Translated by juurensha
Edited by Noks
Because you are very cute ah.
In order to avoid running into too many other guests at the amusement park, the company specially arranged for the shooting of the ensemble show to take place at noon on a weekday. Although this amusement park only occupied a small area and couldn’t be compared to the most famous large amusement parks, it boasted a full set of rides and attractions, and their haunted house was said to be the jewel of the entire place.
It was a wonderful day, with the sun shining down and making people feel warm all over. As soon as the door of the car opened, all of Kaleido’s six boys scattered in multiple directions, just like when ducks were released from their pen.
“Wow, that roller coaster is so high ah!”
“I want to ride the pirate ship!”
“Is there that kind of shooting game?”
Fang Juexia calculated it through—it had already been ten years since he had last come to an amusement park. Looking at these facilities, even he felt a bit of yearning. The sun was so bright that people were finding it difficult to even open their eyes, so Fang Juexia stretched out a hand to cover his eyes as he looked at the carousel not far away.
Sunlight was an efficient tool in generating illusions, and the scene before his eyes took on the tone of an old Polaroid film, one that made him fall into a trance when he shook it out. A seven or eight-year-old boy suddenly appeared on the candy-colored wooden horse, a streak of red at the corner of his eye. At his side were his father and mother, and they turned and turned ah, repeating this circular arc, looking as if they could spin for a lifetime, laugh for a lifetime.
That seemed to have been the only occasion when his parents had accompanied him to an amusement park together.
“You like these kinds of things that kids play with ah.”
Pei Tingsong’s voice came from behind him. Fang Juexia turned his head, pulled himself out of his memories, and then shook his head.
Pei Tingsong turned his head and looked at him as he spoke, “Yet, you were so fascinated while looking at it.”
Fang Juexia wore a white baseball cap, revealing his whole face, looking fresh and comfortable. Pei Tingsong couldn’t help looking at him a few times more. He saw that the tips of Fang Juexia’s pale ears appeared almost translucent in the sunlight, and even the tiny blood capillaries in his earlobes were clearly visible.
“I came here as a child.”
He noticed that Fang Juexia’s chest heaved while saying this, as if he was taking a deep breath.
“That’s good. When I was a kid, I never came to this kind of place,” Pei Tingsong said casually.
“Really?” Fang Juexia thought that was unbelievable. “Your parents didn’t take you there?”
Pei Tingsong put his hands into his coat pocket and shook his head. “I don’t see them more than ten times a year.”
Fang Juexia asked, “At the same time?”
Pei Tingsong shrugged, “Separate. There are even fewer meetings with both of them together.”
His voice was still a little hoarse, and as he said that, he did seem to be a bit pitiful. Fang Juexia wasn’t very good at comforting others; his own situation wasn’t that much better, and moreover, Pei Tingsong, who possessed such a strong character, definitely wouldn’t want to be comforted by an outsider like him who wasn’t in the know.
So Fang Juexia just raised his head, slightly tilted his face upwards, and smiled at him. “So this is your first time.”
The first time experiencing an amusement park.
The birthmark at the corner of his eye appeared a little translucent under the sun, now carrying a bit of orange, looking just like a piece of candy.
“Happy?”
He didn’t know whether this sentence had directly poked his nerves, or if it was because he saw this cold face burst forth with a rare smile, but Pei Tingsong seemed to have been bewitched by it, and really felt a tiny bit of happiness.
“What’s there to be happy about? It’s not like I’m a kid.”
He turned his head to catch sight of their intertwined shadows, seeming to be closer and more intimate than the people themselves.
The directing team came out with the cameras, gathered all six of them together to record the beginning segment, explained the entire day’s arrangement, before finally leading everyone to the site of the main activity of the day.
“Today, for our Kaleido ensemble show horror special, we’ve come to the abandoned medical school in the horror section! This is the most famous haunted house in this amusement park. There are two floors inside and only one traversable route. Everyone can be rest assured that you won’t get lost.”
Ling Yi complained, “Director, do you think I am afraid of getting lost?”
“Hahahaha.”
The haunted house in front of them looked a bit different from the usual pitch-black cave-like haunted houses; it was an old two-story building, which really looked like an abandoned hospital. Big X’s were painted on the walls with red paint, and the plaster on the walls was about to fall off. There were several rusty sign-boards hanging on the top of the gate, written on which was the name of the hospital. Naturally, a hospital had windows, but every window here had already been nailed tight with planks, making its interior airtight.
Fang Juexia looked up, and although his expression still showed calmness, his heart had long grown unsettled.
It must be very dark in there ba….
He had been worried about this matter since last night. There were a pitiful number of light sources in a haunted house, and if someone like him, who suffered from night blindness, entered it, then he would probably be no different from a blind man feeling his path around in there.
Fang Juexia could already see the scenes where he bumped around, felt about, crawled, and rolled inside.
“This looks alright ah,” Pei Tingsong declared with an expression of ‘I’m not afraid at all’. “How frightening can it be?”
“Xiao Pei isn’t very old, but he is very brave,” Lu Yuan teased him.
He Ziyan followed up with, “He himself is a devil, so can he be afraid of ghosts?”
Jiang Miao laughed. “A man even ghosts fear—Pei Tingsong.”
The director continued to explain the process, “There are six of you here, so everyone can divide themselves into your own chosen groups.”
“Won’t we finish it off just by walking through it once? And we still have to split into teams.” Pei Tingsong didn’t understand what was scary about all this. He turned to his bandmates and asked, “Who is afraid ah?”
Everyone raised their hands in one mass move, and Fang Juexia, upon seeing this, also raised his hand, albeit after half a beat, taking the same stance as everyone.
This boyband’s group spirit always came from nowhere.
The director shook her head. “It’s not just simply walking through it oh. This time, in order to increase the difficulty level, we specially put each one of your guys’ chibi dolls in each room, so they total to six dolls. After you guys go in, you have to bring out all of the dolls before you can be declared to have successfully completed this challenge.”
Once this was announced, there was wailing everywhere.
“How come we also have to get the dolls? What dolls do we have to take out?”
“Who can go in and still stay rational ah?!”
“Director, I don’t want to go in, I really can’t do it…”
“Enough,” said the director, who had long gotten accustomed to this group’s daily moaning and groaning. She looked just and stern as she ordered, “Now, let’s start forming groups ba.”
As soon as she said that, Ling Yi hugged Juexia’s arm. “I’m going with Juexia! One look and you can tell Juexia isn’t the kind of person who’s afraid of ghosts, so it’s perfectly right to follow him.”
Pei Tingsong glanced at the abandoned hospital. It was pitch-dark, and with Fang Juexia’s night blindness, he’d be completely lost and blind in there.
“Fang Juexia will go with me.” Pei Tingsong stepped forward and dragged him to his side.
“Why? First come, first served! Aren’t you not afraid of ghosts? And you still want to grab him from me!” Ling Yi took Fang Juexia’s hand and asked, “Juexia, who do you say you want to go with?”
Fang Juexia was about to open his mouth, but Pei Tingsong directly pulled him to hide him behind his body. He then stretched out a hand to grab onto Ling Yi’s small head so that he couldn’t get close to the two of them.
“He will definitely choose me. You give up on this idea forever ba.”
The director promptly interrupted, “How about this ba? Juexia, Ling Yi, and Xiao Pei in one group, while the remaining Ziyan, Lu Yuan, and Xiao Miao will be in another group. We’ll base it on age, that’s okay ba?”
