Chapter 4: Beckoning a Ghost
As if the nightmare had just ended, the handprints and scratches all disappeared, and the elevator reverted back to normal.
In a flash, Lin Xiao Yan and Lin Yiri ran out. Su Min raised his foot to go in after they had left.
“Don’t go in the elevator!” Lin Xiao Yan yelled.
But her warning came too late. The doors had closed, and the elevator already began to ascend. To the side, Lin Yiri hurriedly pressed the b.u.t.tons, but it was futile.
When Su Min heard Lin Xiao Yan’s voice, his heart tightened and skipped a beat.
He cancelled the command to the third floor and pressed the b.u.t.ton to the second floor, wanting to get out as soon as possible. Taking the stairs was a better alternative.
Su Min really didn’t want to experience anymore of the ‘horror’ if he could help it.
However, the elevator unexpectedly delivered him directly to the third floor. There was even a ding as the doors opened.
Su Min, “...”
This elevator was a bit problematic.
As Su Min walked out, he hesitantly looked back and saw that the doors were closing like normal.
Downstairs, Lu Yiri sent him a WeChat: “Su Min? Quickly get out of the elevator. What floor are you on now?”
“I’m on the third floor,” Su Min replied.
“...”
That response was the opposite from what he had expected.
Lin Xiao Yan and Lin Yiri walked up the stairs. When they recalled their experiences in the elevator, their bodies trembled with lingering fears.
After handing in their homework, the three faced each other with nothing to say.
A long time pa.s.sed before Su Min broke the silence, “Did you guys run into something when you were on the elevator?”
They nodded.
Lin Xiao Yan swallowed. “Rather than the third floor, the elevator took us to the seventh floor!”
“The seventh floor?” Su Min had some doubts.
According to the original’s memory, the seventh floor was sealed many years ago. Furthermore, the doors to the stairs connecting the sixth and seventh floor had long since been locked up.
“The most important point here is that the school made it so that the elevator is unable to go up the seventh floor,” Lin Yiri said.
“What do you mean?”
Lin Yiri pa.s.sed over his phone. Displayed on the screen was an old post on the school’s web forum that discussed the seventh floor.
The landlord’s1 post and the replies below could all be summed up to–
The elevator can only go up to the sixth floor.
In other words, the highest floor it could’ve gone was the sixth, but after some strange development, the elevator broke its own seal and made its way to the seventh floor.
Su Min sighed, “This elevator is difficult to deal with.”
To be able to break through a whole floor–this horror movie contained some tofu-dreg2 buildings.
Lin Xiao Yan agreed, “Extremely so.”
“There are a lot of posts online about strange incidents that happened in the elevator,” Lin Yiri exclaimed, “Someone said that when he was inside, a hole appeared out of nowhere and an arm reached out to grab his clothes.”
That wasn’t what they had experienced, but it was more or less the same.
“There’s a security camera inside,” Su Min reminded them.
Lin Xiao Yan’s eyes lit up. “Yes, let’s investigate further.”
The three headed to the monitor room together.
“No, I’ve been here all day, and everything is completely normal. The elevator can’t go go up to the seventh floor, don’t talk nonsense,” the supervisor said.
Despite his words, he still pulled up the footage from around that time.
The recording began with Su Min’s entrance to the office building. Lin Xiao Yan and Lin Yiri had just entered the elevator, and the doors were closing.
As the elevator went up, the numbers climbed alongside it.
In another screen, Lin Xiao Yan and Lin Yiri appeared to be chatting. It was unknown what happened, but their expressions suddenly became strange.
The elevator’s number reached ‘3’; they were now on the third floor.
The doors opened and the two people inside promptly leaped out. However, not long afterwards, they ran back in as if chased by something. Lin Yiri incessantly pressed on the b.u.t.tons, and when the doors finally closed, they both collapsed on the ground.
The supervisor frowned and said righteously, “You are all college students. You should know that jumping on the elevator is not allowed, and pressing on the b.u.t.tons like that is prohibited. It’s very easy for an accident to happen.”
The colors drained from Lin Xiao Yan and Lin Yiri’s faces.
They were clearly on the seventh floor, but what was displayed on screen is the number ‘3’.
Su Min glanced at the two and said, “Sorry for the inconvenience. They woke up early in the morning and aren’t fully awake. We’re leaving. This will not happen again in the future.”
He pulled them out of the room.
Outside, the weather was sunny and cloudless, showing the beauty of daytime. But, apart from Su Min, the two people’s hearts were frosted with the chill of winter.
“The seventh floor was terrifying.”
“I’m never riding on the elevator again.”
They only had cla.s.ses in the morning, so they were free for the rest of the day. Seeing that none of them had eaten yet, Su Min directly took the two to the canteen.
Both were still in a daze.
When it was their turn to order, they nodded to this and that, buying more than a handful of food. Even Lin Xiao Yan’s plate was twice as big as Su Min’s.
Su Min was astonished.
Seeing him look at her meal, Lin Xiao Yan flushed with embarra.s.sment. “I just eat more, that’s all.”
Su Min retracted his gaze. “It’s not much.”
To become indignant of appet.i.te, he knew and understood. After all, it was he who ate less than other people.
Compared to his two frightened cla.s.smates, Su Min was like a spring breeze, cool and serene. He was so calm that he was even picking the Sichuan pepper off his Kung Pao Chicken.
Lin Xiao Yan peeked at him from the corner of her eyes.
By the time they finished their lunch, the two had mostly settled down.
Su Min handed them napkins. “Okay, now let’s talk about what went wrong back in the dorms.”
