Chapter 41.

It was only when we were talking that I had an idea on how to verify a few things that occurred earlier in that hallucination. In the midst of our conversation, I slipped my phone into a crevice at the side beneath the table near the ground.

I fidgeted about a bit and made it obvious that I was searching for something. It didn’t take long before she asked me the only obvious question when she noticed my unnatural behaviour.

“What are you looking for?”

“My phone. I know I had it a few minutes ago, but I can’t seem to find it. Can you let me use your phone to call it?”

The key point here was to ask her to let me use it first. If I paused or hesitated and waited for her to offer to let me use it, she might have instead asked me what the number was so she could call it for me. If I then requested for her to let me enter it myself, it would definitely arouse her suspicions.

She took out her phone and unlocked it with her fingerprint rather than password before she handed it over to me. I opened up the phone app and input my number and started the call.

While I let it ring, I opened up the photos app and found the video recording of me that I’d seen earlier was still there. I closed out the photos app and opened up her search history again, but unlike the first time I looked through it, the original results I’d seen were gone. They were replaced by searches for songs, clothing, shoes, makeup and other girlish things.

I immediately closed out her search history the moment I heard my phone ring from the crevice at the side. While I bent under the table to reach it, I turned off her phone and I tried to key in the passcode. To my dismay, I discovered it was now a four digit passcode much unlike before. I was baffled by the paradox like nature of the situation when I understood the implications of what it meant.

I felt my eyes metaphorically shrink into tiny pinholes due to the shock of the whole ordeal. How was any of this even possible? There was no possible way this could be real unless she somehow punked me with a fake lock screen the first time. For the video to be there, but the previous browsing history gone and the passcode changing without any indication she had taken any sort of suspicious actions before she handed the phone to me? How was any of this possible?

Is she actually playing around with me even now? Is she watching and looking down on me as I squirm while trying to figure out how she’s been messing with me the entire time?

“Here. Thanks...”

“What’s wrong? Despite my kindness, you don’t look very thankful.”

“Are you playing games with me?”

“Games? What games?”

She’d already taken her seat and had her eyes locked onto mine. Her elbow was on top of the table while she rested the side of her cheek on her palm. She quietly stared back at me with what appeared to be a slightly flirtatious or even teasing smile on her face. Her eyes were partly closed while her head was tilted at a slight angle. It really looked like she was simply playing dumb with me and she didn’t intend to seriously answer my question.

It was the worst feeling, sitting on a fence in uncertainty, while being forced to watch her vague playful actions at the same time.

I think my heart might have skipped a beat from fear of the unknown just now. It definitely wasn’t because my thoughts were inadvertently wandering around in the gutter because I thought she was a bit pretty or anything.

“Hmm? Well? What games could my precious employee Dio be thinking of?”

“Are you actually possessed by a ghost?”

She blinked a few times before she burst out into laughter, “hahaha! What? Possessed by a ghost? Have you suddenly lost it? Did you eat too much and start feeling sick?”

“It was just a joke. A joke.”

But it was definitely what I really wanted to know deep down in my heart.

“Boss- Uh… no, I mean, Val…”

“Yes? What is it?

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts, huh? What makes you bring up ghosts out of nowhere like this?”

“Well... I’ve been having a lot of weird dreams and sometimes even hallucinations when I’m not asleep recently.”

“Oh? Are we finally getting to the dream you mentioned that was about me earlier?”

“The dreams, or should I call them nightmares, aren’t just limited to the one I had about you earlier.”

“I see. I see. Go on. Go on.”

“Aren’t you a bit too eager to hear about it?”

“Well, you’ve been acting all mysterious about it for a while now. The curiosity has been killing me on the inside.”

After I let out a small sigh, I explained the various nightmares and hallucinations I'd had since I moved into my new apartment. I started from the day I discovered the VHS tape that I tossed out, to when I woke up in the middle of the night and I hallucinated the phantom VHS tape that haunted me until morning. I also mentioned the rumored ghost girl on the web to give a bit of context to my actions, as well as my speculations towards the identity of the person who committed suicide in my apartment. I then explained the hallucination I had when Rick and I watched that VHS tape before he’d committed, what a lot of the cops suspected was suicide in my apartment.

She was actually laughing and giggling the entire time when she listened to the story.

“It’s not funny you know, this is serious stuff.”

“I know. I know. It’s not funny at all, but you really doused the VHS tape in salt? You even took the time to put on gloves, douse the gloves in salt, buy a grabber tool and you even used it to toss the VHS tape out the window? How am I not supposed to laugh?”

“Do you want me to continue with the story or not?”

“Yes, please continue, please do, I’ll do my best to make sure I don’t laugh.”

“Pfft. Hahaha. Sorry. Sorry. Starting now. Starting now, I swear. This time for sure.”

“Really? You promise?”

“Yes, yes. I promise.”

“Fine then.”