Ling Yi replied, “Objection!”
Pei Tingsong said, “Your objection is overruled.”
After hearing the director’s announcement, Fang Juexia broke away from Pei Tingsong’s clutches, twisted his wrist around a bit, and came out from behind Pei Tingsong’s body.
In fact, just now, he had almost called out Pei Tingsong’s name. If it were any other activity, he would have been fine partnering with anyone, but there was no light in the haunted house, and Pei Tingsong was the only person here who knew about his night blindness. Overall, it would be more reliable to go in with him.
“Then first, Xiao Pei’s group.”
Ling Yi gave a start. “We-we’re starting so soon?” Saying that, he immediately stuck himself to Juexia just like a magnetic doll. “Juexia, you have to protect me.”
“I’ll try my best…” Fang Juexia’s Adam’s apple rolled up and down, and he climbed up the steps of the haunted house with great anxiety.
Pei Tingsong followed behind the two of them. Ling Yi stretched out a trembling hand and gently pushed open the dusty hospital door. With a squeak, the door opened, and there was a damp air inside of a place that had never been aired out. Pei Tingsong’s throat still hadn’t healed completely, and he coughed as soon as he stepped in.
Upon hearing him cough, Fang Juexia looked back at him before quickly turning his head forward again.
The first floor was similar to that of an ordinary hospital, but with the lobby deserted, the chairs against the wall devoid of people, and a semi cylindrical front desk was in the middle. Large red arrow stickers were pasted on the floor, outlining the way for the guests coming in.
“Where can the dolls be ah…” As soon as Ling Yi spoke, his voice started to float up.
Fang Juexia was still calm. “They should be in those places with cameras.”
Following the arrows, the three people slowly moved towards the front desk. Ling Yi was so scared that he was holding onto Fang Juexia’s shoulder, and revealed only half of his head as he hid behind Fang Juexia’s body.
Fortunately, the main door wasn’t closed, so he could still sort of see.
Just as Fang Juexia had thought of that, a bang sounded out, and the door moved inwards from the outside to slam shut!
“Ahhhhh!” Ling Yi was so scared that he was actually stomping his feet. “Scared me to death!”
Fang Juexia didn’t find it strange to see Ling Yi scared to such a state, but what was strange was that Pei Tingsong actually suddenly hugged his right side. Fang Juexia, wearing a look of complete surprise, turned his head toward Pei Tingsong to look at him. “You’re also afraid ah.”
“Who said that? I’m just trying to protect you.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t see his face clearly at all and didn’t know whether he was really afraid or just pretending. If Pei Tingsong was really scared, then they were really done for. Two scaredy-cats and a blind man, when would they be able to finish the task?
Ling Yi’s voice shook as he spoke, “It’s too dark here… They don’t have even a single light?”
As soon as he said that, the sound of a strange music box suddenly resounded within the lobby—ding ding dong dong— and lingered in the hall. Fang Juexia could count as being quite brave, but even he was affected by this ghastly atmosphere.
“Ah, this music is really,” Pei Tingsong was about to curse, “I even have goosebumps.”
The music suddenly clicked to a stop. Seven or eight lights on the walls of the hospital lobby lit up, emitting a faint yellow light. However, for Juexia, they were basically useless. All of a sudden, a girl’s voice came out of the radio, a thread of eeriness in her sweet voice. “Welcome to the horror medical school… Excuse me, but what is your illness?”
The last word, ‘illness,’ suddenly turned into a scream, and not far from them, at the vacant front desk, a female ghost with disheveled hair suddenly stood up. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform and a nurse’s hat, her pupils were all white, and her face was covered in blood. She also held a piece of paper in her hands, which she proffered out; it was red all over.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The two screams, one high and one low, stacked together. Fang Juexia felt that his ears were about to explode, but he couldn’t see anything clearly. He just felt his left side go empty, for Ling Yi seemed to have let go of his hand and run away. He looked over towards the sound of footsteps. “Ling Yi?”
“Ah, don’t come over! I’m going out, I’m going out. Begging you guys to not come over here…”
He really ran away…..
Fang Juexia then thought of Pei Tingsong’s scream just now. “Didn’t you say you weren’t afraid?”
Pei Tingsong hadn’t recovered from the fright caused by the ghost nurse yet, and his voice sounded completely weak. “I-I didn’t know that it would be so horrifying before I came in ah! Also, I have never even been to a haunted house before, so how could I have known whether I’d be afraid or not?”
“You didn’t even know whether you’d be afraid or not, and you stated you weren’t scared of it.”
“What’s the point of saying that now?”
….
The pair of white eyes on the ghost nurse opened wide, as they floated back and forth between these two people. Her hands were already feeling sore from keeping them up, so she couldn’t help but interrupt these two strange but beautiful flowers, “Hey, do you guys want this ah?”
“Yes.” Fang Juexia couldn’t see clearly, so he could only fumble around after stretching out his hand. However, Pei Tingsong grabbed hold of the document with a swish, and then he even bluffed, “You! Do you have any dolls here?”
The ghost nurse Jiejie pulled her wig open and looked down to find a doll. “Here.”
“Thank you…” Pei Tingsong took the doll and dragged Fang Juexia, who still wanted to bow, into running away, only to hear the ghost nurse Jiejie yell from behind them, “Remember to give this paper to the doctor in Room 202~”
They heard Ling Yi’s screams sound out from a distance, probably from the second floor, with each scream higher than the next.
“Ling Yi is about to hit the dolphin note.” Fang Juexia looked up towards the second floor.
Pei Tingsong’s usual cool, fast talking routine had disappeared, leaving behind only the attribute of a trembling chatterbox. “Ah, it’s really scary, it’s too scary, why would anyone make such a horrifying place? Are those people who like to have fun in haunted houses all abnormal? They’re all crazy ba…”
Fang Juexia, who had practically been hefted up and carried away by him, wondered, “Don’t you study philosophy? And you’re still afraid of ghosts ah. Shouldn’t you be an atheist?”
Following the red arrows, Pei Tingsong, with his long legs shaking, arrived at the stairs located at the rightmost part of the lobby. With every step he made, a light on the wall beside the stairs lit up, and they seemed to be proximity lights. “Who told you that philosophy equals atheism? Early philosophy and religious studies were part of the same school of learning!”
Although he was afraid, he still carefully helped Fang Juexia slowly climb up the stairs one after the other. “Besides, so atheists must be brave ah? What kind of logic is…”
Just as they tottered around the corner, from within the midst of the pitch-black darkness, a ghost wearing a patient uniform suddenly stood up. With long fangs and a livid face, he came at them!
“Fuck! What the f……”
Pei Tingsong was so scared that he let out a whirlwind of curses as he threw his entire body against Fang Juexia, pushing him directly against the foot of the wall.
Since this was for the group ensemble show, they’d have to mute his audio for this episode later. Fang Juexia fumbled around in order to reach out and cover his Didi’s mouth with his hand. “Shh… It’s fake, it’s fake. Your throat isn’t even all better yet, don’t yell.”
“Wu! Doll….Wu!”
Only then did Fang Juexia remember. “Right, right, has the doll been lost?” He released his hand, upon which Pei Tingsong also released him. He then felt around for a long time on the ground, and when he found the lost doll, he pulled Fang Juexia up and ran away with him.
“You’ve worked hard.” Fang Juexia sensed where the scare actor was and bowed towards him, but because he couldn’t see, he ended up bowing in the wrong direction.
A perfectly good guy suddenly bowing to a wall devoid of ghosts— this actually scared the scare actor instead.
Pei Tingsong tightly held onto Fang Juexia’s hand and dragged him to climb the stairs—deng deng deng—and he didn’t even dare to turn his head around. The proximity lights continued to light up with the sound of their footsteps, and finally, with great effort, they entered the second floor. Different from the lobby on the first floor, this floor contained a long cross-shaped corridor. There were four rooms in total, some with their doors open, and some with locked doors. The lights on the ceiling were dreadfully dim, and some of them seemed to be broken as they kept flickering non-stop.
Even before he took a step, Pei Tingsong was so horrified that his scalp felt numb. “Can this background music stop for a while ah, it keeps playing non-stop!”
Fang Juexia, who was holding the document in his hand, kept thinking about what had happened at the front desk. “The girl from just now told us to go up to the second floor to room 202 to find the doctor.”
“Yes, yes.” Pei Tingsong gripped Fang Juexia’s shoulder with one hand and moved with crab-like steps to the right side of the corridor, slowly inching forward. “Room 202… 202, this one ba.” As soon as he looked up, he saw the metal tag with 202 written on it, and there was also something that looked like blood spattered on it. Pei Tingsong didn’t dare to look at it more closely as he walked to the closed door.
Fang Juexia also touched the door. Out of habit, he raised his hand and knocked. “Is there anyone there?”
“No one is there, only ghosts!” Pei Tingsong grasped the door handle and twisted it.
A poker-faced Fang Juexia said, “In this world, there are no…”
“Ah!!! Holy shit!”
Pei Tingsong’s cursing gave him a violent start. They were caught completely unaware by the ghost standing in front of them as soon as the door was opened. Fang Juexia couldn’t see, so he just walked forward and ran into the scare actor who was playing the ghost.
“Eh? Sorry, sorry, I ran into you, I’m sorry…” He stretched out his hand to touch the staff member, and then pulled Pei Tingsong into squeezing past this fake ghost to enter the room. “Don’t just casually curse people out la.”
“It’s not like I meant to!” Pei Tingsong felt that every new place they arrived at, part of his soul went missing, but Fang Juexia, throughout all of this, maintained an attitude of being completely fine, not panicking at all. “Fang Juexia, are you a psychopath? You’re not scared at all.”
It’s not like I can even see anything.
Fang Juexia tightened his grasp on this guide dog, who was constantly on the edge of mania, and walked into the room bit by bit. He tentatively called out, “Doctor?”
Pei Tingsong, holding a doll in one hand and Fang Juexia in the other, tried to keep his spirits up, and looked around the room. The light was dim, and the furnishings looked like those found in an ordinary clinic. A table was placed not far in front of them, and behind the table was a swivel chair, the back of which was facing towards them.
Just based on intuition, Pei Tingsong knew that whatever was in the chair would be horrifying when it turned around.
“Warning ahead, warning ahead, warningaheadwarningaheadwarningahead…”
Fang Juexia frowned and asked, “Why have you basically started up a barrage?”
Pei Tingsong covered his eyes using the doll in his hand, grabbed the document from Fang Juexia’s hand, and threw it onto the table in front of him.
“T-take it. Doctor, isn’t this what you w-want?”
Fang Juexia was amused by him. “Pei Tingsong, you’re stuttering.”
That chair swiveled around as expected, but Pei Tingsong kept his sight limited to the area below the doctor’s head. He just saw him collect the document, slowly open a drawer, and take a chibi doll out from it.
Pei Tingsong took one step forward, stretched his hand, grabbed the doll’s foot, picked it up, and ran out. Upon seeing that ghost standing at the door, he once again started trembling from fright.
“Are we going now?” Fang Juexia felt the door frame and waved at his back. “See you again.”
“Again??” Pei Tingsong stuffed the two dolls into Fang Juexia’s hands. “Take them quickly. Stand here and don’t move ah.” After that, he swiftly rushed over to the open door opposite this room, tactically executed a quick squint over the room, finally found a doll lying on a shelf full of disgusting specimens, and ran away after grabbing it. The fake corpse sitting inside the room didn’t even get the time to scare him, he simply ended up watching this tall guy dash in and run away with his own eyes.
Room 203 was an inpatient room with three beds. With their ten fingers tightly clasped together, Pei Tingsong pulled Fang Juexia into the ward, making sure to walk close to the wall. Pei Tingsong looked around to see if there was a doll while continuously chanting, “Don’t mess with me, don’t mess with me, don’t mess with me…”
The first two beds were empty, and there were neither any patients nor dolls in them. However, the curtain was pulled around the last bed.
“Ah, this must be really horrifying. I don’t want to go over there, please don’t scare me, don’t scare me…” Chattering on like a broken radio, the shivering Pei Tingsong still drew close to the last bed.
Fang Juexia whispered beside him, “Your hands are shaking so hard ah.”
“I-I’m not…” Pei Tingsong clenched his teeth and pulled the curtain open. He was so frightened he directly backed up. “AH!!!!!”
“Wow, that’s so good, your voice just hit F5 right now. Is it possible for you to sing high notes too now?”
“Is that the main point?!!”
His guide dog’s fur was about to explode. Fang Juexia held back a smile, and half-holding him while rubbing his back, consoled, “It’s fake, it’s fake, it’s all fake.”
Reclining on the bed was a fake corpse, whose facial features were blurry, and he held a doll in his arms.
“Ah, I can’t, I can’t,” Pei Tingsong stretched out two fingers, lifted the doll’s head, and pulled it out. “Four now, and there are still two left, let’s go quickly.”
The last room was a mortuary, and was lit up with faint green light. As soon as Pei Tingsong opened the door, the “corpses” inside, which were a bunch of possessed corpses, sat up one by one. This scared Pei Tingsong so much that his legs went soft, and he fell directly onto the side of the door.
“Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius, Spinoza, Hobbes, La Mettrie, Feuerbach, Sartre…”
Fang Juexia felt around in the dark and pulled Pei Tingsong up. He felt this action of his was completely inexplicable and asked, “What are you chanting?”
“The great ath–atheists in history, bless and protect me, bless and protect me, don’t let them mess with me.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t help laughing. He copied the manner in which Pei Tingsong was chanting and started reciting, “One times one is one, one times two is two, one times three is three, one times four is four…”
Probably because of how fear tended to make some people more agile, Pei Tingsong quickly managed to find the last two dolls. “Why is it that you recite the multiplication table all the time?”
“All the time?” Fang Juexia didn’t understand. “When else did I recite it?”
Pei Tingsong took his hand and ran out of the mortuary. “When you were drunk, you kept reciting it for the whole night!”
“Really…”
Fang Juexia didn’t know what had happened; everything was utterly pitch black in here, and he, who couldn’t see anything, could only be dragged to and fro by Pei Tingsong. But, whenever Fang Juexia heard him scream and curse, he didn’t feel like it was scary at all, instead, he just found it very funny.
“You’re even laughing.” After exiting the mortuary and returning to the corridor, Pei Tingsong leaned against the wall and took a deep breath. Finally, this thing could count as being done. After following the arrows to go downstairs, this entire ordeal should be over with.
“How can you still laugh?”
Fang Juexia, who was holding a pile of dolls, tried very hard to suppress his laughter. “Because you are very cute ah.”
“Cute??” As soon as he heard that, Pei Tingsong didn’t feel pleased, and so he feigned a very cool and very powerful look. “Who are you saying is cute?”
However, this haunted house didn’t offer him any breathing room. As soon as he was about to harshly defend himself, a group of people, all of whom had only one leg, actually appeared at the end of the corridor, with all of them dressed in school uniforms and hopping towards them just like jiangshi. All of them held a pen in their hand and their gesture made it seem that they were going to stab the visitors with it.
Pei Tingsong was so frightened by this that he once again let out a string of English curse words. He thought that these ghosts would all rush over together to frighten him, but unexpectedly, they actually rushed at Fang Juexia. Three or two of them even grabbed his shoulders and arms.
Fang Juexia, who was forcibly taken away, was still a little confused. “Hey? How come there are so many ah…”
“Ah, the dolls are gone.” Fang Juexia only had one task in mind.
Pei Tingsong was scared to death, and his courage had nearly been shattered, but even though he was trembling, he still went forward to push the strange ghost students aside. “Don’t pull him, thank you, thank you…. God! Da Jie, your make-up is too scary…”
Upon grabbing hold of Fang Juexia’s wrist in the dark, Pei Tingsong’s suspended heart finally fell back down. “Come here.” He jerked fiercely, and pulled Fang Juexia back into his arms.
The ghost students behind them were still trying to perform their crazy siege scene, and so Pei Tingsong was left with only the option of holding Fang Juexia against the wall as he tried to block the ghosts with his back. “Don’t come here, you guys. Quickly go away ba, go.”
Shifting Fang Juexia closer to himself had been done in too much of a hurry, and he had not been able to control either his strength or the distance between them. Pei Tingsong’s head lowered, and he overlooked the last few inches of distance between them, thus accidentally rubbing the side of Fang Juexia’s face.
In this fleeting moment, his soft lips skimmed past smooth skin and stopped at Fang Juexia’s ear.
It was dark and chaotic, but Fang Juexia couldn’t feel that at all. His back was against the ice-cold wall, but Pei Tingsong’s chest stuck against him was warm, very warm.
Their bodies were stuck so close to one another that they were nearly hand in glove. Pei Tingsong’s chest’s undulations, due to agitation, produced a vivid tide in Fang Juexia’s body.
He could smell the tiny bit of cologne Pei Tingsong was wearing—sea salt mixed with a hint of musk, as wisps of it wafted up, rubbing against the side of Fang Juexia’s face just like its owner. Hot breaths kept puffing right into his ear; these big breaths, enlarged and elongated in the dark, tangled around him like seaweed and kissed him all over his body.
The office ambush, the horror assault, the weird music being played in a loop, and the ghosts dressed in disguise— all failed before that.
It wasn’t until this moment that Fang Juexia started to feel shivers.
“It’s okay, it’s okay…” Pei Tingsong chanted in a low voice, and who knows who he was chanting it to. He tentatively looked back, and only after realizing that all of the ghost students had already disappeared did he let out a breath.
“They finally left.” Pei Tingsong let out a long sigh of relief and looked at Fang Juexia. “Do you still think I’m cute?”
He didn’t know if it was because it was too dark, but Fang Juexia seemed to have been nailed scared into his spot, like a little bunny that didn’t dare to move.
You could still get scared enough into falling down even without being able to see anything?
All of a sudden, Pei Tingsong, who was half a step late in realizing that they had been too close to each other before, quickly separated from Fang Juexia and squatted down in a hurry. “A-all the dolls are lost, I’ll go pick them up.”
Fang Juexia leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.
Right now, he was like a stranded fish that had just been rescued by the tide.
“Let’s go ba.” Pei Tingsong held a stack of dolls in his left arm and held onto Fang Juexia with his right hand. They quickly left the creepy corridor on the second floor, and Pei Tingsong hurried downstairs as fast as he could without making Fang Juexia fall over or trip, and then followed the arrows to find the exit, finally exiting this damned abandoned hospital.
“Wow!!! They finally came out!”
“Ling Yi, this coward, abandoned you guys and pumped his short little legs to run out the entire way.”
“You’re the one with short little legs!”
Jiang Miao came up to the two people and asked, “You guys are alright ba? You guys are very powerful ah, you brought them all out.”
Pei Tingsong hugged the dolls, his soul almost gone. “I will definitely have nightmares tonight.”
The director looked at the time and announced, “29 minutes and 34 seconds, a bit faster than we expected, very good!”
29 minutes 34 seconds. As Fang Juexia chanted this number in his heart, only then did he discover that his internal clock had completely failed.
Because of Pei Tingsong’s presence, it hadn’t ticked for a single second. It was broken, completely broken.
It was a small haunted house, but they seemed to have spent a long time walking its confines. The clock in his heart was no longer objective, and no longer could it measure and accumulate time on the basis of the established criteria.
He Ziyan glanced at the two people’s hands. “And you’re still holding hands.”
These two people were startled at the same time and hastily separated their intertwined hands.
“The next group is going in! Ziyan, Yuanyuan, and Miaomiao, get ready!”
“Okay—”
Fang Juexia walked a few steps towards the front by himself and crouched down. He didn’t know what lingering fear was still pestering him, for he clearly hadn’t even seen one ghost.
“Are you alright?” Pei Tingsong came up to him and also crouched down. “I just walked out in a hurry, did you bump into something? Let me see.”
Fang Juexia shook his head, took off his hat, straightened it out and then put it back on his head. The brim of his hat covered his eyes, and he buried his head into his knees. His fine pale neck stretched out, and as lights shone there, his thin layer of sweat was laid sparklingly bare.
“What’s the matter?” Pei Tingsong crouched in front of him, touched his knee, and stretched his hand to cover Fang Juexia’s exposed neck.
Fang Juexia said in a muffled voice, “It’s nothing, it’s just…”
Pei Tingsong’s palms were covered in damp sweat, and it seemed as if they were pressing on the hot temperature under his skin, imprinting that along with the hallucination of the endless low breaths by his ear directly into his flesh and blood.
“My legs are a little soft.”
—
The author has something to say:
K Omake:
After He Ziyan, Lu Yuan, and Jiang Miao enter the haunted house——
They meet the little Jiejie at the front desk:
He Ziyan: “Wow, uniform allure.”
Lu Yuan: “Fire Ge, your tastes are a bit strong…”
The little Jiejie hands over the papers:
Jiang Miao: “You’ve worked hard la~”
Reached the second floor:
He Ziyan: “Each person, search one room ah.”
Open the door, see a ghost:
He Ziyan: “Wow…” Goes around them.
Lu Yuan enters the specimen room. “Old He, your doll is so ugly.”
Jiang Miao enters the inpatient ward. “There’s a bed here.” Pulls open the curtain. “You’ve worked hard la, oh, it’s fake.”
The three of them pull open the door of the mortuary, and all the corpses sit up. All three of them sigh emotionally, “Wow, so cool.” They close the door and pull it back open, and the corpses sit up again.
The three people: “Wow, so cool, do it again!”
Corpses: Are you guys just playing with us?
Ghost students came up, and they pulled them to do karaoke together.
“Have you heard our songs before? Kaleido, have you heard of us?”
Ghost students: Confused….
Translated by juurensha
Edited by Noks
Because you are very cute ah.
In order to avoid running into too many other guests at the amusement park, the company specially arranged for the shooting of the ensemble show to take place at noon on a weekday. Although this amusement park only occupied a small area and couldn’t be compared to the most famous large amusement parks, it boasted a full set of rides and attractions, and their haunted house was said to be the jewel of the entire place.
It was a wonderful day, with the sun shining down and making people feel warm all over. As soon as the door of the car opened, all of Kaleido’s six boys scattered in multiple directions, just like when ducks were released from their pen.
“Wow, that roller coaster is so high ah!”
“I want to ride the pirate ship!”
“Is there that kind of shooting game?”
Fang Juexia calculated it through—it had already been ten years since he had last come to an amusement park. Looking at these facilities, even he felt a bit of yearning. The sun was so bright that people were finding it difficult to even open their eyes, so Fang Juexia stretched out a hand to cover his eyes as he looked at the carousel not far away.
Sunlight was an efficient tool in generating illusions, and the scene before his eyes took on the tone of an old Polaroid film, one that made him fall into a trance when he shook it out. A seven or eight-year-old boy suddenly appeared on the candy-colored wooden horse, a streak of red at the corner of his eye. At his side were his father and mother, and they turned and turned ah, repeating this circular arc, looking as if they could spin for a lifetime, laugh for a lifetime.
That seemed to have been the only occasion when his parents had accompanied him to an amusement park together.
“You like these kinds of things that kids play with ah.”
Pei Tingsong’s voice came from behind him. Fang Juexia turned his head, pulled himself out of his memories, and then shook his head.
Pei Tingsong turned his head and looked at him as he spoke, “Yet, you were so fascinated while looking at it.”
Fang Juexia wore a white baseball cap, revealing his whole face, looking fresh and comfortable. Pei Tingsong couldn’t help looking at him a few times more. He saw that the tips of Fang Juexia’s pale ears appeared almost translucent in the sunlight, and even the tiny blood capillaries in his earlobes were clearly visible.
“I came here as a child.”
He noticed that Fang Juexia’s chest heaved while saying this, as if he was taking a deep breath.
“That’s good. When I was a kid, I never came to this kind of place,” Pei Tingsong said casually.
“Really?” Fang Juexia thought that was unbelievable. “Your parents didn’t take you there?”
Pei Tingsong put his hands into his coat pocket and shook his head. “I don’t see them more than ten times a year.”
Fang Juexia asked, “At the same time?”
Pei Tingsong shrugged, “Separate. There are even fewer meetings with both of them together.”
His voice was still a little hoarse, and as he said that, he did seem to be a bit pitiful. Fang Juexia wasn’t very good at comforting others; his own situation wasn’t that much better, and moreover, Pei Tingsong, who possessed such a strong character, definitely wouldn’t want to be comforted by an outsider like him who wasn’t in the know.
So Fang Juexia just raised his head, slightly tilted his face upwards, and smiled at him. “So this is your first time.”
The first time experiencing an amusement park.
The birthmark at the corner of his eye appeared a little translucent under the sun, now carrying a bit of orange, looking just like a piece of candy.
“Happy?”
He didn’t know whether this sentence had directly poked his nerves, or if it was because he saw this cold face burst forth with a rare smile, but Pei Tingsong seemed to have been bewitched by it, and really felt a tiny bit of happiness.
“What’s there to be happy about? It’s not like I’m a kid.”
He turned his head to catch sight of their intertwined shadows, seeming to be closer and more intimate than the people themselves.
The directing team came out with the cameras, gathered all six of them together to record the beginning segment, explained the entire day’s arrangement, before finally leading everyone to the site of the main activity of the day.
“Today, for our Kaleido ensemble show horror special, we’ve come to the abandoned medical school in the horror section! This is the most famous haunted house in this amusement park. There are two floors inside and only one traversable route. Everyone can be rest assured that you won’t get lost.”
Ling Yi complained, “Director, do you think I am afraid of getting lost?”
“Hahahaha.”
The haunted house in front of them looked a bit different from the usual pitch-black cave-like haunted houses; it was an old two-story building, which really looked like an abandoned hospital. Big X’s were painted on the walls with red paint, and the plaster on the walls was about to fall off. There were several rusty sign-boards hanging on the top of the gate, written on which was the name of the hospital. Naturally, a hospital had windows, but every window here had already been nailed tight with planks, making its interior airtight.
Fang Juexia looked up, and although his expression still showed calmness, his heart had long grown unsettled.
It must be very dark in there ba….
He had been worried about this matter since last night. There were a pitiful number of light sources in a haunted house, and if someone like him, who suffered from night blindness, entered it, then he would probably be no different from a blind man feeling his path around in there.
Fang Juexia could already see the scenes where he bumped around, felt about, crawled, and rolled inside.
“This looks alright ah,” Pei Tingsong declared with an expression of ‘I’m not afraid at all’. “How frightening can it be?”
“Xiao Pei isn’t very old, but he is very brave,” Lu Yuan teased him.
He Ziyan followed up with, “He himself is a devil, so can he be afraid of ghosts?”
Jiang Miao laughed. “A man even ghosts fear—Pei Tingsong.”
The director continued to explain the process, “There are six of you here, so everyone can divide themselves into your own chosen groups.”
“Won’t we finish it off just by walking through it once? And we still have to split into teams.” Pei Tingsong didn’t understand what was scary about all this. He turned to his bandmates and asked, “Who is afraid ah?”
Everyone raised their hands in one mass move, and Fang Juexia, upon seeing this, also raised his hand, albeit after half a beat, taking the same stance as everyone.
This boyband’s group spirit always came from nowhere.
The director shook her head. “It’s not just simply walking through it oh. This time, in order to increase the difficulty level, we specially put each one of your guys’ chibi dolls in each room, so they total to six dolls. After you guys go in, you have to bring out all of the dolls before you can be declared to have successfully completed this challenge.”
Once this was announced, there was wailing everywhere.
“How come we also have to get the dolls? What dolls do we have to take out?”
“Who can go in and still stay rational ah?!”
“Director, I don’t want to go in, I really can’t do it…”
“Enough,” said the director, who had long gotten accustomed to this group’s daily moaning and groaning. She looked just and stern as she ordered, “Now, let’s start forming groups ba.”
As soon as she said that, Ling Yi hugged Juexia’s arm. “I’m going with Juexia! One look and you can tell Juexia isn’t the kind of person who’s afraid of ghosts, so it’s perfectly right to follow him.”
Pei Tingsong glanced at the abandoned hospital. It was pitch-dark, and with Fang Juexia’s night blindness, he’d be completely lost and blind in there.
“Fang Juexia will go with me.” Pei Tingsong stepped forward and dragged him to his side.
“Why? First come, first served! Aren’t you not afraid of ghosts? And you still want to grab him from me!” Ling Yi took Fang Juexia’s hand and asked, “Juexia, who do you say you want to go with?”
Fang Juexia was about to open his mouth, but Pei Tingsong directly pulled him to hide him behind his body. He then stretched out a hand to grab onto Ling Yi’s small head so that he couldn’t get close to the two of them.
“He will definitely choose me. You give up on this idea forever ba.”
The director promptly interrupted, “How about this ba? Juexia, Ling Yi, and Xiao Pei in one group, while the remaining Ziyan, Lu Yuan, and Xiao Miao will be in another group. We’ll base it on age, that’s okay ba?”
