Chapter 47 A Beautiful Place
Lin Han was not driven to vomit by the stench around him, nor did he think of avoiding the wet and sticky pool of blood. He sat on the cold ground soaked in blood that did not belong to him, with the back of his head against the hard door, his head raised, his eyes blank.
The only thing he could see was the dim ceiling light. It flickered when Lin Han looked at it, and then quickly went out.
Only green light remained in the hall. Occasionally, when even the green light flickered out, it became pitch black, so dark that he couldn't see a thing even if he opened his eyes wide.
Lin Han was very cold, so cold that his body was trembling slightly, and his hands on the ground were also shaking.
He was covered in sweat and blood. He could smell scents that belonged to him and those that did not. When he took a deep breath, he could smell the strong, sweet smell of blood that made him dizzy.
He seemed to have a nosebleed.
It was not known when the nosebleed started, nor when it stopped. Lin Han reached out and touched it, but did not feel any warm current, just a few pieces of debris that fell off and broke into pieces when rubbed with his fingers.
He put his hands down again and leaned there in a daze.
He had no strength at all. After his body lost the strong desire to continue running, the soreness that he had not felt before crawled out from his bones, making it difficult for him to move even a little.
He didn't want to move either.
He completed what he wanted to do. Although he had not yet cleared the dungeon, he seemed to have done everything he could, so he didn't want to do anything now.
He leaned there for a long time, and suddenly an idea popped into his empty mind.
It hurts so much.
Why is playing a game so painful?
He asked himself this question over and over again.
It hurts so much.
It's really painful.
Now he couldn't just leave the game and return to the real world which seemed much warmer than the present one, but after this copy was over, he could leave. No matter whether he won or lost, the option that allowed him to leave the game would always appear in front of him. And then, never, never again, no matter how they tempted him, he would never come back, right?
Lin Han leaned there, talking to himself. No one answered his questions, so he could only answer the questions he asked himself.
Is he really not coming back?
He will come back.
He will come back.
Even though he knew that he would be in pain in the future and that he would have to linger on like a waste, he still came back and continued doing the things that made him feel painful.
Lin Han felt that he was a bit of a loser, and thought that it would be better if the pain could just go away and not come back, but he just couldn't bear to do so.
He laughed softly, and his laughter gradually grew louder. His back and chest hurt when he laughed. He coughed while laughing and couldn't control himself at all.
No wonder so many people don’t want to leave the “new world” after entering it. It turns out that the feeling of being driven by instinct is so good.
Only Lin Han's laughter was clear in the darkness. At this moment, he looked a bit like a madman, like a mentally ill patient who could not control his behavior and was desperately indulging himself.
It took him a while to change his posture, and he tried hard to support himself on the ground and then climbed up shakily.
His hands left blood marks on the door, and his vision went dark. He stood there for a while before he could steady himself.
Wen, who was watching from the sidelines, did not help him but took a few steps forward. The darkness was no obstacle for him. He bent down and picked up the key ring that Lin Han had dropped on the ground and hooked it on his fingertips.
The six keys stacked together and collided back and forth, making a crisp sound.
Lin Han didn't care.
He walked forward step by step, avoiding Wen who was standing in his path, and stopped only when he reached the counter.
The cabinet that was still open was now much emptier. The talking woman who had filled the cabinet was gone. Only a thin, shriveled corpse was curled up inside, with its cheek resting on the back of its hand, as if it was sleeping.
Her skin was a dirty brown, as if all the moisture had been evaporated. The wrinkled skin wrapped around her bones, and even the bones seemed to have shrunk. She now only took up half the space in the cabinet, which looked empty.
Lin Han was used to her almost filling up the entire cabinet, so he found this scene a bit absurd.
How could this happen?
She was not a dangerous ghost, although she looked dangerous, but Lin Han had figured it out before opening the cabinet door.
The first time he opened the cabinet, it was Wen who opened it for him, seemingly saving his life, but this woman did not take that opportunity to struggle out, nor did she think of hurting Lin Han. She just talked, said those weird words, said those words that made people feel very dangerous, but she did not really trick Lin Han into opening the door.
Lin Han thought that even if she was a ghost, she would be a good ghost.
She was in the safe area. Until a ghost broke free from the door and escaped, the safe area was always safe, so the woman in the closet was also safe.
Lin Han looked for a long time but couldn't find anything that could record her identity. She just leaned in the corner of the cabinet and closed her eyes quietly.
"Thank you." Lin Han said softly and slowly closed the cabinet door.
The moment the door closed, there was a slight noise from inside. The shriveled body shattered and turned into powder in the cabinet, but remained in the cabinet forever.
