Ghosts
3:10
A pocket watch frozen at 3:10. A woman who died at 3:10. And the man who refused to let go. Some loves don't end when the heart stops—they just wait.
## The Building in the Shadows
The old tube-style apartment building sat at the back of the city where the sun never reached.
The exterior walls were peeling. The stairwells smelled like mildew no matter what season it was. And the wind—there was always wind in those hallways, wrapping around your ankles like something trying to trip you.
Lin Xia pushed open the door to the top-floor rental apartment, and couldn't suppress a burst of joy. South-facing, good light, sunlight spilling across the old wooden floors, dust floating quietly in the beams. The walls were dry with no mold. The furniture was old but neat. And the rent—unbelievably cheap. She clutched the lease agreement, feeling like she'd stumbled into incredible luck, the exhaustion of days of apartment-hunting finally dissipating, her heart filled with the peace of living alone.
---
## The First Night
She settled in. She went downstairs to the breakfast stall in the alley and bought herself a shrimp and chive bun—the kind she'd been craving for weeks. The skin was tight and chewy, and when she bit into it, the filling was fresh and fragrant.
But when she saw the price on the receipt, her heart sank a little. Small bun. Expensive as hell. Real filling.
That was what she thought, anyway.
Back in the apartment, she pushed a heavy old wardrobe against the wall to clean behind it. That's when she found it.
A copper pocket watch.
It was cold when she picked it up—cold in a way that metal shouldn't be, cold enough to make her fingers tingle. She brushed away the dust. The case was engraved with a faded daisy. She pried open the cover, and a wave of old, stale air rolled out—like something that had been sealed in a grave.
The hands were frozen at 3:10.
The second hand hadn't moved either. On the inside of the cover was a black-and-white photograph: a woman in a faded blue cotton jacket, her expression stiff, her eyes empty as two dry wells. She stared straight at the camera—or rather, through it. Through the person holding the watch. Directly at Lin Xia.
Lin Xia felt the back of her neck go cold. Her fingertips went numb. She shoved the watch into the deepest drawer of her desk and slammed it shut.
---
## The Teacher's Charm
Before she left home, her master had noticed how nervous she was about living alone. He'd pressed a yellow paper charm into her palm, folded into a triangle, the paper rough against her skin, smelling faintly of mugwort.
*"Carry this with you. It calms the spirit and blocks the cold. If something strange happens, hold it tight."*
Lin Xia didn't believe in ghosts. She was a modern woman. But she tucked the charm into her inner pocket anyway, because it was easier than arguing. The faint smell of mugwort faded quickly in her memory.
---
## The First Visit
Her first night in the apartment, she slept deeply—until the middle of the night, when a bone-deep chill came creeping up from under the bed.
This wasn't the cold of winter. This was something else. Something rotten, something that crawled up her ankles and legs like thousands of icy hands, sinking into her bones, freezing every muscle until she jolted awake.
The room was completely dark. The windows were shut. The curtains were drawn so tight not even moonlight got through. But the cold was everywhere, filling her lungs with ice.
She reached for her blanket—and her fingers touched something cold, something rough and hard like wood. Not her blanket. Not her clothes.
She opened her eyes.
In the darkness, at the foot of her bed, stood a figure.
Thin. Slender. Arms hanging straight down. Long hair covering its face. It stood absolutely still, like a corpse that had been buried for years and dug up, radiating a stillness that pressed against her chest like a weight.
She tried to scream. Nothing came out. A hand seemed to grip her throat from the inside.
She tried to move. Her limbs were locked as if under a thousand pounds of stone. Even blinking was difficult.
The figure raised its head. No sound. But a cold gaze came through the curtain of hair and landed on her. Then the figure slid forward—no footsteps, no breathing, just the soft whisper of fabric dragging across the floor, like a dead leaf blown by wind—and it moved directly toward her desk.
Toward the drawer where she'd hidden the watch.
---
## Dawn
It wasn't until the sky began to lighten that the figure faded. The cold retreated slowly. Lin Xia gasped for air, her whole body limp on the bed, sweat running down her face, heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her temples.
She stumbled to the desk, hands shaking, and pulled open the drawer.
The pocket watch was there. Center of the drawer. The cover was open. The hands still frozen at 3:10. The metal was so cold it burned her palm. The surface was covered in a fine layer of condensation—water, like she'd grabbed a piece of ice.
