Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  "Alright." Lin Sanjiu could only sigh in her mind bitterly. Anyway, in her current form, those spirits wouldn't even treat her as a threat, so she probably won't get hurt. If those two kids weren't afraid to die, she naturally could go along with their decision.

  "Gosh! There are kids in this family, the floor is just covered with toys. How irksome..." After Rena smashed open yet another door, she remarked with disdain from inside the apartment unit. She kicked the door when she walked out while she complained fussily to Lin Sanjiu, "There isn't even a clean apartment unit here!"

  Lin Sanjiu couldn't help feeling a little annoyed when the siblings exuded that sort of 'rich-pampered-kids' aura. Lin Sanjiu paid her no heed and continued floating forward. Suddenly, Reno yelled out from the end of the corridor, "Quick! Come here! This unit looks good. It's clearly newly renovated..."

  The grayish brain drifted over slowly. Lin Sanjiu wasn't all that concerned about how beautiful the renovations were, but the apartment was surprisingly good. After the lights were switched on, they could see a whole set of new wood furniture, white walls and decorative plastic plants. It looked clean and elegant. The siblings checked the rooms with a well-practiced efficiency—what they called 'pest control'—and they quickly found a supernatural entity under the bed in the children' room. They destroyed the 'bogeyman' under the bed without any hassle.

  The siblings had a couple of Special Items like Lin Sanjiu's Teru Teru Bozu, which could warn them about surrounding dangers. However, they were just pieces of black metal and were not in any sort of doll-like form because anything which resembled humans attracted spirits to possess them. The siblings arranged them around the corners of the room and, finally, their preparation was completed.

  For their safety, the siblings decided to move a bed to the living room and decided to take turns keeping watch during the night. In her current form, it was not necessary for Lin Sanjiu to sleep. She floated to the middle of the living room. Reno beat Rena at rock-paper-scissors, so he could go to bed first. Seeing that, Lin Sanjiu decided to meditate and explore the depths of her higher consciousness, planning to train herself the way Mrs. Manas taught her.

  Click. Rena switched off the light and sat in darkness under the brain.

  Time passed quickly in the dark. Lin Sanjiu training was rather tedious. Firstly, she had to rotate the higher consciousness around her 'nucleus' very quickly. After ensuring that the movements were smooth and fluid, she had to pick and compress two wisps together. This step was very difficult. It was as though she had to push two magnets of the same poles together. The repulsion made her wonder if it was even a legit method. Once she successfully 'pressed' the two wisps of higher consciousness together, a few threads of white smoke would immediately fill up the emptied spaces. This meant that she had generated new higher consciousness.

  Of course, at this point, these 'new higher consciousness' was just Lin Sanjiu regaining the higher consciousness she had used up when she activated her [Defence Forcefield]. The additions would only be considered truly new when she had recovered all her expended higher consciousness.

  The compressed higher consciousness was stronger and longer-lasting. For example, the uncompressed wisps would only power her [Defence Forcefield] for one minute, whereas the compressed version which was many times more efficient could easily power her it for 35 minutes.

  While Lin Sanjiu delighted in regaining her higher consciousness bit by bit, trying her best to squeeze two wisps of higher consciousness together, she was suddenly startled by an external noise. The wisps of higher consciousness immediately floated away like fishes from a broken net.

  That noise wasn't loud. It sounded like a light bump, but somehow she heard it. She looked around her, feeling slightly vexed and a little worried. She didn't know how much time had passed, but the furniture sat silently in the darkness with their dark shadows of all shapes. Rena had her chin on the table; her eyelids sank slowly. Reno was breathing rhythmically while lying on his bed. Apparently, he was fast asleep. The piece of metals which acted as alarms were quiet. Everything seemed normal.

  "This is odd. Where was that sound from?" Lin Sanjiu circled the room once. Then, she heard a creak.

  This time, Rena quickly stirred. Though her eyes were wide open, she was still in a slight daze. She turned to look at Lin Sanjiu. Evidently, Rena also didn't know where that sound came from.

  Then, there was a series of random noise, which seemed to come from the corridor. Lin Sanjiu couldn't stand it any longer. She rapidly spelled, "I'll take a look" and pulled her 'body' into a thin sheet—she already had full control of her shape-shifting. After that, she left through the gap under the door.

  The translucent sheet entered the corridor and flew around it a few times. However, everything was normal. The lights were still yellow and the apartments units were shut. Nothing was out of place.

  "There's nothing." Lin Sanjiu grumbled to herself after discovering nothing and then headed back. She remembered that the apartment they were staying was the last unit at the end of the corridor. She turned into a thin sheet and slipped back into the living room from under the door again.

  The room looked the same. The beds with metal frames, pulled out by the siblings from their rooms, were in the middle of the living room. To make room for the bed, the sofa and coffee table were pushed aside haphazardly. The black metal alarms were in the corners of the room. The light was switched off, so there was only a bit of light coming through the windows. The dim light showed the outlines of the furniture.

  The brain froze in mid-air. It hung there for some time without moving. Finally, Mrs. Manas broke the silence, "What's wrong... Oh? Where are the siblings?"

  Lin Sanjiu sighed. There was no one lying on the bed and no one sitting on the chair. The siblings were missing.

  Chapter 203 - The With Sounds

  The room looked the same, except for the two missing humans. Everything seemed normal—be it the living room, bedrooms and bathroom. Lin Sanjiu had searched the entire apartment but she couldn't find the siblings.

  "Even if they were dead, I should see their corpses or they should have become duoluozhongs. " Lin Sanjiu couldn't make sense of the current situation. " If they wanted to leave the living room, they would need to walk through the corridors. Yet, I was in the corridors."

  Each floor had two L shaped corridors, one to each side of the elevator. It might be possible to miss someone if one person was in the left corridor and the other in the right. However, sounds easily echoed through the corridors there, so Lin Sanjiu would definitely notice if someone came out from the apartment. The only exception would be the case where the siblings used some sort of method to secretly escape without telling her. Lin Sanjiu couldn't understand how they could have just disappeared.

  "They did mention yesterday that they would bring a few nameless visas with them whenever they were traveling, just as a precautionary measure. Didn't they say they could give me one so that I could meet them at Red Nautilus? " Lin Sanjiu mumbled to herself. " It isn't logical that they would just suddenly leave..."

  But, if they didn't leave based on their own intentions, that would mean that some external force caused them to disappear. However, the alarms did not make any sound. Mrs. Manas was also stumped by this puzzle. Even though they discussed for some time, they were unable to come up with any good conclusions.

  " I think I'll go search for them. Maybe, upstairs and downstairs... " Lin Sanjiu said in her head while she slipped out of the door again. She didn't only see the two kids as her guaranteed ticket to Twelve Worlds Centrum, but in this extremely lonely world, they were also her cherished companions.

  If the siblings were in danger, Lin Sanjiu was the only person they could count on now. However, when she entered the corridors once again, there wasn't anything unusual. She could still see that faded 15 under the dim yellow lights. Lin Sanjiu looked at the elevator and immediately decided against using it. She turned and headed to the entrance of the stairway.
The stairway of any residential building older than three months were nightmares. As people would only go there to throw their trash, the stairways were poorly maintained. The lights were usually never replaced and the stairs were crazily steep. In the darkness, the stairways looked narrower than they really were. Even the brain, which floated down the stairs, felt uncomfortable.

  Perhaps, there was even a stench from the trash, but thankfully, her higher consciousness form did not provide her with the sense of smell. As she could scan the area with her higher consciousness, she only needed a few seconds to check each floor. Furthermore, it didn't take much time to go down 15 stories to reach the ground floor, since she was flying. Unfortunately, she didn't see the siblings even after checking through each floor to the elevator lobby on the ground floor.

  "Mrs Manas, if those two children are playing pranks," Lin Sanjiu grumbled as she flew toward the elevator and decided to take a different route this time, "I will knock their nose into their skulls."

  The elevator was still on the 15th floor. Lin Sanjiu pressed the button to call the elevator down and it slowly traveled downward. " There must be something wrong with this elevator..." Lin Sanjiu thought to herself as she floated on the spot.

  Previously, when they were in the elevator, she had pressed a row of buttons. The 15th floor was the first stop, but, she was sure that buttons 16, 17 and the others also lit up. Under normal circ.u.mstances, the elevator should continue upward after they got out. Yet, evidently, the elevator did not move after they got out. It remained on the 15th floor.

  While she pondered about it, the elevator arrived with a 'ding'. The doors opened, revealing the elevator with its white light. The brain drifted into the elevator and a small finger-like tip pressed on the button '16'. The elevator traveled upward after the door closed.

  As the numbers increased in a normal sequential order, nothing happened, even though Lin Sanjiu was expecting some sort of abnormal occurrence. It acted like a normal elevator and stopped with a 'ding'.

  However, the number on the wall was 15.

  There was someone on the 15th floor!

  Lin Sanjiu raised her guard and gathered her higher consciousness. She quickly floated to the top corner of the elevator and watched nervously as the doors opened.

  "Huh?"

  Lin Sanjiu noticed a sparkling pink wig as the elevator doors cracked open. Next, Rena's eyes widened while Reno remarked loudly, "Hey! Look, isn't she here?!" This immediately played out in the image that Lin Sanjiu saw in her head.

  "Where did you run off to?!" Rena jumped into the elevator, she was ready to poke the brain with her fingers covered with colorful nail polish. "Weren't you supposed to check the noise? Why didn't you come back? We thought something happened to you. So, you just went downstairs to play!"

  Lin Sanjiu, who took quite a while to understand what the girl meant, was so frustrated that she could vomit blood. When she saw Reno nodding his head in agreement, she furiously spelled the words: 'I was looking for you both. You two disappeared'. This was the first time Lin Sanjiu spelled so many words.

  "No, you were the one who disappeared! Aren't we standing here?!" Rena didn't stop attempting to poke Lin Sanjiu, forcing the brain to evade her while hiding in the corner of the elevator, "I didn't see you so I asked my brother to look for you!"

  Lin Sanjiu sighed a breath of relief but was still puzzled by all this. She wondered if she lost track of time and incidentally missed the siblings. But why didn't she hear them walking out?

  After a difficult time avoiding Rena's sharp fingernails, Lin Sanjiu followed behind the siblings and returned to the apartment unit, still feeling very perplexed. The apartment unit was exactly the same as when she left.

  "It's just a false alarm," Reno commented as he lay comfortably in his bed but was pulled up by his sister.

  "It's your shift now!"

  He only remembered that after being reminded, and then dragged his feet and sat on the chair under the grayish brain. By the looks of it, nothing had changed. After Lin Sanjiu asked Reno 'how long did you wait for me', she couldn't concentrate on her training any longer because this incident did not make sense.

  "Since you are just a brain, we thought nothing would happen to you, so we started playing cards. Erm... I can't really tell how long we waited for you exactly. But, we waited for at least an hour," Reno replied. Even though she might have lost track of time, Lin Sanjiu was sure she was only outside for less than half an hour.

  "Is there some sort of time warp in Kisaragi Station World? Could we be in a pocket dimension?"

  But if this was a pocket dimension, it was too quiet. Lin Sanjiu thought for a long time, but she couldn't come up with an explanation. The living room became silent again. The night in this world seemed to last for a long time, as if dawn would never come.

  When Reno could no longer endure his sleepiness, he fell asleep in his chair. Lin Sanjiu, the only one who was still wide awake, couldn't help wandering in and out of the apartment unit. She harrassed Mrs. Manas in her mind, trying to understand the entire situation. However, they weren't able to come up with anything even after their discussions. In the end, Mrs. Manas had been pestered too much and started acting dead. After she stopped replying to Lin Sanjiu, the latter entered the bathroom moodily and switched on the light.

  Anyway, she found the siblings, so it didn't really matter if she couldn't figure out what had happened. Lin Sanjiu thought about it for a little longer and decided to give up. She flew straight into the bathtub and converted her corpse back into its original form. She moved to the tap. As she had nothing to do now, she decided to wash her corpse.

  Chapter 204 - She Quickly Familiarized Herself With the Transom Window

  Lin Sanjiu knew that she wasn't known for her intelligence. However, if she knew that they would end up in that situation, she would have rushed out of the bathroom to kill the person who was fast asleep outside when she heard the flushing sounds from the bathroom upstairs.

  Right now, she had already been trapped in that residential apartment for close to ten days. The word 'trapped' wasn't quite right. If Lin Sanjiu could steel herself, she could just fly out from the window because she wasn't imprisoned by anyone or anything. Outside the window, Kisaragi Station World stretched out boundless under the gray skies.

  Yet, she couldn't leave. One of the reasons why she couldn't leave walked up to her. The girl whispered to Lin Sanjiu softly, "I already asked him to make something to eat." Rena pursed her lips and looked gloomy. The stress she felt over these few days had caused a few pimples to appear on her usually smooth skin.

  As she spoke, Reno hummed as he entered the kitchen.

  "When should we kill him?" Rena asked. After that, the teenage girl bit her lips, trying her best to control her hands, which trembled every now and then.

  Lin Sanjiu, in her brain form, wished to just let out a long sigh. Everything began from the night when she heard the flushing sound.

  ———

  On that night, fourteen days ago, when Lin Sanjiu heard that sound through the thin ceilings, her 'fingers' froze. She had always assumed that there was no one else in this building. However, if she thought about it carefully, none of them had gone past the 15th floor. It was possible that there were survivors living upstairs. After all, spirits wouldn't have to use toilet bowls.

  Lin Sanjiu thought about it for a moment and decided to go upstairs to have a look. Anyway, she was just a 'brain spirit' right now, so only duoluozhongs and people who had their eyes corroded by black matter could see her. She might as well take advantage of this worry-free form and make use of the freedom she had.

  After making that decision, she immediately turned and flew out of the transom window. However, after she flew just a few meters upward and was about to reach the 16th floor, she heard a sudden sound of footsteps from the floor below. She heard the door opening and realized that one of the siblings had entered the bathroom.

  Lin Sanjiu was startled, she sudd
enly remembered that her body was still in the bathtub downstairs. If it just scared the siblings, it wouldn't be that much of an issue. However, it would be troublesome if the kids threw her body out of the building impulsively!

  At that moment, Lin Sanjiu couldn't care to look through the window of the bathroom on the 16th floor. She sped back through the transom window and found herself facing Reno, who had just walked into the bathroom. The teenager was staring speechlessly at the body in the bathtub.

  'That's me', Lin Sanjiu quickly spelled. Before he could react, she immediately turned her body back into a card.

  "Ah... Ah…" Reno uttered for some time with his mouth wide opened before he managed to say something. "You... you? You? That's you?" His first few words were quite useless. After he sorted his thoughts for a few seconds, he blurted out a few important questions, "Isn't that a corpse? Where did you place it? Are you dead? Are you a spirit?"

  If Lin Sanjiu were to tell him everything from the start, it would take so long that it'd be dawn. Lin Sanjiu considered for a moment and gave him a simple reply: 'I'll tell you next time'. Then, she flew out of the transom window once more. It was only then that he realized that the grayish brain had squeezed itself into the bathroom through the window. "Hey, where are you going? Why are you running off by yourself again?" he asked urgently.

  Judging from his expression, Lin Sanjiu instantly felt like a dog which had been adopted by some kids. She hesitated and replied him by spelling: 'Someone upstairs'. While Reno stood in a daze, thinking about the meaning of her words, Lin Sanjiu had already slipped out skillfully from the window once again.

  As with most residential buildings, the unit above usually had the same layout as the unit below. The brain which had flown out from the bathroom window of the 15th floor would naturally end up in the bathroom of the unit above.

  The bathroom on the 16h floor was totally dark. The person who used the toilet had obviously finished his or her business and left after switching off the lights.