“Big brother, big brother, please, please~” The two children’s charm was exponentially increased, and Xin Meng awkwardly took a step back, covering his eyes with a cloth.
“This…” Xin Meng hesitated for a moment but still refused, “This cloth is very important, you can’t touch it.”
“Then how do we know if you’re telling the truth?” The girl named Honghong asked sharply, “If you won’t let us touch it, it must be because you’re lying. Mom said that liars are all bad kids! Bad kids need to be punished!”
The little girl’s voice was quite sharp; when she spoke softly, it sounded crisp and pleasant, but once she raised her voice, it immediately became piercing. Xin Meng’s heart suddenly raced, and he had a bad premonition. He was afraid that the two had inadvertently set a flag. Anxiously, he thought, what to do? He couldn’t let them touch the cloth over his eyes, yet he needed to shake off their entanglement…
In a moment of desperation, Xin Meng quickly found a compromise: “We really aren’t lying. How about this? If you don’t believe us, find another piece of cloth that you think is good, and we’ll wrap it around again. Then if we can still accurately find you, it means we really didn’t lie.”
The two little friends suddenly fell silent for a moment, seemingly communicating something. Xin Meng couldn’t help but lean in to listen, but he couldn’t hear anything. After a while, the girl named Honghong reluctantly said, “No need, we believe you now.”
The initially excited little child said to Xin Meng, “You guys sit down quickly! The seats are right in front!”
Xin Meng nodded and was about to feel his way over when he suddenly felt a tight grip on his hand. You Yi seemed to pinch him, and then when he turned his head, You Yi leaned in close and whispered in a low voice, “Well done.”
Xin Meng touched his earlobe, biting his lip as he sat down, unaware that his ears had already turned bright red, and the dimples on his face had also appeared.
It wasn’t just Xin Meng who felt something was off. Li Yougen, who was left with only one life and was on high alert, nearly jumped up in fright upon hearing the word “punishment.” Although the other party was just a child, he didn’t care about that. To him, all NPCs were terrifying, regardless of gender or age!
He immediately shook his head like a wave drum, his words coming out in a rush, “I-I didn’t lie! Don’t punish me! Don’t punish me!”
As he spoke, he subconsciously stepped back, but because he couldn’t see what was behind him, he tripped over a seat and fell flat on his face. The child who had asked him laughed heartily, clapping their hands, “Uncle, you’re so funny! I believe you! You definitely can’t see; otherwise, that would be too silly!”
Li Yougen: “…”
He sat down in the seat the child had offered him, which was right against the side of the bus. He leaned his head against the closed window, curled up his body, and covered his ears with his hands, making a firm decision that no matter what happened, he wouldn’t open his eyes.
Although living was a kind of suffering for him now, he still didn’t want to die.
The bus hadn’t started moving yet, and Qi Xiaokui and Dong Xiu had already lost a life each. By the time they came to their senses, the situation had already been set, and the cloth that had disappeared from Qi Xiaokui’s eyes was now held tightly in her own hands. Qi Xiaokui reacted quickly; she closed her eyes and immediately tied the cloth back over her eyes, taking a step back to distance herself from the child.
“Hey, sister, how did the cloth on your eyes suddenly end up in your hands?” The child asked innocently, biting their finger, “Are you performing magic? I didn’t see clearly; can you do it again?”
This time, even though the child’s voice was still soft and sweet, it no longer moved Qi Xiaokui. She pressed her lips together, her voice much colder than before, “No. Weren’t you going to give me your seat? Where is it?”
The child seemed a bit aggrieved, “It’s right in front of you! Do you want me to help you?”
“No need.” Qi Xiaokui felt around in front of her and found an empty seat. She carefully sat down and ignored the child. The child chatted beside her for a long time but received no response, eventually falling silent.
The most wronged was Dong Xiu. His cleverness backfired as he misjudged the game’s intentions, overcomplicating things with conspiracy theories, which ultimately led to his own death. After being revived, he intended to scold the child fiercely, but he heard the driver in front shout, “In fifteen seconds, it will be too late! Are you all sitting or not?”
Fifteen seconds!
This was probably a reminder for them, who had their eyes closed. Dong Xiu realized the urgency and immediately cast aside all thoughts, sitting down in his seat. Still not at ease, he shouted loudly to others, “There are fifteen seconds left! Sit down quickly, or we’ll fail!”
But he didn’t realize he was actually the last one who hadn’t sat down.