The cold coming off it was worse than the night before.
This wasn't a nightmare.
This was real.
---
## Every Night at 3:10
The terror came every night like clockwork.
At exactly 3:10, the chill would wake her. Every single night. No variation. No exception.
The figure grew clearer each time. More defined. More pressing.
Sometimes it would sit at the edge of her bed, its back to her, long hair spilling across the mattress. It would stare at the direction of her desk—still, unmoving—having apparently sat there for decades.
Sometimes it would lean in close, so close she could feel the cold breath on her face—close enough to make her choke on the stale smell of old soap mixed with something rotten, a smell that clung to the back of her throat. And in her ear, a sound like a sigh, mournful and endless, like a needle stabbing into her eardrum, shaking her to her core.
One night, half-asleep, she felt a hand—ice-cold, rigid, utterly lifeless—stroke gently across her forehead. The touch was colder than ice itself. Her whole body convulsed. Her fear reached its peak. Her soul itself seemed to tremble.
The room grew colder and colder. Even with the windows and doors sealed shut, frost began to form on the glass of the nightstand. The wardrobe door would creak open on its own in the dead of night—a sound like a scream in the silence. And from the dark gap inside the wardrobe, two empty, turbid eyes would stare at her. The gaze was obsessive, sinister, filled with a dangerous threat—as if the moment she made any move, it would devour her completely.
Lin Xia was being driven to the edge of madness. Her eyes were bloodshot. She couldn't sleep at all. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that cold figure, those empty eyes, the fear wrapping around her heart like a vine, squeezing the breath out of her.
Then she remembered the yellow charm.
She tore through her clothes to find it, then plastered it to every corner of the room—the headboard, the wardrobe, the desk—her fingers gripping the last piece so hard her knuckles went white. She prayed that this charm could drive away the haunting and give her a moment of peace.
But her resistance only enraged the spirit.
---
## The Breaking Point
That night at 3:10, the cold shot up higher than ever before. The whole room turned into an ice cave. Even the water in her glass had formed a thin layer of ice.
The figure swept toward her desk with enormous rage. Its withered, rigid hand slashed out and knocked the charm off the desk. Then it stepped heavily on the paper—deliberately, like it was venting endless fury. The smooth paper instantly crumpled into a ball, and a faint but clear footprint was stamped into it.
The wardrobe door slammed open with a boom. The figure retreated slowly into the darkness of the wardrobe, only its empty eyes visible, fixed on Lin Xia with its surrounding rage nearly swallowing her whole. This was a naked warning. A tantrum for being expelled.
Lin Xia curled into the corner of the bed, her whole body trembling, teeth chattering. Fear and rage twined together in her heart, but she didn't even dare cry. She just gripped the charm and stared until dawn.
---
## The Landlord
As soon as it was light, Lin Xia grabbed the crushed charm and stormed to the landlord's face. Her face was pale as death, her eyes filled with the fire of being deceived and days of terror. Her voice was cold as ice:
*"Someone died in this apartment. You rented it to me on purpose."*
The landlord looked at her ashen face and the crumpled charm. His complexion went white.
*"Before, a couple lived here. The man was a watchmaker. That pocket watch was made by his own hands. They had an agreement—every night at 3:10, he'd come home to sit with his wife for a while."*
The landlord's voice faltered.
*"Then the wife suddenly fell ill. She died at exactly 3:10, clutching the watch and refusing to let go. The husband stayed in this apartment, guarding the watch, sitting by the bed at that time every day. He did this his whole life. Last winter, he also died—on that same bed. The young people sorting through his belongings missed that watch."*
Lin Xia stood there, silent.
Her anger still burned in her chest. She hated the landlord for hiding this from her, for letting her fall into this situation. But the fear still coiled at the bottom of her heart—and she understood that this figure had never wanted to hurt her. It was just tenaciously guarding the watch, guarding this room, guarding a span of time it refused to let go of. All the rage, all the terror, were just a possessive creature's resistance to the intruder. She didn't feel at peace. She didn't soften.
She just didn't want to be tormented by this obsession anymore.
---
## Making Peace
That night, Lin Xia silently opened the drawer and took out the pocket watch. She placed it gently in the center of the nightstand. Then she picked up the charm from the floor and smoothed it out neatly beside the watch.