Lin Xiao Yan shook her head. “No... I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That won’t do,” Su Min said, “Liu Lili was your roommate. Her death is extremely suspicious, you have to say it.”
“Then, what do I say?” she asked. “I also don’t know how she died. When she went to the bathroom, I was in bed.”
“What did you guys do before you slept?”
He heard that, generally, in horror movies involving Universities, a group of students would play a game like Bi Xian3. Something would go wrong, and then Bi Xian would start killing them off one by one.
Su Min held his chin. “For instance, did you play Bi Xian?”
Lin Xiao Yan froze.
Her change was not missed by Su Min. He couldn’t help but ask, “You guys really didn’t play Bi Xian, right?”
Is this heroine trying to court death?
“No, no, we didn’t play Bi Xian,” she quickly denied.
Su Min just began to relax when he heard her next sentence, and his elbow nearly slipped off the table.
“...We were playing Kuai Xian4.”
Su Min rubbed his arm.
“Talk.”
After a period of silence, Lin Xiao Yan opened her mouth and started to recount the events that took place last night.
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Time reversed back to yesterday night.
Four schoolgirls faced one another, nervousness leaking out from their expressions.
On the table in front of them were two pairs of rough and shoddy chopsticks. The chopsticks were tied together with a red string, connected to form the shape of a cross.
The rules of this game required all of them to partic.i.p.ate.
There wasn’t much information on Kuai Xuan on the internet. The description of the game itself was vague, much less the ending of it.
Each girl held one end of the cross and muttered the phrase, “Kuai Xian, Kuai Xian, please make haste to come and sit.”
They said it again before sitting down. Once seated, they repeated it one final time.
However, after saying it three times in a row, there were no movements from the cross.
Liu Lili’s courage was small, so she no longer wanted to continue. She had originally rejected the offer to play but relented after her roommates’ persuasions.
Furthermore, she had seen too many horror movies. It was impossible for her to not be afraid.
She was on the verge of withdrawing her hand when suddenly, the chopsticks twitched.
Opposite of her, Lin Xiao Yan shouted, “It moved! Did anyone moved it?”
The three looked at each other and slightly shook their heads. In their eyes were both panic and excitement.
Liu Lili silently swallowed. The soles of her feet began to chill.
They felt the cross in their hands leisurely move. Fastened by the red string, it looked a bit abnormal.
In the end, Lin Xiao Yan broke the silence. “Kuai Xian, Kuai Xian, will I fail a course this semester? If yes, tap once; if no, tap twice.”
She had already failed six subjects.
The University stipulated that if students failed seven subjects during their four years here, they would have to retake the entrance exam. If they were unable to pa.s.s, they would not be able to obtain the certificate for their degree nor their diploma.
Lin Xiao Yan couldn’t afford that.
Under the eyes of the four people, the chopsticks tapped twice in an exasperatingly slow manner.
In her excitement, Lin Xiao Yan nearly stood up and jumped around the dorm. However, she thought of the chopsticks in her hand and stopped herself.
“This is really true,” she said, “You guys, hurry up and ask before it’s too late.”
The other three asked their questions.
Kuai Xian’s taps would change from question to question. Knock, knock, they felt like the taps were right on their hearts.
Half an hour pa.s.sed.
“We should send Kuai Xian off.” Lin Xiao Yan thought it had gone on for long enough.
This was the indispensable part of the game. If Kuai Xian wasn’t properly sent off, trouble would come to them. They could even lose their lives.
“Oh no, the string broke!” Liu Lili suddenly cried out.
Lin Xiao Yan’s face changed. She looked down to see that half of the string was broken off, while the remaining half wavered in the air.
Quickly, she said, “Hurry, Kuai Xian, please return.”
The rest followed her lead.
The four completely forgotten that in order to thoroughly send Kuai Xian off, they had to have an open door. From beginning to end, the door to the dorm room was tightly sealed shut.
A minute later, sweat trickled down their foreheads.
No one dared speak after that. Each turned and went to their respective bed with blank expressions. Burying themselves inside their blankets, they drifted off to a restless sleep.
“That was how things went.” Lin Xiao Yan lowered her head.
After they sent Kuai Xian off, they went straight to bed without any further actions. It wasn’t until hours later that she found Liu Lili’s corpse in the bathroom.
“...You guys are really something, huh,” was all Su Min could say.
“Miss Lin, you failed six subjects?” Lin Yiri asked. “That’s truly something, I only failed three.”
Su Min, “...”
Lin Xiao Yan glared at him, “Is that what you’re concerned about? Me failing a course is not important. What‘s important is that Liu Lili’s dead.”
She had made some a.s.sociations with Liu Lili’s death to the game they played last night, but she didn’t dare say anything.
If she revealed her thoughts to the cops, they wouldn’t believe her. After all, how could someone die from such a trifle game? In the end, they might even send her to the mental hospital.
Lin Yiri scratched his head, “Who asked you guys to do this sort of thing? Everyone else is playing Bi Xian, but you guys just had to play Kuai Xian.”
Beckoning a ghost at midnight was not a good thing.
Of course, him instigating Su Min to play Please, Jing Xian in the middle of the night didn’t count.
Su Min thought for a moment and said, “I have to ask–did you guys really send Kuai Xian away?”
After saying that, however, he waved his hand, “Never mind, that question is unnecessary.”
“Why?” Lin Xian Yan asked.
“Even if I used my toes to think, I’d still be certain that you guys didn’t send Kuai Xian off,” he answered.
Lin Xiao Yan, “...” