Chapter 114 The Poisonous Fan Appears (as the title suggests)
You pressed your forehead, unable to utter a single word.
Tamara noticed your strange expression, circled around you, and curiously leaned closer to see what you were staring at.
You pointed to the screen, she leaned closer to look, paused for a second, then burst out laughing after figuring it out.
What followed was a long, unrestrained round of mockery.
"Are you serious? A hood? No, what were you thinking?!" She laughed as she exaggeratedly imitated your actions, pulling her fur collar over her head as if it were a hoodie, and then sprawling on the bench, pretending to be you falling asleep.
You grab her by the hair and pull her up to sit up.
She calmed down.
You sighed and tossed your phone aside: "No matter how outrageous it is, it seems there's a good reason why I've been having such bad luck lately."
No wonder some managed to slip through the net.
Tamara then stopped smiling. She clicked her tongue, as if pondering for a few seconds, and suddenly said in a serious tone, "Then you need to get rid of the bad luck first."
"You mean moving to a different place?" You gave a wry smile, feeling utterly exhausted. "Where is it safe to go? In the end, there are just endless new rules to follow."
"So, isn't this right here where I can help you?" Tamara's eyes crinkled into a smile.
I took out my phone, opened the memo app, and dozens of hotel listings appeared on it.
"...You're amazing!" You genuinely admire him. This is truly extraordinary.
“Life is meant to be explored, how can you be timid just because you’re in a dungeon?” Tamara raised her eyebrows smugly. “Alright, now let me pick out a good place for you to stay.”
So an hour later, you stand with your luggage in front of a three-story hotel in the old town, its exterior walls covered in vines.
"This one?" You glanced hesitantly at the entrance, which had no signboard and only a brass door knocker.
"Don't worry, it looks old, but it has a high rating," Tamara said casually. "It's the kind of place locals like to book, but tourists don't know about. The key is that the rules are all very basic and reasonable. You just need to be a normal guest and you won't trigger any extra events."
You look at her suspiciously: "What rules?"
"For example: you can't have one person stay in a double room, or it will be mistaken for the other person being missing; mirrors can't face the bed; you can't ask for breakfast to go; the room number will only be given to you once, and you can't ask again if you forget it; and—" she paused, "but it might be more friendly to you—the signal in the room isn't very good, and the electronic facilities aren't complete, so you can just go to sleep when it's time."
“Sounds good.” You take Tamara’s hand and give her a perfunctory, deeply moved handshake.
"Fine, fine." Tamara scoffed at your stiff acting. She shrugged. "These hotels are all about social niceties. I'll have her burn some pine needles for you tonight; they're good for warding off evil spirits."
You finally nodded: "Okay. Then please make the arrangements."
Once inside the hotel, Tamara chatted briefly with the receptionist and quickly received a metal key and a card with a flower language written on it. She casually handed you the key and winked at you.
"I told you the service is very good. If you need anything, just contact the old lady at the front desk. She knows a little about flower language, and communicating in her native tongue is no problem," Tamara whispered in your ear. "307. The first room on the right after turning off the stairs. It's a single room, so I won't go up with you. Be careful tonight."
You took the keys, but didn't leave immediately.
"Wait a minute," you said softly, "I want to ask you for a favor."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Seriously. Consider this a chance for me to wash away the negative stereotypes I have about you."
"Hmm, that sounds pretty good. Winning back your respect is something I've always dreamed of," Tamara sneered, but her expression remained quite serious.
“Isn’t your ‘family card’ linked to mine?” Ignore her tone and get to work.
"You want me to check the signal fluctuations of that thing?" She quickly understood.
“Be more specific.” You look at her. “Help me keep an eye on where it is, what it’s looking at, and what it’s waiting for.”
Tamara didn't immediately agree. She leaned against a vintage bronze pillar in the hotel, looked at you for a few seconds, and a slow, sly smile appeared on her lips: "Are you scared?"
"I don't want it to get ahead of me again," you say calmly.
She suddenly stopped smiling, zipped up her coat pocket, and nodded slightly: "Okay. I'll attach it to the secondary card port and monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic. If it sends any signals that don't fit your usual behavior, I'll let you know immediately."
You nodded, about to say something, when Tamara suddenly smiled slyly, took a step closer, and lowered her voice: "So...can you stay alone tonight? Do you want me to keep you company?" She pointed to the "extra bed" service sign on the wall.
Unable to bear it any longer, you turn around and go upstairs.
Tamara was laughing so hard downstairs that she was doubled over. She had already opened the background on her phone and entered the parent's side of the Family Aid program.
The signal is indeed poor; it shows you're sometimes online and sometimes offline.
