The Thirteenth File
Part One The Thirteenth Case Investigation Unit
Volume One Room 404
Chapter One Move-In
Section One The New Tenant
The rain started at four in the afternoon.
It kept falling until nine that night.
There was no thunder.
No wind.
Only fine threads of rain, like a layer of gray gauze, smothering the entire city until it could barely breathe.
Linkou Old Town District.
Section 4, Heping Road.
This had once been the busiest commercial district of the 1980s. Now, all that remained were rows of old buildings waiting for urban renewal.
Jason Huang dragged his suitcase to a stop in front of a five-story apartment building.
He looked up at the long-rusted address plaque.
No. 44, Section 4, Heping Road.
Beside the security gate hung a faded acrylic sign.
Evergreen Apartments.
Half of the character in “Evergreen” had fallen off.
From a distance, it looked more like—
Ever Apartments.
“This is the place...?”
He glanced down at his phone.
The landlord had sent one last message half an hour earlier.
I had something to take care of, so I left early.
The key is in the lockbox.
Fourth floor, Room 404.
Jason sighed.
If his original rental hadn’t suddenly raised the rent, he wouldn’t have rushed to move here.
Eight thousand a month.
Furnished.
Internet included.
No security deposit.
For Taipei, it was so cheap it barely seemed real.
When his friends found out, every one of them urged him not to rent it.
They had only one reason.
“It’s too cheap.”
But Jason didn’t believe them.
He had studied information engineering.
He’d worked at a tech company for two years.
His biggest hobby was debunking urban legends online.
Ghosts?
Ghost stories?
Curses?
To him, they were nothing more than psychological suggestion combined with rumors passed from person to person.
“There can’t be that many ghosts in the world.”
He smiled.
Dragging his suitcase behind him, he pushed open the security gate.
The gate gave off a shrill scraping sound.
Creeeak—
Beyond it was a narrow staircase.
The lights were dim and yellow.
The walls were plastered with yellowing rental ads.
Some still listed phone numbers from twenty years ago.
For some reason—
Even though it was summer—
The moment he stepped into the stairwell, the temperature seemed to drop several degrees.
Jason rubbed his arms instinctively.
“Is the air conditioning turned up too high?”
He laughed at himself.
In an old apartment like this, even the communal lights flickered. Where would they get central air-conditioning?
The stairwell was very quiet.
Abnormally quiet.
An apartment building with dozens of residents, yet he couldn’t hear a television, a conversation, or footsteps.
The only sound was his suitcase wheels bumping against the stairs, one step at a time.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
He made his way to the fourth floor.
Four mailboxes hung at the top of the stairs.
401.
402.
403.
404.
The first three mailboxes were stuffed with advertising flyers.
Only 404 was spotless.
As if no one had ever delivered anything there.
Jason didn’t think much of it.
Following the landlord’s instructions, he opened the key lockbox on the wall.
The code was—0404.
Click.
The box sprang open.
Inside was a single silver key.
And a neatly folded sheet of white paper.
Jason picked it up.
There was only one sentence on it.
Before moving in, please read the room rules first.
There was no signature.
No date.
“Pretty official.”
He casually stuffed the paper into his pocket.
Then he came to Room 404.
The door was dark brown wood.
The number plaque hung slightly crooked.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but the three digits looked as if someone had touched them over and over. Their edges were brighter than the rest.
Jason inserted the key.
Click.
The door opened.
A faint scent of wood and old books drifted toward him.
There was no mildew.
No dust.
It was even cleaner than he’d imagined.
The room wasn’t large.
About eight ping.
Wood flooring.
A single bed.
A wardrobe.
A desk.
The window faced the street.
The last sliver of sunset fell directly into the center of the room.
“Better than the pictures.”
Jason smiled with satisfaction.
He set down his luggage.
Then he began arranging the room.
An hour later, the room finally looked lived-in.
He put his computer on the desk.
Hung his clothes in the wardrobe.
Replaced the sheets.
He opened the refrigerator.
To his surprise, there was still an unopened bottle of bottled water inside.
There wasn’t a speck of dust on the bottle.
