NFM Chapter 36

Half an hour later, the principal who had disgraced the school and his bodyguards finally slinked out of Lin Huai’s office.

Chen Haoyu and Fang Cheng, who had been waiting nervously outside, exchanged glances and hurried into the office.

“It was just a financial crisis,” Lin Huai explained the earlier commotion to them. “I really didn’t want to be fired, so I took some extreme actions, but it worked out well. I kept my job, and by the way—”

He patted Fang Cheng’s shoulder: “I decided to move the speech to this afternoon. I’m in the mood, it’s time for my performance.”

His cheeks were flushed, he was smug, delighted, with a fierce, cold, and terrifying demeanor, chaotic and disorderly.

But…

Fang Cheng couldn’t take his eyes off him.

“Does everyone understand now?” After finishing his speech in the class meeting, Lin Huai looked at all the students.

Noticing that even Xu Chi was no longer looking out the window, he finally showed a relieved smile.

Compared to students who spent their entire day studying, Lin Huai’s life seemed particularly relaxed. After school, he pondered and decided to first explore the school’s major mysterious spots, and then, in the evening, work on the remaining parts of his lesson plan, practicing his imitation skills by mimicking famous teachers from videos…

He wandered around the school but found nothing. The school during the day seemed different from at night, even the cockroaches in the garden exuded a vibrant energy.

He carefully observed the world within the school, trying to find and chase the figure of Yan Xi. However, whether it was the white Yan Xi or the red Yan Xi, neither seemed willing to be found by him.

He sighed deeply, after all, he just wanted to find him and teach him the correct way of evolution.

After finishing his chase, Lin Huai was about to go to the cafeteria alone when a gentle voice came from behind: “Teacher Lin.”

He turned around to see two men and a woman standing at the door of class B, looking at him.

“We have a few questions we’d like to ask Teacher Lin,” Xia Xingye said, the earring on his earlobe faintly glimmering, “Do you have time to enlighten us?”

Oh…

Lin Huai then remembered that he seemed to have three teammates.

Three teammates, two men and one woman, a very standard adventure team configuration. Thinking this, he casually said: “Sure. What questions do you have? Is it ancient poetry appreciation, modern literature reading, classical Chinese, or conic sections…”

Li Fen, the most impulsive among the three: “…”

“I can also teach binary linear partial derivatives…” Lin Huai smiled, “Just kidding.”

“Don’t you have any team spirit at all! It’s been two whole days! Two days and the four of us haven’t had a single meeting, what do you even take us teammates for?!”

Lin Huai thought for a moment, and sincerely said: “Hmm, I don’t even remember I had teammates.”

Li Fen: “…”

“So, have you guys made any new discoveries these past few days?” Lin Huai asked.

When there were no players that interested him and there were more targets that did, Lin Huai always had a smug look on his face when facing his teammates.

“I say you…”

“Li Fen.” Xia Xingye stopped his action, turning to look at Lin Huai, “Before exchanging information, it’s proper etiquette to offer your own information first.”

His voice was gentle, and Li Fen calmed down under his soothing.

“Through these days of observation, we’ve learned the following information. First, there are Seven Wonders in the school, they are…”

Xia Xingye listed the Seven Wonders one by one, Lin Huai blinked, pretending to be interested.

“Second, the time limit.” Xia Xingye extended a second finger, “The progress of the entire Game doesn’t seem to be as simple as a whole month. Or rather, the final time of the corpse’s decay is the time when the Evil spirit starts killing and removes the restrictions.”

“Corpse corpse corpse corpse?!”

Li Fen and Qiu Ran both jumped up. Xia Xingye didn’t speak, just smiled and looked at Lin Huai. Lin Huai shrugged: “Oh? You didn’t notice? The air conditioner is still on in the big autumn, besides preserving the corpses, it might also be that all the students are uniting to waste electricity as a way to retaliate against the school.”

“So, for the next month… we’ll be having classes with a group of living corpses?!”

“That’s right.” Lin Huai said.

The two looked at each other, both shivering involuntarily. Xia Xingye then chuckled softly: “Speaking of which, there’s something quite strange. While almost all other classes are composed of living corpses, only classes C and F seem to be made up of living people. What do you think about this, Teacher Lin?”

