Chapter 60 - We Are Doomed
The next day, Wan Yi Jun woke up hearing the continuous ringing noise that broke his deep sleep.
"I was ringing the doorbell for almost an hour and thought something might have happened to you." She complained while wiping down the sweat beads from her face. Since she wasn't sure whether Wan Yi Jun was home, she asked Yojiro to drop her somewhere near the mansion and had to walk all the way to avoid any suspicions.
He somehow shot open his heavy eyelids and reached for his phone out of habit to turn off his alarm.
To be very honest, Wan Yi Jun needed a distraction from his excruciating thoughts. Once his teammates went home, he could no longer stay there and ruminate over whatever Han Ze Min said earlier. In the middle of the night, he decided to leave the office and went home without wasting any time.
However, even after continuously pressing on the blank phone screen, the noise didn't go off.
It took a moment for him to realize that it wasn't his alarm but the doorbell.
Is it Ming Yue? He wondered for a moment while rising from the bed, and somehow, dragged his sleepy body to the front door,
"Wait a minute," He informed in his morning hoarse sound and opened the front door with a loud creak sound.
As soon as the door got open, the bright sunlight rushed inside, Wan Yi Jun unknowingly covered his eyes,
"Master, are you okay?" Ming Yue's slightly worried voice fell onto his ears as he struggled to look at the person who stood before him, bathed in golden light that hurt his eyes. Just as he took a step away from the entrance, Ming Yue entered the house without any hesitations.
"I was asleep, Miss Ming." Wan Yi Jun replied as he stretched his aching arms a bit. Last night he left office after the conversation with Han Ze Min.
However, even after coming home, he couldn't stop his thoughts and eventually had to get help from one of the whiskey bottles he got as a parting gift from his previous landlord.
To get away from his loneliness, Wan Yi Jun busied himself with work 24X 7, but there were some instincts in his life where he couldn't help but rely on alcohol to calm his mind.
Maybe it was the reason why he ended up sleeping like a log.
"I was about to break some window and enter the house like a burglar." Ming Yue sighed and stared at the man, who appeared quite different from yesterday's well-groomed look. Looking at his haggard appearance, she was sure that he was tired to death.
"You could have given me a call instead of ringing the doorbell. I always keep my phone next to me." Wan Yi Jun shrugged his shoulders when he heard her reply.
"I did call you when I left my house, but all I could hear was 'the number you are calling is either switched off or not available' When I came here, I saw your car and thought you might be inside, so I rang the doorbell." Ming Yue casually said as it was a normal thing to do.
"My phone was off? I might have forgotten to put it on a charge," Wan Yi Jun unknowingly shuffled his hair as he regretted his decision to drink last night. He always made sure to keep his phone charged because of his work.
"Master, don't you have to go to work or are you on leave?" Ming Yue asked when he saw Wan Yi Jun's dazed state.
"No, no, I need to go." He quickly regained his bearings and looked at the wall clock in the living room.
It was almost 10 in the morning.
"Damn, he did oversleep." Wan Yi Jun almost cursed under his breath and rushed towards his room to get ready to leave as soon as possible.
However, Ming Yue stood at the entrance and looked at him doubtingly. Did something happen last night?
"Are you sure, master? You look more tired than yesterday," She asked once again,
"It's nothing. I will go and get ready." Wan Yi Jun quickly replied and vanished behind the door, leaving Ming Yue all alone in the living room.
"Yes, master, I will get your breakfast." She said and went towards the kitchen. However, just as she moved past the central table in the house, she stumbled upon an alcohol bottle.
She bent down and picked up the bottle from the floor.
"It seems like he was drinking," She mumbled and checked the floor for any other bottles. Luckily, there was no bottle but plenty of cigarette butts.
"No wonder he looks so haggard." She gritted and began to pick the litter from the ground,
But at that moment, she heard some footsteps echoing in the silent room.
"What happened, mas-" Ming Yue's words broke in mid-sentence when she saw a stranger at the doorstep.
It was a man who wore a black hoodie and cap.
"WHO ARE YOU?" Ming Yue inquired when she felt something amiss about this stranger. As far as she knew, Wan Yi Jun never mentioned having a guest over.
"Huh, who are you?" The man who was equally surprised to see another person in the mansion asked in a startled voice. He looked at the beautiful woman who wore a similar black hoodie like him,
"Are you here for work, too? Oh, good morning, miss. I'm Chao Xiang from the electrical team." The man removed his cap and introduced with a smile.
As soon as she heard that he was a construction worker, she let down her guard. Of course, Wan Yi Jun did inform her about it.
"Oh, are you one of those workers who ran away in the middle of the renovation work?" Ming Yue asked since she was the one who had to clean the mess and make the mansion more 'habitable' for Wan Yi Jun.
"No...no...That was another team from our agency." The man immediately refuted as if he got wrongly accused.
"I heard from the chief that few of the workers roamed around this house and saw something that they weren't supposed to see."
"Something that wasn't supposed to see? What's that?" Ming Yue suddenly sounded curious.
"A ghost-like thing." He replied and quickly broke into a peal of laughter. "Who believes in these stupid stories nowadays? "
"What did they see?'
"Some shadowy figures. There are lots of weird rumours about this mansion. They might have believed it and got scared by the shadow of some tree." The man paused for a moment and took a step closer to Ming Yue,
"Oh, finally, they are here. I was starting to doubt whether we two have to do the rest of the works." The man added with a smile and walked towards the truck stopped in front of the entrance.
Just as he walked over, the construction worker got down from the truck one by one.
"Good morning, Chief. Why are you coming so late? We almost thought that you also ditched us due to the stupid ghost story." Chao Xiang greeted his supervisor and his fellow workers, who seemed a little bit shocked to see him.
"We? Do you mean the owner?" The chief who peeked at the car parked in front of the entrance asked in a confused tone, "Is he home?"
"I'm talking about our new worker. By the time I reached here, she had already started working. Did you give the key to her?"
When the supervisor felt something absurd, he quickly changed the topic so that the workers won't get scared due to the same rumour they heard earlier.
"Yaa, what are you doing? Are you drunk from the morning?" Chief who saw Chao Xiang acting weirdly, quickly stopped the other from creating a fuss. He somehow persuaded the workers to renovate the mansion despite the rumours, just because the owner was a policeman. Otherwise, he would have right away rejected to step inside this cursed place.
"I don't know what you are talking about, Chao Xiang. Everyone, let's start working and finish it today itself."
As soon as the workers heard their supervisor's instructions, they immediately started to unload their tools and raw materials from the truck.
Just as he stepped inside the living room, he quickly searched for the girl, and to his surprise, she was nowhere to see.
"Miss, where are you? Come out and meet the rest of the team."
"No...I'm not drunk. I swore there was a girl. She even asked me why didn't the previous team quit in the middle of the work. She was pretty much worried about the owner and almost scolded me." Chao Xiang elaborated as he looked around the living room, "I'm damn sure she might be cleaning somewhere."
"Didn't you hear it earlier? There is no girl in our team."
"No, but I was talking to a girl-" Chao Xiang once again made a vague effort to prove his point.
"Oh my God!!!" All of a sudden, one of the workers, a man in his late forties, gasped in horror, "The last person...who died in this house...it was a girl...."