The expiration date was next year.
“The landlord’s not so bad.”
He smiled and picked up the bottle.
Then he noticed a white card trapped beneath it.
It wasn’t an advertisement.
It wasn’t an instruction manual.
It was a laminated notice.
Its title consisted of six bold black characters.
Room 404 Rules.
Jason assumed it was about sorting trash or building-access precautions.
He casually read the first line.
But the instant he saw the sentence, his smile slowly disappeared.
Because this wasn’t a rental notice.
It was—
If you are reading this notice now, first confirm that you are moving in alone.
Section Two The Landlord's Notice
Jason stared at the sentence for several seconds.
Then he instinctively looked back.
The door was still open.
The narrow hallway was dyed a dark yellow by the last light of sunset. There was no movement in the stairwell.
There was no one else inside the room.
“What the hell is this...?”
He lowered his head again.
The writing on the card wasn’t sloppy. On the contrary, it was arranged with extreme precision, as though it had been printed and then deliberately laminated for preservation.
There were five items beneath the title.
1. On the day you move in, confirm that there are no personal belongings in the room that do not belong to you.
2. Before midnight every night, lock the main door from the inside. If you hear a key turning after midnight, do not open the door to check.
3. There is only one mirror in the room, and it is in the bathroom. If you see a reflective surface anywhere else, close your eyes immediately and leave the area.
4. If someone outside the door calls you by name, first confirm whether they know your full name.
5. The landlord will not contact tenants after nine p.m.
At the very bottom was another line in smaller print.
The above rules are not superstition. Please follow them without fail.
Jason couldn’t help laughing.
“So the reason it’s cheap is that the landlord’s crazy?”
He flipped the notice over.
Blank.
There was no contact number, no signature, and no explanation.
If something like this showed up on an online forum, the title would probably be, “Found Creepy Rules Left by Landlord After Moving In—Help, Waiting Online.”
He used to love reading posts like that.
Usually, the first half was just someone building suspense, and the second half was either an advertisement or something a commenter had made up.
Now that he was actually living in a place like this, it only felt ridiculous.
Jason tossed the card onto the desk.
But the next second, he suddenly remembered the first rule.
Confirm that there are no personal belongings in the room that do not belong to you.
His eyes fell on the refrigerator.
That bottle of bottled water.
Strictly speaking, it did not belong to him.
“No way...”
He picked up the bottle, walked outside, and casually placed it against the hallway wall.
Then he returned to the room and began checking.
There was nothing beneath the bed.
Aside from a few empty hangers, there was nothing in the wardrobe.
The desk drawers were spotless.
The bathroom contained only cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and an empty toothbrush cup.
All of them were things provided with the rental.
He crouched down and pulled open the bedside table.
Inside was a black hair tie.
It was ordinary—the kind sold at any convenience store.
Jason picked it up.
Several long hairs were wound around it.
They weren’t his.
They were a deep black, and at least long enough to reach past the shoulders.
“Left by the previous tenant?”
He frowned.
The landlord had clearly said the room had been cleaned.
He carried the hair tie outside as well and placed it beside the bottle.
After returning inside, he simply searched the entire room from top to bottom.
In the end, he found three more things.
A rusty ten-dollar coin.
A bus ticket wedged between the mattress and the bed frame.
And a Polaroid photo stuffed into the corner of the wardrobe’s top shelf.
The photo was almost completely overexposed.
The image was a sheet of pure white.
Only in the lower-right corner could he faintly make out part of a dark sleeve.
A date was written on the back.
April 4, 2013.
There was nothing else.
Jason looked at it twice, then carried it outside with the other items.
By then, the light in the hallway had already dimmed.
The sunset had disappeared.
The motion-sensor light in the stairwell still hadn’t come on.
He crouched beside the wall and arranged the items together.
The bottled water.
The hair tie.
The coin.
The ticket.
The Polaroid.
They looked like a pile of ordinary trash.
“First rule complete,” he said sarcastically.
The moment he finished speaking, the motion-sensor light in the stairwell suddenly came on.
Snap.