He deliberately emphasized the title ‘Teacher Lin’. Just out of respect for that, Lin Huai thought seriously: “Maybe the Game didn’t have enough money to hire extras, so they had to use living people to make up the numbers.”

Although he already had a guess in his heart, he didn’t want to reveal everything to these people.

Lin Huai never considered every player as a teammate, so he didn’t think sharing information was a virtue.

And…

For some reason, Lin Huai always felt a strange aura around Xia Xingye.

This strange aura made him very uncomfortable.

It was like walking in a tunnel late at night, with high heels clicking on the ground, only hearing one’s own voice. And another gaze was watching from another place.

Xia Xingye said softly: “In that case, my suggestion is to start exploring the ‘mysterious spots’ from tonight. Considering safety and rest, we will explore one spot every two days. What do you all think?”

Qiu Ran and Li Fen nodded, Lin Huai stared at the three of them and said: “Exploring the entire school in fourteen days sounds like a great choice…”

“But, I refuse.”

“My Lin Huai’s favorite thing to do is to say ‘no’ to plans that think they are very strong…” he smiled, “That’s the first reason, and, I’m hungry…”

“Hey! Why did you just unreasonably reject our group plan?!”

“And if you want to go on an adventure, generally speaking, a trio is the most standard pairing for an adventure. Especially the golden ratio combination of two men and one woman.” Lin Huai said, “And compared to acting with you, I prefer to act alone, so I won’t participate in disrupting the male-female ratio…”

“What kind of reason is that…”

Facing Li Fen’s loud complaints, Lin Huai waved his hand behind his back and quickly slipped away.

The people left in the lounge were dumbfounded. After being petrified for a moment, Li Fen shouted: “What kind of a guy is that?! First, he pulls off some strange moves, now he rejects group activities… and uses the excuse of being a people’s teacher! This guy is completely a lunatic, right?!”

“Everyone has their own way of clearing the Game.” Xia Xingye gently mediated. He glanced at his watch and said: “Then let’s gather information about the Sighing Pool today, and go check out the pool tomorrow night.”

As he said this, he tilted his head to the right, looking towards the window.

Through the glass, outside, was the classroom of third-year class F.

In the classroom, a young man with clear features but a cold demeanor was holding a detective novel. He was lightly tapping the desk with one finger, and among the pile of books always placed on his desk was a dark red notebook.

The day passed simply in the ordinary rhythm of study. After the evening self-study ended, Lin Huai lay on the podium, lazily waving to the few leaving students: “Rest early.”

Almost all the students of third-year class F had left, leaving only Xu Chi in the last row, still packing his things. After he put his books back into his bag, Lin Huai kindly said to him: “It’s late, I’ll walk you back to the dormitory.”

Xu Chi seemed not to expect Lin Huai to do this, he paused, and also put the dark red notebook at the bottom into his bag. Lin Huai picked up a few of his exercise books and flipped through them, smiling at him: “Oh, your homework is done very well, it doesn’t seem like the level of class F, more like class C and above.”

“Because of illness, I missed two subjects in the monthly exam, so I had to come to class F.” The young man replied.

“Oh, a banished master…” Lin Huai commented, no one could guess how he thought of the first chapter title of “The King’s Avatar”…

Perhaps some might think that Lin Huai’s previous actions were because he was already addicted to playing the role of a teacher, even after class, he would check the other’s homework to show his dedication as a teacher – however, the fact was that this player pretending to be a kind-hearted people’s teacher only wanted to confirm whether the handwriting of Xu Chi in any notebook matched the “Future Diary” he had seen in the morning. However, the real evidence that confirmed Xu Chi’s handwriting did not match the “Future Diary” was not the few notebooks he randomly flipped through, but the stationery box buried under many notebooks, with a label bearing his name on it.

‘People’s handwriting is hard to change. Of course, it is also possible that he deliberately changed his handwriting to write this ‘Future Diary’. The ‘Future Diary’ handwriting is delicate, Xu Chi’s left hand does not have calluses from holding a pen, and he did not use his left hand when packing things. Therefore, he is right-handed, and can only use his right hand to write the ‘Future Diary’.’