She stopped suppressing. Stopped resisting. Just placed them there quietly.
At 3:10, the cold came as expected. The figure drifted into the room and stopped in front of the desk.
Lin Xia curled in the corner of the bed, heart still pounding, fingertips still ice cold, fear still uncoiled in her chest—but her voice, though shaking, was calm and firm:
*"I won't touch your watch. You stay away from me. We don't bother each other."*
The words fell. The overwhelming rage in the room gradually subsided. The cold around her eased considerably.
The figure stopped where it was. After a long moment, it didn't advance any further. It just stood quietly in front of the nightstand, guarding the watch, until dawn light began to seep in before it slowly faded away.
---
## After That
The violent hauntings never returned. No more rage. No more advancing figure. Just every night at 3:10, a faint coolness would drift through the room, a quiet ghost standing guard beside the watch—but it never disturbed her again.
Lin Xia would still wake at that hour, but not from fear. She would just lie still, letting that faint coolness drift through the room.
Until one night, when the moonlight outside the window was especially bright, pouring into the room without any obstruction, illuminating every corner.
Lin Xia opened her eyes slowly and looked at the nightstand.
Her heart jumped.
Two clear figures stood there. The woman in the photograph—her expression now gentle, without a trace of cold obsession—had a faint smile on her lips. Beside her stood an old man with gray hair and a slightly hunched back, gently holding her hand. His eyes were filled with an emotion that had traveled more than half a lifetime—tenderness and release.
They turned to look at Lin Xia. No malice. Just a slight nod—a long farewell.
The next moment, both figures turned into dots of soft light, drifting out through the window, dissolving completely into the first light of dawn.
On the nightstand, the watch that had been frozen for decades let out a soft *tick*.
The hands finally began to move.
*Tick. Tick. Tick.*
Steady and clear, echoing through the quiet room, unusually moving.
Lin Xia stared at the watch for a long time without speaking. Her heart churned with complex emotions—relief at surviving, resentment toward the landlord's deception, but also a deep stirring for this love that had spanned life and death, this obsessive tenderness that had refused to fade.
But she did not find peace. Those nights trapped in fear would forever remain an indelible mark in her memory.
The old tube-style apartment building sat at the back of the city where the sun never reached.
The exterior walls were peeling. The stairwells smelled like mildew no matter what season it was. And the wind—there was always wind in those hallways, wrapping around your ankles like something trying to trip you.
Lin Xia pushed open the door to the top-floor rental apartment, and couldn't suppress a burst of joy. South-facing, good light, sunlight spilling across the old wooden floors, dust floating quietly in the beams. The walls were dry with no mold. The furniture was old but neat. And the rent—unbelievably cheap. She clutched the lease agreement, feeling like she'd stumbled into incredible luck, the exhaustion of days of apartment-hunting finally dissipating, her heart filled with the peace of living alone.
---
## The First Night
She settled in. She went downstairs to the breakfast stall in the alley and bought herself a shrimp and chive bun—the kind she'd been craving for weeks. The skin was tight and chewy, and when she bit into it, the filling was fresh and fragrant.
But when she saw the price on the receipt, her heart sank a little. Small bun. Expensive as hell. Real filling.
That was what she thought, anyway.
Back in the apartment, she pushed a heavy old wardrobe against the wall to clean behind it. That's when she found it.
A copper pocket watch.
It was cold when she picked it up—cold in a way that metal shouldn't be, cold enough to make her fingers tingle. She brushed away the dust. The case was engraved with a faded daisy. She pried open the cover, and a wave of old, stale air rolled out—like something that had been sealed in a grave.
The hands were frozen at 3:10.
The second hand hadn't moved either. On the inside of the cover was a black-and-white photograph: a woman in a faded blue cotton jacket, her expression stiff, her eyes empty as two dry wells. She stared straight at the camera—or rather, through it. Through the person holding the watch. Directly at Lin Xia.
Lin Xia felt the back of her neck go cold. Her fingertips went numb. She shoved the watch into the deepest drawer of her desk and slammed it shut.
---
## The Teacher's Charm
Before she left home, her master had noticed how nervous she was about living alone. He'd pressed a yellow paper charm into her palm, folded into a triangle, the paper rough against her skin, smelling faintly of mugwort.