Ling Yi replied, “Objection!”
Pei Tingsong said, “Your objection is overruled.”
After hearing the director’s announcement, Fang Juexia broke away from Pei Tingsong’s clutches, twisted his wrist around a bit, and came out from behind Pei Tingsong’s body.
In fact, just now, he had almost called out Pei Tingsong’s name. If it were any other activity, he would have been fine partnering with anyone, but there was no light in the haunted house, and Pei Tingsong was the only person here who knew about his night blindness. Overall, it would be more reliable to go in with him.
“Then first, Xiao Pei’s group.”
Ling Yi gave a start. “We-we’re starting so soon?” Saying that, he immediately stuck himself to Juexia just like a magnetic doll. “Juexia, you have to protect me.”
“I’ll try my best…” Fang Juexia’s Adam’s apple rolled up and down, and he climbed up the steps of the haunted house with great anxiety.
Pei Tingsong followed behind the two of them. Ling Yi stretched out a trembling hand and gently pushed open the dusty hospital door. With a squeak, the door opened, and there was a damp air inside of a place that had never been aired out. Pei Tingsong’s throat still hadn’t healed completely, and he coughed as soon as he stepped in.
Upon hearing him cough, Fang Juexia looked back at him before quickly turning his head forward again.
The first floor was similar to that of an ordinary hospital, but with the lobby deserted, the chairs against the wall devoid of people, and a semi cylindrical front desk was in the middle. Large red arrow stickers were pasted on the floor, outlining the way for the guests coming in.
“Where can the dolls be ah…” As soon as Ling Yi spoke, his voice started to float up.
Fang Juexia was still calm. “They should be in those places with cameras.”
Following the arrows, the three people slowly moved towards the front desk. Ling Yi was so scared that he was holding onto Fang Juexia’s shoulder, and revealed only half of his head as he hid behind Fang Juexia’s body.
Fortunately, the main door wasn’t closed, so he could still sort of see.
Just as Fang Juexia had thought of that, a bang sounded out, and the door moved inwards from the outside to slam shut!
“Ahhhhh!” Ling Yi was so scared that he was actually stomping his feet. “Scared me to death!”
Fang Juexia didn’t find it strange to see Ling Yi scared to such a state, but what was strange was that Pei Tingsong actually suddenly hugged his right side. Fang Juexia, wearing a look of complete surprise, turned his head toward Pei Tingsong to look at him. “You’re also afraid ah.”
“Who said that? I’m just trying to protect you.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t see his face clearly at all and didn’t know whether he was really afraid or just pretending. If Pei Tingsong was really scared, then they were really done for. Two scaredy-cats and a blind man, when would they be able to finish the task?
Ling Yi’s voice shook as he spoke, “It’s too dark here… They don’t have even a single light?”
As soon as he said that, the sound of a strange music box suddenly resounded within the lobby—ding ding dong dong— and lingered in the hall. Fang Juexia could count as being quite brave, but even he was affected by this ghastly atmosphere.
“Ah, this music is really,” Pei Tingsong was about to curse, “I even have goosebumps.”
The music suddenly clicked to a stop. Seven or eight lights on the walls of the hospital lobby lit up, emitting a faint yellow light. However, for Juexia, they were basically useless. All of a sudden, a girl’s voice came out of the radio, a thread of eeriness in her sweet voice. “Welcome to the horror medical school… Excuse me, but what is your illness?”
The last word, ‘illness,’ suddenly turned into a scream, and not far from them, at the vacant front desk, a female ghost with disheveled hair suddenly stood up. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform and a nurse’s hat, her pupils were all white, and her face was covered in blood. She also held a piece of paper in her hands, which she proffered out; it was red all over.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The two screams, one high and one low, stacked together. Fang Juexia felt that his ears were about to explode, but he couldn’t see anything clearly. He just felt his left side go empty, for Ling Yi seemed to have let go of his hand and run away. He looked over towards the sound of footsteps. “Ling Yi?”
“Ah, don’t come over! I’m going out, I’m going out. Begging you guys to not come over here…”
He really ran away…..
Fang Juexia then thought of Pei Tingsong’s scream just now. “Didn’t you say you weren’t afraid?”
Pei Tingsong hadn’t recovered from the fright caused by the ghost nurse yet, and his voice sounded completely weak. “I-I didn’t know that it would be so horrifying before I came in ah! Also, I have never even been to a haunted house before, so how could I have known whether I’d be afraid or not?”
“You didn’t even know whether you’d be afraid or not, and you stated you weren’t scared of it.”
“What’s the point of saying that now?”
….
The pair of white eyes on the ghost nurse opened wide, as they floated back and forth between these two people. Her hands were already feeling sore from keeping them up, so she couldn’t help but interrupt these two strange but beautiful flowers, “Hey, do you guys want this ah?”
“Yes.” Fang Juexia couldn’t see clearly, so he could only fumble around after stretching out his hand. However, Pei Tingsong grabbed hold of the document with a swish, and then he even bluffed, “You! Do you have any dolls here?”
The ghost nurse Jiejie pulled her wig open and looked down to find a doll. “Here.”
“Thank you…” Pei Tingsong took the doll and dragged Fang Juexia, who still wanted to bow, into running away, only to hear the ghost nurse Jiejie yell from behind them, “Remember to give this paper to the doctor in Room 202~”
They heard Ling Yi’s screams sound out from a distance, probably from the second floor, with each scream higher than the next.
“Ling Yi is about to hit the dolphin note.” Fang Juexia looked up towards the second floor.
Pei Tingsong’s usual cool, fast talking routine had disappeared, leaving behind only the attribute of a trembling chatterbox. “Ah, it’s really scary, it’s too scary, why would anyone make such a horrifying place? Are those people who like to have fun in haunted houses all abnormal? They’re all crazy ba…”
Fang Juexia, who had practically been hefted up and carried away by him, wondered, “Don’t you study philosophy? And you’re still afraid of ghosts ah. Shouldn’t you be an atheist?”
Following the red arrows, Pei Tingsong, with his long legs shaking, arrived at the stairs located at the rightmost part of the lobby. With every step he made, a light on the wall beside the stairs lit up, and they seemed to be proximity lights. “Who told you that philosophy equals atheism? Early philosophy and religious studies were part of the same school of learning!”
Although he was afraid, he still carefully helped Fang Juexia slowly climb up the stairs one after the other. “Besides, so atheists must be brave ah? What kind of logic is…”
Just as they tottered around the corner, from within the midst of the pitch-black darkness, a ghost wearing a patient uniform suddenly stood up. With long fangs and a livid face, he came at them!
“Fuck! What the f……”
Pei Tingsong was so scared that he let out a whirlwind of curses as he threw his entire body against Fang Juexia, pushing him directly against the foot of the wall.
Since this was for the group ensemble show, they’d have to mute his audio for this episode later. Fang Juexia fumbled around in order to reach out and cover his Didi’s mouth with his hand. “Shh… It’s fake, it’s fake. Your throat isn’t even all better yet, don’t yell.”
“Wu! Doll….Wu!”
Only then did Fang Juexia remember. “Right, right, has the doll been lost?” He released his hand, upon which Pei Tingsong also released him. He then felt around for a long time on the ground, and when he found the lost doll, he pulled Fang Juexia up and ran away with him.
