Lu Xiaoran whispered to Su Ning, “I suspect that bitch is up to something.”
Su Ning didn’t think much of it.
Shen Ji, who was eating a small cake, twitched the tips of his ears.
Su Ning asked, “What if one of the two people in a team can’t hold out during the dare and quits?”
Bu Zhongyao said, “Then we only need to punish that person.”
The rules Bu Zhongyao had set didn’t seem to have any problems.
After all, this was how they had always played before.
Holding the box, Bu Zhongyao walked up to Su Ning.
“Su Ning, you’re my favorite bestie.
To show you my respect, you should draw first.”
Su Ning didn’t move.
Bu Zhongyao gave Gu Yueshuo a look.
Gu Yueshuo immediately walked over.
“Zhongyao, let me go first!”
He reached into the box and pulled out a slip of paper with the number “4” written on it.
He even showed it to everyone else to prove that there was nothing wrong with the draw.
Bu Zhongyao looked a little hurt.
“Ning Ning, aren’t we best friends anymore?”
The others started teasing her.
“Zhongyao is about to cry.
Ning Ning, just draw one.
You’re the most popular person here.
If you don’t draw first, none of us will dare to do it.”
Lu Zhizhi secretly glanced at Su Ning several more times.
She only felt that this girl was too beautiful, almost excessively so.
Without even trying, she gave people a sense of pressure.
When Lu Zhizhi first came to the school, she had already noticed that all her classmates seemed to be flattering Su Ning.
Now that she had seen it for herself, Lu Zhizhi was convinced that Su Ning was probably the kind of school bully in this school.
Just like in those youth idol dramas, there was always a beautiful girl who led a group of girls around to bully others.
Su Ning glanced at Bu Zhongyao, then reached into the box and pulled out a slip of paper.
When she opened it, the number on it was also “4.”
Gu Yueshuo was surprised.
“Su Ning, we actually drew the same number!”
The others joked about how it must be fate.
Shen Ji took another bite of his cream cake without saying a word.
Bu Zhongyao was very generous about her boyfriend being teamed up with another girl.
She didn’t seem unhappy at all.
Instead, she smiled and had everyone else draw their slips.
Lu Zhizhi drew a “6,” and Lu Xiaoran also drew a “6.”
Xuan Yuan Mo and Bu Zhongyao drew “3.”
As for Shen Ji, he drew “0.” No one else had drawn “0” except him.
Bu Zhongyao was puzzled.
Had she even written a “0”?
She remembered that she had started with “1.”
No, that wasn’t right.
She had clearly counted the number of people before preparing the slips.
So how had one person ended up without a partner?
Did that mean there was one extra person, or was someone missing?
Bu Zhongyao didn’t think too much about it.
She simply guessed that someone might have shown up without telling her beforehand, or that someone had something come up at the last minute and hadn’t made it.
Fortunately, Shen Ji said he didn’t mind doing the dare alone, so the game could begin as planned.
The dare for Lu Zhizhi and Lu Xiaoran was to go to the old boiler room behind the cafeteria late at night, take a photo, and come back.
Someone had died in that boiler room before.
Bu Zhongyao and Xuan Yuan Mo had to go downstairs to the girls’ Building B dormitory and take a photo of Room 503’s window.
The lights there would flicker from time to time.
Shen Ji had to go to the abandoned general building, find the art room that had been burned in a fire many years ago, and take a photo of the easel that had been half burned.
Naturally, according to the rumors, someone had died there too.
…
All the dares they had drawn were related to people who had died.
Only Su Ning and Gu Yueshuo had drawn a dare that involved staying in a room and watching an entire horror movie.
Bu Zhongyao took out a disc kept inside a box.
Lowering her voice and putting on an eerie tone, she said, “This is something good I found online.
It’s supposedly the scariest horror movie from twenty years ago.
Even the bravest person won’t be able to handle it.
There’s a surveillance camera outside the screening room.
If either of you runs out before the movie is finished, you’ll fail!”
Gu Yueshuo straightened his back.
“It’s just a horror movie.
What’s there to be afraid of?”
He added, “Of course, if Su Ning is scared, we can just give up.”
Su Ning was talking to Shen Ji.
“Are you afraid of going to the art room alone?”
Shen Ji shook his head.
“I’m not afraid.”
