Chapter 6: Trickster Game

DECEMBER 10, 2022 ~ M1ZUSHI

The sound of sticky things rubbing the ground came, and the sound of sticky wet water rolled over the ground carefully, like a skinned snake crawling.

The strange noise that made people’s hair stand up was getting closer and closer, followed by a huge impact on the opening and closing door of the checkroom.

“Dong!”

“Dong, Dong, Dong…”

It was a mechanical, regular and dull collision sound. The sound became louder and louder. A few seconds later, the ancient wooden door broke into an irregular hole, and something quickly jumped out of the bottom, leaving a pale shadow.

It entered the cloakroom.

In addition to the noises it made, the cloakroom was actually very quiet, and the needles can be heard falling. There was no human figure in the gaps between the stacked wardrobes, as if this was a deserted room.

But the “dog” did not leave. He gently shrugged his black nose. The air was full of a strange odor, which made it impossible to find out exactly where the sweet smell of human flesh came from.

The game was two minutes away.

It knew that the goal was here.

The “dog” began to be anxious. Its wide and long snout was slightly cracked, revealing its fishy yellow tusks. Its nose was constantly arched, and its ears were upright. It crept mysteriously and quickly to the bottom of several wardrobes. It lay on the ground and plunged its head into the closet. Its black eyes almost came out of its sockets——

There was nothing under the wardrobe.

It began to crack open the doors of those wardrobes more crazily, and there were a lot of suits and gowns with slightly old styles, but in addition to being empty, there was no human trace.

In the narrow space, Skirt curled up slightly and tucked herself into the locker at the top of the wardrobe, which was connected with the dome. The disorderly hats were piled up beside her, and she bit her fingers and dared not make a sound.

Time was short. When Yuan Yuxue agreed with her plan, the first place she thought of was to roll in and hide under the wardrobe.

Fortunately, the famous ghost story of “the ghost on the ground jumped in” saved her in time. She felt that the bottom of the shelter might be the most dangerous place and changed the plan at the last moment.

The closet was the most easily thought of hiding place, and the risk was also huge. After referring to the plan of Yuan Yuxue, Skirt climbed neatly into the locker at the top – although the locker was wide, it was also relative to clothes stuffed in. It was very difficult to close the cabinet door when loading a human even if Skirt was small. She even felt as if she had been put into a coffin, and the air could be exhausted with only a few breaths.

But so far at least, it was safe.

Yuan Yuxue also hid in the hard-to-reach locker.

For women, the space was intolerably narrow. If a teenager like Yuan Yuxue, who was taller than Skirt, got into the space, it would be even more narrow and suffocating.

But fortunately, his body was very soft, and he could almost bend into any desired posture. With his legs bent and his waist bent, he seemed to have more space than the place where Skirt stayed. At this time, Yuan Yuxue was half lying in the cabinet calmly, and heard the earth-shaking rummaging sound outside. It seemed that the space he was in was different from his own. There was no emotional fluctuation. The time when the feather-like eyelashes gently blinked was regularly separated by the same number of seconds——

It seemed to be in standby mode.

The former Yuan Yuxue was often placed in such a narrow space.

When there was no mission, the war robot would be strictly controlled.

Yuan Yuxue was placed in one of the “cocoon” shaped receptacles, which were densely lined up. The transparent soft material tightly wrapped his face, body and every organ, like a precision inverted membrane, and even the breathing space was squeezed clean.

When the eyes are opened, the crow’s black eyelashes will press on the “membrane”, and the light will pass through the cocoon and be twisted into strange wavebands. For the robot, that is the real darkness.

The Yuan Yuxue right now was like he returned to the cocoon.

He hugged his bent leg, slightly lost in thought. His black eyes seemed to be covered with a layer of dense fog, and he could not see his emotions clearly.

Those frantic and rummaging voices didn’t even reach Yuan Yuxue’s ears.

At this time, Yuan Yuxue saw the top of the wardrobe, which seemed to be densely engraved with some characters.

It was a minority language in the Middle Ages of Europe, and it was only popular for a short time. Yuan Yuxue compared it with the text form recorded in the database and quickly deciphered its contents.

The front was a very dense, extremely scrawled line of words with handwriting, all of which are written with “sorry”.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry…”

At a glance, he thought the same words were written on the top of the cabinet.

But later, the “I’m sorry” changed to “I hate you”, and then the word “hate” would be the only word.

Among them, the only long sentence was the last one.

“I don’t want to play games.”

It looks like someone from the past left it.

Yuan Yuxue was not aware of what kind of existence the player was, so he did not think of that either. He stared stoically at the words, and this resentment-laden side of the handwriting seemed unable to cause him any fear.

Robots were certainly not afraid.

That was when the earth-shaking movements outside the wardrobe suddenly stopped.

The cloakroom seemed to return in that instant as silent dead sea, all the strange noises were far away, quiet even let people feel a little eerie.

The monster seemed to have left.

In a trance, such an illusion may occur.

After a moment of silence, there came the sound of the cabinet door being opened. A soft and sweet female voice opened, just like Skirt’s tone.

“Yuan Yuxue,” she said, “it seems to have left. We are safe now.”

The black haired robot stayed in its original position without changing its posture.

Don’t say that he has the ability to lock and track. Even if he thinks about it, Skirt will not venture out to speak at this moment. Who knows if the monster will turn back or just wait for the hare inside.

But the next second, the voice of “Yuan Yuxue” also sounded.

“Has it gone out?” Yuan Yuxue asked in a low voice.

