried to save herself and struggled.
Hearing the teacher’s words, the three girls looked at each other, fear apparent in their eyes.
If the girl from bed number four had died at 11 PM the previous night, then who had tried to unlock the door at three in the morning?
The three girls were terrified and dared not tell anyone about it.
By night, the three girls couldn’t sleep, beholding the image of the girl from bed number four every time they closed their eyes. It seemed as though she was standing in deep water, beckoning them.
At three in the morning, the eerie sound of footsteps shattered the corridor’s silence, and the three girls’ eyes widened in horror.
The sound of the key unlocking shattered the stillness, the rattling of the lock sounding like a hand clawing at the hearts of the girls.
They were terrified to the bone, none daring to leave their beds, all huddled under the covers.
The door remained unopened, and soon after, a horrifying knock sounded, each knock hitting the door with a regular rhythm.
The fear of the girls inside the room reached its peak; they started to blame one another, pushing responsibility onto each other, but it did nothing to alleviate the terror weighing on their minds.
The key was inserted into the lock again and after several turns, the door was opened.
The door was pushed open a crack, hitting the desk behind it.
There was indeed someone unlocking the door, there was indeed someone outside!
One of the girls from room 304 couldn’t stand it any longer, and she screamed hysterically.
Lights flickered in the hallway, and soon after, the voice of the dormitory manager could be heard outside.
The manager thought something had happened inside the dormitory and quickly came to check. After hearing the manager’s voice, the girls moved the desk blocking the door.
The three girls didn’t want to tell anyone about the terrible things they had done; they simply said that it seemed like the girl from bed number four had come back.
The manager didn’t believe them, uttered a few words of caution, and left.
After the manager left, the girls again blocked the door; for some reason, the eerie sounds outside disappeared.
The three girls finally calmed down, exhausted by fear and anxiety; after the sounds vanished, they slowly drifted into sleep.
Perhaps due to their tense emotions, they even dreamt about those footsteps.
But this time, the footsteps didn’t come from the hallway but from within room 304 instead.
One of the girls hazily opened her eyes; she could faintly hear rustling sounds near her.
When she looked towards the direction of the sounds, she froze completely.
Next to bed number four, an eerie black figure stood, drenched from head to toe, clothes clinging to her skin. Her normally beautiful face was grotesquely disfigured.