by N. Heller
The footsteps belonged to human and were accompanied by the splashing of water that was conspicuously loud in the silent washroom. The invader spoke as she moved toward Lin Sanjiu's cubicle.
"Miss Lin, are you in there?"
Lin Sanjiu eyes bulged in shock as a pair of black sneakers stopped outside her cubicle. The owner had stepped on the shoes previously. Lin Sanjiu could see the crease on the shoes.
"Livia?"
"Why didn't you wait for me? Didn't I tell you to wait for me while I got dressed?" It seemed to Lin Sanjiu that Livia knew she was here all along. Then, she called her "Miss Lin" twice.
"Since Livia could get to the seventh floor, does that means that she is all right?"
"Maybe she is the kind of person who is slow at getting dressed?"
Lin Sanjiu then probed, her voice was shivering, "How-- how did you get up here?"
"I came here to find you, obviously," Livia's answer had no flaw, "Besides, I needed to use the toilet. I don't understand why all the rooms in this apartment have no washrooms aside from the seventh floor."
Heaving a sigh, Lin Sanjiu's heart slowly regained its healthy pace.
Putting aside the fact that Livia could not move to another floor if she had been turned, Lin Sanjiu did not knock on unit 601 the second time, nor did she call Livia by her name, so no matter how she looked at it, she did not meet the requirement of "knocking the door for the second time."
"I've met a player here, but he's gone missing too," as Lin Sanjiu talked, she stood up. She did not know why she used the word "too" in her sentence, "It's a he. I'm not sure if you met—"
The last letter stuck in her throat. She could not spit it out.
Lin Sanjiu, who stood at 180 cm now looked over the top edge of the door and saw a head of black hair.
"Livia is not that tall."
"What are you doing in there? Come on out now," the voice, which Lin Sanjiu believed belong to a woman, said. She was smiling.
Chapter 353 - Dual Rules?
When Lin Sanjiu lifted her hand, the thought "Why am I doing this?" surfaced in her mind. Nevertheless, the suspicious question did not stay long enough in her mind to stop her next movement. She grabbed the brass handle tightly and twisted it. A clank sounded as the mahogany-colored wooden door to unit 320 opened with a creak.
Then, she stepped into the apartment unit—
Let's rewind to twenty minutes before when Lin Sanjiu met Livia in the washroom.
——
Lin Sanjiu stared fixedly at the head of black hair that was slightly higher than the door.
The lack of space in the cubicle had hindered her movement. She couldn't fully extend her wings. Hence, she went for another alternative. As she summoned her [Tornado Whip], she sneakily climbed on top of the toilet lid.
After she claimed a relatively higher spot, she said coolly, "I didn't lock the door. Just push it."
Instead of panicking, Lin Sanjiu felt serene in her heart since the danger was imminent. She had no idea what kind of creature was waiting for her on the other of the door, but she was clear that compared to dealing with an enemy which could not be seen or touched, she preferred the one with flesh and blood.
The head moved, then the door to her cubicle creaked open.
Apparently, the person outside only pushed lightly on the door. As the door swayed open, Livia—who looked like the real Livia—appeared in her sight.
"What are you doing?" Startled by Lin Sanjiu's battle stance, Livia quickly recoiled a few steps and asked, "Are you trying to attack me?"
The head of black hair had disappeared and everything outside of the cubicle looked precisely as before. Lin Sanjiu's eyebrows were brought together tightly, forming a deep furrow on her forehead. She held her [Tornado Whip] firmly and decided not to do anything rash for the moment.
It was easy for her to get rid of Livia here, but getting herself dragged into some unnecessary battle was the last thing she wished.
After all, she did not know much about this place.
"Nothing. Just a precaution," the actor in Lin Sanjiu took the stage. She waved her hand and put the [Tornado Whip] away. After she showed Livia that she had no weapon, she got out of the cubicle. "What took you so long to get dressed?"
Lin Sanjiu's reply did not at all comfort Livia. She held on to her guard and kept her distance of a few steps from Lin Sanjiu. "Is it? I came out right after I got dressed. I didn't take too long."
