by N. Heller
"Where is Puppeteer now?" Lin Sanjiu couldn't help mulling over this matter every minute she was trapped in this building.
"We have already been trapped here for three years." Lin Sanjiu remembered those words as if the girl from the apartment unit was speaking just at her ear. She could even visualize the girl's smile in her head. "At the beginning, I tried to look for the exit. But, I have already gotten past that. Life is life no matter where we are, right? I won't have to change worlds every few months, I am not in any danger, and I have everything I want here… My advice to you is just to change your perspective on things. Why don't you have another glass of whiskey?"
"Three years..."
After Lin Sanjiu heard what the girl said, she rushed out of the room. She scoured through the building once more. She was reluctant to accept the girl's words. Yet, she found nothing.
Sighing, she suppressed her anxiety and walked out of the washroom.
Even though she was in an apartment building, there was a public washroom on the seventh floor. It lacked maintenance, and the floor was wet. Nevertheless, it was usable.
The wooden stairs creaked noisily as Lin Sanjiu ran back to the third floor. The corridor on the third floor was exactly the same as before. The only difference was that there wasn't any noise. It had somehow stopped.
Lin Sanjiu strode toward the previous apartment unit she had been in, unit 320. In any case, those people had arrived in this pocket dimension before her so they might have other useful information...
She stopped in front of unit 320. She raised her fist and knocked a few times on the door. Dust fell from the gold door unit number. When she pulled her hand back from the red door, she could see the knuckle print she left behind.
After knocking a few times, the apartment unit remained silent.
"Is there anyone around?" she shouted with an unsettling feeling in her gut. "I came here before. Open the door!"
Her voice reverberated through the corridor but no one answered the door. She placed her ears to the door and listened, but there was only silence. Just when she was about to knock on the door again, Lin Sanjiu heard a sudden whisper amidst the dead silence.
"Stop knocking."
Lin Sanjiu felt all the hairs on her body standing. She extended her wings and quickly backed away from the door. The owner of the voice did not approach her. He simply looked at her quietly from where he was standing with light reflecting off the surface of his spectacles.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"When did he appear? Why couldn't I detect him?"
Seeing Lin Sanjiu's hostility, the scrawny young man adjusted his spectacles and pointed at the door of unit 320 with his veiny hand. He did not answer her question but instead warned her once more, "Don't try to get those people to open the door again. Trust me. You won't want to see the occupants opening the door for you a second time."
"What do you mean? Who are you?"
The scrawny man spoke very softly with his deep voice. It was as if he was afraid that his voice would alert someone.
"Did you arrive here today?" he asked before turning around. After he took a few steps, he realized that Lin Sanjiu was not following him so he couldn't help raising his brow. "I came here last month. I've already been trapped here for almost 20 days. My name is Geran."
"He must be another Growth-type who had entered this amus.e.m.e.nt park." Lin Sanjiu wasn't sure if he belonged to Progressor Alliance, so she just nodded cautiously, "My surname is Lin. Why did you stop me from knocking that door? What do you know about this attraction?"
The scrawny man tilted his head as if he had gotten some information from what she said. But, he answered her quickly with a quiet voice, "I saw and heard you the last time you knocked on that door."
Geran seemed to be a rather stoic person. He spoke with a cautious and collected tone. He pointed at the stairs, explaining, "I was standing at the stairs. No, I know you might not believe me. In this building, no matter what sort of detection techniques you use, it will always be inaccurate… Just like before, you didn't notice me approaching, right?"
Lin Sanjiu was speechless. Just like what Geran said, she did not sense anyone with her hypersensory state. If she weren't in this place, she wouldn't even imagine what it would be like.
Seeing that Geran wasn't hostile to her and had exposed his back to her once again, Lin Sanjiu followed him keeping a distance between them.
"I told you not to knock on the door because…" For a moment, Geran couldn't find the right word. After some consideration, he continued, "It is because both of us don't know what is behind that door."
"Over the past 20 days, I have observed other posthumans who knocked on the doors. I don't know what they saw, and I don't know if they met the same group of people you met. But, they acted the same way. After searching through the entire building, they usually went back the apartment unit doors a second or third time.
"I understand their mentality. No one would give up on any possible clues that will lead them to the exit… I was lucky. If I didn't realize that something was amiss, I would follow suit and start knocking on the doors to ask questions." As Geran spoke, they reached the stairway. With his hand on the railing, he turned his head and added, "I discovered that any posthuman who saw the occupant opening the door for the second time would…"
Before he could finish his sentence, his eyes, behind the sheen of his spectacles, widened. When Geran caught sight of what was behind Lin Sanjiu, his face turned sheet white. Before Lin Sanjiu could make a sound, he turned around and rushed down the stairs without saying a word.
Lin Sanjiu felt the back of her head go numb. Before she could follow behind him, she heard a creak from a door behind her. It seemed to be from unit 320. In the end, she did manage to make one of the occupants from unit 320 open their door.
A drop of cold sweat rolled down Lin Sanjiu's back and onto her spinal dimple.
