Pei Hu's face had drained of every drop of colour; he staggered backward several steps, arms windmilling, until his back slammed against the opposite wall. The impact knocked a startled gasp out of him, but it also seemed to anchor him back into his body.
"Are you alright? What happened?" Wang Wenlong and Xia Meili came running from the left corridor, flashlights cutting frantic white arcs through the gloom.
"It's nothing, don't mind him," Wang Hailong said quickly, though his own knees were still trembling and the corners of his mouth kept twitching upward in a nervous tic he couldn't control. "Just a bunch of mannequins. Really well-made ones." He forced a laugh that cracked halfway through.
Even with mental preparation, the sight through the window hit the newcomers like a physical blow. Twenty-four lifeless figures arranged in perfect classroom rows were disturbing enough, but the way every single neck had twisted—some a full one-hundred-eighty degrees so that cracked, painted smiles faced the door while bodies remained seated—was the stuff of nightmares no amount of bravado could shrug off. Xia Meili's hand flew to her mouth; Dou Menglu took an involuntary step back, pressing against Wang Hailong's chest.
"So the earlier classrooms were purposely tame," Wang Wenlong muttered, forcing his breathing to steady. "Classic misdirection. Save the big one for here." He was the calmest of the group, analytical mind already working. He flicked on his phone's flashlight despite Xia Meili's warning hiss of "The boss said no phones!" and swept the beam across the room. "He doesn't know we're using it. Look—the light's reflecting off plastic skin and glass eyes. None of them blinked. They're definitely mannequins." The beam paused. "Wait. Nametags! Two of them!"
"Where?" Four heads snapped toward the window.
"One pinned to the centre mannequin's blazer, another on the desk at the very back," Wang Wenlong said, voice tight with greedy excitement. "We have to go inside."
"This boss is evil!" Dou Menglu whispered. "Thank god we came in a group. If someone tried this alone they'd piss themselves."
"Stop hyping the place and lowering our own courage," Wang Hailong growled, pacing in tight circles until blood returned to his legs. "There's probably more than two tags in there. We're not leaving until we clean the room out."
Pei Hu, still plastered against the wall, shook his head frantically. "Brother Long, four thousand isn't worth dying over! Let's just go back!"
"Quit talking like we're in a slasher film. Get over here!" Wang Hailong marched over, grabbed Pei Hu by the sleeve, and hauled him bodily to the classroom door. Pei Hu dug his heels in. "Why do I have to go first?!"
"Because if I let you stay behind you'll bolt the second we turn around!" Hailong shoved him across the threshold, then looked back at the girls. "We three guys go in first. If anything happens, come drag us out."
Dou Menglu managed a shaky nod. "Be careful."
"It's fine," Wang Wenlong added, stepping in behind them. "They're literally just mannequins."
The moment all three boys crossed into the classroom and stood on the raised lectern, the temperature seemed to plummet another five degrees. Rows of uniformed figures filled every inch of space; narrow aisles barely wide enough for one person snaked between the desks. The air smelled of chalk dust, old paper, and something faintly metallic.
"Great," Wang Hailong muttered, rolling his shoulders. "No room to even breathe."
"Pei Hu, you're scaredest anyway—go grab the tag from the centre mannequin," he ordered. "Wenlong, check drawers and under desks. I'll head to the back for the far one." Leadership tone firmly in place, he clapped Pei Hu on the back hard enough to jolt him forward.
Pei Hu took one reluctant step down from the lectern—and immediately leapt back with a strangled yelp, nearly knocking Wang Hailong over.
"Brother Long! Their eyes—they moved! I swear they just moved!"
"Could you try being quiet for once?" Wang Hailong hissed through clenched teeth, his own pulse hammering so loudly he was sure the others could hear it. The sight of those twisted necks had rattled him more than he wanted to admit, and Pei Hu's constant yelping wasn't helping.
Wang Wenlong adjusted his glasses, forcing a clinical tone. "It's just the Uncanny Valley effect. When something looks almost human but not quite, the brain freaks out. Perfectly normal psychological response." The explanation sounded neat and textbook, but the slight tremor in his voice betrayed that even he wasn't fully convinced. His flashlight beam jittered across the rows of frozen faces, searching for anything that might prove him wrong—or right.
"Both of you shut it!" Wang Hailong snapped, more to silence his own nerves than anything else. "The boss started the timer the second we walked in. Twenty minutes, twenty-four tags, twenty thousand on the line. Move!" He sucked in a breath, squared his shoulders, and marched toward the back of the room, boots thudding deliberately loud against the floor, as if the noise could prove he wasn't afraid.
Pei Hu swallowed hard, wiping sweaty palms on his shirt. "Fine, fine…" He lumbered down from the lectern, belly brushing against a standing mannequin. The figure swayed slightly from the impact, its head rolling with a soft creak that sounded disturbingly like a sigh. "Whoever designed this place must've had a seriously messed-up childhood," he muttered, then froze. Something had just bumped the small of his back—firm, deliberate pressure, like a shoulder nudging him forward. "Wenlong?"
He whipped around. Wang Wenlong was three metres away, crouched beside a desk, flashlight pointed at the floor. No one was behind him.
Pei Hu's gaze dropped to the mannequin he had jostled. It had stopped swaying, but its head was now tilted a fraction more toward him, the painted smile a little wider. "Did… did this thing just touch me?" His voice cracked. He bolted the rest of the way to the centre desk, breath coming in short, panicked bursts.
The girl seated there wore a different uniform—summer style, sleeves rolled up, fabric absolutely soaked in dark, dried blood. A nametag glinted on her lapel. Pei Hu stared at it like it was the holy grail, wiped his hand again, and reached out. His fingertip hovered a centimetre from her collar when the head (which had been facing the window) slowly, fluidly turned toward him.
"F*CK!" Pei Hu jerked back so hard he nearly toppled over a chair.
"It actually moved?!" His heart tried to punch through his ribcage. "Is this a real person dressed up?"
Wang Hailong and Wang Wenlong were both deeper in the room, too far to have pulled any tricks. The sight of his friends nearby steadied him just enough. "Okay… okay, just a mechanism. Rich haunted house, fancy props." He reached again, fingers shaking, and finally pinched the nametag. Relief flooded him—until he tried to pull it free and met resistance. A thin red string looped through the tag and disappeared beneath the girl's blood-stiffened collar, tied in a tight, perfect noose around the mannequin's neck.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Pei Hu cursed, half-laughing in disbelief. "What kind of psycho does this?" He needed light to see the knot properly. Rules be damned—he yanked out his phone, thumbed the flashlight, and leaned over the girl's shoulder, face inches from the back of her plastic skull.
The bright beam washed across lifeless cheeks—and the painted smile stretched, just a fraction, as if pleased to finally have company.
Pei Hu was too focused on the knot to notice.
Behind him, Wang Wenlong's voice floated over, low and uneasy. "Guys… tell me I'm imagining this, but that mannequin by the blackboard—has it been… following me with its eyes?"
Pei Hu snorted, still fumbling with the string. "You're just paranoid—"
He turned his head to answer, and the words died in his throat.
The girl in front of him had silently rotated her neck a full one-hundred-eighty degrees while he was bent over her. Painted eyes now stared up into his. Real eyes—wide, terrified, alive—stared back from less than the width of a finger away, close enough that he could see his own reflection trembling in their glossy surface.
Two faces, one living, one not, frozen in perfect, breathless proximity.