Kiwi Beyond the Cage 002

**Caged Bird (II)**

Beneath the Huanmeng Jiayuan Apartment Complex, as the clock struck nine, a nondescript black sedan idled by the curb. Officer Ou Yang Lin sat in the driver’s seat, her gaze locked on the apartment windows. When light flickered behind a third-floor pane, she straightened, alert.

“She’s headed to the third floor,” she murmured.

Zhao Liang, shuffling through case files in the passenger seat, glanced up. A homicide had shaken Huanmeng Jiayuan—a swift police cover-up couldn’t mask the victim’s prominence. Residents privy to the secret had already fled the tainted building.

“Bold of her,” Zhao remarked, a wry smile playing on his lips as he recalled the suspect’s statement. “If she’s telling the truth about leaving the corpse in her third-floor bedroom, she’s probably there now… disposing of it.”

Ou Yang tossed him a bottled water, her tone sharp. “Save the jokes.”

“Lin, that Ji Wei’s clearly unhinged. Do we really think tailing her will crack this case?” Zhao unscrewed the cap, eyes still on the apartment.

The third-floor windows were bare, blinding white light spilling into the night. Through the glass, Zhao spotted a transparent display case crammed with grotesque dolls, paintings that glowed like halos from below, and the edge of a sofa. Every detail screamed opulence—Ji Wei’s wealth matched her eccentric purchase of three entire floors. But where was the body?

Leaning closer, Zhao crinkled the water bottle in his grip, straining for a better view. Ji Wei’s silhouette materialized suddenly before the window, making him choke on his own spit. He shrank back into the shadows.

“She didn’t see us,” Ou Yang assured him, her voice steady. Ji Wei paced the room, flinging open blackout curtains, her movements frantic. “She’s searching for something.”

Zhao frowned. “What?”

Ou Yang stayed silent.

The car fell quiet. Ji Wei’s silhouette darted past the window repeatedly, her motions growing more frenzied. A July night, sweltering with heat, yet Zhao felt a chill creep up his spine.

“She… might actually be unhinged,” he whispered.

“Sometimes ‘unhinged’ is just another kind of normal,” Ou Yang replied coolly.

Zhao blinked. “Huh?”

“The first assumption with abnormal behavior is mental illness. So when someone labeled ‘ill’ acts bizarrely, normals write it off as ‘symptoms.’”

She turned to him. “Do you think Ji Wei is sane or insane?”

Zhao hesitated. “Insane.”

“Because you’ve already labeled her, any aberration becomes ‘proof’ of her illness. Abnormal becomes normal.”

“What if Ji Wei isn’t ill?” Ou Yang pressed. “If a sane person acts aberrantly, is she a ‘sane’ patient or an ‘aberrant’ sane person?”

Zhao was speechless.

“Too much?” Ou Yang patted his shoulder. “You’ll get there.”

Before Zhao could respond, his phone buzzed. Ou Yang answered without a word, the car now holding the breath of three—their own, and Ji Wei’s on the line.

Zhao followed her gaze to the apartment. The third-floor windows still blazed with light, but Ji Wei had vanished.

Through the speaker, Ji Wei’s voice wavered, a mix of terror and forced politeness. “Hello… is this Officer Ou Yang Lin?”

“It’s me,” Ou Yang said.

“What’s wrong?”

A choked sob. “I can’t find it… the body’s gone.”

The corpse she’d killed had vanished. The decaying, dismembered remains she’d expected to find were gone.

“I’ve looked everywhere… he always found me, no matter where I hid. But now that he’s dead, why can’t I find *him*?”

But she had found him.

Her voice steadied. “Do you know where I found him?”

The speaker amplified her words: “When I looked up, he was hiding in the ceiling.”

“Officer Ou Yang,” Ji Wei whispered, confusion lacing her plea, “does a corpse still count as a corpse if it’s clinging to the ceiling?”

If not…

Why wouldn’t the demon, dead and resurrected, leave her be?

.

*Click-click—*

A pink candy box trembled in Ji Wei’s grip, its rhythmic jingle the room’s only sound.

The cleaver lay abandoned on the floor, beside a waterlogged note—Ou Yang’s phone number, scrawled before she left. Ji Wei didn’t understand why, but her fingers dialed instinctively.

She was scared.

Huddled in the bed’s corner, knees to chest, she refused to look up.

Above her, *click-click*—the corpse crawled, scaling the crystal chandelier, slithering across the ceiling until it loomed over her. Bloodshot eyes fixed on her, a bloodied arm stretched silently toward her hair…

“Officer Ou Yang…”

“Officer Ou Yang…” Ji Wei’s voice frayed as she pleaded into the phone. “What do I do…?”

“He won’t leave.”

“They’re all watching me.”

The arm inched closer, fingertips nearly grazing her scalp. Ji Wei’s eyes welled with tears. “He’s about to—”

Grab her.

*Bang—*

A thunderous kick shattered the door.

Ou Yang and Zhao stormed the apartment.

Though skeptical of Ji Wei’s claims about ceiling corpses, both sensed her desperation. Ou Yang trusted her plea wasn’t for a ghost, but for help—a coded cry from someone trapped under another’s gaze.

