CH 27

Coming out of the teaching building, I rushed to the laboratory building with the three youngsters in tow. With a missing person right under my nose, it was impossible not to worry. Even though it was possible that the disappearance was just a staged act, as an adult, my first priority was to ensure her safety.

Because only I knew that this school might actually be haunted. I didn’t have time to pay attention to the barrage of comments from the online audience as we made our way down the overgrown path to the entrance of the laboratory building.

The building had six floors and looked much larger than the teaching building. “This is Japanese-style elite education. In class, students only learn limited theoretical knowledge, and most of the teaching content is done in the laboratory building. They focus more on practical skills.”

“Holy crap, the Japanese invaders haven’t left yet!”

“Everyone, get out of my way. My grandfather used this grenade to sink a Japanese submarine!”

“The people upstairs are crazy…”

The door of the laboratory building was locked and sealed with a strip of tape. As I approached it, I noticed that the tape, although old, had not been torn off. This meant that the door had not been opened since it was sealed shut.

“Well, then there’s no need to check this building.” If we couldn’t get in, there was no need to worry about Shen Meng being brought here.

“Look at this, host.” As if someone was playing a joke on me, Hideki pointed to a window on the left side of the first floor. “You can get in from here!”

I went to the said window, and noticed that all the other windows were taped shut and locked except for this one, which was halfway open. As if deliberately telling me that someone had just entered through here, the window was half open, making a whistling sound as the wind blew through it.

“You guys wait outside. I’ll go in and take a look.”

“How can that be? Shen Meng is my girlfriend. I have to go in as well.”

“Let’s all go together. More hands make light work.” Hideki had just narrowly avoided getting beat up by Xue Fei and was now more obedient.

The two of them insisted on coming, and I couldn’t leave Sakurako, the youngest, outside alone, “Alright, let’s go in together. Don’t panic if we encounter any danger.” With that, I lifted my camera with one hand and entered the room first.

It seemed to be an art classroom, with old painting boards stacked in the corner. I randomly flipped through a few, and the colors on them looked somewhat hideous.

“Their taste in art is quite unique,” I remarked, as I waved my phone like a flashlight. Suddenly, I saw a vacant face staring back at me. It startled me at first, but as I approached, I realized it was just a plastic mannequin.

“If someone with poor mental resilience saw this thing at night, they’d probably be scared to tears.” The plastic mannequin was blocking the door, so I wanted to move it aside. However, when I picked it up, I realized it wasn’t hollow, and it was quite heavy. It felt like holding an actual living person.

I laid it flat on the ground and examined its face. It seemed that a mischievous student had painted all sorts of colors on it, and I also noticed a name written on the mannequin’s bald head—Guo Junjie.

“Was this painted by this Guo Junjie guy?” I quickly realized that I had guessed wrongly when I looked at the mannequin’s entire back, which was covered with various slandering words.

“Poor child.” There’s always one such child in every class who was quiet, introverted, and inexplicably becomes the punching bag for the entire class, growing isolated and bullied.

The words on the mannequin’s back had traces of being wiped with clothing, but on top of those wiping marks were even more abusive words densely packed together.

I envisioned the scene in my mind at the time—a poor child holding the mannequin desperately using their school uniform to wipe it clean, but the people around them were laughing wildly and writing with paintbrushes dipped in paint on the mannequin’s body, crazily and maliciously writing on the places the child had cleaned, even on the child’s clothes, body, and face.

Some say that children were inherently innocent, because sometimes, they didn’t even understand how terrible their actions were.

I touched the mannequin’s head and remembered myself when I was young, “There was a time when I was also bullied a lot.”

“So what happened then?” Hideki and Xue Fei flipped into the art room.

I grinned, “Later on, I put a fruit knife in my backpack.”

“Wow, even the host has such a thrilling past? What happened after that?”

“Later, I got expelled from school, suspended for a long time, and eventually had to go to the police academy.” I looked a bit world-weary, “If I could have kept my head down and endured it at the time, maybe now I would be a lawyer or a doctor.”

As my hand touched the door, I found that the lock had been forcibly removed, and the lock cylinder was rolling in the middle of the drawing board.

“There are no tool marks; it looks like it was pulled out by force.” I opened the door slightly, and the hallway outside was pitch black, and nothing could be seen.

“Let’s go; we’ll never find Shen Meng if we keep hiding here.” Hideki urged, he didn’t seem to be worried about Shen Meng, but his eyes were shining with excitement.

“The three of you better hold hands and walk along the wall. In case you encounter something beyond human understanding, immediately turn back the way we came from. Do you understand?” I repeated my instructions, afraid the kids might get into trouble again.

“You should worry about yourself; you talk too much.” After Shen Meng had disappeared, Xue Fei grew very impatient.

I stopped talking and used my phone as a flashlight to move step by step along the wall.

“Bang…” Suddenly, there was a sound of something being kicked over. The sound was very small, but it was very clear in the silent laboratory building.

“That wasn’t us.” The four of us stood still and confirmed that there was nothing underfoot.

“Bang….” A short time later, the strange sound rang out again. Hideki tugged at my clothes and said, “It seems to be coming from the innermost part of the first floor. Let’s go see together.”

My original intention was to search each classroom one by one, but since he said that, I felt uneasy if I didn’t go and have a look.

As we walked past two unfamiliar laboratories, we arrived at a staircase that led to the second floor. In the gleam of the light, I counted twelve steps precisely.

Suddenly, Hideki spoke in a mysterious tone, “Have you heard the tale of the thirteenth step? It’s rumored that mischievous children come to the school at midnight, and the twelve steps they usually tread upon will reveal an extra step. If one steps on that thirteenth step, they can enter another world.”

Xue Fei swiftly interrupted, pushing Hideki to the corner of the wall. “Could you please keep quiet for a moment? Stop spreading such tales! Ghosts do not exist in this world.”

Watching the two argue, I felt inexplicably annoyed.

“What I actually heard is that once you step on that step, you will see what you look like after death because the thirteenth step is your own corpse,” I explained.

Of course, I had heard of the story of the thirteenth step, and before coming here, because the phrase appeared in the mission prompt of the underworld show, I had even searched the internet for various versions of the tale.

“Host, is what you’re saying true?” The two of them spoke in unison, but I couldn’t see their expressions amidst the darkness.

“It’s definitely fake. That’s just a story someone made up. If you want to hear a good one, find Shen Meng, and I can tell you stories for three days and three nights.”

As we passed by the stairs, we groped our way towards the source of the sound.

“Thump, thump…”

Finally, the four of us arrived at the deepest part of the first floor of the laboratory building, and at that moment, the strange noise suddenly stopped.

“It should have come from here, right?” The three big men looked at each other, and it turned out that the deepest part of the laboratory building was a restroom.

I picked up the camera and looked at the screen on my phone. If there was anything filthy inside the restroom, I should be able to capture it on camera.

“I’ll go in first, you guys wait outside,”

Pushing open the door to the restroom, there was no unpleasant odor inside, after all, it had been five years since it was last used.

Upon entering, the first thing that caught my eye was the sink area, with three basin sinks and a massive mirror above them.

The mirror was covered in cracks, dust, and scribbled in bright red paint were the words, “I’ll kill you all! Die! Die! Die!”

“How much hatred doe this person hold?” I thought as I wiped the mirror with my hand, but due to the angle, my reflection was blurred, making it hard to recognize myself.

Turning on the faucet, the first two knobs were broken, and as I turned the third, a gurgling sound came from the pipes, and soon, a sticky liquid began to flow out.

“It…it can’t be blood, can it?”

I reached out and collected a small amount, holding it up to the light…