Uploaded on Naeda Translations. Do not re-upload.

Arc 1: University Thriller

Chapter 5: In the Depths of the Night

Kuai Xian's face?

Lin Xiao Yan shook her head. "Even if we dared look at its appearance, I'm afraid there wasn't even enough time to do so."

Last night, she looked down and happened to see Liu Lili's shadow move unexpectedly. When Lin Xiao Yan was about to ask her about it, she was interrupted by Liu Lili's cry of alarm and hurried to send Kuai Xian off.

As for if she really sent it off–she didn't know.

Su Min frowned. "I still want to go back and investigate further on this Kuai Xian, but there's no chance now." It was morning, so the female dorms still had a fair amount of people inside.

"Research, what research?" Lin Yiri whispered, "Pulling out is one's proper business."

Lin Xiao Yan and them were neither friends nor relatives. The only relations.h.i.+p they shared was one of cla.s.smates. This matter involved lives and Su Min actually wanted to get involved.

Su Min shook his head. "Forget it. I'm going back to the dorms."

He couldn't obtain anymore news on Kuai Xian in a short amount of time. However, he could still go online and dig up for more intel on the seventh floor of the office building.

Since strange things had already happened, it was bound to happen again.

The seventh floor was most likely hiding some key information, but he didn't dare go up for now.

Su Min wasn't the kind to just stand by and watch events unfold. He headed back to the male's dormitory, stopping when he reached the door of the old aunt that took care of this place.

Generally, the old aunt was here all year round. There was unlikely to be subst.i.tute caretakers.

Maybe she would know what happened.

Su Min knocked. "Auntie, are you in there?"

The door opened and the old aunt appeared. "What is it?" she asked.

Su Min organized his thoughts and said, "Auntie, there's something I want to ask. How many years have you been working here?"

The old aunt pondered for a moment. "Six years, I guess. I started in 2012, it shouldn't be wrong."

It's a long time, so she should know…

Su Min struck while the iron was still hot, lowering his voice to ask, "Auntie, do you know what happened in the seventh floor of the office build–"

"You shouldn't be asking this," she directly cut him off.

Although the old aunt's expression only changed slightly, Su Min could tell that whatever happened on the seventh floor was no laughing matter.

"Why? Auntie can't say?"

"Since you are a student, study hard and don't ask questions about messy affairs. If that's all, I'm closing the door."

She closed the door right in front of his face.

Touching his nose, Su Min walked up to his shared room. When he walked in, he pulled out a chair and started to browse for more information. This horror movie took place in 2018, so the network should be developed well enough for him to search for clues.

Anyhow, matters relating to deaths of students or teachers couldn't just be a small pieces of news.

Su Min entered in a couple of keywords and soon, countless web pages popped up.

There were cases of people getting into accidents and mishaps outside school, the causes of which were extremely common.

However, he didn't find any useful information after looking through several pages and ended up circling back to the school's web forum. Digging up old posts, he searched for any leads he could work with.

Only, whenever he finally found posts about the office building, the replies were always dodgy and unclear. Moreover, they only talked about the fourth or fifth floor.

This school was too clean.

Clean was abnormal.

Since he gained nothing out of the internet, Su Min could only let things quietly develop.

He didn't have any afternoon cla.s.ses, so he took a stroll around the school, feeling out the layout of the teaching blocks and dorms. Once satisfied, he went off campus to several nearby stores and pried for any additional information.

In the end, the reactions of the shop owners mirrored that of the old aunt's.

Although there wasn't any huge breakthroughs, Su Min was able to uncover this bit of information: Before it was refurbished for reuse, the old office building was once sealed off.

The initial construction cost for the building was expensive, so they couldn't exactly discard it.

When the renovations were completed, the building looked vastly different from how it originally was. Whatever it was that happened before must've been so grave, the school had to change the image of the entire building.

Su Min faintly had an idea of what happened, but it wasn't what he was expecting.

Late at night, he was awakened by the cinema's clue.

【Audience member Su Min, congratulations for successfully surviving one full day. Please keep up your good work. Today's hint: toilet cubicle】

Toilet cubicle?

Su Min heard of urban myths about toilet cubicles, each and every one stemming from a horror movie. It was no surprise as toilet scenes were a common occurrence in thrillers.

Who is going to go through this scene?

Yesterday's bathroom scene was experienced by Liu Lili, so today's toilet scene would probably be experienced by one of the remaining roommates.

Since the dormitory building only had stand alone toilets, the toilet cubicles could only be in the teaching blocks or office building.

Su Min sent a message to Lin Xiao Yan.

Because she was too afraid to return to her own room, Lin Xiao Yan was sleeping in the dorm next door. Her other roommates also went somewhere else to sleep for the night.

It was only 12 o' clock. She wasn't asleep, yet.

"Okay," Lin Xiao Yan texted back.

After a while, she sent out a new message, "I heard from someone that Zhang Yuan walked to the direction of the office building."

Zhang Yuan was one of the roommates that partic.i.p.ated in Kuai Xian.

Tonight, she was staying with a friend from another dorm room.

Su Min immediately turned over and got out of bed. The racket woke Lin Yiri up.

In a daze, he asked, "What are you doing?"

"You want to go to the office building?" Su Min added, "Lin Xiao Yan's also going."

Hearing that, Lin Yiri was instantly alert. He asked with vigilance, "What do you want to do there? It's already locked this late at night."

"Go or not?" Su Min asked again.

Lin Yiri wanted to go, but he also didn't want to go. He thought for a few seconds, and in the end, decided to go. That didn't stop him from grumbling while crawling out of bed, though.

As he was putting on his clothes, Lin Yiri whispered, "Are we going to try to find that thing? Should we bring some boy's urine?"