This actually makes observation easier.
Because at some point in time, all the data will be refreshed rapidly, constantly overwriting the old content.
**
As you push open the door to 307, a lingering scent of pine wood wafts out.
The room was much smaller than you expected, with a dark carpet covering the wooden floor.
The heating is on high, but the room always feels damp.
Although it was a single room, the bed was a standard double bed. The sheets and pillows were a dark color, a deep blue-green that had faded in the sun.
The windows were tightly shut, and the heavy curtains were drawn tight.
You intended to draw back the curtains to let in some fresh air, but when you saw your reflection flash across the glass, your heart skipped a beat.
—You keenly observed that your shadow seemed to be a beat behind.
…Let's pull him along.
You wandered around the small room and found several light switches hidden in different places.
With a series of clicks, the chandelier, spotlights, and floor lamps lit up one after another, and then the button was pressed again, finally revealing a brass chandelier hanging in the center of the ceiling.
The light was extremely dim; if no other lights were turned on, it would barely illuminate the small area of carpet between the bed and the wardrobe.
Tamara is not lying to you.
There are mirrors in the room, but unlike the hotels you stayed in during the Ying Kingdom instance, which are careless about the placement of mirrors, the mirrors here are not directly facing the bed. Instead, they are placed in a corner near the door, at an angle, pointing at a certain spot on the ceiling rather than at a person's reflection.
There's an old TV in the room, but you can't find the remote. You try touching it up and down, but you still can't turn it on.
Fine, I didn't expect this decades-old relic to still be usable.
There was no WiFi indicator light in the room.
After looking around and settling your luggage, you went straight to the bathroom to take a shower.
Since we're here, let's make the best of it.
As the water splashes down, your mind gradually calms down.
You carefully recall the details of the past few days, pondering just who the other party is.
This should be a new incident independent of the "tour guide" incident, but the fact that it could provoke the other party must be related to that live broadcast, no, even the entire internet account that was created before.
Did you do something wrong or go too far, causing these things to come back to you?
Host, streamer, poison, die-hard fan.
You remembered this account.
In fact, whether it's the back-end messages or the live stream comments, it's not just this one account that keeps posting comments that are unrelated to the video content but only focus on your personal activities.
At the time, you only thought of it as a "perfect simulation" of a scripted performance.
Thinking about it carefully, that's probably it.
Shampoo foam got into your eyes, and you couldn't open them for a moment.
My ears were itchy, as if... as if a gust of wind had gotten in from somewhere.
You want to open your eyes and turn around. Ouch! This old hotel's shampoo is some kind of rotten product; the more you wash and apply it, the more it irritates your eyes!
The discomfort in your eyes and the complete darkness make your other senses more acute.
The water temperature seems to have dropped a little.
It's just a little bit, and you're not sure if it's because you've been standing here for too long and have already adapted to the original water temperature.
【whee】
It sounded like someone chuckled softly in my ear.
You feel like a needle is piercing from the top of your head to the sole of your foot.
—Perhaps it's better not to open your eyes.
What if you open your eyes and something makes eye contact with you?
The showerhead gushed water, cascading over you. The water pressure was inconsistent, sometimes a gentle drizzle, sometimes stinging your scalp until it itched.
You closed your eyes tightly, afraid to move.
Only when your body instinctively relaxes do you slowly open one eye.
Open the other eye.
You didn't dare turn around, nor did you dare look around. Your eyelashes covered half of your eye, and you secretly observed things through the reflection in the faucet.
There was nothing behind me.
There was nothing above my head.
The scariest thing is you, with your convex surface reflecting light and making you look like a grotesque, pot-bellied monster.
—Don't think like that. You feel like you're scaring yourself a bit.
Anyway, I can't take this bath anymore.
You quickly rinsed off the foam, gave yourself a quick wash, wrapped yourself in a towel, and rushed back to your room.
This is a very old room, so the bathroom ventilation system has long since stopped working. You left the hot water running silently for so long, filling the entire room with steam.
Even the mirror near the door was fogged up with moisture.
As you blow-dry your hair in front of the mirror and look at yourself, a thought suddenly pops into your head: if it's not an illusion, then that thing might be standing somewhere, watching you for a very long time.
When you got back to bed after taking a shower, you lit another handful of pine needles that the old lady at the front desk had given you, just as Tamara had instructed.
When the dried leaves are burned and fall, they have a faint sour smell. It's not unpleasant, but it's not exactly reassuring either.
Tamara said that you should sleep when you're supposed to.
You didn't turn off the light, and you lay there tossing and turning, still unable to close your eyes.
He pulled out his phone and sent Tamara a message: "Any movement yet?"
A few seconds later, Tamara replied: "Not sure. But it seems... I know you changed locations tonight."
You were stunned.
"What are they doing over there?"
Tamara replied after about ten seconds: "Nothing special. Just looking at your old content. Your phone's background shows that the photo album is constantly draining the battery. Even the deleted albums. It feels like it's remembering you."
You suddenly felt a chill.
"You go to sleep first. I'm definitely not sleeping tonight. I'll be your online guardian."
"Thank you." You throw ten heart-shaped special effects at him.
I held my phone to my chest, closed my eyes, but couldn't fall asleep at all.
After reviewing everything that had happened since the beginning of this instance, you finally drifted off to sleep again.
In the early hours of the morning, you are startled awake by a faint "snap" sound.
Open your eyes.
The light that was specially left on was still on, but the bunch of pine needles had almost burned out, with only a few millimeters left.
You are awake, and the drowsy feeling has completely disappeared.
I listened intently for a while but couldn't hear anything. However, I felt like there was "an extra layer" in the room.
You turn your head to look at the mirror in the corner.
It didn't move, but there was a patch on the mirror that looked like it had been coated with some kind of moisture—not water vapor, but something lighter and less part of the room.
You hold your breath.
In the mirror, the corner of the room remained empty.
You feel a slight numbness in your legs, as if you were sleeping in an uncomfortable position that was pressing on a nerve.
You shifted your leg.
You suddenly stopped what you were doing.
My eyes slowly moved toward the mirror.
—Your position, angle, and even the way you lie down... are not exactly the same as the "you" in the mirror.
You are lying on your side with one pillow higher than the other. In the mirror, your head seems to be lowered, as if it is closer to the pillow and the image, but your face is not clearly visible in the shadows.
No, a mirror shouldn't reflect the bed, right?
You instantly jump out of bed, walk to the mirror, and your heart races.
There's only you in the mirror, just a shadow, nothing else.
The mirror's position was subtly adjusted.
"Good luck~ I wish you good luck~" A loud female voice boomed in the room.
This is the thing you regret most: in order to create a more courageous environment for yourself, you deliberately chose the most festive song; but in the dark and cramped room, the singing was just too loud.
So much so that when you hear the three words "Good Luck Comes," you get a strange, off-key feeling.
Of course, this can't be changed now; you'll learn from this mistake next time.
The question now is, should I answer this call or not?
I swiped the screen, and it showed my own number.
Your mind explodes, and you want to go find Tamara, but your phone answers automatically.
Even though the speakerphone wasn't on, a voice so low it was almost touching your ear came through the receiver:
"You're finally all alone."
"I've been waiting for this day for so long."
"Now you can... belong only to me, right?"
You throw your phone aside and freeze in place.
The sound hadn't ended yet; it was like an electronic voice being lowered, or like your own voice being disassembled, reconstructed, and pieced together into another person's love.
"I won't hurt you, I just don't like other people looking at you."
"I won't come unless you stop posting or letting people see your posts."
"Promise me, okay?"
You slumped down on the edge of the bed, unable to utter a single word.
It is a fear that arises from within.
Your phone vibrates again.
It's Tamara.
And that previous phone call? It's long since vanished without a trace.
Before you could speak, you heard her anxiously say, "She just tried to redirect all your contact data."
"But she failed because I intercepted her. She knew I was watching."
"So she said something."
You pick up your phone and ask in a hoarse voice, "What did she say?"
Tamara read slowly, almost mockingly: 'You don't belong to her. You are mine.'
You squinted and told Tamara about the voice you had just heard and your contact with it.
“I have a lot of information, so she’s probably getting anxious. I’ll keep it short and tell you what I’ve found, but you have to figure out the pattern yourself; I won’t try to trick you.”
Tamara rattled off a long string of information: "Your phone, during a period of time when you didn't do anything, actually generated a 'non-click redirect'."
"That is to say, every time you stay on the Little Green Book interface, whether you are watching videos or just spacing out, that thing on your phone will try to switch to one of your apps, read your drafts, or even piece together what you just said in the background."
Is it all about spying and imitation? What will it ultimately do? Seize power?
If she gains more knowledge about you, she might start projecting your behavior patterns, making choices based on what you'll do next, half a second, a second, or even earlier.
Is she imitating you?
“It feels more like you’re going to be even more like me than I am, and eventually replace me.” You quickly shared your thoughts with Tamara.
"You're right—but I can't—still—be—me—"
The call with Tamara was interrupted.
Your phone screen is getting hot.
Should I throw my phone away? You see your reflection on the screen, as if coated with an oily film, with a halo of light.
Snap!
It's not a cell phone, it's a television set.
