The second Lin Yan crawled out of the incense burner. Though he had a human form, his face was clearly sullen. He stood by the burner without moving, looking down at his palm, as if waiting for something.
Xu Zhiyi was also waiting nervously. In her anxiety, a wisp of smoke suddenly drifted out from beside her.
How was this any different from shouting through a megaphone that someone was here!
She was startled, quickly shut the window to block the smoke, and turned around to find what on earth was burning inexplicably.
It didn't take much effort to find it—it was burning right before her eyes.
—It was the phone in Lin Yan's hand.
In just a second or two, it burned away like spirit money, leaving only tiny ashes.
Xu Zhiyi frantically grabbed Lin Yan's hand to check, but thankfully there were no burn marks. His palm was also ice-cold, still that corpse-like temperature.
"I'm fine." He seemed to have just snapped back to reality.
Xu Zhiyi sighed in relief, then immediately rushed back to the window, opened it just enough to poke her head out, and looked at the bad-tempered-faced Lin Yan. Sure enough, the burned phone had returned to his hand.
After getting the phone, he took a step forward, casually picked a direction, and began to wander. His hand gripped the phone tightly, and after just a few steps, he had to take it out and glance at the screen.
After a long while, no third version of Lin Yan crawled out of the incense burner.
But Xu Zhiyi was still staring at the direction of the burner, her expression somewhat complicated.
If she remembered correctly, she had just confirmed that this phone only had one function—viewing her photos.
The bad-tempered Lin Yan just wanted to look at her.
Xu Zhiyi thought of the sad tone and gesture when he had tried to hold her hand, and she felt a pang of emotion. It was like seeing a lonely elderly version of Lin Yan, and she immediately shed two tears out of heartache.
Just as she raised her hand to wipe the corner of her eye, her peripheral vision caught the genuine Lin Yan beside her with a gloomy expression, seemingly in a bad mood as well.
Xu Zhiyi said with genuine feeling: "Brother, are you sad for him too?"
Lin Yan: "…"
"I am quite sad." He pinched her tear-stained finger and let out a laugh. "Then tell me, between your brother and him, who do you think is more pitiable?"
Xu Zhiyi was stunned by the question. Upholding the principle of answering her brother's questions truthfully, she began to seriously ponder the issue.
The brother wandering alone on the playground, and the brother with no body heat and pale skin.
The temperature around them dropped lower and lower the longer she remained silent.
Fortunately, she was dressed quite warmly, so the low temperature didn't affect her fair judgment too much.
She was just about to speak when Lin Yan suddenly glanced down casually. "Take your time thinking. Brother has something to do—I'll head down for a bit."
That tone sounded rather frightening. Xu Zhiyi immediately straightened her expression and said, "Brother is the more pitiable one. I was sad for him because I saw his situation and thought of you."
The pitiable brother's brows relaxed, as if pleased by her coaxing, but he still insisted on going downstairs, saying with a high-sounding excuse that they couldn't stay in the teaching building forever—to escape the Instance, they still had to leave through the school gate.
Xu Zhiyi held his hand tightly, wary of him harming himself. She leaned against him, and naturally didn't notice the deep reluctance and attachment in his eyes.
After experiencing the two Lin Yan incidents, Xu Zhiyi actually felt that she could go change her answer.
The good-student dream team of Squad Two was fake.
But the strange students of Squad One weren't all that real either.
She looked from afar at the whiteboard on the main stage, her gaze sweeping over the shuffling monsters, no longer afraid of them.
They were creatures born of longing, carrying gentle emotions.
But she didn't walk toward the main stage to change her answer, nor did she even tell Lin Yan about her change of heart. She simply tilted her head up and asked him, "Brother, we can go home together, right?"
Lin Yan gave a slight nod and hummed in agreement.
Xu Zhiyi said nothing more.
The Huamei Middle School they were in was actually a very small school—so small that the track looked like it would take four laps to complete eight hundred meters.
The first time Xu Zhiyi went to an amusement park, it was also a place about the size of a palm. Standing in front of the carousel at the entrance, she could already see the last ride at the far end of the park.
It was too small—there was no risk of a child getting lost.