Su Min, "…"

He was aware of the danger, but not going meant that he would be waiting for death to come to him.

Su Min was not that type of person. Uncovering the horror movie's deepest secret and living until the grand finale was his end goal.

After all, his first experience of living in a horror film couldn't be too bad, ah.

The two met up with Lin Xiao Yan outside the dorms.

Many college students were night owls, but that didn't mean they would roam around the school at midnight.

The street light was spa.r.s.e and fragmentary.

"I heard from her friend that Zhang Yuan went out. The friend was afraid that she would have an accident and followed after her. What could Zhan Yuan be doing in the middle of the night?" Lin Xiao Yan softly whispered.

The friend followed closely for two minutes and discovered that Zhang Yuan was heading towards the office building. The whole way, however, Zhang Yuan did not turn her head even once, her gaze dead ahead as if her whole heart and soul was set on a mission.

Zhang Yuan's friend didn't want to be out this late at night. She shouted several times at Zhang Yuan to head back. But, Zhang Yuan never turned around nor responded no matter how loud she yelled, so she could only return back to the dorms, alone.

Su Min stood next to the street lamp. "When we get there, we'll know."

Zhang Yuan hadn't been out for long. If they run, they'll be able to catch up to her, and they might get more clues.

As the office building was not far away from the dorms, they arrived only after a few minutes.

In the depths of the night, no lights could be seen inside the office building. The black paint looked utterly frightening in the dark, the windows resembling that of man-eating holes.

Su Min glanced around. "The door is open."

It looked like it was ripped opened by force. The most likely culprit was Zhang Yuan.

Lin Xiao Yan turned on her phone's flashlight and followed Su Min into the building. Even with the light, they were unable to see to the ends of the long corridor.

Late at night, the office building looked desolate and bleak. Not a sound could be heard. It wouldn't be noticed during daytime, but at night, the insides looked extremely ghastly.

"Where are you going?" Lin Yiri asked.  

"Bathroom," answered Su Min.

His goal was the toilet cubicles, so they naturally had to go to the bathroom. But since this was a multi floored building, he didn't know which bathroom to go to.

"T-there?" Lin Yiri gaped, trembling, "Don't you know the toilet legends? I heard that when this guy went to the toilet, he heard someone calling out his name. When he turned around, he felt a ghost touch his head."

Su Min couldn't help but say, "And you say this now?"

Lin Yiri felt wronged. He was truly afraid.

He was about to speak when suddenly, he heard a weak and feeble voice behind him, "Su Min?"

Su Min and Lin Yiri jumped. Fear overcame them, especially Su Min. He finally understood what it meant to have a crow's beak.

Lin Yiri gulped. He pulled at Su Min's clothes, stuttering as he asked, "Now…now what?"

"Run!"

When Su Min's voice fell, the two lifted their foot and sprinted away without looking back.

After running for a couple of seconds, Lin Xiao Yan was unable to bear it and asked, "Su Min, why are we running?"

"Mother f.u.c.ker, there are ghosts calling out names!" Lin Yiri shouted.

Lin Xiao Yan stopped and rolled her eyes. "I said that. You didn't recognize my voice?"

Realizing that nothing actually happened, Su Min's footsteps slowed.

The trio sat on the stairs, looking at each other in dismay.

Who would've thought that when Lin Yiri finished telling his ghost story, Lin Xiao Yan would absentmindedly say the one line that frightened the soul out of the two.

How embarra.s.sing.

"My mind was just drifting when I heard you talking. Lin Yiri, you truly picked a perfect place to tell a ghost story." Lin Xiao Yan ridiculed.

"I couldn't help it," Lin Yiri muttered, feeling wronged.

Once he was in this kind of scenario, his mind would wander to all kinds of ghost stories. In order to ease his fears, he said his thoughts aloud.

Lin Xiao Yan gave him a thumbs up. "I salute to you as a man."

Su Min never spoke a word. The moonlight outside spilled through the windows and trickled on them, creating three hazy shadows on the ground.

With a chill, he discovered that his own shadow seemed to be moving, slowly shortening as it approached his feet.

Su Min abruptly took a step back. He watched as his shadow separated from under his foot.

The only cause he could think of was that ghost.

The rogue shadow twisted and turned, morphing into the shape of a heart ❤ .

Su Min, "…"

He felt that this situation was surreal. The shadows in this horror movie are too difficult to deal with. Please return back to fright school.

"What are you looking at, Su Min?" Lin Xian Yan asked.

In a blink of an eye, the shadow s.h.i.+fted back to normal.

He was about to respond when his ears picked up the sound of activity. It appeared to be coming from upstairs, and it was coming closer.

"There are people upstairs." Su Min quickly warned the two.

Lin Yiri blinked, then whispered, "They might not be human."

Lin Xiao Yan, who felt the sudden urge to strangle him, warned, "From now on, you have no right to speak."

The author has something to say:

Lin Yiri, just shut up, why on earth would you say that hahahaha

Shadow: Can it be more than a heart? No? Then roll from the movie!

Translator's Notes:

office building: Original raw says school building/teaching block for a few paragraphs, but then switched to office building. Don't know if that's intentional or a typo, but I'm gonna go with office building.

boy's urine(童子尿): Urine of boys under 12, used as medicine(TCM) (I think it repels ghosts or something???)

crow's beak: person who has made an inauspicious remark

Please return back to fright school(都學會撩漢了嗎): Dictionary gave me something about learning while MTL said, “Have you learned to pull the Han?” I improvised.

Naeda's Log: Hallo!

For some reason, this chapter was frustrating to translate. I rage quitted 5 times and was still not satisfied with how it turned out after I was done. As a result, there were more tweaking to the paragraph structures and improvising of some phrases than usual. Eh, at least ML gave us(SM) a heart. ❤