Three Ks figured either he had finally grown a spine, or terror had warped his brain beyond repair—Boss Smiley had left nothing but his pet behind, yet somehow that alone made him feel much safer.
Barely coherent, he tried to ingratiate himself with the kitten.
“You look kind of like a lump of moldy tofu. All fluffy.”
The kitten gave him a sidelong glance.
“Do you know where your owner went?”
Afraid he might scare the kitten away, Three Ks softened his voice to a whisper. In the sealed, deathly quiet room, it sounded eerily faint.
“There’s a ghost in my photo. I’m just a tiny bit scared. Can I hold you? One paw would be enough. I’m scared you’ll run off too—”
His cat-kidnapper tone finally woke Shan Bei.
A mechanical whir suddenly sounded behind him.
Three Ks jumped and spun around in terror.
Shan Bei sat inside his slowly extending metal drawer, dark circles bruised beneath his eyes.
“I’m begging you. Could you not talk in that haunted-house voice?”
Seeing another teammate alive immediately took the edge off Three Ks’s fear.
“Sorry I woke you. I don’t want to sound like this either, but that photo scared the hell out of me. Look, someone suddenly appeared in—”
He pointed at the two-inch photograph.
His voice stopped dead.
The long-haired ghostly figure that had been staring at him was gone.
Only Three Ks remained in the photograph, perfectly normal.
It was as though everything he had just seen had been a dream.
Shan Bei craned his neck toward the picture.
He checked not only Three Ks’s photo and his own, but even Boss Smiley’s, just in case. None of them appeared to contain anything extra.
And he had no intention whatsoever of hearing exactly what had supposedly appeared.
“Ever watched a horror movie? Played a horror game? Know who dies easiest?”
He cut Three Ks off.
“People like you, who casually crawl out of the safe room.”
“…”
That made far too much sense.
After thinking it over, Three Ks thoughtfully closed the door for the kitten, then sheepishly crawled back into his own drawer.
He had barely lain down when he abruptly sat back up again.
“But we still don’t know where Boss Smiley went—”
Shan Bei seemed worried too, but possessed considerably more reason than Three Ks.
“Judging by how Boss handled things at the photography studio, our biggest priority is probably minding our own business.”
“…Fine.”
Three Ks reset his alarm, shut his eyes, and swore that this time, no matter what happened, he was not coming back out.
The metal drawer was cramped, but as a safe room it felt remarkably secure.
Lying down, he could touch both side walls. Raise a hand, and he could reach the ceiling.
There was not a single spare inch where a ghost could hide.
Inside the drawer, everything was extremely quiet.
There was only the faint hum of the air vent—
and soft breathing.
Especially the breathing.
Light.
Slow.
Almost soothing enough to help him sleep.
Three Ks kept his eyes screwed shut and held his breath as he listened.
After a while, he began to drift off…
Then a thunderclap exploded through his mind.
He was holding his breath.
He did not even dare exhale.
So whose breathing was that?
Three Ks instinctively wanted to scream, but faithfully remembered the scallop’s teachings and clamped both hands over his mouth.
He could clearly feel a ghostly face slowly drawing closer.
Almost nose to nose with him.
Loose strands of long hair brushed softly across his cheeks.
If he opened his eyes, he knew he would be staring directly into a pair of enormous, hollow eyes.
Cold sweat trickled down his temple.
Three Ks did not even dare wipe it away.
He did everything in his power to pretend he was asleep.
And then…
An icy finger reached over and wiped the drop of sweat away for him.
Three Ks: “…………”
He could not help remembering that night at Blue Bay Hotel.
The spider-like ghost had danced wildly beside his bed, but because the room was a safe room, it had been unable to touch him.
All it could do was frighten him.
But this safe room seemed different.
Whatever this thing was, it could touch him.
And if it could touch him, did that mean…
it could kill him too?
Now Three Ks truly could not stay put.
The image of Lord Spicy Soup’s head being torn open was still vivid in his mind.
He had no desire to become the second innocent casualty.