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She is one of the best escape room employees and is a front desk person.
She has been in this closet for a long time.
Even if Lin Han and Wen ignored her, she would not get angry. She treated everyone who came here as her distinguished guest, and she was always good-tempered when greeting guests.
She was just alone and she would talk nonsense.
Just like at work, colleagues entered the scene, guests chose the scripts they wanted to play and left one after another, and those who were still waiting were chatting and making noise in the waiting area, but she was not among the hustle and bustle.
She was always a bystander and was used to being a bystander.
Then suddenly one day, no one in the scene came out. Her colleagues and her guests were all left behind those doors. Only she was left in this hall, looking at the eternal dim light on the ceiling, watching the emergency exit flashing with a strange green light, watching the stairs collapse and the elevator no longer move, and she was still the only one on the dusty counter.
There's no safe place here, no safe place anywhere.
But she couldn't go anywhere.
Then she hid in the small cabinet at her feet.
Such a small cabinet could barely accommodate an adult, and was usually only used to store posters that had not yet been distributed. But she struggled for a long time and finally got in. When the door closed, she curled up in the cabinet, guarding the darkness as usual, and finally felt the long-lost peace of mind.
The door that belonged only to her was closed.
There was nothing in here but her.
Perhaps at the beginning, the cabinet door was always not closed tightly, leaving a small gap, and those eyes were looking out through the gap. Even though she was afraid, she still had to wait there, waiting for the person to come out, waiting for the secret room to operate normally, waiting for her colleague to call her to lock the door, so that she could run out happily and do what she had to do.
Then the cabinet door closed.
No matter what sound was outside, she would not open the door. She would just talk, welcoming everyone and all sounds. It didn't matter if there was no response. She would just continue to curl up in the closet and wait.
If you really want to find her, you will open the door and look for her, right?
When she appeared in this copy, she was already abnormal. She was just an NPC who was unaware of it and happened to be placed in the safe zone. Because she had the key to the door, she was slightly useful and could wait here all the time.
But she waited for so long, and no one came to see her.
So long.
So long.
Her vision was always dark. She couldn't see the time, and no one told her the time. She curled up here for such a long time, and the desire to go out made her swell. She tried to squeeze out from every corner of the cabinet. She couldn't help but respond to any sound, no matter it was the sound of people talking or a sound from an unknown source. It also made her quietly reach out and scratch the door panel in front of her that made her feel safe, making some abnormal noise, hoping that a guest would hear the sound and come to ask, "Is anyone here?"
Just thinking about it made her full of energy to continue waiting.
Lin Han is her guest.
She asked again and again, hoping to help her guest, but the guest soon disappeared and she returned to the cabinet.
I don’t know what day it is today, today is the same as every day in the past.
She might have just had a dream that she hadn't had for a long time. She used to have dreams all the time, but she just didn't have them now.
Maybe she was too absent-minded, she really wanted a "guest" to talk to...
Until Lin Han asked her "Have you figured it out?"
Did she figure it out?
Did she really figure it out?
She fell silent.
Does she really not know that she has turned into a monster, and that the world outside the cabinet is no longer the lively world she remembers?
She actually knew it a long time ago.
She's not stupid.
She knew that she had become strange. She would not feel hungry and could guard the counter for so long without eating. She could crawl into the cabinet and never come out. She did things that many people could not do, but she just did not want to accept this reality.
She hid in the closet, where her beautiful imaginations filled her imagination. There would be guests, colleagues, and the daily chores. She was still a person. It seemed that soon, her friend would take off her wig, rub her palm with her face, which was frozen in the air-conditioned room, and ask her to lock the door and go home together. She would say, "It's so hot today, let's buy an ice cream downstairs later." Then she would happily pack up the things on the table, which was the prelude to going home. In ten minutes, she would scan a shared bicycle and ride it dangerously and boldly, ice cream in hand, laughing with her friend and discussing what dish to cook for herself when she got home that night...
Outside the closet, layers of dust drifted down, covering up the realities she refused to accept. It felt like a never-ending snowfall, a black snow. When she secretly opened the closet door, tiny specks of dust landed on her hands, staining them gray and black, and she couldn't rub them off.
So she never opened the door again.
She had just woven a beautiful dream for herself, and now, someone finally talked to her and made her face the reality.
She had never lied to herself, and finally didn't want to pretend that she knew nothing anymore.
She couldn't go back, and neither could the outside world. She had been the only one stubbornly waiting for everything to return to the way it was at the beginning, without even considering whether there was any possibility of turning back.
Now she had to come out of her fantasy.
She had actually died a long time ago.
If she were to die, she would like to die in her own world, in a beautiful place.
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