She had no idea how long she lay rigid on the bed.
The extreme fear began to blur the edges of her consciousness.
She was just beginning to drift toward the threshold of sleep when a faint, barely-there sound jolted her back.
Someone was talking.
The sound was coming from the corridor — muffled through the door, indistinct, like hushed whispering just outside.
Xiao Hui snapped awake at once, her mind a tangle of alarm and confusion.
It was well past ten o’clock.
Who was out there?
Who in their right mind would be wandering the corridor at this hour?
Did they have some kind of death wish?
The maid’s warning was still fresh in her ears: You must not leave your room.
But who could it be?
She ran quickly through the remaining group in her head.
Wrench, that reckless idiot — more than likely.
But Artist?
No.
She was far too timid to dare.
Shirogane?
That little girl seemed like the type who followed rules to the letter.
Or… had a few of them slipped out together to quietly work something out?
Were they plotting strategy without her?
A flicker of indignation rose in her chest.
Why hadn’t they included her?
Curiosity overpowered fear.
She had to know what was happening on the other side of that door.
She carefully peeled back the covers, swung her bare feet to the floor, and eased herself down from the bed.
The cold bite of the floorboards made her toes curl involuntarily.
She hunched low, shuffling inch by inch toward the door, then pressed her ear gently against it and held her breath, straining to make out the sounds beyond.
The corridor sounds were still indistinct.
She was concentrating every scrap of her attention on listening — and then a voice rang out, perfectly clear, right against her ear.
“Qianhui…”
It was as though someone had leaned in and breathed the word directly into her ear, warm breath tickling her earlobe.
“Ah!”
Xiao Hui nearly leapt out of her skin.
She lurched instinctively sideways — and pitched face-first straight into the wall.
Her chest absorbed most of the impact, which, on reflection, had a certain cushioning effect; she bounced back without any real injury, though the dull ache was immediate.
She had no time to dwell on the pain.
She clapped both hands over her mouth in terror and pressed herself against the wall, eyes wide, stare locked on the door, heart slamming so hard she thought it might crack a rib.
What — what was that just now?
The whispering in the corridor had stopped.
Silence had reclaimed the space beyond the door.
She waited a long time.
Nothing.
No movement, no banging, none of the horrors she had braced for.
Slowly, she began to calm down — and only then, with belated clarity, did she realize: that voice outside the door… it had sounded remarkably like Student.
Yes.
His voice, exactly.
Softer, more indistinct, but the same quality of tone.
Xiao Hui’s thoughts dissolved into chaos.
But why would Student be out in the corridor after ten o’clock?
And why would he come to her room?
An absurd thought surfaced unbidden, and her heart gave a traitorous little leap.
Could it be…
Xiao Hui straightened up, almost unconsciously.
She had always been confident in her looks and her figure.
In her stream, fans would compete fiercely, outbidding each other for the privilege of sending her gifts.
Student seemed cold, sure — but at the end of the day, he was still just a teenage boy, at exactly the age when curiosity about the opposite sex ran at its most unruly peak.
And she was a polished, fashionable, widely adored woman with an audience of thousands.
Was it really so hard to believe that an inexperienced high-school boy might find himself drawn to an older girl like her?
Wasn’t that… entirely understandable?
Maybe he’d noticed her during the day and been too shy to say anything.
So he’d waited until nightfall, and crept over to find her.
The more she turned it over, the more sense it seemed to make.
The fear dissolved, replaced by something harder to name — a warm, slightly foolish swell of vanity.
So he isn’t as cold as he seems after all.
The corners of Xiao Hui’s mouth curved upward before she could stop them.
She moved to the door, straightened her dishevelled collar, drew a slow breath, and let her hand settle on the door handle.
She was ready to open it.
Better let him in quickly — talking in the corridor was far too dangerous.
But in the very instant before her wrist turned to pull the handle, she stopped.
A chill — sourceless, impossible to name — shot up her spine from the base of her tailbone.
Something is wrong.
Something is very wrong.
The vanity-drunk haze in Xiao Hui’s head began, at last, to clear.
She thought carefully back over everything Student had done throughout the day.
Calm.
Decisive.
Almost no unnecessary emotional display at all.
His eyes were always still.
When he looked at her, there was not the slightest difference from the way he looked at Wrench, or at Programmer.
Was he really the type of person who could be so thoroughly ruled by attraction that he would risk his life to come to someone’s door in the middle of the night?
And then there was Shirogane.
If she was being honest, it seemed obvious that Student regarded Shirogane with a markedly warmer eye than he regarded her.
If he really had some urgent need — or really had lost the battle against some adolescent impulse — he would go to Shirogane.
Why would he come to her?
One doubt after another rose in her mind, drenching those foolish romantic notions until there was nothing left of them.
She snatched her hand from the door handle as though burned.
The maid’s warning came back to her.
Shirogane’s analysis came back to her.
In this manor, the most fundamental rule of survival was to follow the rules.
Do not leave your room after ten o’clock at night.
Which meant that the inverse should also hold: as long as she stayed in her room, she was absolutely safe.
That voice… that voice claiming to be Student… it was trying to lure her into opening the door.
Cold sweat began to seep down Xiao Hui’s back.
She didn’t dare let the thought run any further — and yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to let it go entirely.
What if?
What if she really was overthinking it, and Student genuinely had some urgent reason to find her?
She set her teeth, and made a decision.
Slowly — very slowly — she brought her eye to the door’s peephole.
In the half-second before her eye met the lens, a cascade of horror-film classics flashed through her mind — the classic peephole moment, where the person looking out sees an eye staring back at them, or a face pressed up close, blown up into something grotesque and enormous.
She shuddered, almost pulling back.
But in the end, curiosity won.
She looked through the small circular lens at what lay beyond the door.
The corridor lights were stuttering — flickering on and off, casting everything in a shifting, uneasy pall.
But…
There was nothing there.
An empty corridor, stretching away into unbroken darkness.
No Student.
No figure of any kind.
The voice that had called to her had vanished without a trace, as though it had never existed at all — as though it had been nothing more than a waking dream.
Xiao Hui’s heart sank.
She was just about to pull her eye away from the lens when a detail she had overlooked suddenly blazed back into her mind.
Every drop of blood in her body seemed to freeze.
She remembered now.
That voice — from the very first word to the last — had called her Qianhui.
Her real name.
How could Student possibly know her real name?
When they had introduced themselves, she had given the name Xiao Hui.
She had said nothing else.
So…
That voice outside hadn’t been Student at all.
Or rather — what was it?
The fear that crashed through her was total.
Whatever was out there had mimicked Student’s voice.
It had known her real name.
It had been trying to get her to open the door.
If she had actually opened it just now…
She didn’t dare finish the thought.
She scrambled back from the door on all fours.
“I’m safe in the room… I’m safe in the room…”
She could only repeat the words again and again, a mantra to hypnotize herself into something like calm.
As long as I don’t open the door, I’ll be fine.
It can’t get in.
Xiao Hui’s chest heaved.
The belated terror was sinking in fully now.
Thank god.
Thank god she had managed to collect herself at the last moment.
She lifted her head unsteadily and looked around at the small room.
It was modest — barely furnished.
But in this moment, those four walls offered her an immeasurable sense of security.
She rose slowly and made her way back toward the bed.
Tonight would be sleepless regardless, but lying down was still better than standing here staring at nothing.
She turned around.
And in the instant she turned, every movement in her body stopped.
A gaze — ice-cold, bone-deep — had fastened onto her like a nail driven through her skin.
It was a gaze saturated with malice.
Venomous.
Undisguised.
And that gaze…
Was coming from inside the room.
Every hair on Xiao Hui’s body stood on end in the same instant, a wave of cold surging up from the soles of her feet to the crown of her skull.
What was happening?
What was happening?
She was inside the room.
Wasn’t the room supposed to be absolutely safe?!
Her mind went completely blank.
Her body locked up where it stood, unable to move.
She could feel it with terrible clarity — a pair of bloodshot eyes, somewhere in the shadows of this room, boring into her without blinking.
She didn’t dare move.
All she could do was sweep the room frantically with her peripheral vision.
The walls?
Nothing.
Under the desk?
Nothing.
The ceiling?
Nothing either.
Where was that gaze coming from?
Then Xiao Hui’s thoughts came to a dead stop.
A question surfaced in her mind — one that made her soul want to flee her body.
Why — why did she know those were blood-red eyes?
Unless…
Unless she had already seen them.
Xiao Hui’s pupils contracted sharply.
The realization hit her all at once.
Moving with terrible stiffness, she lowered her gaze.
Slowly, she looked toward the bed she had been lying in moments before.
Looked toward the narrow gap between the bed frame and the floor.
And then she saw it.
In the absolute, impenetrable darkness beneath the bed, a pair of eyes stared directly back at her.
They were blood-red.
They were full of an endless, fathomless malice.