As soon as he settled in, the bus immediately started moving. The children who had been wandering around the bus seemed to have calmed down a lot, though they still gathered together to talk. The bus was filled with the cheerful laughter of children, making it feel almost too pleasant to be a horror game.
Xin Meng thought for a moment and asked the child who had pulled him over, named Heizi, “Where are you guys going? Are all the kids around you your friends?”
Heizi answered obediently, “Yes, they are all my good friends. We’re from the same kindergarten. Today, the kindergarten organized everyone to go out for a spring outing. The teacher said she would take us to fly kites and play games!”
“How many children are there in total?” Xin Meng continued to inquire, “Is your teacher also here?”
“There are eighteen of us, including me! Of course, the teacher is here too. She’s scolding Pingping because Pingping just pretended to be a puppy and bit someone, so the teacher is angry! Listen, you can still hear her scolding!”
Xin Meng listened carefully and indeed heard a mature female voice speaking sternly, but he couldn’t make out what was being said, as it was drowned out by the children’s screams and laughter.
But this voice… why does it sound a bit familiar?
Xin Meng thought for a while but couldn’t recall when he had heard a voice similar to this.
“Are there other people on this bus?” he asked.
“Yes,” Heizi giggled, “A lot, a lot!”
This answer made Xin Meng feel inexplicably uncomfortable, as if there was a strange sense of dissonance. What does “a lot, a lot” mean? On a bus, there were already eighteen children and one teacher, plus their six people, not counting the driver. There should be at least twenty-five people in the bus. And since the driver had been calling for people to give up their seats as soon as they got on, there shouldn’t be any seats left. Yet, Heizi just said there were many, many more? But when he walked over just now, he didn’t feel anyone standing in the aisle?
A sense of foreboding made him stop asking further questions. He sat there in a daze for a while and then leaned over to whisper to You Yi, “Can we just sit like this until the end? It feels too simple; it’s not the style of this game…”
You Yi was silent for a moment, pressing three heavy taps with his thumb on Xin Meng’s palm, “Be careful.”
After saying that, he pressed three more times.
Xin Meng naturally felt it and curiously asked, “What does this mean? A signal?”
“No.” You Yi replied, “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Qi Xiaokui, with her eyes covered, had separated from the others and completely lost her sense of direction. But it didn’t matter; as long as she continued to sit here and protect her eye mask, she could ensure her safety.
The noisy little friends from earlier had disappeared, and she quietly sensed that there seemed to be no one beside her. Were there still empty seats? Then why did the driver call for people to give up their seats when they got on?
In fact, Qi Xiaokui wasn’t particularly clever, or rather, she had never deeply explored her own wisdom. In her past twenty years of life, only the first five years were happy; the following fifteen years were almost entirely immersed in her own world, never caring about everything around her.
She always felt out of place with others, like a gloomy nuisance, thus having no friends and no one who truly cared for her.
No, it should be said that the person who truly cared for her had already gone to another world when she was five years old, never to be seen again.
Caught in pain and emptiness, she felt like a walking corpse every day, and living had become a burden.
Unexpectedly, entering this game allowed her to regain the senses she had lost for so long. These strange experiences and the horrific deaths she encountered finally awakened her from the self-pitying world, making her want to open her eyes and see the world around her. Because she looked carefully, she could see the selfishness and division among her teammates, and she could see the strange relationship between Xin Meng and You Yi, which she could simply exploit. But if you asked her to solve a puzzle in the game, she didn’t have that confidence. After all, she had kept her eyes closed for too long, and opening them would require an adjustment period.
She couldn’t understand the meaning of this game, didn’t know how to return to reality, and even wondered if she could survive to the next game.
If she died here, would she see him again?
Would her soul regain its freedom, breaking free from all shackles, flowing down the River of Forgetfulness, and meeting that person before stepping onto the Bridge of Forgetfulness? Or would she still be trapped in this bizarre game, never having the chance to reincarnate again?
Qi Xiaokui, like a sorrowful artistic girl, kept thinking about her own troubles. Her years of negative worldview made her feel increasingly sad and more desperate.
However, at that moment, she felt someone walk over and stop in front of the seat beside her, slowly sitting down.
She initially didn’t pay attention, thinking it was the child returning, but she quickly realized she was wrong.
Because she heard a familiar voice: “Xiaokui…”
Qi Xiaokui’s eyes, covered by the blue cloth, widened in disbelief, almost popping out of their sockets!
“Si-sister?!”