He took a deep breath, preparing to open his eyes and bolt—
when he heard a harsh scraping noise.
Screeech.
Screeech.
Fingernails dragging across metal.
Three Ks’s teeth ached from the sound.
He snapped his eyes open.
The ghostly face he had expected was nowhere to be seen.
He pulled out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and discovered a line of words scratched into the top of the drawer by fingernails.
I’m sorry. I seem to have frightened you. I only wanted to get your attention.
Three Ks: “?”
Does it seriously think I’m an idiot? Why would I believe a ghost?
As if anticipating his disbelief, the ghost scratched another message into the metal.
Screeeech. Screeeech.
If I really wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have wiped away your cold sweat just now.
…
Fair point.
Three Ks fought an intense internal battle for a long while before finally squeezing out,
“I don’t want to become the bottom of the IQ barrel. Could you maybe scam somebody else?”
That teeth-grating scraping noise sounded for the third time.
Three Ks plugged his ears and watched another line appear beneath the others.
I’m really not lying to you. Honestly, I’d rather choose someone else too. But among you outsiders, one disappeared, one won’t open his eyes no matter how much I scratch, and you’re the only one who reacts at all.
“…”
Shan Bei.
Reincarnated ninja.
No wonder his dark circles were heavier than a ghost’s.
Three Ks finally began to soften.
Screeeech. Screeeech.
A fourth sentence appeared.
I just want to ask you for a favor.
At that very moment, Yu Qing also very much wanted to ask someone for a favor—
Could he stop running around in Yu Qing’s body and landing him in bizarre situations every single time?
For example…
right now.
Yu Qing was standing outside the photography studio’s darkroom, a long, slender metal hook pinched between his fingers.
He could not tell whether he had been preparing to pick the lock and break in—
or whether he had just finished doing something questionable and was now trying to hook the door shut again.
The photography studio owner and her employees appeared to be gone.
The interior was silent as death.
Only a single wall lamp remained lit along the corridor beside the fitting room. Everywhere else was swallowed by darkness.
Yu Qing examined the area carefully.
A faint red light glowed behind the wall lamp.
Probably an electronic eye hidden there.
From that angle, it would have had a perfect view of him.
Combined with the way he was glancing around…
Whatever else could be said, on camera he definitely looked like a thief.
Yu Qing: “…”
The thin metal hook between his fingers was nearly being crushed.
His voice, however, remained extraordinarily calm.
“Mi Xiaobai. Come out.”
For once, the little white kitten was not draped across his shoulder.
He had no idea where it had been left behind.
The blue-green butterfly, however, had followed closely, apparently so it could relay messages when needed.
Yet after Yu Qing spoke, no response came.
Afraid I’ll yell at him?
Yu Qing’s expression turned strange.
But he knew that was probably not it.
Wuchang might be too lazy to explain himself, but whenever Yu Qing genuinely asked, he would admit what he had done.
Most likely with no attempt to hide it.
Excessively candid, even.
Which was precisely why the man could sometimes be so shameless he bordered on a rogue.
When Mi Xiaobai still failed to respond, Yu Qing was about to ask again when a faint sound came from beside him.
His brows drew together.
He did not even turn his head.
One hand shot out—
and seized a figure lunging at him from the darkness.
His fingers tightened sharply around the person’s throat.
He dragged him close and slammed him against the wall.
The other person barely managed a strangled wheeze before beginning to struggle furiously.
Even while unable to breathe, his face remained deathly white, with no trace of flushing.
His scarlet mouth gaped open, revealing a thin, pointed tongue.
Other details might have been harder to identify.
That enormous mouth was not.
Yu Qing recognized him immediately as the employee who had held the makeup album.
According to the photography studio owner, his name was Little Eight.
Little Eight forced a sentence through his constricted throat.
“It… it’s my turn on night duty tonight. What… what are you sneaking around… outside the darkroom for?”
Yu Qing thought, Excellent question. If you’re asking me, who am I supposed to ask?
There was no chance whatsoever he would admit to “sneaking around.”
