Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 1 The Relic Shop (Seeking Recommendations)

"Crack!"

The flash went out, and the camera ejected a photographic sheet with a distorted ghostly figure and the words: "Shadows lock souls. Remember it, or you will not die."

Xu Yan looked at the line of text and realized that he had forgotten something again.

It's been a month, and this is his first business deal.

Summer nights in Jiangcheng are always sultry, like being wrapped in a damp cloth.

Sweating profusely, Xu Yan dragged a suitcase, his camera strap gripping his wrist, and walked into the deepest alleyway in the old town.

A month ago, he took over the photography studio left by his master.

“This city is a huge tomb. Skyscrapers are the tombstones, the internet is the river, and people like us are both tomb keepers and tomb raiders.” At that time, his master held his hand and instructed him, “Yanzi, remember, clothes carry the soul, and shadows lock the spirit. You must continue the photography studio.”

It was then that Xu Yancai realized that the "photo studio" was both a business and a belief.

Since my master passed away, almost no one has come to the photo studio.

Nobody believes those things.

Yet he still kept working on the camera and memorizing the rules, like guarding a fire that was about to go out.

It wasn't until tonight that he received his first order of the month—a "cleaning commission".

An elderly man living alone died in his rented room, and it wasn't until three days later that his neighbors noticed the smell.

The commission was made to an organization called "City Services Rapid Response Center," which sounds like a municipal department, but the deposit was paid in cryptocurrency with no traceable origin.

Xu Yan looked at the email and felt only irony; the city's efficiency in handling "garbage" was astonishingly fast.

Before his death, my master instructed me: "Stay away from this center, but you must take their jobs."

The task was clearly stated: clear out the belongings from the house before midnight.

Why must it be done before midnight?
He didn't ask.

There's always a reason for something like this.

The darkness of the stairwell pressed down on him, and the musty smell and sweet, rotten odor filled his nostrils and stuck in his throat, forcing him to take small breaths.

The damp cement wall is mottled like an old wound; a touch of it with your fingertip leaves it feeling cold.

With each step, the motion sensor light snaps on, casting a dim yellow halo around your feet.

Xu Yan stopped at the end of the third floor and inserted the key into the lock.

The moment the knob was turned, the phone rang suddenly.

It's not my own phone.

It's inside the house.

"bell……"

The ringtone was like an ice needle, piercing straight into the eardrum and into the brain.

Xu Yan twitched her fingertips, and the keychain rattled.

He understood; the anchor point had appeared.

The records about life and death in the ancient books left by my master came to mind:
"Life begins when vital energy gathers, and ends when it disperses. Hence it is said that the living become spirits, and the dead return to the realm of ghosts."

“The soul belongs to Yang and ascends to heaven; the spirit belongs to Yin and returns to earth. If the soul and spirit are not in harmony, they become wandering ghosts.”

His heart sank. These kinds of ghosts could neither ascend to heaven nor completely return to earth. Their vengeful spirits lingered, and it seemed that tonight's cleanup would be quite troublesome.

However, he knew that such a ghost could only exist by attaching itself to some kind of "object".

"Click."

The door lock turned open.

A musty smell, a mixture of medicinal ointment and lingering heat, hit me.

Xu Yan felt a spasm in his stomach.

It wasn't fear, but an instinctive aversion to the smell of "death."

The light bulb hung from the ceiling, swaying gently.

The house wasn't big, but it felt like someone still lived there.

The old television in the corner suddenly lit up with a "hum," its white light flashing.
The kettle was bubbling on the electric stove, steam billowing out;
The black coat hanging straight down on the back of the chair looked like the arms of a person sitting still.

An old landline phone sits on the table, its black dial gleaming dullly.

The ringing was so loud it pounded into his ears, making his teeth ache.

Xu Yan frowned and muttered under his breath:
"Damn, it's the Ghost of the Lonely Building."

The most troublesome type of ghost is the "lingering attachment" ghost, whose obsession runs deep enough to act as an anchor.

Compared to the information ghosts bred by data garbage, these old objects always carry a bittersweet feeling that belongs to "humanity," which is both disgusting and pathetic.

His fingers hovered over the receiver, almost as if he wanted to grab it.

The year his mother passed away, he would sit by the phone, hoping she would call again.

"Don't answer..." he whispered to himself.

If it doesn't respond, it won't find a place to land.

