Chapter 15: Ending
Su Min was overwhelmed by the string of movements.
When they stood up again, only Teacher Chen was left in the office. He was trying to use everything around him to put out the fire but was unsuccessful.
Eventually, he also ran outside.
The window curtains and awards were eaten by the raging flames. It wouldn’t take long until the fire consumed the entire office.
That year, did the seventh floor also burned like this?
Su Min didn’t know if this scene was real or an illusion. Inhaling the smoke around him, he didn’t carelessly try to find out.
He patted Lin Yiri, “Carry Lin Xiao Yan and quickly leave.”
Lin Yiri was stronger than him. He directly placed Lin Xiao Yan on his back and easily stood up. Since she was very light, he didn’t need to exert that much strength.
“Go first,” Su Min said.
The fire caught up to him as he trailed after Lin Yiri. It kissed his clothes, leaving behind sparks of amber.
Su Min promptly shook them off.
When they came out of the office, they took a glance back and saw that all the electronics inside exploded, intensifying the blaze and causing it to spread faster.
The fire made its way out of the office’s open door, engulfing the combustible materials in the outmoded corridor.
The school seemed to be working on a new archive room on the seventh floor. With so much paper and wood, the floor was completely claimed by flames.
The area around the elevator had the most empty s.p.a.ce.
Burning everything it could, the fire quickly occupied the bigger half of the seventh floor. As the flames devoured, it let out loud, mocking crackles, inducing terror in the hearts of spectators.
Meanwhile, the elevator finally rose to the seventh floor and opened its doors. All the ghosts rushed to scramble in, pushing and shoving one another.
A scene of people fleeing for their lives.
The dilapidated elevator was bursting with ghosts. Outside, there were countless more who wanted to get in, creating a confrontational situation.
There were arguments and persuasions. Those inside wanted to close the doors and leave; those outside refused, wanting to go in. Eventually, because it had reached more than carrying capacity, the elevator’s doors couldn’t close.
‘The scene from that day must’ve looked like this,’ Lin Yiri thought.
The walls on the elevator were filled with hand prints and fingernail scratches. If these ghosts were all students, wouldn’t those be the marks they’d left behind?
Su Min quickly made a decision, “Take the stairs.”
The office was very close to the stairs on the other end.
Lin Yiri subconsciously headed to that staircase but was stopped by Su Min, “Don’t go there, go this way.”
“Why?” Lin Yiri had some doubts, “This staircase is closest.”
Su Min pulled him while explaining, “The body that tried to escape was on other staircase, remember? Think about it: why would a body be there but not here?”
That night, Zhang Yuan’s body was placed on the staircase by Su Ya. At one glance, anybody could tell that it was done on purpose.
If the body escaped on this side, it would be placed here.
“But did the ones who fled to the other side really managed to escape?” Lin Yiri nervously asked.
Su Min paused. Then, fishing a small hammer out of his pocket, he said. “If it’s unsuccessful, just smash the doors open. I brought tools.”
Since the setting was now the seventh floor from several years ago, the doors were made of wood.
He specifically brought tools just in case they got locked in and couldn’t escape.
Lin Yiri asked again, “What if it still won’t open?”
While they were talking, the corridor behind them completely went up in flames. From the billowing black smoke came several ghosts who were running in their direction.
“I already informed Zhou Runian,” Su Min replied.
He had prepared a text message beforehand and only needed to send it with one click. As long as Zhou Runian came to open the door, it would only take a couple of minutes.
They had to press on until then.
Naeda Translations. Don’t re-upload.
The ghosts surpa.s.sed them, ran to the other staircase, and then slammed the door fiercely.
It was locked.
Lin Yiri ran there, breathless. He ignored the ghosts in front of him, crying out, “My crow’s mouth! Why did I say that?!”
The door was really locked. No wonder why, at that time, Zhang Yuan’s body was in that position.
As if they couldn’t see them, the ghosts wailed and kept beating on the door, wanting to get out.
Su Min knew that they couldn’t do anything for the time being, so he took off his jacket and soaked it in the water from the restroom. One sleeve was place over Lin Xiao Yan’s nose, while the other was placed in front of his.
Lin Yiri followed suit.
While the fire rapidly spread, they tried looking for a fire extinguisher but found none in the corridor.
Su Min couldn’t really blame the school–who knew if this horror movie deliberately set it up to be this way.
At this time, Lin Xiao Yan, waking up to thick smoke, coughed.
Su Min and Lin Yiri watched her every movement. “Do you feel anything different?”
Lin Xiao Yan put her hands on her head, mumbling, “I, there’s so many complicated memories pouring in my head...”
She felt like she had become another person.
“I feel like I’ve just argued with someone,” she continued. “Anger, but also sorrow... And, I almost fell down...”
It wouldn’t have been an ‘almost’ if Su Min hadn’t caught her in time.
When Lin Xiao Yan woke up at night, she was confused as to why she was standing in the middle of the dormitory.
Later, with anger bubbling in her gut, she ran to the office building and quarrelled with a teacher because of a matter involving a good friend.
Due to her muddled memory, she was unable to speak properly.
Lin Yiri covered his nose with his clothes, “Is the quarrel over the girl’s birthday card? I’m sure I guessed right.”
However, the cause was different.
He’d thought that Teacher Chen would often threatened students with a failing grade if they didn’t give him money, or the like. Somehow, he had a hand in Jiang Hui’s suicide.
Lin Xiao Yan shook her head nonstop, “Not this... No... She was murdered... Originally, she wanted to confess... That beast... She was killed by him...”
Intermittently, the pieces of the truth were roughly a.s.sembled together.
Su Min couldn’t help but sigh. This was the most common occurrence in universities: students were infatuated with teachers, but the teachers’ true nature wasn’t as beautiful as they had imagined.
Lin Xiao Yan lowered her head, crying as she blamed herself. She seemed to still be influenced by the remnants of Su Ya’s emotions.
Su Min stood up and walked to the doors.
The ghosts had already fallen into despair. Sitting on the ground, they looked as if they’ve given up all hope. However, there was still one ghost who continued to beat madly on the doors.
That ghost was Sun Chaoyang.
Pursing his lips, Su Min pushed the doors.
Almost simultaneously, the doors let out a sound. Then, it suddenly slammed open, allowing the staircase to enter his sight.
No one could be seen on the pitch-black staircase.
Startled, Su Min took a second to react, “The door opened?”
There was panic in Lin Yiri’s heart, “Zhou Runian didn’t open it?”
Su Min looked at his phone and found that it was unexpectedly turned off. After turning it back on, he saw Zhou Runian’s reply.
Zhou Runian just saw his text and had already gotten out of bed. But, even if he ran here at his fastest speed, it would still take a few more minutes before he arrived.
If that was the case, who opened the door?
In his heart, Su Min already had the answer.
He promptly switched topics, “First, go out and discuss later. The whole seventh floor will soon be completely burned.”
Su Min’s back crawled from the chill of desperation in the air.
After the three people came out, they finally smelled fresh air.
The thick smoke and the smell of burning plastic disappeared, as if they were never there.
Lin Yiri couldn’t help sighing with emotion, “The air is so good.”
Su Min unconsciously looked back.
The entire seventh floor was burning, but the smoke and flames were trapped behind the open door. Inside, the corridor displayed a scene from h.e.l.l.
Lin Yiri also noticed this, “The fire will not come out?”
So mystical? So to speak, they didn’t need to run down the stairs.
Su Min contemplated, “Because the doors didn’t open back then, the fire will be locked inside.”
At that time, the doors never opened, so the fire was contained on the seventh floor from beginning to end. That was why there were so many burnt, black marks on the doors.
So, even if the doors were to open now, the fire couldn’t come out, and the ghosts trapped inside would have to ultimately relive their death.
It was like two separate s.p.a.ces: everything outside was in the present, while everything inside was stuck in the past, eternally replaying the scene from years ago.
It was cruel. Completely merciless. How many times had they repeated their deaths?
Those on the staircase died in despair because they couldn’t open the doors; those on the elevator died in despair because the elevator couldn’t operate.
None of the students who returned to school and came to the office building managed to come out alive.
At the beginning, Zhang Yuan’s corpse had already given them a hint.
This door couldn’t be opened.
“What do we do now?” Lin Xiao Yan asked weakly.
Su Min didn’t know. He was just about to speak when the cinema’s voice sounded in his mind.
【h.e.l.lo, Audience Member Su Min. Congratulations for successfully surviving until the big conclusion! There is still a five-minute transitional period. Please make preparations.】
Su Min was stunned.
The cinema had told him that the ending would be in two days, but it had just been over one. He didn’t understand until he saw the time.
It was now past midnight, basically the next day. Like the cinema had said, it really was the movie’s conclusion.
As the heroine, Lin Xiao Yan was possessed by Su Ya and obtained her memory, allowing her to learn the truth from that year.
That was the big ending for this kind of decrypting-type horror movie. When everything was edited, the run time could be well over an hour.
What could he do in this five-minute transitional period?
Su Min leaned against the wall and looked at the pitch-black stairwell, a little dazed. To him, this stairwell was one of the memorable places.
Lin Yiri didn’t know what would happen next.
He was inquiring from Lin Xiao Yan the small details of the incident from that year. Bits and pieces of that conversation drifted into Su Min’s ears, though their contents weren’t very clear.
Sitting down on the stairs, Su Min looked and counted the steps. There were twelve, not one less, not one more.
Suddenly, he sensed a figure sitting down beside him.
The moonlight behind him came in and reflected a person’s shadow on the staircase.
Only, Su Min knew that that shadow was his. The Jing Xian next to him didn’t have a shadow; he was a ghost.
Like before, Jing Xian’s hand held onto Su Min’s wrist. An ice-cold feeling traveled up his skin and crawled into his heart.
The corner of his lips bent, but it wasn’t seen.
“Have you been here all along?” Su Min asked.
“Yes.”
As if demons and G.o.ds were at work1, Su Min parted his lips and asked, “Do you remember your name?”
“My name...”
Jing Xian said it again, and then suddenly moved closer to Su Min’s ear. In a low voice, he spoke two words, repeating them for no less than three times.
Su Min felt ice-cold lips touching his ear.
He was aware that the ghost before him was different from all the other ent.i.ties he’d encountered before. It was like Jing Xian was a real person.
This kind of intimacy momentarily overwhelmed him, making his body to tremble.
In the eyes of others, his reaction was very interesting.
Jing Xian said, “Since you asked, you must remember.”
Unable to take it anymore, Su Min retreated a distance and, without thinking, agreed, “Okay.”
His consciousness began to feel a little muddled. It seemed like the cinema was starting to extract his brain waves out of the horror movie.
Su Min turned his head slightly, the question at the tip of his tongue refusing to come out. It was a bit of a shame.
The scene in front of him blurred for a moment. When his vision finally focused, he found himself staring at a pair of dark eyes. They were bottomless, like an eternal night sky.
His memory ended with those last two words repeating in his mind, engraved.
Su Min gradually became transparent. Eventually, he disappeared.