He was still displeasedly trying to invent an explanation when the phone in his left pocket vibrated several times.
He pulled it out.
Little Eight had never encountered such an inhumane customer.
“You… you broke into the shop for no reason, grabbed me by the throat, and now… now you’re playing with your phone?!”
Yu Qing lifted his eyes toward him.
Perhaps something about that naturally cold gaze froze Little Eight in place.
He shrank back and temporarily fell silent.
Only then did Yu Qing unlock the screen.
The messages came from Team Chat.
In the middle of the night, for some unknown reason, Three Ks had suddenly posted several photographs.
Yu Qing opened them one-handed and flicked through them quickly.
They showed a metal panel with several messages apparently scratched into it with fingernails.
The gist was simply:
I don’t mean to hurt you. I just want to ask you for a favor.
And so on.
Yu Qing did not examine the details closely.
He only remembered the final photograph.
It read:
I’ve been trapped here for a very, very long time. Could you go to the photography studio, retrieve my photograph, and take me home?
Key information extracted:
Photography studio.
Three Ks appeared to be asking what they should do.
But Mr. Painted Skin’s mind contained only the words photography studio.
So without another word, and with his usual economy of speech, he typed a reply into Team Chat.
^ ^: Come.
Two minutes later, Three Ks and Shan Bei came charging into the photography studio, panting hard.
Then both recoiled a step at the sight of Boss Smiley strangling a ghost.
Little Eight had nearly resigned himself to his fate.
Seeing people arrive through his haze, he immediately began squirming.
“Someone’s here, someone’s here… kh… let me down already.”
Yu Qing released him.
Little Eight collapsed onto the floor and clutched his throat, coughing so hard tears streamed from his eyes.
Watery-eyed, he glared at the newcomers and rasped,
“One after another, you people keep breaking in here in the middle of the night. What exactly do you want?”
Three Ks had come on someone else’s behalf.
“Uh… someone asked us to retrieve a photograph.”
Little Eight could not understand.
“What kind of person sends you for a photograph in the middle of the night?”
Three Ks and Shan Bei exchanged glances.
“It’s… kind of hard to explain quickly.”
Three Ks tried anyway.
“She told me she had a photograph taken here a long time ago. Then she died unexpectedly before she could pick it up. The photo has supposedly been stored here for years. And apparently photographs can sometimes trap… souls?”
The more Three Ks talked, the more ridiculous it sounded even to him.
Little Eight, however, did not seem surprised.
So he continued,
“Anyway, she’s trapped here. She wants us to retrieve the photo and take her home.”
Little Eight looked at them suspiciously.
After a long moment, he said,
“If you mean something being trapped… there really is something in our studio that moves between photographs from time to time. Some customers have also said an extra person occasionally appears in the photos they take.”
Three Ks nearly burst into tears.
“…You could’ve told us earlier. She scared me for an entire night.”
Then he remembered something and turned toward Yu Qing.
“Wait. Speaking of which, Boss Smiley, why are you here?”
Little Eight immediately widened his eyes at Yu Qing, both angry and frightened.
“Exactly! Why are you here?”
Yu Qing looked down at him.
“I knew they were coming to retrieve a photograph, so I came early to wait for them. Is there a problem?”
Little Eight: “…”
Fine.
He thought the explanation was complete nonsense.
But there were three of them, and more importantly, a large line of text hanging at the studio’s front desk plainly stated:
Any photograph taken here may be collected at any time.
And these three had taken any time very seriously.
That was precisely why the studio kept someone on duty every night.
Little Eight was reluctant, but he still swiped the door open and let them into the darkroom.
“All photographs we keep on file, along with the ones nobody collected, are stored here.”
The moment the door opened, a strange odor drifted out.
It smelled like dust sealed for years inside an old-fashioned chest.
Yu Qing was a native of the island city, yet even he had never seen this darkroom before.
Beyond the narrow doorway was an unexpectedly vast space.