Zhao’s mind raced with his captain’s earlier words: *“Abnormal” normals.*

“I can’t wait!” The elevator was too slow; Zhao bolted for the stairwell, his legs pumping as he outpaced Ou Yang to the third floor.

Ji Wei’s rambling replayed in his head, each detail more unnerving than the last. He cursed under his breath: “What the hell is this?”

The dead don’t resurrect. They don’t crawl onto ceilings. The world had enough charlatans—human monsters far scarier than ghosts. No zombies, no vengeful spirits.

“Zhao, stay calm!” Ou Yang’s voice, still on the line, cut through his thoughts.

When Ji Wei’s final words—*“He’s about to catch me”*—echoed down the hallway, Zhao lost it. Spotting the ajar door, he kicked it open, gun drawn.

Ou Yang nearly jumped out of her skin.

The room was empty. No corpses, no blood, no signs of struggle. Just Ji Wei, curled in a corner, breathing raggedly.

“Where is it?!” Zhao demanded, sweeping the room again.

Nothing.

No body.

No crime scene.

Ji Wei had lied.

“You said—” Zhao wiped sweat from his brow, cut short by Ou Yang’s glare.

“Later,” she warned, then knelt before Ji Wei.

“Ji Wei,” she said softly. “Where’s the corpse?”

The bloodied arm retreated from above.

Ji Wei gasped for air, still refusing to meet their eyes. She trembled, pointing upward. “Up there.”

“It crawled from the chandelier… right here,” she whispered, describing its path across the ceiling.

Ou Yang followed her gaze. The space from chandelier to bed was indeed crawlable—if one defied gravity. But the ceiling was pristine, unbroken.

“There’s no corpse up there,” Ou Yang told her.

Ji Wei didn’t lift her head. “It’s there. Watching.”

Ou Yang smoothed her tangled hair. “You might’ve misseen. This room’s empty—no corpses, no eyes on you. We’re here with you. Neither Xiao Zhao nor I see anything. Could you… have misseen it?”

“Or… look again?”

Ji Wei, perhaps soothed, tilted her head upward slowly.

Her face, pale and flushed, reflected delirium. Zhao saw it in her pupils—she wasn’t fully present.

“Huh?” Her neck arched higher, consciousness clearing. She scanned the ceiling, puzzled. “It’s gone.”

Her tone was bewildered. “It was there just now, said it would watch me forever. Why’s it gone?”

Zhao almost laughed.

He felt toyed with. “There are no ghosts,” he sneered.

Only ghosts in the mind.

When Zhao assumed Ji Wei wouldn’t register his words, she suddenly locked eyes with him. “It’s not a ghost. It’s human.”

“A corpse. Human.” Anything but a ghost.

Ji Wei clutched the candy box tighter. “I’m not afraid of ghosts, only *him*.”

“They’re still in the room.”

Ji Wei was certain. “Always here. Never left.”

Perhaps hidden in the ceiling, perched on her bedside, nestled in vases, bookshelves, picture frames, her own eyes, or any place she couldn’t fathom—except “never under the bed.”

“Why not?” Ou Yang followed her gaze across the room.

“Because—”

“The bed blocks their view.”

Ou Yang pondered.

“Ceiling, bedside, frames… can’t see…” she murmured, approaching the wall opposite Ji Wei. A diamond painting hung there—a broken cage entwined with roses, and an abstract creature bursting forth, birdlike yet wingless.

The artwork was a chaotic mosaic, colors blurred, clearly the work of an artist who’d disregarded the pattern’s code.

Shards of crystal glittered under the chandelier—no wonder it looked like a halo from below. Ou Yang inspected it closely, finding nothing amiss.

Just as she turned away, Ji Wei’s words echoed:

*“Hidden in the ceiling, vases, shelves, frames, eyes…”*

Eyes within eyes?

Her gaze fixed on the wingless bird’s eye in the painting—a circle of mismatched black shards, uniform in size but chaotic in color.

“Zhao!” Ou Yang exclaimed.

Gloved hands pried the diamond painting loose. With tweezers, Zhao extracted a shard from the bird’s pupil—not a shard, but a “*eye*.”

Connected to Ji Wei’s “*they*,” Zhao realized the room harbored countless such eyes, hidden in plain sight.

Ji Wei hadn’t lied.

This room, in every inconspicuous corner, was infested with blood-red eyes.

Through countless micro-cameras disguised as everyday objects, they watched Ji Wei, transmitting her every move to other eyes—human eyes.

Clutching the “eye,” Zhao stiffened, as if the ceiling itself now watched.

The vanished corpse loomed above.

“Xiao Zhao.”

Ou Yang had spotted a photo frame beneath the bed.

The heavy metal frame, moved from shadows into light, revealed smudged glass—a photo obscured by overlapping fingerprints, each ridge caked with blood.

“This is…” Zhao stepped back, his shoe catching on the carpet.

Ou Yang, crouching, noticed another anomaly beneath his foot. The dark plush rug concealed stains—and secrets.

Signaling Zhao to lift his foot, she saw it: another bloodstain.