Jason jumped.
Yellow light flooded the entire hallway.
An old woman stood at the top of the stairs.
She wore a dark red patterned shirt and carried a bag of trash. Her hair was gray-white, and her body was thin as a withered branch.
The old woman stared at him without moving.
Jason froze for a moment, then politely nodded.
“Hi, ma’am.”
The old woman didn’t respond.
Her gaze slowly lowered to the objects beside the wall.
The moment she saw the Polaroid, her expression visibly changed.
The trash bag in her hand trembled with it.
“That thing...”
Her voice was very soft.
“Where did you get it?”
Jason followed her gaze.
“The photo? I found it in the wardrobe.”
The old woman pressed her lips together and took half a step back.
“Which room?”
“404.”
The hallway suddenly fell silent.
The old woman’s already hunched back seemed to bend even lower.
She looked at Room 404, then back at Jason.
“You’re the new tenant?”
“Yeah. I just moved in today.”
“Did the landlord not tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
The old woman didn’t answer.
Something in the trash bag seemed to be made of glass bottles. As her fingers trembled, it gave off a faint clinking sound.
After several seconds, she suddenly approached him.
“Put those things back.”
“What?”
“Put them back where you found them.”
The old woman lowered her voice.
“Especially that photo.”
Jason was stunned.
“But the room rules say to remove anything that doesn’t belong to me.”
The old woman’s expression stiffened.
“The room rules?”
“Yeah.”
He pointed inside.
“There was a notice in the refrigerator. The first rule says—”
“That wasn’t left by the landlord.”
The old woman cut him off.
Jason didn’t hear her clearly.
“What?”
The old woman didn’t repeat herself.
She turned toward the stairs below, as if afraid someone might hear them talking.
“Don’t stay here tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Go to a hotel, go to a friend’s place, anywhere is fine.”
She grabbed Jason’s wrist.
Her grip was far stronger than he expected.
“Have the landlord come over tomorrow during the day. Move out in front of him.”
Jason was baffled.
“Ma’am, did something happen here before?”
The old woman’s lips moved.
Just as she was about to speak, the sound of the security gate opening suddenly came from downstairs.
Creeeak—
The old woman released him as if startled.
The expression on her face was no longer nervous.
It was fear.
“Remember this.”
She grabbed the trash bag and hurried toward Room 402.
“If someone calls out to you tonight, don’t answer.”
“Even if it’s someone you know, don’t answer.”
With that, she opened her door and slipped inside.
Bang!
The door slammed shut.
Jason stood where he was.
Footsteps came from downstairs.
They weren’t fast.
Every step landed with steady precision.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Someone was coming upstairs.
At first, he wanted to see who it was.
But when the footsteps reached the third floor, they suddenly stopped.
They didn’t continue.
They didn’t go back down.
They simply stopped below the turn in the stairs.
Jason waited for a while.
“Is anyone there?”
No one answered.
He moved two steps closer to the stairs.
The motion-sensor light didn’t reach the landing.
There was only a mass of heavy darkness.
He had the vague feeling that someone was standing inside it.
But when he looked more carefully, he couldn’t make out anything.
“What the hell...”
Jason didn’t move any closer.
He picked up all the objects beside the wall and returned to Room 404.
Before closing the door, he deliberately glanced toward the stairs.
There was still no movement in the darkness.
The door shut.
Click.
He locked it from the inside.
The room was still dark.
Light from the sign outside filtered through the window, cutting a flickering red square across the floor.
Jason placed the objects on the desk.
The old woman’s reaction made him uncomfortable.
But he didn’t believe there was any real supernatural phenomenon.
When people lived in old apartments long enough, rumors naturally spread among the neighbors.
Maybe someone had died in Room 404.
Maybe a tenant had committed suicide.
Maybe the photo belonged to someone who had gone missing.
Things like that could certainly make the rent cheaper.
But as long as the building’s structure was sound and there was no actual danger, it wouldn’t affect living there.
He turned on the room light.
The white fluorescent tube flickered twice, then came on normally.
Then he returned each item to its original place.