The voice of young people was a slightly cool voice. It does not make people aware of the cold and estrangement that was difficult to approach, but it was a very comfortable tone.

At the beginning, Yuan Yuxue said little, and there was nothing between her skirt and him. She did not feel deeply about this, but later she communicated more when she ran away together. Skirt liked his rhythm and voice very much, which was almost engraved in her heart. Therefore, as soon as Yuan Yuxue’s voice appeared, her eyebrows jumped and her heart began to move restlessly.

——That’s not her! Don’t go out.

For a moment, Skirt was so upset that she wanted to jump out now to remind Yuan Yuxue not to expose it. She slightly adjusted her posture and suddenly stopped when she touched the cabinet door.

… Will Yuan Yuxue be cheated out so easily?

The anxiety in her mind just now seemed to have been expanded a hundred times, and the eager impulse almost corroded her heart.

Perhaps it was the mental pressure of being in a very narrow space, perhaps involving their own voice she momentarily cared, or else is a ghost monster some kind of “blindfold” ability. Skirt was indeed tense, chaos to a certain limit arc, a cold sweat fell down, sticky, and drenched in layers of rain, wet and cool.

She woke up and was careful not to make any noise. However, the strange voice outside the cabinet door seemed to be a kind of hoarse laughter and a sharp scream of human beings.

It hissed and laughed while making intermittent sounds of human characters.

“I, find, find… you,.”

Skirt bit her fingertips nervously and became restless.

Are you still cheating her?

But the monster who kept repeating that sentence became fluent.

“I found you.”

“I found you.”

“Hee hee, I found you.”

One sentence was more fluent and faster than another, almost too fast to hear a word clearly. It was also like a heavy hammer hitting on the heart of Skirt nearly exploding countless times.

… Was it an illusion?

The voice seemed to be getting closer and closer.

At the last sentence, it was like sticking on the cabinet door. The trembling sound was transmitted through the thin wooden door, as if touching Skirt’s body with a solid object.

She shivered uncontrollably and wanted to be farther away from the cabinet door – but the space was too narrow for her to retreat.

There was no escape.

She even started to try to see what was happening outside from the hidden gap in the cabinet door.

It’s too dark. I can’t see anything.

Skirt stared at that point intently, trying to divert her extreme panic and anxiety.

Then the originally dark line suddenly quivered, like a pair of eyes, blinking.

In her life, the most terrible sound came into her eardrums.

“Squeak”.

The cabinet door was opened.

The “Dog” climbed on the wardrobe and locked on Skirt with his huge eyes.

It had human-like sounds, limbs, and skin. It was naked all over the body. Its hands and feet were long and thin. It looked like a bamboo pole had been taken off and installed on its limbs, with a skin that was blue and white. It looked like a very normal human shape, but it was too thin, and the proportion of hands and feet were too long, leading to a little disharmony – if it didn’t have a dog’s face, it may have been very normal.

The Uncanny valley effect made Skirt’s fear hormone soar to the highest in a flash, but she could not shout or make any sound, and her pupils were dilated and staring at the monster.

Hands and feet were sucked on the wardrobe, the dog’s face slightly twisted into a curve, slowly extended in, and touched Skirt’s hem.

Then, it maintained this movement and was rigidly fixed in place.

Yuan Yuxue grabbed its back neck and kindly reminded him, “The game is over.”

“We won.”

The dog fell down from the hanging wardrobe, and it remained in that posture. It seemed that because of the loss of command, it became extremely heavy and curled up on the ground, with its lanky hands and feet twisted into a ball and wrapped into a meat ball.

Yuan Yuxue also said that to Skirt.

She was still lying in the middle of the cupboard, her expression slightly lax. It was not until Yuan Yuxue firmly repeated the words “won” again, which made her see the light again, that she climbed out of the wardrobe with soft hands and feet.

Before she could say thank you, he heard Andre’s words.

Andre had been watching them.

So he uttered his voice at the first time. The voice came from a corner of the cloakroom: “To be exact, you won.”

“She was caught at the last minute and will be punished.”

The hot blood Skirt of seemed to fall to zero again.

Can she survive if punished?

But now she was much calmer than before, and even said that it was the best result to survive completely from the “dog”. Even if it was a punishment, it wouldn’t be a fatal situation – Skirt began to seriously consider the way to deal with it, and her desire for survival was unprecedented strong.

But Yuan Yuxue did not understand such negotiations. He turned his head slightly and emphasized seriously: “It was ‘we’ who won.”

“One second before the dog met her, the game ended and went back to zero.”

In view of what Andre said before, they would live video their game process, and he seemed to have been watching——

Yuan Yuxue suggested calmly and kindly, “Would you like to replay it again?”

Andrea: “……” Shit, it’s not easy to fool.

All the players around him turned around and stared at him. Till Andre gritted his teeth and squeezed out the words.

“… I don’t need to see it anymore.” He said, “The game was over. Congratulations to my two friends for winning.”

When Yuan Yuxue and Skirt returned to the banquet hall, they noticed that the most clean and flat wall was covered with a layer of white cloth, which was showing the scene of the cloakroom. It seems that he has been staring at them for recording just now, but it seems that Andre did not record the “funny” expressions of his friends in his imagination.

This made him a little unhappy.

It was also because their game process was broadcasted just now. Apart from the fact that the difficulty of the game was too demanding, which made the players feel frightened and scared, they secretly insulted Andre a hundred times, and they also saw something different… For example, at this time, the eyes watching Yue Yuxue increased again.