He put down the camera and opened the box.

The gloves were on top; he pulled them off and put them on, the bell still ringing in his ears.

"Work first."

Inside the wardrobe was an old Zhongshan suit, its collar worn smooth but still perfectly straight.

When folding clothes, he resembled a grave robber, packing up other people's traces.

I found a cold USB drive in the bedside table, labeled E-07.

Elderly people living alone should not have such things.

He stuffed it into his pocket, his clothes drooping. The bedside table drawer was crammed with receipts and expired electricity bills.

A hospital receipt sits atop the pile, its name glaringly obvious.

"Hao Defeng".

He inadvertently read out the name on the hospital receipt.

As soon as the words left my mouth, my heart sank.

The phone stopped ringing abruptly the next second.

A hoarse male voice came through the microphone: "...You remember me?"

The night wind blew in through the window, rustling a stack of yellowed electricity bills on the corner of the table.

Xu Yan's Adam's apple bobbed, and his palms were icy cold.

His mistake made him realize the difference between remembering the rules clearly and following them diligently.

To say his name is to acknowledge his existence.

Xu Yan abruptly hung up the phone.

"Zi..."

The static noise filled my ear canal.

The light bulb exploded, and the entire building fell into a deathly silence.

In the darkness, with a rustling sound, the black coat on the back of the chair slowly billowed up.

With a flick of the sleeve, it was as if someone had put it on.

It stood up, turned around, and looked straight at him.

The next second, it pounced!

The cold, suffocating pressure pressed against my throat, preventing me from taking a single breath.

Driven by his survival instinct, he gripped his neck tightly with his left hand while frantically groping on the table with his right.

bumped into!
He gripped the camera tightly.

"Crack!"

A flash of light erupted.

That wasn't ordinary white light; it was scorching hot, almost liquid, and it instantly sucked the air away.

The ghostly figure screamed, twisted and shrank into the camera, and was finally frozen in time on the photographic paper.

The kettle was silent, the television screen was black, and the telephone line drooped down.

Xu Yan gasped for breath, exhausted, but a burning pain shot through her wrist, as if she had been scalded by the camera.

He glanced down and saw that the dark silver camera surface was still radiating an ominous residual heat, and a faint smell of burning filled the air.

Even before the physical pain arrives, there is a void in the mind.

The instant the shutter was pressed, something was forcibly pulled away.

It's not a picture, not a sound, but a physical memory.

He didn't even have time to figure out what it was, only a cold sense of being stripped away remained, as if someone had gently erased a stroke from somewhere in his life with an eraser.

He knew this was the price to pay for using a camera to seal a soul.

Every flash of light signifies the permanent loss of a memory.

The room fell silent again.

The camera ejected a sheet of photographic paper, which slid "rustling" into his palm.

Initially blank, then ink appears:
"Forgetting is the real death."

Xu Yan's fingertips trembled slightly.

My master's words flashed through my mind:
"The soul has a place to return to, and the spirit has a place to rely on. As long as the incense continues and the name is not forgotten, the soul will leave its mark; once forgotten, both the soul and the spirit will scatter."

He stroked the photograph paper, his expression complex.

The words seemed to be written for a ghost, or perhaps for him.

He suddenly chuckled softly:
"Isn't it good to be forgotten?"

Then he murmured another sentence:
"But nobody remembers, and they really die."

He bent down, refolded the clumsily patched sweater, and put it into the woven bag.

Perhaps, "he" just wanted to leave a trace that would be remembered.

He fastened the suitcase, the metal buckle clicking shut like closing a coffin.

He turned around and placed his hand on the doorknob.

The deathly silence behind them was broken at that moment.

"Om..."

He suddenly looked down, and the camera's printer was slowly ejecting the second sheet of photographic paper.

Xu Yan's body stiffened.

A cold, familiar sense of dread gripped him, more intense than any ghostly attack.

On the snow-white paper, what appeared was not a ghostly figure, but his own back view.

But on the shoulder of that figure, a pale shadow appeared and disappeared, like a hand, long and slender, but always shrouded in a thin mist, making it difficult to see clearly.

“Here it comes again…” he almost groaned, his nails digging deep into his palms.

This time, however, it seemed to be closer to him.

PS: Please vote for my new book! I'll be updating three chapters tomorrow and making up for the chapter I missed on my previous book.

(End of this chapter)