The hair tie went back into the bedside table.
The coin was pushed into the back of the desk drawer.
The ticket was tucked between the mattress and bed frame again.
The Polaroid went back onto the top shelf of the wardrobe.
Only the bottle of bottled water remained.
Jason held it in front of the refrigerator.
“Put it back where you found it,” he said, imitating the old woman’s voice with a laugh.
He returned the bottled water to its original place.
The moment the refrigerator door closed, the light in the room suddenly went out.
Snap.
The surroundings plunged into darkness.
Jason looked up.
“Power outage?”
The refrigerator was still running.
The standby light on his computer was still on, too.
Only the fluorescent light overhead had gone out.
He flicked the switch several times.
Nothing happened.
“Did the bulb burn out?”
He turned on his phone’s flashlight and climbed onto a chair to inspect the fixture.
The tube looked new.
There were no black scorch marks.
The connection seemed fine, too.
Just as he was about to climb down, his phone suddenly vibrated.
A message popped up.
It was from the landlord.
Are you there yet?
Jason glanced at the time.
8:57 p.m.
He replied with one hand.
I’m here. The room’s all set up.
But the light seems to be broken, and there’s a really weird notice in the refrigerator. Did you put it there?
The message showed as sent.
A few seconds later, the landlord replied.
What notice?
Jason jumped off the chair, picked up the laminated card from the desk, took a picture, and sent it over.
After the photo was sent, the screen remained stuck on the spinning “sending” circle.
More than ten seconds passed.
The message failed to send.
He tried sending it again.
It failed again.
Strangely, the text messages still went through normally.
It was just a notice with five move-in rules.
The landlord didn’t respond right away.
The words “Typing...” appeared at the top of the screen.
They appeared.
They disappeared.
Then appeared again.
Nearly a minute passed before a message finally arrived.
Where did you see it?
Jason typed back.
In the refrigerator.
You didn’t put it there?
This time, the landlord called him directly.
The ringtone suddenly rang out, especially shrill in the silent room.
Jason answered.
“Hello?”
Static came from the other end first.
Then a middle-aged man asked hurriedly:
“You’re sure it was in the refrigerator?”
“Yeah.”
“What did it say?”
Jason read through all five items.
There was no sound from the other end.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“Did you take anything out of the room today?”
The landlord’s tone had become strange.
“Yeah. A hair tie, a coin, a bus ticket, and a Polaroid. But the woman next door told me to put everything back, so I did.”
“The woman next door?”
“The one in 402.”
The landlord fell silent again.
This time, the silence lasted much longer.
So long that Jason thought the call had disconnected.
“Leave the room immediately.”
The man finally spoke.
His voice was very low.
“Don’t take the key. Don’t take your things.”
Jason frowned.
“Why?”
“Get out first. I’ll explain later.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t ask.”
The landlord’s breathing was heavy.
“Open the door and go downstairs now. Once you’re out of the building, I’ll explain.”
His tone was starting to irritate Jason.
“What are you people doing? One person tells me not to stay, and another tells me to leave immediately. Did something happen in that apartment before?”
A woman’s voice suddenly came from the other end of the call.
It sounded far away, as if she were standing beside the landlord.
Jason couldn’t make out what she said.
The landlord immediately lowered his voice and replied:
“He’s already gone in.”
The woman seemed to ask something else.
The landlord said:
“Yes. The notice has appeared.”
Jason tightened his grip on the phone.
“Who’s with you?”
The call suddenly disconnected.
Beep.
The screen showed that the call had ended.
Jason immediately called back.
No one answered.
A second time.
A third.
Still no answer.
“Crazy.”
He cursed under his breath.
But the fear in the landlord’s voice hadn’t sounded fake.
Especially that line—
The notice has appeared.
He hadn’t said, “You saw the notice.”
He’d said, “The notice has appeared.”
As if the card hadn’t been sitting in the refrigerator all along, but had appeared out of thin air only under certain conditions.
Jason raised his phone and shone it at the desk again.
The laminated notice lay there quietly.
The words were still clear.
He took two steps closer.
