An old woman leaning on a cane stood there in a floral shirt. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, her hair gone completely white. She smiled cheerfully at the two of them. “What is it, young lady?”
“Grandma, do you happen to have a spare lock? Ours is broken, and we checked the nearby shops but couldn’t find one.” Zhang Xiangyi spoke sweetly, holding Xiao Xingzhi’s arm while keeping a grip on the fruit knife.
Her looks were the cute type that easily won over the elderly.
“Hm? Even the Fugui family is out? I just bought one there last time, and there were clearly plenty left.”
The old woman’s facial muscles twitched. The corners of her mouth pulled further back, as if she were holding something in.
Zhang Xiangyi tightened her grip on the knife and sighed without changing her expression. “Maybe they sold out too fast. Do you have any spares yourself, Grandma?”
“I don’t. You should go ask Fugui himself, he might still have some at his place.”
“And—”
The old woman’s eyes suddenly bulged as if they’d pop out, while her pupils shrank to pinpoints. Her facial muscles snapped taut, and her once-kind smile twisted eerily.
“You don’t actually not know where Fugui lives, do you? Everyone in our building knows…”
“Of course we know. But there was no one at 1-1, Grandma.”
At that, the old woman’s expression returned to normal. She looked at Zhang Xiangyi with even more fondness. “Then just wait until tonight. He usually gets back around ten.”
“Thank you, Grandma. We’ll head back now.”
Xiao Xingzhi slung an arm around Zhang Xiangyi and led her upstairs. Leaning down, he whispered in her ear, “You’re pretty sharp.”
“If I were dumb, how would I have gotten the same score as you?!”
Zhang Xiangyi glared at him. Same score, same major, same top rank in the year, she didn’t see what there was to doubt about her intelligence.
“The exam that year was just easier for you.”
“Shut up!”
“So what now?”
“Let’s go fix the door first. It’s almost dinnertime anyway, we should head back and eat. I’m a little hungry.” Xiao Xingzhi touched his stomach. “And judging by that old woman just now, the residents in this building aren’t normal. Whether it’s—”
“Ah—!”
A scream rang out, freezing them both.
On instinct they searched their minds for the source and realized it was one of the players they’d met earlier. Without hesitation they ran toward the sound.
The story clearly hadn’t truly started yet, so someone shouldn’t be dying this soon.
Beginner instances usually aren’t too hard. Since this was a puzzle type, its danger level definitely wasn’t the highest, the survival types were the real risk.
Neither of them could understand what might kill someone before the story had even been triggered.
Third-floor stairwell—
When they arrived, a fat man was slumped in the middle of the corridor. There was a hole in his chest, and something inside seemed to be missing.
Every resident’s door was shut, but a pool of blood outside unit 3-2 had been dragged all the way to where the fat man now lay.
Hearing a faint “creak,” Xiao Xingzhi didn’t stop to think. He grabbed Zhang Xiangyi and ran back to their room, locked the door, then said, “It was 3-2. They dug out his heart.”
Zhang Xiangyi’s expression wasn’t good. “Did 3-2 just try to open their door earlier?”
“Maybe we made too much noise.” Xiao Xingzhi steadied his breathing, not sure whether there’d been danger in that moment, or whether 3-2 would have killed them too.
But running had definitely been the right call.
Zhang Xiangyi recalled what she’d just seen and matched it against the people they’d met that afternoon. “The dead one was from 4-1. When we first came out, I noticed it. 4-1 had two people, while 4-2 and 4-3 each had only one.”
“In other words, 4-1 still has one person left. You think this has something to do with that other person?”
Xiao Xingzhi handed her a cup of warm water, then took some 502 glue [1] 502, a popular Chinese brand of cyanoacrylate “super glue” jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2691967_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2691967_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); out of the TV cabinet. “Who cares if it’s related. We don’t even know how the game assigns things. Maybe those two people didn’t even know each other to begin with. Strangers sharing a room is dangerous enough.”
“You stay here. I’ll go seal the door.”
“Take the knife.” Zhang Xiangyi pulled the fruit knife from her pocket and tossed it to him calmly. “Don’t die out there.”
