My life was cursed with four trials. The last one was at Narita Airport.

My life has been defined by a prophecy. When I was three years old and dying, my grandmother carried me to a temple on Mount Putuo, a sacred site for Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. A wise old abbess told her that my life was not written in the stars; it was a gift, stolen from fate by Guanyin herself. But such gifts come with a price. I would face four great trials—four moments where fate would try to reclaim me. They would come at ages three, thirteen, twenty-three, and thirty-three. Each one would be harder to survive than the last.

She gave my grandmother an amulet, and I survived my first trial that day.

The second came when I was thirteen. Locked in my room for safety as my birthday approached, I tried to climb out a window and fell from the sixth floor. A carport broke my fall, but I broke three ribs and spent half a year recovering.

The third, at twenty-three, involved a horrifying encounter with something not quite human in Thailand. It was a nightmare I thought could never be topped (the story will be updated later on).

I was wrong. The fourth trial, the one at thirty-three, was the one that was meant to kill me. And it all began with her.

That year, I was handling a business project that required frequent trips to Japan. On one of my flights, I met a flight attendant. She was beautiful, with a grace that seemed almost ethereal. We were both from China, but our busy schedules meant we often met in Tokyo. I fell for her, hard.

There was something strange about her, though. She was vibrant and full of life in the summer and autumn, but as the weather grew cold, a deep lethargy would claim her. In the dead of winter, she was a ghost of herself, barely able to speak, sometimes falling asleep in the middle of dinner. She would ask me to take her to crowded department stores or busy train stations, and after sitting there for a while, her energy would slowly return.

Her body temperature was always low. Her hands and feet were ice-cold, even in the summer. She told me doctors could never find anything wrong, chalking it up to a strange, harmless condition. I thought it was just a quirk, a part of her mysterious charm. I was a fool.

Our meetings often took place at Narita Airport, a convenient hub for her international flights. Every time, she gave me the same strange warning: "Don't wander around at night. Especially not near the stairwells. Just wait for me in the cafe." When I asked why, she’d just whisper that the airport wasn't "clean." I laughed it off.

One evening, her flight was severely delayed. Bored of sitting, I decided to walk around. I found an escalator out of order and opted for the nearby stairwell. At the entrance, an old man, a janitor by his uniform, was pacing in circles, muttering to himself. I asked him if he was looking for something. Without turning, he mumbled, "Looking for something? I can't even find the way."

I didn't think much of it and started climbing. The staircase felt wrong. It seemed to stretch on forever, far longer than a single floor should take. When I finally reached the top and pushed the door open, I stepped into silence.

Absolute, deafening silence.

It was the same terminal—the same shops, lounges, and signposts. But it was empty. Utterly, impossibly empty. Not a single soul in sight. I pulled out my phone. It was 8:39 PM. No signal.

A cold dread washed over me. I turned and ran back to the stairwell, intending to go back down. But the stairs wouldn't end. I descended and descended, the light growing dimmer with each step, the air growing colder, until it felt like I was walking into a tomb. I was trapped.

Panicked, I pulled out my phone to use its flashlight. My blood ran cold when I saw the screen. The time was still 8:39 PM. Not a single minute had passed. I watched the clock for five minutes straight. The numbers didn't change. Time had frozen. I was locked in a place that didn't exist.

Just as despair began to set in, my phone rang.

It was her.

My hands shook as I answered. I didn't even know how the call could have come through. Her first words were urgent and sharp. "Where did you go in?"

I told her which stairwell. The line went dead.

A few moments later, I heard her calling my name from the bottom of the endless stairs. I scrambled down and saw her standing there, her form hazy, her hand outstretched. The moment I grabbed her hand, it felt like breaking the surface of water. The world exploded back into existence—the bright lights, the cacophony of airport announcements, the rush of people. I was back.

She put a finger to her lips, her eyes wide with fear, and pulled me away. She moved erratically, constantly looking over her shoulder and changing direction as if we were being followed.

She took me to a small house, a place she said she rented. It was in the most bizarre location imaginable: inside Narita Airport's perimeter, practically on the runway. It was one of the infamous "nail houses", homes of farmers who had refused to sell their land. The sight was surreal, a rural cottage in the heart of a modern airport.

Inside, she collapsed onto the bed. Her face was pale, her skin as cold as marble. "Don't mind me," she shivered. "I just need to sleep. I might stop breathing, but don't move me. It's fine."

She was dead asleep in seconds, her body unnervingly still and cold. I couldn't leave her like that. I shook her awake, telling her I was taking her to a hospital.

She shook her head weakly. "A hospital can't help. I need to be around people... but it's too late now."

"What do you mean?" I pleaded.

She hesitated, then told me. She was from a remote part of Yunnan, a region where ancient shamanistic traditions still hold sway. She was a practitioner of a rare and strange art. Every winter, her body's energy would fade, and to replenish it, she had to go to crowded places and... feed.

She explained that to people like her, every person has an aura, a cloud of life force. She would find people with strong, vibrant auras and siphon off a tiny amount from each. It was how she survived the winter.

My mind reeled. It sounded like something out of a dark fairytale. Just then, a strange sound came from outside—a rhythmic thump, thump, thump, like a heavy cane striking the ground. Her face went white with terror.

"He's found us," she whispered. "There's no time. I have to take some from you. Just a little!"

"Take what you need," I said, desperate. "I'm strong."

I expected her to kiss me, to perform some kind of ritual. But she just turned her face to mine, her lips parted slightly, and inhaled.

A violent shock went through me. My heart hammered in my chest, and a wave of nausea and vertigo washed over me. It felt like having blood drawn too fast, like my very essence was being pulled out of me. Then, everything went black.

I woke up in a hospital. A strange old man in a dark robe had dropped me off. She was gone.

The doctors told me I was dying. My organs were failing, my body had aged decades in a matter of hours, and a patch of my hair had turned stark white. I knew what had happened. I had them transfer me back home immediately. My only hope was the mysterious Taoist temple my father had stumbled upon in his youth.

But before I left, they found something else. Nodules on my liver. Early-stage cancer.

The abbess's prophecy had come true. The fourth trial was here, and I wasn't going to survive.

For a year, I was a walking ghost, sustained by a combination of targeted therapy and red pills from the Taoist temple. Miraculously, the cancer didn't spread. I survived.

During my recovery, I used all my family's resources to find her. The flight attendant records were fake. Her identity was a ghost. I learned the truth about Narita Airport—it's a famously haunted place, built on land where many foreign laborers died. Their souls, it is said, were lost during soul-summoning rituals, forever trapped in the airport's stairwells. The old janitor I saw was one of them.

I never found out who she was, or what she was. A spy? A spirit? I went back to the Taoist temple and begged the master for answers. He just scolded me, his voice heavy with warning. "She is not of our kind, and those who are not our kind cannot be trusted. You must never think of her again."

Not of our kind. The words still chill me.

I'm married now, to a normal, wonderful woman. I live a quiet life. But sometimes, when winter approaches and the air grows cold, I find myself thinking of her. I wonder where she is, and if she's starting to feel tired. And I remember the feeling of her breath on my face, and the terrifying, exhilarating feeling of being loved by something not of this world.