Only then did Su Ning feel a little more at ease.
She told him to call her if anything happened.
Then she walked into the screening room.
“Whoever gets scared is a dog.”
Gu Yueshuo exchanged a glance with Bu Zhongyao and hurried inside after her.
Everyone who had drawn a dare headed off in their respective directions.
No one wanted to admit defeat in a courage test like this.
The screening room was dimly lit.
The horror movie hadn’t even started yet, but the atmosphere was already in place.
Gu Yueshuo asked Su Ning again, “You’re really not scared, right?”
Su Ning sat down on the sofa.
“Stop wasting time.
Hurry up.”
Gu Yueshuo said nothing more.
He took out the disc and put it into the old-fashioned DVD player.
He quickly sat down on the sofa as well.
At least he had some manners and kept a proper distance from Su Ning.
Of course, if she became scared and needed comfort, he could quickly pull her into his arms.
The television screen first filled with flickering static.
After a burst of electrical noise, an image appeared.
In a dimly lit room, there was a mirror hanging on the wall.
A woman in a white dress sat in front of it, brushing her hair.
Her face couldn’t be seen.
Only her back was visible.
Slowly, eerie music began to play.
It was a gentle, broken melody, but it didn’t make anyone feel relaxed.
Instead, the slow rhythm, the drawn-out endings of the notes, and the old-fashioned quality of the footage made it even more gloomy and terrifying.
Gu Yueshuo was already feeling a little creeped out inside.
Where had Bu Zhongyao even gotten this movie?
A minute passed, and the woman was still brushing her hair.
Su Ning covered her mouth and yawned.
Gu Yueshuo suddenly saw the television screen flicker.
A pale, ghastly face appeared in the mirror.
Caught completely off guard, he shuddered all over.
Gu Yueshuo quickly composed himself.
“N-Nothing.”
It was a horror movie.
Of course there would be scary scenes.
The woman on the television was still brushing her hair.
Su Ning suspected she was going to brush herself bald.
Bored, she leaned back against the sofa, feeling sleepy as she watched.
Just as Su Ning closed her eyes, Gu Yueshuo watched in horror as the woman’s head in the mirror suddenly turned a full 360 degrees.
He screamed.
Su Ning was startled awake by his scream.
She looked at the television, only to see that the woman was still brushing her hair.
She looked at him strangely.
“What’s so scary about brushing your hair?”
Gu Yueshuo forced himself to calm down.
“I-I just bit my tongue.
I wasn’t scared.”
Su Ning glanced at him before turning her attention back to the screen.
The scene on the television finally changed.
After the screen flickered several times, a well appeared.
Su Ning stared at the well for quite a while, but she couldn’t see anything unusual happening.
Bored, she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
At that exact moment, a woman crawled out of the well.
Gu Yueshuo knew this was a classic horror movie trick.
For today, he had watched over a hundred horror movies.
He wasn’t afraid at all!
The woman crawled out of the well, her body moving across the ground in a twisted and eerie position.
She crawled closer and closer to the camera, as if she were getting closer and closer to the television.
Gu Yueshuo’s nerves were stretched to the limit.
He faintly felt that something was wrong.
Wasn’t this woman getting a little too close to the camera?
His phone suddenly rang.
Gu Yueshuo instinctively pulled out his phone and answered it.
A rustling sound came through the phone.
Then a woman’s eerie breathing could be heard.
“You will die in seven days…”
He looked at the number.
It was an unknown call.
There was no number displayed.
Just as Gu Yueshuo was starting to panic, he suddenly caught sight of something from the corner of his eye.
The long-haired woman with her face hidden behind her hair had stretched ten twisted fingers out of the television screen.
Gu Yueshuo screamed.
“Mom!”
Terrified, he jumped to his feet and ran straight out of the room.
Su Ning’s ears hurt from Gu Yueshuo’s scream.
She looked at the television screen.
The woman in the white dress, her face hidden beneath her long, loose hair, was crouching on the ground.
She was even singing,
“Make it, make it, make a flower basket, make a flower basket and take it up the southern mountain…”
Those ten stiff fingers were having quite a hard time weaving a flower basket.
Didn’t the director even know how to find a hand double?
Su Ning looked in the direction Gu Yueshuo had run.
She simply couldn’t understand.
What was there to be afraid of?