Chapter 60

Chapter 60

Cheng Miao’s brows drew together. Qin Musong was already out of the classroom in one long stride.

Cheng Miao, Lin Zhu, and Qi Jiajia followed close behind. The remaining players either joined the crowd instinctively before they had processed what happened or hurried after the group once their slower reactions caught up.

The auntie was dead. She had died inside the phone booth in the corridor.

Students were forbidden from bringing cell phones to class, so every classroom had a phone booth in the corridor where parents could contact their children.

Class had just ended. After surviving another day, the players had all relaxed at once, their nerves at their most vulnerable.

No one had died that day, which was good news. Even the toughest person would eventually break after hearing about companion after companion dying.

Then a student had entered and said a call had come in for the auntie.

A call for a player who was not even a student was strange to begin with.

“She was too afraid to answer, but we thought it might be a clue, so we talked her into it.” The old man still looked shaken. Veins pulsed along his abnormally thin neck.

“In the end, I agreed to accompany her. I didn’t know whether going into the booth with her would count as eavesdropping on someone else’s private call, so I waited outside.”

Qiao Jin shrugged. Blood speckled her floral dress, yet did nothing to diminish her ethereal air. If anything, it gave her delicate beauty an added fragility.

“The moment she answered, something was wrong. Her face went deathly white. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to tell me something, but no sound came out.” Qiao Jin glanced at the mangled body inside the phone booth and lightly furrowed her elegant brows.

“Then Qiaoqiao opened the door, but it was too late. The auntie went crazy and started smashing her head against the glass. She died soon after.” Qian Ming stood faithfully beside Qiao Jin like a loyal dog, speaking of the auntie’s death with complete indifference.

“So no one heard what she was trying to say?” Freckles stood behind Cheng Miao. She wanted to contribute, but Qian Ming inexplicably frightened her, so she lowered her voice.

“I heard her.” Qiao Jin adjusted her braid. She had not dared shower in the dorm, and her hair was slightly greasy, so she had braided it. “When I opened the door, I heard what she said. She heard her own voice. The person calling her was herself.”

A chill swept through the group. It was summer inside the instance, yet no one felt hot. They might as well have been standing in a freezer.

It was easy to imagine the auntie’s terror when she answered the phone and heard her own voice.

As a fellow newcomer, she lacked Freckles’s composure. The last thread holding her mind together must already have been close to snapping. The call broke it, and she beat herself to death against the glass.

“What taboo did she violate beforehand?” Cheng Miao went straight to the point. Each death in this instance was stranger than the last, but the method of death was not the point. It merely guided the players toward the underlying rule.

“Nothing. I sat close to her, and she paid attention throughout class.” Qiao Jin shook her head. She was equally puzzled by the auntie’s unexplained violation.

“What else? Think carefully, all of you from the liberal-arts class,” Cheng Miao encouraged them.

“She sat there grumbling. The student beside her stopped responding, but she kept complaining.” Qiao Jin’s frown did not ease, making her look all the more pitiable.

“What was she complaining about?” Cheng Miao sensed that they were nearing the truth.

“The usual. Respecting your elders and all that. A student rushing out to play ball knocked her book down, and she lost her temper. What she said was pretty ugly.”

“What did she say?”

“…” Qiao Jin thought for a moment, then imitated the auntie’s habitual nagging tone. “Is that brat in such a hurry to die? No mother, no manners. What a miserable little creature.”
“Even if the student knocked down her book, she didn’t have to say something so vicious.” Chen Yu frowned in anger despite the customary respect afforded to the dead.

“She was too careless. She was used to getting the better of people with her mouth and forgot that, in an instance, the less you say, the fewer mistakes you make,” the old man summarized.

“If that is what killed her, then I may know why.” Cheng Miao searched the crowd. Qin Musong had been the first to run out, but he had not joined them.

Curiosity clawed at everyone, but they could only follow Cheng Miao downstairs.

Qin Musong stood beneath a Chinese parasol tree, holding a male student as easily as a chick. It was Cheng Miao’s deskmate, Ma Yuan.

Cheng Miao hurried over. Ma Yuan looked ready to cry. “What… what do you want?”

Qin Musong possessed extraordinary strength and skill. He had used a question about schoolwork as an excuse to approach Ma Yuan. When the guilty student tried to flee, Qin Musong had half dragged, half hauled him here.

“Don’t be nervous. The last time I asked about the relationship between the Dean and Tan Tao, you hid from me afterward. Is there something you’re afraid to tell us?” Cheng Miao studied Ma Yuan. The athletic boy was drenched in sweat, and guilt and panic nearly spilled from his eyes.

Surrounded on all sides, Ma Yuan had no path of escape. No one touched him, and they spoke with measured restraint, careful not to violate any taboo.

“The Dean is Tan Tao’s mother, isn’t she?” Cheng Miao meant it as a probe, but her tone was certain.

Ma Yuan’s eyes widened in disbelief. “H-How… How did you know?”

Cheng Miao pressed down on his shoulder before he could jump. Softening her voice, she said, “You know the Dean asked us to help. If you want the trouble at this school to end, you need to tell us everything you know.”

Ma Yuan struggled with himself, his whole face scrunched tight. At last, he heaved a long sigh and yielded.

“Tan Tao told me the Dean was his mother. But she devoted herself to work and had to look after every student, so she barely had time for him. Tan Tao studied desperately and held himself to strict standards, hoping she would notice him one day.”

“Tan Tao really was sick. He’d always been frail, and his condition kept getting worse…” Ma Yuan’s eyes reddened. He wiped them and forced down the sob in his throat. “These strange incidents started after he died.”

Cheng Miao had no time to console a student still grieving his friend. Escaping the instance mattered more. “Do you know where the Dean went?”

Ma Yuan looked up, tear tracks still on his face. “She left the school. I saw her go.”

Perhaps the desperation radiating from the surrounding players frightened him, because he hurriedly added, “Tomorrow is the fifth seven-day observance after Tan Tao’s death. At every earlier observance, I saw the Dean return. Whenever I passed her office, I could smell burning joss paper.”

“Fifth seven-day observance?” Qi Jiajia poked half her head out from behind Cheng Miao and looked up at her.

“People used to mark every seventh day after a death to help the deceased pass on,” Cheng Miao explained lightly. That meant Tan Tao truly was dead, and the Dean wanted him to enter his next life as soon as possible.

Cheng Miao recalled the first hint: the moon in the mirror, the flower in the water.

She sighed inwardly. This truly was not a supernatural instance about a murderous ghost.