The room was far larger than anticipated, almost as though this single chamber occupied the entire floor of the covered arcade while the photography room, makeup area, and fitting room outside were merely tiny annexes tucked into the corners.
Little Eight took down a lamp from somewhere, lit it, and carried it in one hand.
Still wearing a sour expression, he asked,
“Did the person who asked you to retrieve the photograph give you an address?”
“What address?”
Three Ks was about to shake his head when Yu Qing suddenly spoke.
“A string of numbers. It was in the photograph you took. I saw it.”
Little Eight paused and gave him a strange look.
Three Ks immediately shouted,
“Oh! Yes, yes, yes! You mean that kind of long string of numbers with dashes in it? Like a parcel-locker code?”
The invisible ghost really had left him a string of numbers.
It had looked very similar to the number displayed on the hotel drawer.
So those were addresses within Rose Island?
Little Eight offered no explanation.
“Show me. Quickly.”
Three Ks hurriedly pulled up the photo he had taken with his phone.
Little Eight muttered the numbers under his breath to memorize them, then carried the lamp deeper into the room.
From floor to ceiling, the entire space was densely packed with small square cabinets.
Yu Qing swept his gaze over them.
Each cabinet door bore a number according to its row and column.
He suddenly remembered that when he had opened his eyes earlier, he had already been standing outside this darkroom.
He wondered whose photograph Mi Xiaobai had wanted to find inside.
While Little Eight searched, Yu Qing beckoned to the fluttering blue-green butterfly.
It obediently landed on his shoulder at once, its wings stirring a faint breeze beside his ear.
Strictly speaking, the distance between him and the butterfly had little effect on his ability to hear his believer’s voice.
Still, Mr. Painted Skin did something unusually childish.
He gestured for the little butterfly to come closer.
He wanted to hear whether a certain someone was still breathing.
Only after quite a while did Yu Qing finally hear Mi Xiaobai’s extremely faint breathing.
“…”
So he had not refused to answer because he was gone.
He had forcibly occupied primary control and expended so much energy doing so that he was barely conscious?
Yu Qing was just planning to find somewhere private and ask whether the man was alive or dead when Little Eight returned carrying the lamp.
“Found it. This is the photograph you wanted?”
This one?
Yu Qing caught the odd note in his voice and turned.
Little Eight held a photograph between his fingers.
Its edges had yellowed slightly with age, yet the person pictured within remained bright and vivid.
She was a young woman with long, straight black hair.
She held a posing doll in her arms, smiling so broadly that her eyes curved.
There was a tiny mole beside one corner of her mouth, resting right where a dimple formed.
It made her smile look even warmer and brighter.
Three Ks froze when he saw the picture.
Her air and expression were completely different now, but he was not face-blind.
He recognized her instantly.
The woman in the photograph and the ghost who had terrified him all night were the same person.
Before this, he had only half believed her.
Ghosts lied, after all.
But the moment he saw that photograph, all his suspicion faded, leaving only melancholy.
Yu Qing had intended to ask Little Eight why he sounded surprised.
But once the photograph reached his hand and he saw the note written on the back, he too paused.
There was no numerical code.
Instead, there was a written address.
Lower City, Covered Arcade No. 1-33, Gongqiao Street, noodle shop. Owner’s daughter. Awaiting collection.
Yu Qing was bad with routes, but he knew the general area.
Unless something unexpected had happened, that address belonged to Lady Meng’s noodle shop downstairs.
And the instant they accepted the photograph, another holographic screen appeared.
Congratulations! You have obtained Event Clue Item x1.
[An Uncollected Photograph]
A yellowed photograph that appears to be many years old. Its owner cherished it, but never had the chance to collect it. There was once a rumor in the island city that photographs could sometimes trap a fragment of their owner’s soul. Yet perhaps having one’s soul trapped is not always a bad thing. At the very least, this fragment of a soul may still have a chance to walk the road home once more.
Yu Qing had barely closed the screen when another quest appeared.
Because of your kindness, you agreed to grant a wandering soul’s small request, thereby triggering the time-limited quest [Her Road Home]. Perhaps good deeds really do bring good rewards after all.