Maybe it was the lighting, but there seemed to be another line at the bottom.
Jason picked up the card.
Beneath the original line—The above rules are not superstition. Please follow them without fail—a hair-thin black line had appeared.
He rubbed it with his finger.
It wasn’t a stain.
It looked as if words were slowly emerging.
A tiny black dot seeped out from inside the card.
Then it extended into strokes.
One character.
Then two.
As if an invisible pen were writing beneath the laminate.
Jason stood frozen.
The new content gradually took shape.
6. If the landlord tells you to leave immediately, do not believe him.
The only sound in the room was the refrigerator’s low hum.
Jason stared at the sixth rule.
A chill crawled from the soles of his feet up the back of his neck.
His phone vibrated again.
The landlord sent another message.
Don’t open the door.
The person who called you just now wasn’t me.
Jason’s fingers instantly went stiff.
He looked at the call log.
The caller for that last call was indeed listed under the landlord’s name.
The phone number was exactly the same.
Then a second message appeared.
The last time I contacted you was 6:23 p.m.
I’m out of town right now. There’s no way I could have called you tonight.
A third message.
No matter what you hear next, do not say your name.
Before Jason had time to reply—
Outside the door—
He suddenly heard a key being inserted into the lock.
Click.
Someone was turning the lock.
He whipped his head toward the door.
Rule Two—
Before midnight every night, lock the main door from the inside.
If you hear a key turning after midnight, do not open the door to check.
But it wasn’t nine o’clock yet.
Click.
The key turned once.
The lock didn’t open.
Because he had already locked it from the inside.
The person outside paused for several seconds.
Then a man’s voice sounded.
“Mr. Huang.”
It was the voice from the phone just now.
“I’m the landlord.”
Jason didn’t answer.
“I’m at the door.”
The person outside knocked twice.
Knock.
Knock.
“Open the door.”
The real landlord sent another line of text.
Don’t respond.
He doesn’t know your full name.
Jason’s gaze fell on Rule Four.
If someone outside the door calls you by name, first confirm whether they know your full name.
The person outside spoke again.
“Mr. Huang, I know you’re in there.”
His tone sounded perfectly normal.
Even slightly impatient.
“Didn’t I just tell you to leave? Why haven’t you gone downstairs yet?”
Jason made no sound.
Holding his phone, he quietly moved toward the door.
The peephole was right ahead.
One glance would be enough to confirm who was outside.
But just as his eye was about to meet the peephole, the voice outside suddenly stopped.
The next second—
A very soft voice came through the door.
“Are you watching me?”
Jason abruptly backed away.
A short laugh came from outside.
“That’s okay.”
The voice spoke.
“I’m watching you, too.”
The gap beneath the door slowly darkened.
As if something had crouched down and pressed its face against the floor outside.
Then—
A finger slid through the gap beneath the door.
It was very thin.
Its skin was deathly pale.
But its joints were unnaturally long.
It groped across the floor for a while, the fingertip curling toward the room.
As if searching for something.
Jason held his breath.
The finger suddenly stopped.
Then its fingernail slowly scratched across the wooden floor.
Screeech—
One stroke.
Then another.
It was writing.
Jason didn’t dare move closer.
Only after the finger withdrew did he open his phone camera and zoom in.
Three crooked characters had appeared on the floor.
Jason Huang.
His full name.
At that moment, Rule Four had become useless.
The person outside knocked again.
Knock.
Knock.
“Can I come in now?”
Jason’s heartbeat pounded so hard his chest almost hurt.
That thing knew his name.
Not his surname.
Not a form of address.
His full name.
The phone screen suddenly lit up.
The real landlord sent one final message.
It isn’t confirming your name.
It’s confirming whether you’ll admit that name is yours.
Do not answer. Whatever you do, don’t answer.
The person outside seemed to know he had seen the message. Its tone suddenly softened.
“Jason.”
This time, it no longer imitated the landlord.
It had changed to a woman’s voice.
Jason’s expression stiffened.
It was his mother’s voice.
“Open the door.”
The woman spoke softly through the door.
“Mommy’s here to take you home.”