“Don’t worry.”
There wasn’t much more to say. Although it was their first time meeting, they got along fairly well. It would’ve been even better if Xiao Xingzhi talked a little less and had a thinner skin.
Zhang Xiangyi didn’t sit idle either. Checking the time, she went into the kitchen.
It was as if Xiao Xingzhi had timed it, just as she finished setting the table, he came back.
“It’s sealed.”
“All right, then let’s eat.”
“I’ll wash my hands first.”
After laying out the dishes and chopsticks, Zhang Xiangyi watched Xiao Xingzhi come out from washing his hands and frowned slightly. Something about him felt off.
The face was still Xiao Xingzhi’s, but the overall feeling was wrong. Xiao Xingzhi would never be this quiet.
She smiled faintly and handed him a bowl. “Hubby, have you seen my fruit knife? I’ve been looking everywhere and can’t find it.”
“Ah? I’ll go check.”
The moment he turned around, Zhang Xiangyi tightened her grip on the bowl, raised it, and smashed it down hard on his head. Gripping the shattered shards, she slashed hard across “Xiao Xingzhi’s” neck. “Xiao Xingzhi” crumpled to the floor and quickly dissolved into a wisp of black smoke, vanishing completely.
The hand holding the shard trembled faintly. At that very moment, the door was pounded loudly, thud, thud, thud.
“Babe! Babe, open up! It’s me! Babe!”
All right, this time it was the real Xiao Xingzhi.
Forcing her mind steady, Zhang Xiangyi opened the door still holding the shard she’d just “killed” with, looking like a god of slaughter and scaring Xiao Xingzhi badly. “You… I didn’t do anything, did I?”
“Come in first.”
“Okay.”
Xiao Xingzhi obediently came in. Seeing the fragments on the floor, he took the initiative to pick them up. “What happened?”
“A monster impersonated you.”
“You weren’t hurt, were you?”
“No. Clean it up and get your own bowl for dinner.”
At exactly 19:00, the sky flipped from day to night without giving anyone time to react.
Bang!
Just as Xiao Xingzhi turned on the light, his expression changed. Zhang Xiangyi sensed something wrong too. She opened the balcony door and looked down. In the open space below the building lay a person, blood slowly seeping from their head.
In an instant, screams broke out one after another. Someone even shouted, “Someone jumped! Call the police!”
“Let’s go down.”
The moment Xiao Xingzhi opened the door, the other three doors opened too. All five of them said nothing and immediately ran downstairs.
They reached the outside without obstruction. Besides the five of them, many residents had already gathered around the body.
Zhang Xiangyi looked up toward the rooftop. “Did they jump from up there?”
Seeing more people coming out, Xiao Xingzhi tugged her. “Let’s check the rooftop later.”
“That’s Fugui!”
“Fugui? Isn’t Fugui supposed to be at his shop? I just bought a bag of cotton candy for my son, and when I left, Fugui even gave me a lollipop.”
“No, that’s not Fugui. Fugui has a mole at the corner of his mouth, a matchmaker’s mole [2] a mole near the mouth, traditionally read as the mark of a smooth talker jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2691967_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2691967_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });!”
“Yes, yes, I remember that!”
“Did anyone call the police?”
“They did, they did. The police are on their way. Damn it, how does someone just jump like that…”
“What’s there to brood over in life? One little setback and they can’t take it. Young people these days…”
Xiao Xingzhi held Zhang Xiangyi’s hand and stood at the outer edge of the crowd. The front was packed. The other three, who’d planned to push closer, ended up beside them too.
4-3: “The storyline’s finally starting to surface. But who is this person really? They look like Fugui, but also not.”
4-1: “What I want to know more is, who is Fugui?”
Zhang Xiangyi glanced at the girl from 4-1. She was quite tall, around 1.8 meters, with a strong, mature big-sister air. She looked very calm, her roommate had just died, and here she was looking at a corpse with little reaction.
“I’d rather know how the person in your room died.” Xiao Xingzhi pulled Zhang Xiangyi over to his other side. “He died on the third floor. Where were you at that time?”
