Lin Yan, a thirty-year-old freelance writer, moves south from the north to Guangxi with her daughter Xiaoman, hoping to treat the girl’s seasonal asthma. They move into an old two-bedroom apartment rented by Lin Yan’s close friend Su Qing. Busy adjusting to their new surroundings, Lin Yan dismisses the dim, damp rooms, the strangely poor lighting, and the smell of mold as typical problems with an old apartment.
Strange things begin happening in late autumn: books mysteriously shift on the shelves, and a regular, faint tapping sounds at three in the morning. Lin Yan explains it away as “rats” or “nerves,” but she can’t ease Xiaoman’s fear. The girl refuses to enter the kitchen and clings to her mother at night, crying, “The shadow is moving.” In early winter, the landlord avoids questions about the apartment’s past, and the neighbor, Auntie Chen, seems to have something to say but holds back. Lin Yan starts keeping a notebook of the disturbances, caught between materialist beliefs and folk knowledge.
At the end of December, an outbreak begins and the residential compound goes into lockdown, ruining their plans to move. Water and electricity supplies run short, as the landlord and property management blame each other. The strange occurrences grow worse: the smell of tobacco drifts through the dining room, a chill of “being watched” creeps in late at night, and Xiaoman points at the empty dining room and cries, “The man in gray is watching me eat.” Old Yang, the convenience store owner, quietly tells Lin Yan as he delivers supplies, “There’s something downright eerie about how cold your place is.” Lin Yan calls the police, but they dismiss her as suffering from lockdown anxiety and quickly end the call.
On the day the lockdown is lifted, Lin Yan practically flees with Xiaoman, leaving some of their belongings behind. They settle somewhere else, and Xiaoman’s asthma even improves. But the smell of tobacco, the “man in gray,” and the fear of the lockdown remain memories Lin Yan dares not revisit, though they haunt her night after night. She has never found out what was hiding in that apartment.
