Chapter 6
Chapter 6
The moment Xiao Huai stepped into the west teaching building, a girl’s voice rose around him, laughing one moment and sobbing the next.
The eerie voice whispered in his ear.
“Why won’t you play a game with Hanako?”
At the name Hanako, Xiao Huai’s eyes curved in amusement.
So even the gods’ games enjoyed borrowing urban legends from Earth.
Hanako of the Toilet, a Japanese schoolyard legend.
According to the tale, Hanako’s mother had been a teacher. While searching the school for her, Hanako was murdered in a restroom by a villain. Her vengeful spirit lingered there, hiding in the third stall of the girls’ restroom.
After her death, Hanako was always looking for someone to play with. She would pound on the stall door, then drag her victim into the toilet and drown them.
The closer Xiao Huai drew to the third-floor restroom, the louder the voice became.
By the time he reached the entrance, it sounded angry, as though deeply displeased.
Xiao Huai acted as if he heard nothing. He walked into the restroom, stopped at the third stall from the back, and knocked twice.
The instant he knocked, the voice cut off. The world returned to its original silence, but a bone-chilling cold saturated the air.
“Hanako, are you there?”
He asked with a smile.
A sinister giggle drifted from inside the stall.
“Hehehehe…”
The girl’s shrill laughter echoed as ink-black hair spilled down from the ceiling.
She hung upside down like a spider. Every inch of her red dress looked dyed in human blood.
A bright, terrifying smile stretched across her pale face. Bruised blue lips slowly parted. “I’m here.”
Bang!
The stall door blasted outward. Pair after pair of pallid hands reached from the endless darkness, grasping for Xiao Huai to drag him inside.
He made no move to retreat. Instead, he rummaged through his pocket. The moment his hand emerged, the ghostly hands stopped in midair as if they had struck an invisible wall.
“Hanako, you haven’t turned in your homework.” Xiao Huai waved a faculty badge. There was no photograph on it, only He Lecheng’s name.
While everyone thought he was asking He Lecheng a math question, Xiao Huai had already stolen his badge.
The Student Handbook contained rules for students.
Within a school, there was always a degree of inequality between students and teachers. Even if teachers had rules of their own, they would not be the ones written in a student handbook.
“Homework?” Hanako’s voice rose to a squeak.
“That’s right.”
Xiao Huai lied without the slightest change in expression. He repeated, “Hanako, you haven’t turned in your homework.”
Panic flashed through her eyes. She dropped from the ceiling and landed prone on the floor like an insect. Her body remained flat against the tiles while her head twisted a full hundred and eighty degrees to face Xiao Huai.
“I don’t know what the homework is.”
Xiao Huai raised a brow. As expected, the rules here followed a hierarchy of priority.
Once a player recognized that fact, they could exploit it.
Students, for example, had to obey school rules. Break one, and they would meet the same end as the bald man.
Once Hanako’s game began, a player had no choice but to participate. But her game ranked below the school rules, and Hanako herself was a student. Dead or not, she still had to obey them.
School rules > Hanako’s game.
Xiao Huai knew some school rules were false, but others were real. He was gambling that Rule Ten belonged to the latter group.
Even if it was false, he had no fear of playing Hanako’s game.
“This problem.”
He took out his notebook and copied down a math question from the placement test.
He had slept so soundly that he had not had much time to memorize one.
Hanako accepted the notebook. She looked at the problem, then at Xiao Huai. Something felt wrong, but she still lay quietly on the restroom floor and began working with complete seriousness.
After staring at it for ages, however, she had not written a single step. The way she scratched her head in frustration was almost adorable.
Xiao Huai crouched beside her and found her surprisingly well behaved.
He completely ignored her horrifying appearance and the fact that she was the monster responsible for this instance’s scares.
He yawned and asked casually, “Hanako, do a lot of people play games with you?”
Hanako glanced at him. Why wasn’t this human afraid of her at all? He was even propping his chin on one hand and watching her do homework…
“Of course. The big sisters all love playing games with Hanako. They come find me whenever they’re under too much pressure.”
“Oh?” Xiao Huai arched a brow. “Don’t tell me you’re the one making them jump off the building.”
“Jumping? Hanako doesn’t like jumping games. Hanako likes hide-and-seek. Heeheehee.”
She licked her lips as she spoke, as though savoring the memory of something wonderfully entertaining.
“Then what do I get if I volunteer to play with you?”
In the dim restroom, his eyes fixed on Hanako like a snake’s.
Hanako froze. This was the first time she had ever heard a human volunteer to play with her.
She raised her head to look at him. “Hanako can let you choose the game.”
Xiao Huai smiled and leaned closer. “First, let me ask: how old are you?”
“Hanako is five this year.”
Xiao Huai laughed.
A mature high school student would not begin every sentence with their own name, unless the child was afflicted with adolescent delusions or had not fully developed mentally.
“Then how about I choose a game?”
Hanako loved games. Her eyes lit up the instant she heard the word. She put down her pen and nodded at once. “Okay!”
Xiao Huai fished a coin from his pocket. It had been there ever since he entered the game.
It looked nothing like the money he remembered. It was more like a token from an arcade.
He told Hanako the side with the king was heads, and the side with the queen was tails.
“Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.”
Hanako did not understand what those words meant. She only thought the coin was pretty and games of chance were fun.
“Okay!” She nodded and crawled to Xiao Huai’s side.
He casually tossed the coin into the air. It struck the floor with a clear chime, and Hanako’s pupils widened as she stared intently.
“Heads. I win.” Xiao Huai showed her the coin.
Needless to say, his chance of winning this game of probability was one hundred percent.
Heads, he won. Tails, he still won.
He was playing a trick on a five-year-old child.