Creeak... creeak...
Click!
With a crisp click, the lock cylinder on the door to Room 204 popped out, returning to a usable state after being completely stuck.
"It's fixed. Although it's just a temporary patch-up, it should hold for a few days without any problem."
Wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead, Sun Dajun looked up and said to Gao Hai with a smile.
"Thank you very much. This way, we should be able to feel a little more secure at night."
Gao Hai tried pulling the doorknob and found that it was indeed just a makeshift fix. The handle still had a very noticeable catch when pulled, but compared to before when it couldn't be moved at all, it could at least budge now and wasn't completely seized up.
"Are you really sure that man named Lao Guo could turn the clock at any moment?"
Not far away, a slightly nervous Maki was observing their surroundings. After a moment of thought, she asked again.
"I'm certain. The reason we ended up completely wiped out last time had a great deal to do with that bastard turning the clock."
Gao Hai shook his head, looking at the others in the hallway, then at the wall clock Kaguya Shinomiya was holding. A sense of anxiety lingered in his heart.
The exploration of the cracked hole in Room 206's kitchen didn't last too long.
After Kaguya confirmed the contents of the second rule sheet, Gao Hai only attempted one more exploration. This time, he didn't even step out of the living room; in fact, he closed the living room door. Then, he decided to retreat. First, he closed the first-floor kitchen door, and after returning to the second floor, he carefully covered the hole, closed the kitchen door there, and then told everyone to prepare to return to their respective rooms.
Lao Guo could use that young Black man to turn the clock at any moment. Once he did, the entire apartment's time would rapidly shift into darkness.
Therefore, everyone had to return to their rooms before that happened.
Sun Dajun left 206 and used the tools he had found in his room to repair the door to 204, solving the troublesome problem of the broken lock for Gao Hai and Kaguya. It was worth noting that not long after Sun Dajun left the room, Green—who had been told by Maki to stand guard at the open door of Room 206—discovered that the charred corpse had appeared in the hallway of 206 at some unknown point, scaring him so badly he nearly collapsed on the floor.
But then, after Sun Dajun returned to 206—or more precisely, the very moment Sun Dajun himself stepped through the door of 206—the charred corpse vanished from the hallway. Everyone then found it inside the scorched wardrobe where it had originally been lying.
During the day, when a resident leaves their room, the corpse inside may or may not react. But as long as the resident returns to the room, the corpse will become quiet and revert to its initial state.
After this, Gao Hai also made a special trip to Green's Room 209 to take a look and quickly found a desiccated corpse hidden in the damaged ceiling. This corpse, like Fridge Bro in 208, had no reaction to Green leaving. But when Green was outside the door of 209 and Gao Hai stepped inside, he had only just entered when he heard footsteps coming from within the room. He quickly pulled Green inside, and the two of them discovered the desiccated corpse had already walked into the living room.
Green's face turned as green as a frog's at that moment, especially after learning that he had to spend the night in the same room with this corpse, or else likely be killed by a horror. He practically trembled with every step as he entered the room.
He was terrified of dying.
This man named Green was very, very afraid of dying.
Perhaps because he had already experienced one horror story, Green's fear of the horrors and anomalies far exceeded that of the others. He knew clearly that in this death game filled with danger at every turn, one wrong step could lead to instant death, which was why he was so desperate to latch onto someone powerful.
He was actually a troublesome guy.
Gao Hai couldn't help but think this to himself.
He was being obedient now because he believed this group could keep him safe, that he could gain a hope of survival by sticking with them.
But if the situation became critical, if no one could offer him a sense of security and he was instead required to face danger himself, would he still be so obedient?
I'll have to take precautions.
Meanwhile, Miwa Maeda from 205 was basically dragged into her room.
Upon learning she had to spend the night with a female corpse in that pitch-dark, foul-smelling room, the woman screamed like she was insane, struggled desperately, and cried until tears, snot, and saliva were everywhere. Finally, she lost control of her bladder, and nothing Gao Hai or the others said had any effect.
In the end, it was Green who came up, put Miwa Maeda in a headlock, and knocked her unconscious on the spot. He then tossed her into the living room of 205 and locked the door from the outside, finally resolving the troublesome issue.
Sun Dajun felt some pity during this process, but after Gao Hai asked him if he was willing to bear the consequence of the woman letting out a single scream in his room and attracting all sorts of ghostly things, the man fell silent for a long time and ultimately chose to stand by and watch.
Kindness depends on the situation and the person.
In this terrifying apartment where everyone feared for their own life, no one had any extra compassion to share with someone who stubbornly refused to cooperate and offered no value herself. Green even went so far as to snatch the supply box from Room 205 and cheerfully present it to Gao Hai's group. However, robbing someone of their supplies while they were still alive was a bit too unscrupulous. Since both Maki and Sun Dajun found the act unacceptable, the supply box was ultimately returned to 205.
"This is the first time I've seen someone be so utterly useless and nothing but a burden."
After watching Green fiddle with the lock on 205's door with a small piece of wire and successfully lock it from the outside, Gao Hai shook his head and remarked with a sigh.
"People who have lived in peace and comfort for too long become like this once they're thrown back into a harsh environment. In the end, the greatest significance of modern society's progress is simply that it allows more useless people to survive. You can't see the problem with them in normal times, but when a critical moment arrives, every single one of them becomes a burden."
Kaguya, hailing from a ruthless financial conglomerate, no longer saw Miwa Maeda as a person at all. She even snorted when she saw Gao Hai return the supply box because of Maki's compassion, feeling utterly disdainful of their actions.
"Ahem, you have to at least put on a show while the person's still around. 'Looting their box with tears in your eyes' looks better, doesn't it?"