*"Carry this with you. It calms the spirit and blocks the cold. If something strange happens, hold it tight."*
Lin Xia didn't believe in ghosts. She was a modern woman. But she tucked the charm into her inner pocket anyway, because it was easier than arguing. The faint smell of mugwort faded quickly in her memory.
---
## The First Visit
Her first night in the apartment, she slept deeply—until the middle of the night, when a bone-deep chill came creeping up from under the bed.
This wasn't the cold of winter. This was something else. Something rotten, something that crawled up her ankles and legs like thousands of icy hands, sinking into her bones, freezing every muscle until she jolted awake.
The room was completely dark. The windows were shut. The curtains were drawn so tight not even moonlight got through. But the cold was everywhere, filling her lungs with ice.
She reached for her blanket—and her fingers touched something cold, something rough and hard like wood. Not her blanket. Not her clothes.
She opened her eyes.
In the darkness, at the foot of her bed, stood a figure.
Thin. Slender. Arms hanging straight down. Long hair covering its face. It stood absolutely still, like a corpse that had been buried for years and dug up, radiating a stillness that pressed against her chest like a weight.
She tried to scream. Nothing came out. A hand seemed to grip her throat from the inside.
She tried to move. Her limbs were locked as if under a thousand pounds of stone. Even blinking was difficult.
The figure raised its head. No sound. But a cold gaze came through the curtain of hair and landed on her. Then the figure slid forward—no footsteps, no breathing, just the soft whisper of fabric dragging across the floor, like a dead leaf blown by wind—and it moved directly toward her desk.
Toward the drawer where she'd hidden the watch.
---
## Dawn
It wasn't until the sky began to lighten that the figure faded. The cold retreated slowly. Lin Xia gasped for air, her whole body limp on the bed, sweat running down her face, heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her temples.
She stumbled to the desk, hands shaking, and pulled open the drawer.
The pocket watch was there. Center of the drawer. The cover was open. The hands still frozen at 3:10. The metal was so cold it burned her palm. The surface was covered in a fine layer of condensation—water, like she'd grabbed a piece of ice.
The cold coming off it was worse than the night before.
This wasn't a nightmare.
This was real.
---
## Every Night at 3:10
The terror came every night like clockwork.
At exactly 3:10, the chill would wake her. Every single night. No variation. No exception.
The figure grew clearer each time. More defined. More pressing.
Sometimes it would sit at the edge of her bed, its back to her, long hair spilling across the mattress. It would stare at the direction of her desk—still, unmoving—having apparently sat there for decades.
Sometimes it would lean in close, so close she could feel the cold breath on her face—close enough to make her choke on the stale smell of old soap mixed with something rotten, a smell that clung to the back of her throat. And in her ear, a sound like a sigh, mournful and endless, like a needle stabbing into her eardrum, shaking her to her core.
One night, half-asleep, she felt a hand—ice-cold, rigid, utterly lifeless—stroke gently across her forehead. The touch was colder than ice itself. Her whole body convulsed. Her fear reached its peak. Her soul itself seemed to tremble.
The room grew colder and colder. Even with the windows and doors sealed shut, frost began to form on the glass of the nightstand. The wardrobe door would creak open on its own in the dead of night—a sound like a scream in the silence. And from the dark gap inside the wardrobe, two empty, turbid eyes would stare at her. The gaze was obsessive, sinister, filled with a dangerous threat—as if the moment she made any move, it would devour her completely.
Lin Xia was being driven to the edge of madness. Her eyes were bloodshot. She couldn't sleep at all. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that cold figure, those empty eyes, the fear wrapping around her heart like a vine, squeezing the breath out of her.
Then she remembered the yellow charm.
She tore through her clothes to find it, then plastered it to every corner of the room—the headboard, the wardrobe, the desk—her fingers gripping the last piece so hard her knuckles went white. She prayed that this charm could drive away the haunting and give her a moment of peace.
But her resistance only enraged the spirit.
---
## The Breaking Point
That night at 3:10, the cold shot up higher than ever before. The whole room turned into an ice cave. Even the water in her glass had formed a thin layer of ice.