‘It’s not impossible for people to deliberately change their handwriting, but there are a few words that are hard to change the handwriting of—that is their own name. Having written it tens of thousands of times since childhood, people find it hard to change the way they write their own names. After observing the label, the corresponding characters in ‘Future Diary’ and the way Xu Chi writes ‘Xu Chi’ are completely different, so the conclusion is—Xu Chi is not the writer of ‘Future Diary’.’

As for why he suspected Xu Chi? For Lin Huai, it was simple.

‘According to the cliché of stories, transfer students and class changers almost account for half of the causes of campus horror stories; secondly, apart from class, people who often pretentiously rest their chin on their hand and look out the window are either the protagonist or the boss; lastly, this person’s reaction upon hearing about Shen You and Yan Xi during gossip really makes one pay attention…’ Among these three reasons, Lin Huai placed the last slightly ‘evidential’ reason at the end, and the other two at the forefront, perhaps this is the so-called intuition of a Jinjiang (two) male protagonist (one).

“Teacher Lin?”

“Oh, oh.” Lin Huai came back to his senses from his logically rigorous reasoning, straightened his collar, and walked downstairs with Xu Chi.

On the way, he asked: “Student Xu, you seem to really like detective novels, do you like Keigo Higashino?”

As he said this, he pointed upstairs: “I see your desk is filled with Keigo Higashino’s novels.”

“Actually, I used to prefer Otsuichi for Japanese novels.” Xu Chi said in a low voice.

“Really?” Lin Huai thought for a moment, “By the way, there’s a library in the school, did you borrow this book from there?”

“No.” Xu Chi shook his head, “I never go there.”

“Only he likes to go there.” He said in a voice too low for Lin Huai to hear.

The two chatted as they walked down to the third floor, where the sound of the rolling shutter being locked could be heard. Under Lin Huai’s inquiry, Xu Chi said: “This is the school’s rule, every night at 11:30, the janitor locks every floor to prevent students from sneaking into the teaching building at night.”

“Is that so? Then if someone stays in the classroom and doesn’t come out, wouldn’t they be trapped? And the signal in the teaching building isn’t good, sometimes you can’t even make a phone call, wouldn’t you be trapped in the teaching building for the whole night?” Lin Huai exclaimed.

“But the signal on the rooftop is better, you can also go to the rooftop to make a phone call.” Xu Chi said, “In the past, students often secretly called home on the rooftop.”

The two walked through the school’s woods, and as they passed a small two-story red house near the dormitory building, Lin Huai remembered that Chen Haoyu had told him in the morning that this was the location of the piano room.

Although it was really questionable for a high school famous for its strict training to have a piano room. But presumably, this was also a desperate move by the Game to embody horror. After all, without a piano room, the “midnight piano sounds” of the mysterious events wouldn’t hold up.

…Speaking of which, it’s only two minutes to midnight. With the spirit of mischief, Lin Huai suddenly stopped and said to Xu Chi: “Actually, I’ve always wanted to ask you something… now that you’ve transferred to class F, are you used to it?”

“…?”

He was counting the seconds in his heart, saying: “Through these days of observation, I feel that you don’t seem to interact much with your classmates, have you encountered any problems in interpersonal relationships?”

“It’s just that we can’t chat together. And… I don’t need friends.”

‘What a super chuunibyou statement… feels like the death flag on this person has gotten a bit heavier.’ Lin Huai thought in his heart, the count reached ninety seconds.

Xu Chi lowered his eyelashes.

“Actually, I…”

Just then, a piano sound came from the silent piano room next to them.

It was the sound of “Für Elise.”

Lin Huai and Xu Chi looked up, only to see a figure standing straight by the dark window on the second floor of the piano room.

The moment he saw his face, Xu Chi completely froze.

“Yan…”

Standing by the dark window was the red Yan Xi. His two arms drenched in blood, his black eyes filled with malice, stared at Xu Chi downstairs.

He cracked the corner of his mouth and laughed.

“Keke… keke keke…”

The red Yan Xi turned around and quickly disappeared into the darkness. Xu Chi looked at the disappearing figure of Yan Xi, and immediately wanted to chase after him.

“Stay here and don’t move.” Lin Huai pulled Xu Chi behind him, “I’ll go up to check the situation and come back.”

After making this very death-flag-like statement, Lin Huai turned on his phone’s flashlight and walked up. But halfway up, he heard another set of footsteps following him.

It was Xu Chi’s footsteps.