Within this instance, time-limited quests are shared by the entire team. Countdown: 30 minutes.
“Half an hour?”
Three Ks pulled out his phone and checked the alarm.
“It’s 5:35 AM right now. The hotel receptionist said the noodle shop downstairs opens at six.”
That was why he had originally set his alarm for six.
“So if we wait until they open, that eats twenty-five minutes. We only get five minutes to deliver the photograph?”
Yu Qing, however, looked puzzled.
“Five minutes isn’t enough for you to put a photograph on a table?”
Three Ks scratched his head.
“That lady said—”
Shan Bei could not help muttering,
“Back at the hotel, it was ‘that ghost’ this and ‘that ghost’ that. Now she’s already ‘that lady’?”
Three Ks looked embarrassed.
“Well, she looks nice in the photo. And she’s kind of pitiful.”
He cleared his throat.
“Anyway, she said it only has to reach the hands of her family.”
It still was not a difficult request.
Yu Qing and the others took the photograph and went down early to the street corner on the first floor.
Three Ks and Shan Bei were a little worried that Boss Smiley would not have the patience to stand around waiting.
To their surprise, he simply folded his arms and stood beneath the fine drizzle that dampened clothing without soaking through it.
He did not move a single step.
He waited the full twenty-five minutes.
What the other two did not know was that during those twenty-five minutes, Yu Qing flicked the blue-green butterfly’s wings several times.
Coincidentally, just as Mi Xiaobai finally stirred, Lady Meng’s little noodle shop opened its doors.
The person opening up was a teenage boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen.
Three Ks rushed over with the photograph.
The moment he saw the boy, he froze and pointed.
“Hey! Aren’t you Walnut from Painted Skin’s character preview when the server launched?”
Walnut held the door open, his face full of question marks.
“Who are you? What character preview? How do you know my name is Walnut?”
Three Ks had the inexplicable excitement of running into an acquaintance.
“I don’t just know your name is Walnut. I know your grandma too!”
Walnut: “…”
That sounded disturbingly like an insult.
Three Ks hurriedly explained,
“Don’t misunderstand! I’ve just seen you guys before. Once. A one-sided once.”
Walnut yawned as he looked over the three customers who had arrived at the crack of dawn.
When his gaze reached Yu Qing, he scratched his cheek in confusion.
“Why do you look kind of familiar?”
Yu Qing had been standing several steps behind the others.
He had intended to use the opening to interrogate Mi Xiaobai about whatever trouble he had been causing in the middle of the night.
But Walnut’s interruption gave a certain bastard the perfect chance to switch topics.
“Walnut? You’re already at that noodle shop? This early?”
Mi Xiaobai probably really had exhausted himself.
His voice sounded newly awake, even lazier than usual.
And yet the blue-green butterfly seemed terrified Yu Qing might not hear him and practically perched on the rim of his ear.
“Speak from farther away.”
Expressionless, Yu Qing flicked the butterfly an inch away before answering quietly,
“We picked up a time-limited quest. We’re delivering a photograph.”
“Delivering a photograph? What a novel little quest.”
Barely awake and already offering commentary, Mi Xiaobai continued,
“Who’s important enough to make you deliver their photo instead of collecting it themselves? Very brave.”
He dragged out the word very, his teasing unmistakable.
By then, fewer than two minutes remained on the quest timer.
Three Ks and Shan Bei glanced toward Yu Qing, their pillar of support, then hurriedly pushed the photograph into Walnut’s hands.
“This is a photograph your grandmother’s daughter left at the photography studio. She never picked it up, and it’s been there for years. We were asked to bring it back. Just keep it.”
The instant Walnut accepted the photograph, Mi Xiaobai suddenly made a questioning sound.
“Did I hear that wrong? Whose photograph did that little idiot say it was?”
Yu Qing replied,
“The noodle shop old woman’s daughter.”
“You mean Lady Meng?”
Mi Xiaobai fell silent for a beat.
“Since when does she have a daughter?”