"You're back. I fell asleep just now so I didn't hear the door," the girl's voice rang out behind Lin Sanjiu. She sounded the same. She spoke with a tipsy, intoxicated and indolent tone of voice. "Am I right? You didn't find the exit, did you?"
Lin Sanjiu quashed her urge to turn around. With her gaze fixed straight ahead, she took one stiff step forward. Geran had escaped without explaining things properly but Lin Sanjiu could infer what he meant from his unfinished sentence. "Any posthuman who saw the occupant opening the door for the second time would…"
Lin Sanjiu didn't know what would happen to them but she knew that it wasn't anything good. In other words, she must not turn her head back no matter what happens. Lin Sanjiu had the impression that the girl with her converse shoes was approaching her. Lin Sanjiu wasn't certain. Between the rugs on the floor and the entire building, Lin Sanjiu felt that she could not trust her senses anymore. She opened her wings backward stirring up a gust of wind. Then, she sprinted toward the stairway. She made a sharp turn and raced down the stairs.
The second she twisted her body to make that sharp turn, she noticed a black round shoulder from the corner of her eye. Somehow it had already reached the back of her hand. It seemed like a face. "Why don't you come to me, come here…" the round face in the shadows taunted.
Lin Sanjiu blocked her left eyes with her hand. She did not dare to even look at the corridor again. She scrambled down the stairs all the way to the first floor. Seeing that she didn't have another way out, she shot a glance upstairs as her body tensed up like a threatened prey.
"Regardless what that girl was, she's not behind me now."
Lin Sanjiu waited with bated breath for a few seconds. The stairway was silent and there was no sign of anyone coming down.
"As long as I avoid seeing that 'person' who opens the door the second time, I'm safe?" Lin Sanjiu thought to herself shuddering at that thought while her heart pounded. She waited a while more until she was sure that things have calmed down before she let out a sigh of relief.
Incidentally, she found herself standing at th
e spot where she arrived. She looked around and felt a moment of doubt.
"Where is Geran?"
"There is only a single stairway in the building and there is no exit. If Geran ran down from the third floor, shouldn't he be here? Did he stop on the second floor?" Lin Sanjiu did not dare to make a single sound. She stepped on the rugs in front of the doors and slowly walked through the corridor on the first floor once more. However, it was just a straight corridor with no hiding spot. How was she going to find a fully grown man who had disappeared without a trace?
"Geran? Where are you?" It wasn't easy for Lin Sanjiu to meet a slightly more normal person. Even though he wasn't the most loyal person around, Lin Sanjiu wanted to see him again. Since Geran had been in this apartment building for more than 20 days, he definitely knew a lot more...
The only difference between the first floor and the other floors was that there was a dome-shaped alcove where the entrance was supposed to be. Lin Sanjiu loitered at the alcove for some time and just when she decided to go upstairs to look again, she heard a familiar creak sound.
That was the sound of a dark red wooden door opening and it sounded just beside her. The door to unit 101 opened before Lin Sanjiu's bewildered eyes. She saw the sheen from a pair of spectacles and the scrawny man who had introduced himself before peeked out.
Geran recognized Lin Sanjiu the moment he opened the door but he did not move. Instead, he peered cautiously at the corridor. After he confirmed that nobody had chased them down the stairway, he turned to Lin Sanjiu whispering, "You're pretty quick-witted! You didn't look behind you?"
Lin Sanjiu had her skeletal wings pressing against a wall. She did not move.
"My conjecture was right. The 'occupants' on each floor can only move within their own floors…" Geran adjusted his spectacles. "Are you alright?"
Lin Sanjiu gulped. She didn't forget what she did just now…
The door of unit 101 opened only after she called out Geran's name a few times. In a sense, this could be considered the first time the door of unit 101 had been opened—
"Why… why are you in that apartment unit?" Lin Sanjiu asked dryly, feeling slightly afraid of the answer that she might get.
"Didn't that girl say that there was everything she wanted in her apartment unit? " Lin Sanjiu thought to herself.
Geran crooked his head and instantly understood her expression. "Ah," he exclaimed knowingly. "This room? 101 is the only apartment unit in the building that protects the players… It is our 'living space'. There isn't anything here. There are some sofas here and some drinks. The drinks get replenished every day."
"How did you find this place?" Lin Sanjiu stared at him unblinkingly. It was as if she was trying to find any warning signs from his face, but the man's skin, hair, eyes, and body looked very normal. He didn't look any different from before.
"That's because… the first door that I knocked was unit 101." Geran scratched his hair feeling a little hard-pressed by Lin Sanjiu's questions. Since nobody answered, I opened the door and walked in. After that, I found out that this was the only room that was truly unoccupied."
He walked out and stood in the corridor. Following Lin Sanjiu's gaze, he pointed at the rows of doors at the two sides of the corridor. There was silence.
"It is quiet so you might think that no one is living in those apartment units… If you knock on those doors, each one of them will eventually open."
Chapter 351 - The Second Occupant
Clank. Lin Sanjiu placed an empty can of drink on a coffee table and squashed it flat. The white Coca-Cola brand could still be seen on the twisted and misshapen red can.
