Horror Short - Facial Recognition

# Facial Recognition Late at night, the apartment was so quiet that only the faint hum of the air conditioner could be heard. Xiaomei was curled up in bed, fiddling with her newly acquired smartphone. This phone boasted top-tier 3D structured light facial scanning, with official promotions claiming it could capture subtle facial contours and apply dynamic filters in real-time, even in pitch-black darkness. She slid her fingers, turning off all the lights in the room. The room was instantly plunged into thick darkness, with only a barely visible infrared scanning light point emanating from the phone's camera, slowly sweeping back and forth across her face. The screen flickered with a faint glow, successfully recognizing her face, and a soft cat filter was applied, its ears twitching slightly with her shallow breaths. The next moment, the screen was suddenly overlaid with a special effect. The infrared scanning line moved upwards, sweeping across the dark area of the ceiling. A dark shadow suspended directly above her head was forcibly fitted with a blood-red ghost face by the system. The ghost face had sunken eyes, with dark red liquid slowly dripping down from the eye sockets. Its mouth was torn open, stretching all the way to its ears. It had no hair, and its face was plastered to the ceiling, hanging its head and quietly looking down at her lying on the bed. The filter was still auto-tracking, and as the shadow moved slightly, the ghost face also tilted its head slightly. Xiaomei froze, her blood seeming to instantly turn to ice. She didn't dare to breathe loudly, and cold sweat seeped from the back of her neck into the pillow, her fingertips numb and almost unable to hold the phone. She dared not look up at the ceiling, only seeing through the phone's viewfinder that blood-red face hanging just a few dozen centimeters above her head. A cold, emotionless system prompt popped up on the phone, with white text on a black background slowly appearing: