Chapter 16

Chapter 16

It is now the fifth day.

4:00 AM.

The moon is bright-exceptionally bright.

I’m not sure if the moonlight is a beacon of hope or a flame drawing moths to their doom, waiting for us to destroy ourselves.

No regrets.

I tell myself.

Sun Huawen and the others are awake too.

Aside from a single cell phone, we’ve brought nothing with us.

“I’m going to open the door now. Take a second to mentally prepare yourselves,” I whisper.

Quietly, I pull the door open.

There is nothing outside.

Once we step out, we close the door behind us.

In this moment, Xiao Ze and Huang Pang have been completely severed from our lives. Our paths will never cross again.

We leave the dormitory. The campus is incredibly quiet.

Unlike the previous few days, this silence isn’t a suffocating, deathly stillness. Instead, it’s a tranquility that makes me feel at peace.

We’re leaving.

And we’re never coming back.

We head toward the school gate.

The entrance stands wide open.

“Who goes first?” Zhou Yiqiang asks.

“Let’s go together. The dorm door is locked; there’s no going back anyway,” Tao Ran says.

And so, the four of us stand side-by-side at the school gate.

“I’ll count to three, then we all step out with our right feet together!” I say.

“I’m used to leading with my left foot,” Zhou Yiqiang says, raising his hand.

“Fine, you’re so high-maintenance. We’ll lead with our left feet then.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

We’re out!

Not only was it fine to lead with the left foot, but even after following through with the right, nothing happened!

“Come on, to the bus station!” Sun Huawen says with a grin.

When we reach the station, our moods turn heavy once again.

There are three buses parked there.

Routes 16, 17, and 18.

“We can’t take the 17,” I say. “The correct one must be one of the other two.”

Zhou Yiqiang can’t wait. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s just pick whichever one looks better and get on.”

“Wait,” Sun Huawen stops him. “I understand now.”

“Understand what?”

“Between the 16 and the 18, only one bus is the right one. If we board the wrong one, we’ll still die.”

[Once upon a time, three brothers stood in a row. The brother in the middle died, and the brothers on the sides laughed. The middle brother was unhappy, so he crashed into and killed another brother, while the last brother ran away.]

“The Route 17 bus is the middle brother?!” I ask Sun Huawen.

“That should be it.”

“So which one do we take?”

“There isn’t enough information. I don’t know.”

Zhou Yiqiang says regretfully, “If I’d known, I would have visited the restroom a few more times.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. I went eighteen times in one day and no one spoke to me. It’s already been hard enough just to get this far.”

Sun Huawen nods. “Gu Tang is right. The rest is up to fate. I choose the 16.”

Sun Huawen and Tao Ran choose the Route 16 bus, while Zhou Yiqiang and I choose the 18.

I give a bitter laugh. “This is fine too. At least two of us will definitely survive.”

“Not necessarily. If the Bathroom Person lied to us, we’re all dead,” Tao Ran says with a smirk.

“Shut it! Don’t jinx us! Tao Ran, if you’re lucky enough to survive this, you’d better learn to watch your mouth and turn over a new leaf. Otherwise, sooner or later, someone won’t be able to resist slapping you,” Zhou Yiqiang jokes, giving Tao Ran a playful kick.
“Fine, fine. Maybe we’ll all make it out alive. After all, you said the Brother Problem was just a Decoy Option.”

And so, we boarded our separate buses.

At five in the morning, the bus started its engine.

Sun Huawen sent a message in the neutral group chat: “Let’s get some sleep. Once we’re out, whether we live or die, it’ll be easier if we’re resting.”

Me: “Okay. Take care.”

Tao Ran: “Okay. Take care.”

Zhou Yiqiang: “Okay. Take care.”

I was woken up by a heavy weight pressing against me.

I opened my eyes to find that Zhou Yiqiang had fallen asleep on my shoulder.

We survived!

“Zhou Yiqiang! We made it!” I shouted, shaking him awake.

“Holy shit! Really?! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!” Zhou Yiqiang roared at the top of his lungs.

We were currently sitting on the bench at the school’s bus stop. The people around us waiting for their buses looked at us as if we were lunatics.

We didn’t care.

Once the initial excitement faded, I thought of Sun Huawen and Tao Ran…

And Xiao Ze and Huang Pang…

“Boss Sun…” I only managed those two words before my voice choked up.

Sun Huawen was the one who led us out, yet he hadn’t managed to escape himself.

Zhou Yiqiang wiped away a stray tear and said, “Let’s go check the school. Maybe they’re already back.”

When we reached the school gates, however, we found nothing but a desolate wasteland.

I frantically grabbed a passerby and asked, “Where’s the school that was here?!”

The passerby gave me a bewildered look. “What school? There’s never been a school here.”

“Dammit, where the hell were we sent?!” Zhou Yiqiang yelled.

“This is B City. Where else would you be? You guys are weird,” the passerby muttered, cursing under his breath as he walked away.

B City?

That was right.

Everything here seemed normal.

Except for the fact that the school was gone.

My phone rang.

It was my mom.

“Where the hell have you been? You haven’t been answering your phone! Your Counselor called me and said you didn’t come back to the dorms last night. Do you even want to go to school anymore? And that classmate of yours, Zhou Yiqiang-is he with you? Where did you two go off to fool around?”

“The school? Where is my school?”

“How much did you drink?! Get a taxi and get back to K University right now!” My mom hung up the phone in a rage.

K University?

“Is K University where we go?” I asked Zhou Yiqiang.

“I think… I think so…”

We took a taxi to K University.

It was a familiar campus, but every face inside was a stranger’s.

We returned to our dorm room. There were four roommates inside.

But they weren’t Xiao Ze, Sun Huawen, Huang Pang, or Tao Ran.

“Where are Sun Huawen and Tao Ran?” Zhou Yiqiang asked.

“Huh?” one of the roommates replied. “Sun who? Tao Ran? Who are they?”

Another roommate walked over and asked me, “Cousin, where did you take Zhou to fool around? You even stayed out all night. People were saying you guys had gone missing.”

“Yeah, that’s not cool. Remember to bring me along next time.”

Zhou Yiqiang glanced at me and whispered, “They seem to know us really well?”

“Yeah. Don’t ask, and don’t say too much,” I replied.

If you don’t want to be treated like a lunatic, you have to follow the new rules.

A sentence echoed in my mind.

[Blend in with everyone, and do not speak of that matter to anyone.]

(The End)