But for that entire afternoon, Xu Zhiyi still never left Lin Yan's side. They had only become brother and sister not long ago, yet she overcame her shyness and held tightly onto his hand, afraid to be separated from him.
She was just a little worried.
Lin Yan would be like Xu Songsheng—she had only been distracted by a kite by the roadside for a moment, and she never saw her father again.
When she was younger, she would curl up at home and refuse to go out, as if as long as she held fast to that anchor point, home would always be there. But now that she had grown, she knew that anywhere could be home. What she wanted to hold onto was just the person in that home.
She only had her brother.
She only wanted her brother.
He had revealed that he wasn't a player, and his attitude toward going home together was so vague. With a little deduction, Xu Zhiyi knew that Lin Yan could no longer leave the Instance.
Then she would stay here.
Of course, the clever younger sister didn't call out her brother. She merely invited him to go back and be mushrooms by the gate wall, as if she had very strong expectations of leaving the Instance.
Lin Yan agreed.
But he also asked her to go check the main stage area again, so Xu Zhiyi had no choice but to reluctantly walk toward the incense burner.
Since Lin Yan wasn't in his all-powerful shadow form, and to avoid running into the fake brother again, they carefully circled around the flower beds, tiptoeing slowly toward the incense burner.
It was large enough for both of them to hide in.
Inside the round opening was half a burner of tilted incense ash, with three sticks of incense inserted—brown, as thick as an arm, burned more than halfway, glowing with a dim red light.
Xu Zhiyi had to pretend to be a fool who couldn't see anything, so she lowered her head.
There was a shallow circular indentation on the ground, as if someone had stood there for years with a cane, praying to the gods and Buddha.
Teacher Hua Mei.
She recited the name in her heart.
She could almost see that kind, gentle face, surrounded by two groups of students, noisily calling out to her, like twins demanding fairness.
Teacher Hua Mei must have known which ones were real and which were fake, but just like Xu Zhiyi's own feelings when facing two brothers, they were so gentle and so sad—how could one casually say that was false?
The patterns carved on the surface of the incense burner were intricate and beautiful. Xu Zhiyi leaned down, slowly reached out her hand, and touched the grooves on it.
The incense burner didn't change at all.
Lin Yan pulled back her wrist, like holding back a young child curious about fire.
"Don't touch things in the Instance casually," he said.
Xu Zhiyi obediently took Lin Yan's hand and said, "Alright, alright, we've done our exploring now. It's time to happily go squat by the wall and wait for the gate to open so we can leave school, right?"
"Right, big brother?"
Lin Yan asked gently, "Xu Zhiyi, don't you want to double-check your answer?"
Xu Zhiyi tilted her head. "No, I'm sure. The Smile Squad are fake students. Big brother, you're just confused."
She stubbornly pulled him along, slowly retreating to the hidden spot behind the flower beds, heading toward the direction of the gate.
Lin Yan remained silent, but Xu Zhiyi's mood was considerably lighter.
After walking a few meters, she inexplicably turned back to glance at the incense burner.
Maybe it was just a matter of perspective—things farther away appearing smaller.
It seemed to have shrunk a little.
She froze for half a second, then turned her head back calmly as if nothing had happened.
If it shrinks, it shrinks.
She still had to go squat by the wall with Lin Yan.
But fate had other plans.
When they were still some distance from their original wall-side base, Lin Yan suddenly stopped and held back Xu Zhiyi, who had been looking down at her thoughts and about to keep walking toward the gate.
"Look." He pointed at the base of the tree.
Xu Zhiyi looked up, confused, and once she saw it clearly, she gasped sharply.
The morning light was faint, and everything seemed peaceful and serene.
But the tree that had been dozens of centimeters away from the wall was now pressed flush against the wall with no gap behind it, while a thick pile of dirt was heaped in front—clearly because it had been pushed forward, its roots forced to tear up the ground.
The school was shrinking.
Realizing this, Xu Zhiyi's scalp went numb. She had no idea how much longer the ghost-catch-human game would last, but judging by the speed at which the walls were closing in, they might soon be squeezed into two thin slices.
Lin Yan listened to her doomsday pronouncement and smiled. "It's fine. When that happens, I'll hold you up. You can just sit on my shoulders."
"…Then what about you?"
"I'll probably become a paper ghost."
"……"