Secret for Secret
How did I get here?
Xin Meng paused for a moment.
This was the second time he had heard someone ask him this; the first time was Dou Dou!
The two seemed to know each other from before but pretended not to recognize one another, taking turns to ask him this one question. What exactly… were they trying to do?
How did he get here, and what happened?
Xin Meng thought for a moment and said nonchalantly, “I forgot.”
“Forgot?” Jiezi seemed unable to accept this answer. “How long have you been in the game? You can forget this?”
“Or…” He squinted and deliberately put his arm around Xin Meng’s shoulder like they were good buddies. “Or do you have some kind of hardship that you can’t tell me?”
“Hardship?” Xin Meng frowned and pushed his arm away. “I have no hardship; I just can’t remember.”
Jiezi didn’t give up and leaned closer. “Come on, don’t be stingy. If you tell me this little secret, I’ll reward you with a big secret. How about that?”
“Not interested.” This time, You Yi came over and directly pushed Jiezi aside, giving him a cold glance. “Keep your distance.”
Jiezi was taken aback, looking at You Yi’s lifeless, inorganic brown pupils, and quickly raised his hands in explanation. “I have no other intentions.”
You Yi ignored him and stood next to Xin Meng like a grim reaper, making it so that normal people didn’t dare to approach.
Jiezi scratched the back of his head and muttered to himself, “Looks like I really stirred up trouble…”
Unbeknownst to him, while he was struggling, Dou Dou on the other side wasn’t doing much better.
“I already told you, we both took a nap and woke up here,” Luo Yingying frowned at Dou Dou. “What else do you want to know?”
Dou Dou felt as miserable as if he had eaten ten pounds of bitter herbs. “Don’t be angry, don’t be angry. I don’t not believe you; I’m just a bit curious…”
“What’s there to be curious about?” Li Wenjun, who was usually easygoing, seemed genuinely unable to listen anymore and said a bit angrily, “I’ve told you three times already. If you keep asking, isn’t it just that you don’t believe me?”
“I…” He had no way to argue back and finally lowered his head, saying, “I won’t ask anymore…”
“Dou Dou, what’s wrong with you?” Luo Yingying, seeing his pitiful appearance, couldn’t help but soften her tone and asked gently, “Is there something wrong with how we got here?”
“Ah, haha, no, I just…” Dou Dou stammered, “I just wanted to gather some statistics on the probability of entering the game by different methods…”
“Huh?” Luo Yingying was taken aback. “What do you need that for?”
“N-nothing, just bored, haha…” Dou Dou awkwardly covered his face and quickly changed the subject. “This room is empty, right? Let’s go to the next one, haha, haha…”
Li Wenjun glanced at him and forcibly took Luo Yingying, who was still worried about Dou Dou, out of the room.
“Hiss, looks like I really angered the nice guy,” Dou Dou said with a frown. “Detective dramas really aren’t for me; I’m more suited for sports shows… I wonder how Jiezi is doing over there…”
…
A whole night passed like this. They found no clues and no children, which was very strange. Even if the other party was small, they had turned over every drawer and found not even a scrap of clothing.
Before dawn, everyone gathered outside the door on the first floor.
“Found nothing,” Luo Yingying said to Xin Meng. “Looks like you guys didn’t either.”
“Could it be that they’re not in the building?” Xin Meng speculated. “Should we go outside and look?”
Jiezi nodded. “The only places outside to hide are the haystack and the slide. Let’s check those two spots.”
So they split up again. Xin Meng and his group went to look near the trimmed garden holly, while Luo Yingying and the others went to check the slide.
The slide was cylindrical, and the pale yellow cylinder must have been beautiful before, but now it looked very old. Besides dust and fallen leaves, there were many unidentifiable dirty stains, as if it had been thrown into a junkyard and abandoned for a long time.
Moreover, as they got closer, they found that these nine cylinders… were identical.
No matter the style, color, or even the location of the stains on them, there was no difference at all.
Luo Yingying rubbed her arms and nervously hid behind her husband, while Dou Dou joked to tease her, “Isn’t this something you see every day? Why are you still so scared?”
But Luo Yingying retorted, “You’re wrong. Just because it’s a familiar scene, any change in atmosphere can be more terrifying than any unfamiliar place.”
Dou Dou thought about it and realized she had a point.
But no matter how scared they were, they still had to search. Their advantage was their identity as “ghosts.” At night, the other party couldn’t harm the players; if discovered, they would flee, at most retaliate, but not attack proactively, as evidenced by the ghost child they had encountered earlier.
Dou Dou started searching from the left cylinder, Li Wenjun from the right, and Luo Yingying took the middle position, which was better. If anything went wrong, the people on both sides could come to support her. The team generally treated Luo Yingying, the only lady, with more care, and Dou Dou was no exception.
Since it was children’s equipment, the diameter of the cylinder was relatively small and positioned low. Even if they squatted down, they couldn’t see inside. They initially wanted to climb up to the slide platform to look down but found the other end blocked. So they had to come down and peek inside from the lowest exit.
Luo Yingying knelt, her upper body leaning on the ground, carefully pressing her face close, not daring to go too deep, just wedging herself at the entrance, her eyes moving upward and gently turning.
Inside the cylinder was pitch black; she couldn’t see anything, and the only sound was the slight friction from her own movements.
It seemed there was nothing…
She didn’t know whether to feel regret or relief. Supporting herself on the ground, she pulled her head out and exhaled, “It’s too dark in there; I can’t see anything, but it should be…”
As she stood up, her movement was too sudden, and her body was a bit weak, causing her head to spin. Instinctively, she grabbed the cylinder for support.
“Tap, tap.”
Suddenly, a sound came from inside the cylinder!
The sound was not loud, but in the quiet of the night, it echoed in everyone’s ears like thunder. Li Wenjun and Dou Dou immediately jumped up and rushed to Luo Yingying’s side, with Li Wenjun shielding her behind him, the three of them warily staring at the cylinder.
However, the sound only rang out that once and then fell silent.
“Was it from inside here?” Li Wenjun asked Luo Yingying.
“I don’t know; it’s too dark inside, I really can’t see, but I didn’t feel any signs of a living person,” Luo Yingying said uncertainly. “But they are no longer human; maybe I misjudged.”
The two men didn’t dare to be careless and exchanged glances. Dou Dou took the initiative and said, “I’ll take a look!”
“Be careful,” Li Wenjun advised him.
Dou Dou, however, didn’t seem scared at all; instead, he rubbed his fists, eager to try, and nimbly pounced over, sticking his head inside.
There was no movement for a long time.
“Dou, Dou Dou…?” Luo Yingying, seeing this, felt inexplicably scared and tightened her grip on Li Wenjun’s shirt, calling out toward him.
Her voice was trembling.
But the terrifying scene she imagined didn’t happen. Dou Dou quickly pulled his head back, but he had something in his hand.
A cloth doll.
The cloth doll was dressed in a beautiful princess dress, but the white fabric had turned black and gray, the lace had several holes, one arm was missing, and the golden curly hair was dirty and tangled, with a layer of dust covering the button eyes.
“There really isn’t anyone, just a cloth doll,” Dou Dou looked at the doll a few times and was about to hand it to Luo Yingying, but she coldly refused.
“Don’t give it to me; I don’t want to touch it!”
Li Wenjun, being a bit braver, took it and turned it over in his hands. “Was that sound just now made by this doll?”
But it was indeed the most ordinary cloth doll. He squeezed it and could feel some clumped cotton inside, along with some dirty fluff peeking out from the broken arm.
When he touched it, he could even wipe off a layer of dust from the button eyes.
Aside from being dirty, there was really nothing special about it.
“It must have been when Yingying bumped into the cylinder, accidentally knocking this out, which made the sound,” Dou Dou said. “I wonder which child threw it in.”
Seeing it was just a false alarm, the three of them breathed a sigh of relief. Li Wenjun put the doll back inside the cylinder, not throwing it further in, just leaving it at the entrance.
Later, Luo Yingying was pushed aside to calm down, while the two men searched all nine cylinders again, finding no children but discovering some toys and a small sand shovel, all broken and equally dirty.
At this time, Xin Meng and the others also returned, and they hadn’t found anyone either.
“This is too strange; there’s no one inside the building, and no one outside either!” Luo Yingying exclaimed in shock. “What’s going on?”
Dou Dou also shouted, “Could it be that there’s a bug again?!”
Jiezi rolled his eyes at him, and Dou Dou scratched his head, sticking out his tongue.
“What do you mean ‘again’ with the bugs?” Xin Meng seized on this point and directly asked.
“Ah? Did I say ‘again’?” Dou Dou immediately played dumb. “I don’t remember; I probably misspoke, ahaha…”
Jiezi gave him a disdainful look and said, “Did you used to play computer games a lot? Otherwise, how would you have such a catchphrase?”
“Yeah, yeah, I really love playing games,” Dou Dou quickly replied. “Looks like you’re also an old hand; we should exchange notes sometime?”
Luo Yingying, not suspecting anything, laughed and said, “Indeed, games, alcohol, and women are common topics for men, allowing those who initially don’t see eye to eye to quickly reconcile.”
“Hmph!” This time, the one who snorted coldly was not Jiezi, who usually had this tone, but Xin Meng!
Dou Dou felt a cold sweat break out under Xin Meng’s “Do you think I’m a fool?” gaze, feeling as if the other party had seen through something.
This time, even Jiezi was momentarily speechless, unable to find a more reasonable explanation immediately.
“What’s wrong?” Luo Yingying noticed the atmosphere suddenly became strange and looked around in confusion.
Dou Dou and Jiezi had just eased their relationship, so why were they now at odds with Xin Meng and You Yi? She was about to ask when Li Wenjun secretly tugged at her clothes. Luo Yingying, looking bewildered, saw her husband didn’t want her to speak, so she had to remain silent.
Xin Meng scrutinized Dou Dou and Jiezi with a cold, examining gaze.
It was as if he had become a different person.
