I Can See Health Bars in Real Life

"What the heck...?"

"Exactly, I thought there'd be some twist at the end."

"Are you kidding me? I thought you were telling a joke!"

After a brief silence, the companions all wore subtle expressions and started chattering noisily, unanimously denouncing his horror story as nothing but a joke. This consensus made the young man's face tense with embarrassment, and he shouted in anger.

"What are you complaining about! What are you complaining about! Didn't you guys say the same stupid thing before? Like a bloodshed caused by a bun, isn't that also funny?"

"Nonsense! That was a horror story I carefully prepared for days and then selected, okay! Weren't you all scared just now?" The chubby guy opposite looked incredulous, upset that his friend was trying to drag him down by blatantly lying to evade criticism.

"..."

"..."

"Hey! Why aren't you guys saying anything? Was the applause you gave me just for politeness?" Realizing the atmosphere had turned awkward, the chubby guy seemed to figure something out, pointing at his group of fake friends in shock. He couldn't accept this truth.

"Um... some things are better left unsaid when everyone knows them..."

Someone awkwardly laughed, trying to brush it off with a joke.

"Okay, okay, everyone is just here for fun, no need to take it seriously... I recorded Ah Quan's earlier performance, do you guys want to watch it, or is it someone else's turn now?" A cute girl with bunny-ear hat proactively smoothed things over, waving the phone in her hand.

From the start, she had been filming everyone's reactions, and naturally, she had recorded the guys just now.

"Let's see, let's see, if Brother Quan is photogenic..."

"Exactly, we'll learn from it, if mine's ugly, I want to redo it..."

"Me too..."

A group of people flocked to the girl's side, like before, to see the filming effects. They're not video bloggers, yet it's not often they do such midnight escapades, running to the outskirts abandoned building to tell ghost stories. For them, it's a memorable, ridiculous adventure.

Even though it's just noisy and spontaneous, they didn't find any evidence of ghosts here at all, and were bored, so they ended up telling ghost stories through the long night... but it was indeed an interesting experience worth recording.

"...Next, the story I'm going to tell is called 'The Haunted School Building'..."

The recording started playing, with clear sound coming from the phone, which made everyone laugh uncontrollably.

Only Ah Quan, the young guy, felt a little uneasy, but didn't mind much. After all, he had watched others' performances just now, knowing they're all the same, not professionals, just filming for fun, it's all play without taking it too seriously.

However, after a short while, strange noises started appearing in the recording.

"What sound is that?" someone asked with a frown.

"Sounds like... footsteps?" Others listened carefully, noticing that apart from the storyteller's voice, there was slowly emerging sound of footsteps.

Not too heavy or light, coming from afar nearing.

It seemed first to come from upstairs, slowly walking down, then passing this floor, continuing down... it was supposed to be a normal thing, but everyone couldn't help but looking at each other, feeling a sudden chill in their hearts.

After all, apart from them, this deserted building shouldn't have anyone else. Before it got dark, they thoroughly checked each floor and room without any omission... How could there be other people coming down from upstairs.

And during that moment just now, everyone was sitting here, the stairs are right there... it shouldn't be possible not to hear anything, it should be visible at a glance.

"Wait, wait... is this... capturing something?"

A girl's voice trembled, pointed with a shaking finger at a corner of the phone screen.

Everyone focused their eyes, only to see that the corner captured the stairway, due to angle and hand-shake issues, not fully captured nor particularly clear. Yet clearly someone's feet walked down from above, paused for a while, then turned and disappeared off screen.

"Judging by the rhythm of footsteps, it seems to be heading downstairs."

This made things even creepier—just moments ago, as they sat here telling ghost stories, unbeknownst to them, footsteps echoed in this empty floor, and something unseen slowly walked down from the stairs, stood there watching them for a while...

This kind of association was almost instinctive, visuals and sounds together appeared in their minds.

From the moment the oddity was noticed, the atmosphere turned frighteningly silent, and at this moment, the pent-up terror finally broke through the brain's rational suppression, converting completely into high decibels—

"Aaaaah——!!"

......

"Eh..."

Outside the abandoned building complex, having walked a good distance, Gu Mo looked back, puzzled at the series of building frames left hollow like pigeon cages, did he just hear someone screaming loudly?

Did something really happen? Or was the ghost story so convincing that it scared a bunch of youngsters?