This was a childish argument, and Lin Sanjiu knew that pointing the finger at each other at this moment would not get them anywhere. As she narrowed her eyes and studied Livia, she changed to another topic, "How much you know about this place? What are we going to do next?"
"Not much," Livia said briefly, "I entered a few rooms, and all of them were empty. I did not meet any other players either, so even if I wanted to gather information about this place, there were no people for me to ask."
Lin Sanjiu remained silent for a moment before saying, "I do know of a way if you want to gather intel about this building."
Lin Sanjiu felt words paled in comparison to action. She gestured with a nod of her chin to Livia and exited the washroom.
It was pretty easy to prove the truth in Livia's words.
The stairway was situated on the right side of the women's washroom. After ordering Mrs. Manas to take care of her back, Lin Sanjiu took the first step and led Livia down the stairs. Before they could finish walking the flight of stairs, unit 601 and half of unit 603 that stood beside unit 601 appeared.
Lin Sanjiu stopped, turned around to face Livia and asked, "How many rooms have you entered so far?"
"I've entered the first few rooms on the sixth floor," Livia was perplexed by her question, "What's wrong?"
"So I guess you wouldn't mind entering the room again, right?" Lin Sanjiu shot a warm smile at her, "Don't enter unit 601, enter unit 603."
Livia was dumbfounded. She was unable to comprehend and was extremely suspicious of Lin Sanjiu's demand. Nevertheless, after darting a glance at Lin Sanjiu, she did not voice out her doubt and did what Lin Sanjiu had asked her to do. "Didn't I tell you that there was nothing in the rooms?" As she said, she twisted the brass handle.
The door to unit 603 opened before Lin Sanjiu's bewildered eyes.
As if she was proving her words, Livia stepped into the room without waiting for Lin Sanjiu's next order, "See? Nothing is in here."
From Lin Sanjiu's position, she could only see a portion of the room. There was a shoe cabinet in the entranceway, a vase of dried flower on top of the shoe cabinet, and an empty hallstand. The rest of the room was blocked by a wall.
"We really can enter the room!"
Just as the thought materialized in Lin Sanjiu's mind, her body had made the action before her brain could give the order. As she rushed toward unit 603, Livia's voice drifted into her ears, "Come here and take a look yourself, there isn't anybody in here…"
A sudden blast of wind appeared without warning. It brushed Lin Sanjiu's hair back away from her face. She paused and before she could resume her sprinting, the wind had swept the door close with a bang, killing whatever Livia was trying to say next.
It happened too fast that Lin Sanjiu's eyes were wide open in astonishment as she stood in a trance staring at the door.
She had lost track of time as of how long she had been standing. Then, she lifted her trembling hand.
Knock. Knock . Two hesitating rat-a-tat sounds reverberated far down the corridor.
Nobody answered the door.
Her left hand dripped with sweat as she gripped the card containing the [Tornado Whip] tightly. She held her breath and listened but nothing, no sound transmitted into her ear. She found herself once again enveloped in silence after the echo dissipated.
Just as she lifted her right hand to knock on the door again, the brass handle rotated, and the mahogany-colored wooden door slit open.
It was an old lady in the Autumn of her life. Her face was full of s
miles.
The old lady had gunmetal grey, curly hair dr.a.p.ed neatly around her shoulders. Her wrinkly skin looked like a discarded, wrinkled, paper bag left to itself. Everything on her face was bent downward, only her bright red lips curved upward, forming an arc with two sharp points on either of her cheeks.
With a husky voice, the old woman asked, "Who are you looking for, sweetheart?"
Clearly, she was the occupant of this apartment.
Lin Sanjiu had unwittingly taken a step back. Her heartbeat picked up its pace. After feeling the sharp edges of the card in her hand, her heartbeat seemed to slow a bit. She then asked the old lady, "Who are you? Have you seen the woman that entered this unit just now?"
"I have been staying here for twenty years, and nobody ever pays me a visit," the old lady said as she observed Lin Sanjiu with her dull and cloudy eyes under her shaggy eyelids. When she smiled, her mouth looked peculiarly large, "Thieves, though, visit me occasionally, but I'm too old, so I cannot catch them and all of them have escaped through the window."
