Chapter 16

Only five hundred yuan.

Why five hundred again?

Oh, right. The property manager had said something about a reward for surviving the screening scenario.

They’d risked their lives, been through hell, and got five hundred yuan for it?

Looking at the food and drinks costing over a hundred, Jiang Mingran suddenly couldn’t bring himself to pay.

After agonizing for a long time, he bought only a bottle of mineral water and a sandwich.

The wall beneath the screen abruptly parted, exposing an opening.

Strange. Didn’t that wall lead outside? Was there a conveyor belt inside it, delivering whatever food he chose?

He leaned close and peered in. Pitch-black. He couldn’t see anything.

After what had happened earlier, he certainly wasn’t going to tempt fate by sticking his hand inside.

Two seconds later, a five-hundred-milliliter bottle of mineral water and a sandwich half the size of his palm dropped out.

Then the opening slowly closed.

The wall was as good as new. Jiang Mingran knocked on it. It felt solid, with no sign of a mechanism.

Nothing here could be explained by ordinary logic anymore… He picked up the water and sandwich, intending to put something in his stomach first.

Thirty yuan for this little. It hurt.

Meanwhile, Shao Lan was also standing before his vending machine.

His screen showed:

“Income: 10,500. Balance: 10,500.”

He tapped “Income details.”

It displayed:

“Cleared screening scenario: Night of the Cannibal. Guaranteed payment: 500.

Obtained Precious Memory: Suxia’s Pocket Watch. Bonus: 10,000.”

Shao Lan paused and reached into his pocket.

Sure enough. Everything had vanished like a dream when they left the old apartment. Only the pocket watch remained.

In its wedding photograph, the young couple smiled shyly and gently.

No wonder the rules had specifically said, “Goodbye, Suxia.” Only if Li Chengyuan could properly say goodbye to her would he hand over the watch.

And that watch had brought ten thousand yuan to live on.

Yes. To live on.

Shao Lan was beginning to understand how survival worked in this building.

Take the elevator to a scenario. Come back alive, and earn money.

Obtain a Precious Memory, as he had, and there was a bonus.

Compared with the meager guaranteed payment, the money for a memory was considerable.

And that money bought everything they needed to survive.

Thinking of 801 across the hall, Shao Lan lowered his eyes.

He had a fairly good idea how the woman there had died.

She’d starved to death.

If you didn’t dare play the games, you couldn’t earn money. Without money, you couldn’t buy food.

How long had she gone hungry to waste away like that?

He didn’t dare think about it. Didn’t want to.

All he knew was that he couldn’t let himself end up like her.

When Jiang Mingran came to Shao Lan’s room, he found him with four potatoes and a tray of eggs.

“Why’d you buy everything raw?” Jiang Mingran asked in surprise. “Can we eat it like that?”

“I looked through every category,” Shao Lan said. “Ready-to-eat food has the biggest markup. Everything else costs about the same as it does in the real world.”

One kilogram of potatoes: three yuan fifty.

Thirty fresh eggs: sixteen yuan.

Ready-to-eat food? Jiang Mingran thought of the sandwich he’d just finished.

That must be what Shao Lan meant. Buy it, eat it straight away.

The potatoes and eggs together cost about as much as Jiang Mingran’s sandwich. The difference was that his sandwich had contained only a few miserable slices of ham and some leaves. He’d be hungry again soon after eating it.

Shao Lan’s food would last much longer.

“So we… eat the eggs raw?” Jiang Mingran remembered an American show he’d watched. Its muscular hero cracked four raw eggs into his mouth every morning.

Shao Lan shook his head. “Plenty of food can’t be eaten raw. Getting sick would be a disaster.”

He pointed to the table. Only then did Jiang Mingran notice the induction cooker on it.

“You bought a pot, too?” Jiang Mingran was astonished.

Shao Lan had chosen the cheapest induction cooker available. Even that cost 128 yuan.

He’d spent far more than Jiang Mingran…

His expression heavy, Shao Lan asked quietly, “Xiao Jiang, do you know why ready-to-eat food costs so much more than ingredients you have to cook?”

Jiang Mingran paused. He really hadn’t thought about it.

“Price is tied to demand,” Shao Lan said. “The markup means people want ready-to-eat food.”

“And the reason is that they all think they’ll get out soon.”

Jiang Mingran froze.

He was right.

Trapped here though he was, he still clung to that unrealistic hope.

He kept feeling that once they found the way, perhaps they’d be out immediately.

He had competitions ahead. His coach was waiting for results. University life had only just opened up before him, waiting to be experienced.

He couldn’t imagine staying in this eerie building for a long time. How long was long? A week? A month? A year?

“You saw the body in 801. She starved to death,” Shao Lan said softly. “How long does someone have to be trapped before that happens?”

Jiang Mingran shuddered.

Before she died, the woman had become skin and bone, almost a skeleton.

She must have been hungry for a long time. Right up to her death, she’d never found the way out.

“We have to look for a way out. But we also have to stay alive until we find it,” Shao Lan said. “I don’t know how long that will take. So we need to save as much money as we can.”

Perhaps too many people shared Jiang Mingran’s hope. They bought food they could eat immediately, because buying a cooker and a pot obviously cost more.

But what if they weren’t going to eat just one meal here? What if it was dozens, or hundreds?

Spread across all those meals, buying cooking equipment and making their own food was certainly cheaper.

The bathroom had running water. Shao Lan used the induction cooker to boil the potatoes and eggs.

Steam rose from the boiling water. Through that white haze, he suddenly noticed something like a tattoo on Jiang Mingran’s arm.

Strange. It hadn’t seemed to be there during Suxia’s scenario.

“Xiao Jiang.” Shao Lan pointed at his arm. “What’s that?”

Following his gaze, Jiang Mingran turned his head and looked down at his right arm. Where he’d had his vaccinations was something like a burn scar.

Ordinary scars didn’t have a particular shape. This one looked like writing.

XLI.

“Holy shit. What is that?” Jiang Mingran was shocked. “I’ve never had a tattoo. Where’d this come from?”

Shao Lan examined it closely.

It looked as though someone had heated a specially made iron stamp until it was searing hot, pressed it to the skin, then let the wound heal.

That would obviously have been agonizing. Yet Jiang Mingran clearly knew nothing about it.

Wait.

A thought struck Shao Lan. He took off his long-sleeved white shirt and searched his arms.

No scars.

Before he could puzzle over it, Jiang Mingran blurted, “On your back!”

Sure enough, Shao Lan had a similar scar. Only its position differed.

Jiang Mingran’s was on his arm. Shao Lan’s was between his neck and back, over the prominent vertebra.

The shape was different, too. Jiang Mingran looked and told him, “VIII.”

Shao Lan frowned.

By now, he’d recognized the shapes.

Roman numerals. His number was eight. Jiang Mingran’s was forty-one.

But what did they mean?

Identification numbers? Like students assigned numbers in a class, did every resident receive one automatically on moving in?

But if everyone had their own room, the room number was enough to identify them. Shao Lan was 802. Jiang Mingran was 803. Why add another number?

And if these weren’t identification numbers, what were they? Branded onto them in such a cruel, indelible way, they had to be important.