"I don't know why there is only Cola here and no bottled water." Geran pushed the items on tabletop toward Lin Sanjiu. "I think that's the reason why there is a washroom on the seventh floor."
Cola beverages generally increased kidney workload and didn't replace fluid well, and were even weak diuretics. From a survivalist's point of view, water was an absolute necessity. Lin Sanjiu knew these facts but she still finished the can of carbonated drink.
"However, I've been to the washroom on the seventh floor," she frowned as she looked at the cakes, biscuits and other snacks on the coffee table. She realized that she didn't have any appetite. "The tap isn't working. There's no water."
"I know," Geran adjusted his spectacles and sighed. "Desperate times call for desperate measures. We can't be too picky. I have been drinking the water from the toilet tank."
Lin Sanjiu had drunk things worse than water from a toilet tank. She nodded and scrutinized the apartment unit once more. Just as Geran had described, there wasn't much in this apartment unit. It didn't look any bigger than 20 m². The beige carpeted floor was closer to a brownish-black due to the stains all over it. There was a coffee table in the middle of the room and two dirty black two-seater sofas.
Oddly, when she first entered the apartment unit, she didn't notice the furniture. Her gaze was immediately drawn to the thing on the wall in front of her.
It was a window.
Lin Sanjiu could not remember if she saw a window in unit 320. In any case, this was the first window she noticed and she could even see the gray skies outside. Lin Sanjiu's heart raced and she quickly approached it to see what was outside.
Outside the window, there was a small village by a river. But, the moment Lin Sanjiu inspected the "village", her body went cold. After that, an inexplicable fury overwhelmed her. She was angry and frustrated and she wanted to scream. In the end, she stood quietly without saying a word for some time.
"I guess it is different in every single room," Geran grumbled moodily. "The painting behind the window in the male washroom is that of a bustling city center."
After Lin Sanjiu stood closer to the window, she noticed that the "outside view" of the window was actually just a painting even through the glass window panel. Its vibrant play on lightning in the painting made it look real from afar.
"Is this a joke?" Lin Sanjiu voice was cold and stiff. She controlled her churning emotions. When the girl on the third floor told her that there was no exit in the building, Lin Sanjiu was still unruffled, but after seeing this still life landscape painting posing as the outside world, she couldn't keep her hands from trembling.
—
"So, the first thing to note is that a player must not knock on the doors, right?" Lin Sanjiu asked Geran thoughtfully. "What else do you know about this building?"
The scrawny man shook his head. If one could generate the most average face from facial data of all males between 20 and 30 years old in China, he would probably look like Geran.
"Other than the 'living space' in Unit 101, and the door knocking, I don't know really know much more about this place than you," Geran crossed his hands and placed them over his knees. "However, after being trapped here for 20 days, I have already thoroughly thought about this attraction. With the information that you have given me, I have some idea about it."
"Care to explain?"
"You mentioned the female ticket seller telling you something before you came in. She told you specifically that this is a sightseeing attraction, right? Could it be possible that we have to see every part of this building?"
"But I didn't miss any spot." Just when Lin Sanjiu was about to rebut, she thought of something and immediately kept quiet. In fact, she had seen only the smallest area of the building which was its corridors. Lin Sanjiu had no idea what was behind every single dark red door. Once she realized this, her face turned a little sour no matter how gutsy she was.
Noticing her changed expression, Geran added, "After you knocked a door once, you are temporarily still safe. This might be a very critical point to note. Look, you're still perfectly fine, right?"
"For now..." Lin Sanjiu rued. "If the door to unit 320 opens the third time…"
Lin Sanjiu could still imagine the overly large round shadow she saw from the corner of her eyes. She froze for a moment before she asked Geran another question with a parched thr
oat, "What will happen to the players who see an occupant who opens his door for the second or third time?"
"Who knows?" Unexpectedly, Geran shook his head again. His face also turned a little pale. "After a player entered an apartment unit for the second time, he appeared on the first floor the second day. However… I don't know how to explain this so that you can understand what I mean. I spent that day hiding in the washroom. I don't mean he changed or anything," Geran seemed inept at expressing himself but Lin Sanjiu could sense a hint of lingering fear in his voice. With that, she got a vague inkling of the meaning behind his words. He continued, "The person did not look any different, but after surviving so many worlds, the least I could do was to trust my intuition so I avoided him the best I could. Ever since that day, I had not seen him. At that time, there was also another player I don't know. We didn't talk to each other."
Lin Sanjiu felt a shiver down her spine. She could only hope that Geran's deduction was wrong. If he was right, she would not be able to enter unit 320 again. If that was the case, how was she ever going to complete the requirement to "sightsee"?
Geran stopped speaking as if he had remembered something. After hesitating for a bit, he sighed and lamented, "Maybe, I could be wrong about everything. If that was the case, this game might be a little too easy. Peek into every unit and then exit. How could it be that easy?"
Even though Lin Sanjiu knew that Geran might have said that to comfort her, she did feel better. She nodded gratefully. "You might be on to something. If there is a 'person' living in each apartment unit, based on my experience, they should be able to provide some information… Maybe, we should try to gather more information first."