“That woman said she wanted to date me earlier, and even talked about marrying me and having babies.”
“And yet, today she suddenly decided she’s calling it quits!”
“What gives her the right to just unilaterally decide she’s done dating me?!”
“Tell me, is there something seriously wrong with her head?!”
The bandaged boy stood by the water’s edge, ranting and raving, looking as though he might jump up and down in sheer agitation. He muttered on and on without stopping, the anger and grievance deep within his deadpan eyes making him look like he desperately wanted to go carve up a few more unlucky souls.
The conjoined twins exchanged glances, then spoke in unison: “So… you’re mad just because she said she doesn’t like you anymore?”
“As if!” The bandaged boy bristled like a startled cat, his pupils contracting and the whites of his eyes flashing larger, giving him an uncanny, non-human vibe. “Who cares about her stupid liking!”
Sticking his neck out, he insisted stiffly, “I just think… well, I just think she’s definitely on her guard against me now. If I can’t catch her off guard when she’s completely relaxed, I won’t get to harvest her life at its peak, meaning I’ll miss out on the most delicious meal. It’s just a bit of a pity, that’s all.”
The older conjoined twin remarked, “Since it’s such a pity, why don’t you just charm her back into a good mood?”
The younger conjoined twin agreed, “Yeah, just make her happy again.”
The bandaged boy’s eyes lit up. “Charm her? How do you do that?”
“If you want to make a girl happy, there’s one method that’s always foolproof,” the Old Gardener chimed in, having wandered over at some point to watch the spectacle. He plucked a red rose from a nearby bush and chuckled. “Give her flowers. If it’s a flower no one else has, she’s bound to be delighted.”
A wave of sudden realization washed over the boy, a brilliant spark of sheer genius flashing in his eyes. But noticing the strange, hard-to-read looks his colleagues were giving him, he let out a scoff. “I couldn’t care less about making her happy or getting her to like me again. I’m only doing this for the sake of top-tier food!”
With that, he shoved both hands into his pockets, tossed his head back, and sauntered away with a slow, swaggering gait. His nonchalant, devil-may-care posture made him look like someone who had completely sworn off love, radiating pure edginess.
Once his figure vanished into the distance, the younger conjoined twin whispered, “Are we being kind of terrible right now?”
The older brother replied, “What of it? It’s not like any human could ever genuinely love a monster anyway. When the idiot tries this hard to win someone over, only to find out in the end that he gave his sincere heart to the wrong person, he’s definitely going to…”
Younger twin: “He’s going to go hide somewhere and cry his eyes out!”
The conjoined twin brothers locked eyes with each other and burst into harsh, gleeful laughter, thoroughly enjoying the drama without a care in the world.
The Old Gardener snipped off another flower and murmured in high spirits, “Looks like a good show is about to start.”
The moment night descended, a new batch of people was dragged into the terrifying slaughterhouse.
The individuals pulled into the killing fields each night were chosen at random. Rumor had it that only those who successfully survived five rounds of the game would earn a chance to escape the Crimson Moon Academy and break free from this nightmarish role-playing scenario.
The participants forced into tonight’s game prayed silently in their hearts that the executioner wouldn’t turn out to be the slasher. The good news was that tonight’s executioner was the Headless Woman; the bad news was that some survivors claimed they had caught a glimpse of the slasher wandering around.
How could there possibly be two executioners in a single game?!
“No, seriously, I really saw the slasher!”
A few survivors huddled behind a tree, frantically whispering to share information.
“You must have been so scared your eyes are playing tricks on you. There’s never been a game with two executioners before.”
“If there really are two of them, do we even stand a chance of surviving?!”
“Could I really have been mistaken?”
The survivor who had first claimed to see the slasher began to harbor doubts about himself. Come to think of it, he had only caught a fleeting glance while running for his life—yet in that brief moment, it looked as though the Slit-Mouthed Fiend was actually holding a bouquet of white flowers. How was that even possible?
He must have been seeing things.
“Hey, have either of you seen a certain woman?”
Without a sound, a shadowy figure materialized right in the middle of the huddling group of survivors. He was actively searching for someone, and proceeded to describe her distinctive features in meticulous detail.
“Her hair is very long and black, like dark water weeds in a stagnant pond. Her skin is super, super white, like chalk-gray whitewash. Her eyes are huge, almost like rotting black grapes, and her lips are bright red—she looks like she’s eaten human children before. She’s exceptionally short, too, shorter than the giant green onions the Old Gardener grows.”
