Chapter 11: Train K9746

Train K9746

In the autumn of 2015, I boarded Train K9746 with a crumpled job notice tucked in my pocket and my childhood friend Akai beside me.

We were traveling from Chengdu to Xi’an. Hard-seat tickets had been impossible to get, so we gritted our teeth and bought sleeper berths instead. I had expected the carriage to be packed with passengers, but when we stepped into our hard-sleeper compartment, I realized it was nearly empty.

There were only four of us in that whole section: Akai and me, a bespectacled office worker, and a middle-aged man with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. We sat scattered among the berths, the silence stretching so wide between us that the clatter of the wheels over the rails sounded strangely loud.

“This train is way too empty,” Akai muttered, glancing out the window.

Night had already gathered beyond the glass. Distant lights flashed past one by one, pale and fleeting, like ghost fire vanishing into the dark.

I nodded and pushed my backpack farther under my pillow. For no clear reason, unease had begun to coil in my chest.

At ten o’clock, the lights in the sleeper carriage went out. Only a dim yellow wall lamp remained in the corridor. Its weak glow slipped through the gaps in the curtains and broke across the floor in ragged patches, making the shadows look almost alive.

Sometime deep in the night, I woke with the urgent need to use the toilet.

When I sat up, I accidentally kicked one of my slippers off the berth. It struck the floor with a sharp little sound that seemed far too loud in the sleeping carriage.

I held my breath, climbed down quietly, and felt my way toward the toilet.

The corridor light flickered weakly overhead. The carpet under my feet felt oddly soft, almost as if I were stepping on cotton. Inside the toilet, the light was off. Only a thin wash of moonlight leaked in through the vent, just enough for me to make out the outline of the sink.

After I finished, I turned on the faucet.

That was when a low laugh sounded behind me.

“Heh… heh.”

It was very soft.

Very cold.

Like someone had leaned close to my ear and breathed the sound into it.

My whole body went rigid.

I spun around.

The toilet was empty.

There was nothing there but my own reflection staring back from the cloudy mirror.

It had to be my imagination, I told myself. I must have misheard.

I wiped my hands in a hurry and all but fled back to my berth. Even after I lay down, my back stayed cold.

Less than half an hour later, the office worker with glasses got up and went to the toilet as well.

A short while after that, we heard him let out a choked cry.

Then he came stumbling back into the compartment, his face white as paper.

“What happened?” I whispered.

He swallowed hard. When he answered, his voice was shaking.

“When I was washing my hands just now… someone laughed behind me. Heh… heh…”

The air in the carriage seemed to freeze.

Akai sat up at once.

“I’ll go check.”

He forced himself toward the toilet. When he came back, his face had changed too.

“There’s no one in there,” he said. “But it feels wrong. Cold. Creepy.”

Just then, the middle-aged man with the canvas bag patted his pockets. His expression tightened.

“My lighter is gone. And some loose cash.”

I hurriedly turned over my pillow.

The power bank in my backpack had disappeared.

Akai checked his phone and realized his earphones were missing.

The man with glasses opened his wallet and found that most of his coins were gone.

“Someone’s playing tricks on us,” Akai snapped, his voice rising.

The noise woke the railway police officer in the neighboring carriage. He came over, looked around, and listened as we listed what was missing. When he heard they were all small, cheap items, he waved it off.

“Probably some passenger took them in passing,” he said. “Nothing valuable is gone. No need to make a scene.”

“But we all heard laughter in the toilet,” I said quickly.

At that, the officer’s face changed.

He hesitated for a long moment. Then he lowered his voice.

“Since you keep asking, I’ll tell you the truth. Something happened in this carriage two years ago.”

The four of us went silent.

“There used to be a group of pickpockets who worked trains like this,” he said. “They had a special trick. They would use a pair of chopsticks to steal from sleeping passengers—slipping the sticks into people’s pockets and pinching out money or small things without waking them. Among thieves, they called it ‘chopstick hooking.’

“One night, one of those thieves was caught by a passenger. There was a struggle. Somehow, he was dragged into the toilet. During the fight, he was accidentally beaten to death.”

The officer glanced toward the dark end of the carriage.

“After that, passengers in this compartment started losing little things. Nothing expensive. Coins, lighters, earphones, power banks. And late at night, people sometimes heard laughter coming from the toilet. That same laugh. Heh… heh…”

The moment he finished speaking, every light in the carriage went out.

Darkness swallowed us whole.

It was so black I could not see my own hand in front of my face. The air seemed to thicken, and the cold sank straight into my bones.

Then laughter rose again from the direction of the toilet.

Only this time, it was no longer the low, breathy heh-heh we had heard before.

It was thin and shrill, a piercing cackle that scraped through the dark like fingernails dragged across glass.

My hair stood on end.

Then a voice came out of the blackness.

“Sleepers I steal from… one pair of chopsticks hooks four… heh-heh…”

The words drifted through the carriage, warped and sing-song, as if something were grinning while it spoke.

The four of us shrank back onto our berths, not daring to breathe.

Even the railway officer had lost his earlier calm. He pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight. The beam swept through the compartment, across the berths, the curtains, the luggage racks, and the empty corridor.

There was nothing.

But the laughter crept closer.

And closer.

Then, all at once, it stopped.

Only the cold remained, filling the carriage from end to end.

The lights did not come back until just before dawn.

None of us slept again. We sat stiffly on our berths, staring toward the toilet, waiting for the night to be over.

When morning finally came and the train pulled into the station, we grabbed our luggage and rushed off as though escaping for our lives.

Only after my feet touched the platform did I dare turn back.

In the pale morning light, the sleeper carriage of Train K9746 stood there quietly. Somehow, it looked even colder and more sinister than it had in the dark.

From that day on, I never took a sleeper train again.

Even now, whenever I remember that low laugh in the middle of the night, and that eerie line—one pair of chopsticks hooks four—a chill runs through me.

What exactly was hiding in that carriage?

Was it the restless spirit of the dead chopstick thief?

Or was there some other truth buried in the dark?

To this day, I still do not dare think too deeply about it.