The figure swept toward her desk with enormous rage. Its withered, rigid hand slashed out and knocked the charm off the desk. Then it stepped heavily on the paper—deliberately, like it was venting endless fury. The smooth paper instantly crumpled into a ball, and a faint but clear footprint was stamped into it.
The wardrobe door slammed open with a boom. The figure retreated slowly into the darkness of the wardrobe, only its empty eyes visible, fixed on Lin Xia with its surrounding rage nearly swallowing her whole. This was a naked warning. A tantrum for being expelled.
Lin Xia curled into the corner of the bed, her whole body trembling, teeth chattering. Fear and rage twined together in her heart, but she didn't even dare cry. She just gripped the charm and stared until dawn.
---
## The Landlord
As soon as it was light, Lin Xia grabbed the crushed charm and stormed to the landlord's face. Her face was pale as death, her eyes filled with the fire of being deceived and days of terror. Her voice was cold as ice:
*"Someone died in this apartment. You rented it to me on purpose."*
The landlord looked at her ashen face and the crumpled charm. His complexion went white.
*"Before, a couple lived here. The man was a watchmaker. That pocket watch was made by his own hands. They had an agreement—every night at 3:10, he'd come home to sit with his wife for a while."*
The landlord's voice faltered.
*"Then the wife suddenly fell ill. She died at exactly 3:10, clutching the watch and refusing to let go. The husband stayed in this apartment, guarding the watch, sitting by the bed at that time every day. He did this his whole life. Last winter, he also died—on that same bed. The young people sorting through his belongings missed that watch."*
Lin Xia stood there, silent.
Her anger still burned in her chest. She hated the landlord for hiding this from her, for letting her fall into this situation. But the fear still coiled at the bottom of her heart—and she understood that this figure had never wanted to hurt her. It was just tenaciously guarding the watch, guarding this room, guarding a span of time it refused to let go of. All the rage, all the terror, were just a possessive creature's resistance to the intruder. She didn't feel at peace. She didn't soften.
She just didn't want to be tormented by this obsession anymore.
---
## Making Peace
That night, Lin Xia silently opened the drawer and took out the pocket watch. She placed it gently in the center of the nightstand. Then she picked up the charm from the floor and smoothed it out neatly beside the watch.
She stopped suppressing. Stopped resisting. Just placed them there quietly.
At 3:10, the cold came as expected. The figure drifted into the room and stopped in front of the desk.
Lin Xia curled in the corner of the bed, heart still pounding, fingertips still ice cold, fear still uncoiled in her chest—but her voice, though shaking, was calm and firm:
*"I won't touch your watch. You stay away from me. We don't bother each other."*
The words fell. The overwhelming rage in the room gradually subsided. The cold around her eased considerably.
The figure stopped where it was. After a long moment, it didn't advance any further. It just stood quietly in front of the nightstand, guarding the watch, until dawn light began to seep in before it slowly faded away.
---
## After That
The violent hauntings never returned. No more rage. No more advancing figure. Just every night at 3:10, a faint coolness would drift through the room, a quiet ghost standing guard beside the watch—but it never disturbed her again.
Lin Xia would still wake at that hour, but not from fear. She would just lie still, letting that faint coolness drift through the room.
Until one night, when the moonlight outside the window was especially bright, pouring into the room without any obstruction, illuminating every corner.
Lin Xia opened her eyes slowly and looked at the nightstand.
Her heart jumped.
Two clear figures stood there. The woman in the photograph—her expression now gentle, without a trace of cold obsession—had a faint smile on her lips. Beside her stood an old man with gray hair and a slightly hunched back, gently holding her hand. His eyes were filled with an emotion that had traveled more than half a lifetime—tenderness and release.
They turned to look at Lin Xia. No malice. Just a slight nod—a long farewell.
The next moment, both figures turned into dots of soft light, drifting out through the window, dissolving completely into the first light of dawn.
On the nightstand, the watch that had been frozen for decades let out a soft *tick*.
The hands finally began to move.
*Tick. Tick. Tick.*
Steady and clear, echoing through the quiet room, unusually moving.
Lin Xia stared at the watch for a long time without speaking. Her heart churned with complex emotions—relief at surviving, resentment toward the landlord's deception, but also a deep stirring for this love that had spanned life and death, this obsessive tenderness that had refused to fade.
But she did not find peace. Those nights trapped in fear would forever remain an indelible mark in her memory.