Gao Hai felt a bit awkward about this. He had actually intended to happily accept the supply box when Green brought it out, but Maki's reluctance made him hesitate. In the end, there wasn't much food in the box anyway, and the horrors in Shirakawa Apartments were incredibly ferocious. The survival pressure from hunger was relatively low in comparison. Therefore, he ultimately chose to return the box, as Maki's opinion was more important to him.
As for whether he realized that both Maki and Kaguya had seen through his reason for the decision—leading the former to get lost in her thoughts and the latter to start enjoying the show—unfortunately, he was completely oblivious. But such things weren't important right now; the immediate pressure of survival was the main focus.
Click—clack—
In the end, reality proved Gao Hai's prediction correct. With a series of crisp sounds, the wall clocks in everyone's rooms began to accelerate clockwise, and time started to leap forward rapidly.
This time, however, because Gao Hai hadn't turned the clock, he didn't see any abnormal visions. Sun Dajun, on the other hand, was suffering immensely. He was huddled on his bed as all sorts of blurry images flickered through his mind, but before he could see or hear anything clearly, he lost consciousness and fainted.
He closed the living room door and locked it.
Gao Hai turned back to look at the boarded-up window in the living room.
At this very moment, the light outside the window was rapidly dimming. The time throughout the entire apartment was shifting swiftly from day to night.
"The hands will stop at 8:50 in the end. That means ten minutes after they stop, we must remain absolutely silent until the next day arrives."
Gao Hai spoke in a low voice to Kaguya, who was standing to one side of the room. He then took off his shoes and socks and sat down on the floor, leaning directly against the wall.
Because of the exploration on the 1st floor, Gao Hai's shoes and socks were soaked. It might be difficult for them to dry overnight, but he had no choice but to make do for now.
"Understood."
Kaguya Shinomiya nodded lightly and, without any unnecessary words, sat down on the floor as well.
Neither of them chose the filthy bed.
The light outside the window had already grown very dim.
Gao Hai knew that complete darkness was not far off.
"Based on the apartment's layout, this window should actually lead to the hallway of 205."
After thinking it over, Gao Hai decided to say something before the time came when they absolutely couldn't speak, hoping to improve their rapport slightly.
"The spatial distortion. You've mentioned this before. You said the 3rd floor has become an infinitely large, chaotic space."
Kaguya's voice came coolly from a considerable distance away from Gao Hai.
"That's right. Besides that, there's something else I'm concerned about," Gao Hai hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Maki Shijo, Sun Dajun, Green—there's a corpse in each of their rooms. The three of them are each in a room alone, which forms a traceable, common pattern."
"However, there are exceptions to this pattern, like our room. A situation with two people in one room is unprecedented."
"Also, the situation in 205 is strange, too. Two corpses, a sealed kitchen door—these are all abnormal. And then there's Lao Guo's Room 210. I think there's something unusual there as well. He once warned me about the danger of the corpses, but if he's the master of Room 210, the corpse inside shouldn't attack him during the day."
"Rules-based horror stories have to follow rules in the end. Even for exceptions, there should be a corresponding reason, a certain logic. But I still haven't figured out the reason behind the exceptions in 204, 205, and 210."
"Do you have any thoughts, Miss of the Shinomiya family?"
As Gao Hai's last words fell, the light outside the window vanished completely.
"Who knows? Even I can't draw a conclusion with insufficient information. And besides, compared to an unanswerable question like this, I'm more curious about something else. I'll ask you about it tomorrow."
Kaguya's voice rang out in the darkness, then fell silent.
Silence spread through the indifferent room.
Gao Hai just sat there leaning against the wall, quietly waiting for the night to end.
Silence.
A silent place of utter darkness.
Gao Hai suddenly recalled a story he had once heard. Two people made a bet: one of them had to live in a haunted house for three days. If he walked out fine after three days, he would receive a handsome prize. So, the man moved into the haunted house. Of course, there was no actual haunted house; the other person in the bet was just playing tricks in the mansion. On the first day, the hidden person made all sorts of strange noises in the house but failed to scare the resident. On the second day, the hidden person created even more terrifying noises and various supernatural events but still couldn't affect the resident.
Then, on the third day, the person in hiding did nothing. Nothing abnormal happened in the haunted house on the third day. But the resident couldn't stand the silence and fled the house early, failing to complete the bet.
Fear doesn't necessarily require the appearance of a terrifying monster or some bizarre noise.
In fact, just sitting here in the dark, with limited vision and in such profound silence, was enough to make one's nerves stretch to the breaking point.
This is really tough to endure.
Gao Hai couldn't fall asleep, nor could he maintain a relaxed state of mind.
I wonder what's going on with Kaguya on the other side. Haha, maybe she's already been replaced by some strange entity and is standing right in front of me, staring.
Gao Hai, with his rich imagination, couldn't help but picture the scene.
He closed his eyes.
Leaning against the wall, Gao Hai waited quietly.
Gradually, the urge to let his mind race seemed to dissipate somewhat.
Gradually, it seemed he could hear something, see something...
What was it?
That sound... so intense, repeating almost every few days...
Gao Hai opened his eyes in a daze.
[Let us sway~ our twin oars~♪]
Was that a child's singing coming from the hallway?
Gao Hai slowly stood up, turned his head, and looked at the bed beside him.
He saw Kaguya, lying on the bed, sleeping peacefully.
He saw himself, also lying on the bed, staring right at him.
A version of himself whose skull was crushed down the middle, one side of his torso almost flattened, his whole body covered in red and white stains.
He saw his own eyeball dangling from the side of the shattered skull, and in that eye staring back at him, he saw the reflection of the crushed-skulled body standing in the living room.
"So that's how it is..."
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