"Window?"
Unconsciously, Lin Sanjiu raised her head, and her eyes found the window right behind the old lady.
Behind the opened window was an alley. It was too far from her; Lin Sanjiu could not make sure was it a true-to-life painting, or if it was a real alley.
"I'm going back to rest if you don't have anything else that requires my assistance," the old lady didn't move her gaze away from Lin Sanjiu when she spoke. As she closed the door, she smiled at her, "Pay me a visit when you're free. I'm thrilled to meet you youngsters."
The door to unit 603 closed once again.
Once the wooden door was shut, the apartment building sunk into a pool of silence. Lin Sanjiu couldn't hear any footsteps behind the door, and there was no sound of breathing either. It was as if the old lady was an inanimate object standing behind the door… Suddenly, Lin Sanjiu's intuition kicked in. She turned around and rushed toward the stairway.
"Where are you going?" Mrs. Manas asked, baffled by her sudden action.
"I think," Lin Sanjiu's voice was shaking, "I think both of them are right."
"What do you mean?"
"In this apartment, both the rules"knocking the door" and "entering the apartment unit" work in parallel," amidst the creaking sounds caused by the collision between Lin Sanjiu's feet and the carpeted corridor, Lin Sanjiu voiced out her thoughts quickly to Mrs. Manas, "Both Geran and Livia are telling the truth. Both of them are fine as well— at least, they were fine until just now."
If a player knocked on the door, the occupants of that apartment unit would come out to greet him or her. If the player barged into the unit without knocking on the door or opened the door without waiting for the occupants, then the apartment unit would be empty. That explained why Geran's words contradicted Livia's!
While from her experience, it seemed that the occupants of this apartment building would try to hoodwink the player into knocking on their door just like the gaggle of youngsters and the old lady.
She might be wrong, and the possibility that she bet on the wrong horse was ridiculously high. If she was wrong, what would happen next?
Then, the door to unit 320 opened.
Just as Lin Sanjiu had expected, there were no people inside the unit. The stains and empty bottles were still there, but the bunch of youngsters was nowhere to be seen. Even the smell of the burnt weed had disappeared.
Lin Sanjiu supported the door to prevent it from closing with her skeletal wings and walked gingerly into the unit.
Behind the window of unit 320 was a landscape painting showing a majestic desert. Even though it looked extremely real, but she knew from a glance that it was only a painting.
Lin Sanjiu thought she should not stay too long in unit 320. As such, she carefully maneuvered her skeletal wings through the corridor when she exited unit 320. As long as she did not produce any sound that would make the thing inside unit 320 to open the door, then it wouldn't be counted as "the third time knocking the door."
With her racing heart and raging mind, she made herself safe on the first floor.
"So you're right," Mrs. Manas was surprised, "However, it won't change anything since you still don't know where the exit is!"
Lin Sanjiu did not walk into unit 101. She just glanced at it and moved further through the corridor. Her eyebrows drew together and entangled tightly on her forehead. Her mind kept running as she murmured, "There must be a reason why the rules exist. If I can iron out the relationship between the rules, I might be able to find the exit."
In order to verify her speculation, she went to the last unit in the corridor and opened the door starting from unit 120. Like what she had seen in unit 320, all the apartment units were empty. There were no traces of people living there. However, she did find that the paintings were different in each unit's window.
"Same," Lin Sanjiu stood outside unit 108 and roughly scrutinized its interior. She then said, "Nothing here."
There was a mixture of disappointment and relief in her tone.
Unit 108 was a single apartment. The unit was so tiny that she could finish surveying the room in a glance. Just as she was going to close the door and go to the next unit, a soft voice that was particularly familiar to her sounded from her behind her, "Miss Lin."
"Geran."
Mrs. Manas had deactivated her [Higher Conscious Scan] since it had no effect in this apartment building, so Lin Sanjiu could not see the thing behind her. Then, at this instance, a daring thought surfaced in her mind that sent her hair standing on their ends.