Beneath his hood, a pair of eyes as lifeless as a pool of dead water stared without a ripple on the bandaged boy’s face. Cradling a bunch of white flowers, he squatted unceremoniously on the ground and drawled lazily, “Have any of you seen this woman?”
The survivors froze in place for a long time.
His deadpan eyes narrowed as a wave of displeasure leaked through. “Are you guys deaf or something?”
“Aaaah—!!! It’s the slasher!!!!”
Several unlucky souls scrambled to their feet, stumbling as they fled in every direction. One of them unfortunately collided head-on with the Headless Woman, prompting an even louder shriek. The next second, the head atop his own shoulders was yanked right off by the Headless Woman and mounted onto her neck.
She used her hands to twist the head around until it settled into the right position. With a man’s head perched atop a woman’s body, she wobbled unsteadily for a good while, taking strides that crashed into several trees before finally managing to balance herself.
Then, she spread her arms and bolted off in pursuit of the fleeing survivors—only for her left foot to trip over her right, sending her sprawling face-first onto the ground.
She let out a grievance-filled, muffled sob. From the man’s skull came a woman’s voice: “This is so hard… Going to work is so hard… I don’t want to work. Why do I still have to work even after dying? Waaah…”
Despite her tearful wailing, she stubbornly dragged herself back up, wiped away her tears, and valiantly tried her best to stifle her crying. Sniffling all the while, she broke into a run of tiny, hurried steps to resume hunting people down.
Behind the stone pillars of a small pavilion, Xia Miao shoved aside a leafy branch that had been blocking her view and popped her head out. Through careful observation, she had finally managed to piece together a rule of thumb: as long as she could successfully idle and stealth her way through until dawn, she would clear the game.
In other words, all she had to do was hide properly from start to finish.
Xia Miao crouched on the ground, inching her position forward bit by bit. But just as she turned around, her entire field of vision was abruptly swallowed by a massive expanse of white.
Unbeknownst to her, the tall, slender figure of the boy had materialized right before her eyes. He squatted there lazily, thrusting a huge bundle of white flowers directly toward her, while stubbornly turning his head away to gaze stubbornly into the nightscape in the opposite direction. Every single inch of his body language screamed absolute reluctance.
“Here. Stop being mad.”
Xia Miao didn’t make a sound.
Impatiently, he whipped his head back to glare at her, his gloomy eyes swirling with irritation. “Listen, enough is enough! If it weren’t for the fact that you actually taste delicious, I wouldn’t bother coming over to coax you. Don’t you dare start acting… acting spoiled just because I’m giving you attention!”
He had wanted to use the phrase “spoiled by favor,” an idiom he had previously picked up from the Old Gardener. But his literacy level was far too low, and he couldn’t quite remember it correctly.
To his utter astonishment, even though Xia Miao clearly saw him, she acted as if he were invisible. Shifting directions, she kept her posture low and continued inching away.
The boy’s eyes widened in disbelief. He scrambled after her, pressing right up against her right side. “Hey, you’re not allowed to ignore me!”
Xia Miao turned her head toward the opposite direction.
He immediately scurried over to her left side. “Dammit, if you dare ignore me one more time, see if I don’t gouge your eyes out!”
Xia Miao twisted her head away again.
Just yesterday, she had been so wildly passionate toward him, even mapping out a future of getting married and having babies—and now she wouldn’t even give him the time of day, treating him like transparent air. This woman was without a doubt the most cunning creature he had ever laid eyes on!
The pupils in both of his eyes constricted sharply. Beneath the bandages, his mouth pressed into a tight, thin line, fiercely resenting the feeling that he was currently putting on a one-man show.
Reaching out, he grabbed her arm and slammed her back against the trunk of a tree. His towering frame pressed in close as he bent down to loom over her, radiating an overwhelming, oppressive aura—the kind where he might pull out a knife the very next second to chop her into a bloody pulp and paint the air with the scent of carnage.
Yet, the next moment, his fiercely menacing warning was simply: “Don’t you dare play mute! Talk to me!”
He had been riled up to the point of fury and was all set to pull out his blade when he suddenly noticed Xia Miao reaching out and shoving his head firmly away. His head banged against the tree trunk with a sharp thud, sending a jolt of genuine pain through him.
“Don’t you even know how to apologize to a girl you like?!”
His brain had a rather limited capacity for processing complex verbal information. Once the words finally registered, his eyes bulged. “What kind of gibberish are you spouting?! What girl… what… like…?”
He wanted to mock her for being delusional and full of self-importance, but when he caught sight of Xia Miao’s flushed face—her dark, moist eyes reflecting only his own image—he froze.
For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly felt as though the temperature around them was climbing.