“You’ve worked hard.” Fang Juexia sensed where the scare actor was and bowed towards him, but because he couldn’t see, he ended up bowing in the wrong direction.
A perfectly good guy suddenly bowing to a wall devoid of ghosts— this actually scared the scare actor instead.
Pei Tingsong tightly held onto Fang Juexia’s hand and dragged him to climb the stairs—deng deng deng—and he didn’t even dare to turn his head around. The proximity lights continued to light up with the sound of their footsteps, and finally, with great effort, they entered the second floor. Different from the lobby on the first floor, this floor contained a long cross-shaped corridor. There were four rooms in total, some with their doors open, and some with locked doors. The lights on the ceiling were dreadfully dim, and some of them seemed to be broken as they kept flickering non-stop.
Even before he took a step, Pei Tingsong was so horrified that his scalp felt numb. “Can this background music stop for a while ah, it keeps playing non-stop!”
Fang Juexia, who was holding the document in his hand, kept thinking about what had happened at the front desk. “The girl from just now told us to go up to the second floor to room 202 to find the doctor.”
“Yes, yes.” Pei Tingsong gripped Fang Juexia’s shoulder with one hand and moved with crab-like steps to the right side of the corridor, slowly inching forward. “Room 202… 202, this one ba.” As soon as he looked up, he saw the metal tag with 202 written on it, and there was also something that looked like blood spattered on it. Pei Tingsong didn’t dare to look at it more closely as he walked to the closed door.
Fang Juexia also touched the door. Out of habit, he raised his hand and knocked. “Is there anyone there?”
“No one is there, only ghosts!” Pei Tingsong grasped the door handle and twisted it.
A poker-faced Fang Juexia said, “In this world, there are no…”
“Ah!!! Holy shit!”
Pei Tingsong’s cursing gave him a violent start. They were caught completely unaware by the ghost standing in front of them as soon as the door was opened. Fang Juexia couldn’t see, so he just walked forward and ran into the scare actor who was playing the ghost.
“Eh? Sorry, sorry, I ran into you, I’m sorry…” He stretched out his hand to touch the staff member, and then pulled Pei Tingsong into squeezing past this fake ghost to enter the room. “Don’t just casually curse people out la.”
“It’s not like I meant to!” Pei Tingsong felt that every new place they arrived at, part of his soul went missing, but Fang Juexia, throughout all of this, maintained an attitude of being completely fine, not panicking at all. “Fang Juexia, are you a psychopath? You’re not scared at all.”
It’s not like I can even see anything.
Fang Juexia tightened his grasp on this guide dog, who was constantly on the edge of mania, and walked into the room bit by bit. He tentatively called out, “Doctor?”
Pei Tingsong, holding a doll in one hand and Fang Juexia in the other, tried to keep his spirits up, and looked around the room. The light was dim, and the furnishings looked like those found in an ordinary clinic. A table was placed not far in front of them, and behind the table was a swivel chair, the back of which was facing towards them.
Just based on intuition, Pei Tingsong knew that whatever was in the chair would be horrifying when it turned around.
“Warning ahead, warning ahead, warningaheadwarningaheadwarningahead…”
Fang Juexia frowned and asked, “Why have you basically started up a barrage?”
Pei Tingsong covered his eyes using the doll in his hand, grabbed the document from Fang Juexia’s hand, and threw it onto the table in front of him.
“T-take it. Doctor, isn’t this what you w-want?”
Fang Juexia was amused by him. “Pei Tingsong, you’re stuttering.”
That chair swiveled around as expected, but Pei Tingsong kept his sight limited to the area below the doctor’s head. He just saw him collect the document, slowly open a drawer, and take a chibi doll out from it.
Pei Tingsong took one step forward, stretched his hand, grabbed the doll’s foot, picked it up, and ran out. Upon seeing that ghost standing at the door, he once again started trembling from fright.
“Are we going now?” Fang Juexia felt the door frame and waved at his back. “See you again.”
“Again??” Pei Tingsong stuffed the two dolls into Fang Juexia’s hands. “Take them quickly. Stand here and don’t move ah.” After that, he swiftly rushed over to the open door opposite this room, tactically executed a quick squint over the room, finally found a doll lying on a shelf full of disgusting specimens, and ran away after grabbing it. The fake corpse sitting inside the room didn’t even get the time to scare him, he simply ended up watching this tall guy dash in and run away with his own eyes.
Room 203 was an inpatient room with three beds. With their ten fingers tightly clasped together, Pei Tingsong pulled Fang Juexia into the ward, making sure to walk close to the wall. Pei Tingsong looked around to see if there was a doll while continuously chanting, “Don’t mess with me, don’t mess with me, don’t mess with me…”
The first two beds were empty, and there were neither any patients nor dolls in them. However, the curtain was pulled around the last bed.
“Ah, this must be really horrifying. I don’t want to go over there, please don’t scare me, don’t scare me…” Chattering on like a broken radio, the shivering Pei Tingsong still drew close to the last bed.
Fang Juexia whispered beside him, “Your hands are shaking so hard ah.”
“I-I’m not…” Pei Tingsong clenched his teeth and pulled the curtain open. He was so frightened he directly backed up. “AH!!!!!”
“Wow, that’s so good, your voice just hit F5 right now. Is it possible for you to sing high notes too now?”
“Is that the main point?!!”
His guide dog’s fur was about to explode. Fang Juexia held back a smile, and half-holding him while rubbing his back, consoled, “It’s fake, it’s fake, it’s all fake.”
Reclining on the bed was a fake corpse, whose facial features were blurry, and he held a doll in his arms.
“Ah, I can’t, I can’t,” Pei Tingsong stretched out two fingers, lifted the doll’s head, and pulled it out. “Four now, and there are still two left, let’s go quickly.”
The last room was a mortuary, and was lit up with faint green light. As soon as Pei Tingsong opened the door, the “corpses” inside, which were a bunch of possessed corpses, sat up one by one. This scared Pei Tingsong so much that his legs went soft, and he fell directly onto the side of the door.
“Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius, Spinoza, Hobbes, La Mettrie, Feuerbach, Sartre…”
Fang Juexia felt around in the dark and pulled Pei Tingsong up. He felt this action of his was completely inexplicable and asked, “What are you chanting?”
“The great ath–atheists in history, bless and protect me, bless and protect me, don’t let them mess with me.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t help laughing. He copied the manner in which Pei Tingsong was chanting and started reciting, “One times one is one, one times two is two, one times three is three, one times four is four…”
Probably because of how fear tended to make some people more agile, Pei Tingsong quickly managed to find the last two dolls. “Why is it that you recite the multiplication table all the time?”
“All the time?” Fang Juexia didn’t understand. “When else did I recite it?”
Pei Tingsong took his hand and ran out of the mortuary. “When you were drunk, you kept reciting it for the whole night!”
“Really…”
Fang Juexia didn’t know what had happened; everything was utterly pitch black in here, and he, who couldn’t see anything, could only be dragged to and fro by Pei Tingsong. But, whenever Fang Juexia heard him scream and curse, he didn’t feel like it was scary at all, instead, he just found it very funny.
“You’re even laughing.” After exiting the mortuary and returning to the corridor, Pei Tingsong leaned against the wall and took a deep breath. Finally, this thing could count as being done. After following the arrows to go downstairs, this entire ordeal should be over with.