The antique TV, which had no remote control and looked like it had been broken for a long time, suddenly turned on by itself.
It's not the kind of "on" where the screen lights up, but the kind of "on" where the TV is woken up.
You hear the compression sound, the hum, from the machine, like a rusty old man crawling out of a coffin and slowly taking a breath.
You are staring at the screen.
At first, there was nothing, just a distorted screen.
Snowflakes, specks of black and white, flickering slightly. But you know perfectly well it's not a signal problem, because the rhythm of the distorted screen is blinking at you.
"Splash—splash—splash."
A frame of flowers, a frame of black, a frame of shadow.
A face you "almost recognized" is slowly emerging from the white noise.
Your instinct is to back away, but you grit your teeth and force yourself to stay standing.
At least for now, in this room where the heating is constantly rising, you are still safe.
Once you start to "run away," she'll assume you're "scared."
—Isn't that how it is in ghost movies? Does the ghost only start chasing after the protagonist when they start running away? Or does it mean that running or not running is meaningless once the ghost appears? —What are you talking about?
You're so scared you're stunned.
You are a very rational and brave girl, but you also experience physical fear of things that are offensive.
You're still trying to remain calm and making wild analyses, but you've actually been terrified for a long time.
Then the TV clicked and the screen distorted.
The face bulged out of the flat image, like a paper figure peeking out of the painting.
It didn't burst out instantly, but slowly, like a gunpowder being poured into ink—first the face rose up, then the hair fell down little by little, then the neck, the shoulders... She just burst through the image like that, drilling outwards from two dimensions.
Your eyelids feel tight, and your heart is pounding uncontrollably.
She's not imitating you. She *is* you.
This is when your eyes are most unfocused.
It's those five seconds you want to cut off when you say something wrong during your live stream.
It's that sleepy look you have when you wash your face late at night, staring blankly in the mirror with a "deadpan" expression.
Her face is a collection of all your faces when you're not feeling well.
Looking at something exactly like yourself, yet bearing an expression of extraordinary pain and sorrow, you feel an urge to surrender from every pore.
The thing pressed one hand against the edge of the screen, and the television made a screeching sound as if glass was rubbing together.
You could hear her fingernails scraping against the metal edge of the picture tube, as horrifying as nails scraping a blackboard.
The next second, her head popped out of the television.
And in that instant, what you thought wasn't "I'm doomed," but rather—
"Her hair is longer than mine now."
To be precise, it's your hair that's gradually getting shorter.
She's not just becoming you; she's turning you into someone else. Maybe even herself.
You took a step back, your heel touched the edge of the carpet, you tripped, and you almost fell.
As if sensing an opportunity, she lunged forward, landing on her elbows—a posture like a baby learning to crawl, yet also like a broken-backed corpse struggling to stay upright.
She slumped down from the bottom half of the television, not "walking" out, but falling out like liquid.
You could almost hear the smile on her lips, and the cracking of her bones was mixed with a distorted breathing rhythm.
That's the limit.
I can't stand the visual shock that the live-action Sadako brings anymore.
With a loud bang, the hot steam in the heating pipes exploded! You turned around abruptly, flung open the door, and rushed into the hallway.
The hallway lights are motion-activated. The moment you run out, all the lights go out.
You can hear the TV still playing outside the room.
But it wasn't a sound; it was her speaking.
You can't control what she's saying anymore.
You stumbled into the stairwell.
The walls of the stairwell were plastered with red notices from budget hotels: "Please do not make loud noises," "Hot water available until 2 a.m."...
But in the small rearview mirror next to the elevator door, you see—
She stood at the end of the corridor.
It doesn't run, it doesn't walk, it just stares at you without moving.
Try going downstairs.
First step, second step... she didn't move.
You run up to the second floor and look again—she's at the end of the second-floor corridor too.
You didn't hear any footsteps.
You clearly didn't hear her move, yet she was still waiting for you at the end of your floor.
In the dim light, with your face, I look at you lifelessly.
You rushed to the lobby on the first floor like a madman. There was no one at the front desk. All the lights were off, and there was a sign on the door that said "Closed at Night."
Look back—this time she didn't chase after you.
The television light was still flashing upstairs, reflected at the bottom of the stairs.
It's as if she's waiting for you to run away on your own.
In the middle of the night, all alone in my pajamas, I ran out into the street.
Then you would freeze to death.
wrong.
You tiptoed to the front door and looked outside.
It was pitch black.
Is this thing really that influential? It can even affect the outside world?
If she were really that strong, why would she need to lie in wait for so long before suddenly appearing in the middle of the night to scare you?
When were you able to understand Rose language again?
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Author's note: Hehe
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