The reason Geran mistook unit 101 as the "living room" was because unit 101 was empty. He probably entered unit 101 right after he knocked the door without waiting for the "occupant" in the unit to open the door for him. That's why unit 101 was empty. In another way, if he waited for a while after he knocked on the door, somebody, perhaps the occupants would have answered the door.
In this sense, he did the same thing Livia had done. Regardless of whether were they alive or dead at that time, they had "moved" into the apartment.
"Can you hear me, Miss Lin?" Geran's voice reverberated in the corridor. It seemed that he was closing in on her, "I've found a way to get out from here. Do you want to come and have a look?"
Lin Sanjiu would not forget that she had knocked on the door to unit 101 twice.
[Tornado Whip] materialized in her left hand. Then, she acc.u.mulated all her power and sent a fierce gale towards the source of the voice. When the attack that could destroy half of the apartment dispersed. Geran's voice rang beside her ear.
"Why don't you turn around, Miss Lin?"
When he talked, he wasn't breathing.
Chapter 354 - Two Routes that Lay Before Lin Sanjiu
If Lin Sanjiu had the chance to meet the female ticker seller again, she swore she would grab her by her collar and pull her out from the glass ticket booth. She wanted to ask what was going on in her mind when she told her this was a "sightseeing attraction."
The moment Geran's voice rang out, Lin Sanjiu did not turn around and launched a barrage of concentrated, focused attacks at him. However, much to her dismay, all of her attacks were neutralized by an unknown force.
She had no idea whether or not any of her attacks had hit her target.
On second thought, even her hypersensory had lapsed in the apartment building; it was no surprise to her that an ordinary attack would fail as well.
"Miss Lin, why do you attack me?" Geran's voice sounded like he was surprised, "It's me, Geran. I've found a path that will lead us to the exit. You don't want to see?"
Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath and held on to her sangfroid so that her nerves would not get the best of her. This was because she had realized that the thing that introduced itself as "Geran" would not attack her.
"Come over here, turn around. The exit is just around the corner. Anyway, turn around, and sneak a peek," the "Geran" said, there was a smile in his voice.
She was v
ery familiar with this scene. If Lin Sanjiu had been given enough time to think about her situation, she would have probably begun to doubt herself and not do what she was going to do next. Geran was extremely close to her; Lin Sanjiu knew that very well. A light, dark-colored shadow crawled onto her shoulder and cast a huge dark patch on the door of unit 108.
With her eyes filled with fear, the shadow turned slowly and bent its head until it almost touched her cheek.
As soon as the corner of her eyes caught that glimpse of darkness, a thought flickered in her mind, and before she knew she was doing it, her hand had already landed on the door of unit 108.
The shadow that loomed over the wooden door trembled, and "Geran" fell silent.
Very soon, the sound of footsteps drifted from within unit 108 into Lin Sanjiu's ears. Then, the brass handle rattled, and a stubbled, scrawny man came out of the unit.
The man looked like he was in his forties. He smelled like he hadn't taken a bath in ages. Just as he approached Lin Sanjiu in his rumpled plaid shirt, his sour body odor drifted up and hung in her nose. His gaze did not stay long on Lin Sanjiu as he very soon shifted his attention over to the thing behind her. Then, he turned his gaze back to Lin Sanjiu, smiling amiably at her.
She somehow felt that she had been betting all the time since she entered this apartment building.
"Go on," she gave her full attention on the stubbled man with unblinking eyes. She was trembling, very much afraid that she might accidentally see "Geran" if she ever let down her guard, "Speak what you have."
Lin Sanjiu felt God had a wicked sense of humor and He had played a mean joke on Geran and her. The reason she did not dare to turn her head around was that Geran had mentioned to her before that as players, they were forbidden to "see" the same occupant twice. But now, the rules were being used on "Geran." Taking a deep breath, Lin Sanjiu hoped that she had placed the right bet.
The stubbled man remained quiet as he continued to observe her, and when he moved his eyeballs, it sent Lin Sanjiu into a panic so severe that she nearly screamed. The movement of his eyeballs was minute. If one did not pay attention to his eyes, you would never notice that his eyeballs had moved.