“How can you still laugh?”
Fang Juexia, who was holding a pile of dolls, tried very hard to suppress his laughter. “Because you are very cute ah.”
“Cute??” As soon as he heard that, Pei Tingsong didn’t feel pleased, and so he feigned a very cool and very powerful look. “Who are you saying is cute?”
However, this haunted house didn’t offer him any breathing room. As soon as he was about to harshly defend himself, a group of people, all of whom had only one leg, actually appeared at the end of the corridor, with all of them dressed in school uniforms and hopping towards them just like jiangshi. All of them held a pen in their hand and their gesture made it seem that they were going to stab the visitors with it.
Pei Tingsong was so frightened by this that he once again let out a string of English curse words. He thought that these ghosts would all rush over together to frighten him, but unexpectedly, they actually rushed at Fang Juexia. Three or two of them even grabbed his shoulders and arms.
Fang Juexia, who was forcibly taken away, was still a little confused. “Hey? How come there are so many ah…”
“Ah, the dolls are gone.” Fang Juexia only had one task in mind.
Pei Tingsong was scared to death, and his courage had nearly been shattered, but even though he was trembling, he still went forward to push the strange ghost students aside. “Don’t pull him, thank you, thank you…. God! Da Jie, your make-up is too scary…”
Upon grabbing hold of Fang Juexia’s wrist in the dark, Pei Tingsong’s suspended heart finally fell back down. “Come here.” He jerked fiercely, and pulled Fang Juexia back into his arms.
The ghost students behind them were still trying to perform their crazy siege scene, and so Pei Tingsong was left with only the option of holding Fang Juexia against the wall as he tried to block the ghosts with his back. “Don’t come here, you guys. Quickly go away ba, go.”
Shifting Fang Juexia closer to himself had been done in too much of a hurry, and he had not been able to control either his strength or the distance between them. Pei Tingsong’s head lowered, and he overlooked the last few inches of distance between them, thus accidentally rubbing the side of Fang Juexia’s face.
In this fleeting moment, his soft lips skimmed past smooth skin and stopped at Fang Juexia’s ear.
It was dark and chaotic, but Fang Juexia couldn’t feel that at all. His back was against the ice-cold wall, but Pei Tingsong’s chest stuck against him was warm, very warm.
Their bodies were stuck so close to one another that they were nearly hand in glove. Pei Tingsong’s chest’s undulations, due to agitation, produced a vivid tide in Fang Juexia’s body.
He could smell the tiny bit of cologne Pei Tingsong was wearing—sea salt mixed with a hint of musk, as wisps of it wafted up, rubbing against the side of Fang Juexia’s face just like its owner. Hot breaths kept puffing right into his ear; these big breaths, enlarged and elongated in the dark, tangled around him like seaweed and kissed him all over his body.
The office ambush, the horror assault, the weird music being played in a loop, and the ghosts dressed in disguise— all failed before that.
It wasn’t until this moment that Fang Juexia started to feel shivers.
“It’s okay, it’s okay…” Pei Tingsong chanted in a low voice, and who knows who he was chanting it to. He tentatively looked back, and only after realizing that all of the ghost students had already disappeared did he let out a breath.
“They finally left.” Pei Tingsong let out a long sigh of relief and looked at Fang Juexia. “Do you still think I’m cute?”
He didn’t know if it was because it was too dark, but Fang Juexia seemed to have been nailed scared into his spot, like a little bunny that didn’t dare to move.
You could still get scared enough into falling down even without being able to see anything?
All of a sudden, Pei Tingsong, who was half a step late in realizing that they had been too close to each other before, quickly separated from Fang Juexia and squatted down in a hurry. “A-all the dolls are lost, I’ll go pick them up.”
Fang Juexia leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.
Right now, he was like a stranded fish that had just been rescued by the tide.
“Let’s go ba.” Pei Tingsong held a stack of dolls in his left arm and held onto Fang Juexia with his right hand. They quickly left the creepy corridor on the second floor, and Pei Tingsong hurried downstairs as fast as he could without making Fang Juexia fall over or trip, and then followed the arrows to find the exit, finally exiting this damned abandoned hospital.
“Wow!!! They finally came out!”
“Ling Yi, this coward, abandoned you guys and pumped his short little legs to run out the entire way.”
“You’re the one with short little legs!”
Jiang Miao came up to the two people and asked, “You guys are alright ba? You guys are very powerful ah, you brought them all out.”
Pei Tingsong hugged the dolls, his soul almost gone. “I will definitely have nightmares tonight.”
The director looked at the time and announced, “29 minutes and 34 seconds, a bit faster than we expected, very good!”
29 minutes 34 seconds. As Fang Juexia chanted this number in his heart, only then did he discover that his internal clock had completely failed.
Because of Pei Tingsong’s presence, it hadn’t ticked for a single second. It was broken, completely broken.
It was a small haunted house, but they seemed to have spent a long time walking its confines. The clock in his heart was no longer objective, and no longer could it measure and accumulate time on the basis of the established criteria.
He Ziyan glanced at the two people’s hands. “And you’re still holding hands.”
These two people were startled at the same time and hastily separated their intertwined hands.
“The next group is going in! Ziyan, Yuanyuan, and Miaomiao, get ready!”
“Okay—”
Fang Juexia walked a few steps towards the front by himself and crouched down. He didn’t know what lingering fear was still pestering him, for he clearly hadn’t even seen one ghost.
“Are you alright?” Pei Tingsong came up to him and also crouched down. “I just walked out in a hurry, did you bump into something? Let me see.”
Fang Juexia shook his head, took off his hat, straightened it out and then put it back on his head. The brim of his hat covered his eyes, and he buried his head into his knees. His fine pale neck stretched out, and as lights shone there, his thin layer of sweat was laid sparklingly bare.
“What’s the matter?” Pei Tingsong crouched in front of him, touched his knee, and stretched his hand to cover Fang Juexia’s exposed neck.
Fang Juexia said in a muffled voice, “It’s nothing, it’s just…”
Pei Tingsong’s palms were covered in damp sweat, and it seemed as if they were pressing on the hot temperature under his skin, imprinting that along with the hallucination of the endless low breaths by his ear directly into his flesh and blood.
“My legs are a little soft.”
—
The author has something to say:
K Omake:
After He Ziyan, Lu Yuan, and Jiang Miao enter the haunted house——
They meet the little Jiejie at the front desk:
He Ziyan: “Wow, uniform allure.”
Lu Yuan: “Fire Ge, your tastes are a bit strong…”
The little Jiejie hands over the papers:
Jiang Miao: “You’ve worked hard la~”
Reached the second floor:
He Ziyan: “Each person, search one room ah.”
Open the door, see a ghost:
He Ziyan: “Wow…” Goes around them.
Lu Yuan enters the specimen room. “Old He, your doll is so ugly.”
Jiang Miao enters the inpatient ward. “There’s a bed here.” Pulls open the curtain. “You’ve worked hard la, oh, it’s fake.”
The three of them pull open the door of the mortuary, and all the corpses sit up. All three of them sigh emotionally, “Wow, so cool.” They close the door and pull it back open, and the corpses sit up again.
The three people: “Wow, so cool, do it again!”
Corpses: Are you guys just playing with us?
Ghost students came up, and they pulled them to do karaoke together.
“Have you heard our songs before? Kaleido, have you heard of us?”
Ghost students: Confused….