“Handsome, isn’t the focus right now the person who jumped?” 4-1 covered their mouth and smiled, blinking at Xiao Xingzhi. “Besides, I wasn’t close with that fat guy anyway.”
“Bro, you’re overdoing it.” Xiao Xingzhi frowned, a wave of disgust rising. A grown man acting like a seductive woman was just unsettling.
Apart from Xiao Xingzhi and 4-1, the other three all widened their eyes. A… man?
4-1’s expression flickered, then quickly smoothed over. He shrugged. “Well, all I can say is the fat guy and I split up. He went to the third floor, I went to the fifth. As for how he died, I really don’t know.”
“Did you find anything?” the 4-2 girl asked.
“I only knocked on 5-1’s door. A lecherous, disgusting man.” 4-1 seemed to recall something unpleasant, his face darkening. “The moment I went in he kept trying to grope me. Couldn’t answer a single thing I asked. Useless.”
The man from 4-3 chuckled. “You’re both men anyway. It’s not like you’d lose anything.”
4-1 rolled his eyes.
Soon the police arrived. They were no different from the ones in real life.
They dispersed the crowd, set up a cordon…
After being sent off, when the five of them reached the fourth floor, the man from 4-1 suddenly spoke as he closed his door: “By the way, that creep doesn’t seem picky about women either.”
4-3 adjusted his glasses and walked slowly to his own door. Unlocking it, he said, “6-1 is a family of three, not home. 6-2 and 6-3 are vacant. 6-4 is a woman living alone, supposedly resting at home due to illness, though she seemed pretty energetic to me. The info on the other three units came from her too. Whether it’s true, you’ll have to judge for yourselves.”
After all, this was a solo instance. Getting this much information already counted as impressive.
Seeing this, Zhang Xiangyi traded a glance with Xiao Xingzhi. She pursed her lips and nudged him forward. “You talk too much, you go.”
Xiao Xingzhi: …
“Fugui runs a small shop outside the apartment, not inside the building.”
Of the four units, only three had been mentioned.
Everyone’s attention shifted to the girl from 4-2.
Stared at by everyone, the girl bowed her head and said timidly, “S-sorry… after what happened this afternoon, I didn’t dare go out. I don’t have any information to share.”
After she finished, no one said much. They all went back to their rooms to wait for the police questioning.
“Tsk, 4-2 isn’t simple.”
“Just don’t set your sights on us.”
Zhang Xiangyi didn’t really have an opinion on it. Everyone had their own choices, as long as they could bear the consequences.
The identity of the jumper still hadn’t been confirmed.
Sitting upright, Zhang Xiangyi’s mind began assembling a logical structure on its own, but she found that none of the threads connected properly.
The old woman from 1-4 knew Fugui from the 1-1 shop. The person who jumped also resembled Fugui.
Was Fugui a twin?
“Should we go check the rooftop now?” Zhang Xiangyi nudged Xiao Xingzhi, slumped on the sofa. “The police will need time to question each unit. If we go now it’ll be quick, and once they arrive, we won’t be able to.”
“Then hurry.”
Xiao Xingzhi got up at once and pulled Zhang Xiangyi toward the door.
For some reason the stairwell, normally lit at the faintest sound, was now pitch dark. Even the green “EXIT” sign had gone out.
“Zhang Xiangyi.”
“Hmm?”
“Zhang Xiangyi.” His voice trembled slightly.
“Hmm?”
“Zhang—”
“You’d better have a reason!”
“I… you walk in front…”
Zhang Xiangyi didn’t expect that. After two seconds of thought, she found it a bit funny, but still moved up front. “So you’re afraid of the dark, Xiao Xingzhi?”
In the dark, Xiao Xingzhi was practically glued to her back, still trying to sound tough. “Afraid? There’s no such word as ‘afraid’ in my dictionary!”
“Then you walk in front?”
“…Sister~”
They lowered their breathing and counted the steps in their heads. In the end, they reached the rooftop entrance without incident.
The door…
Was wide open.
References[+]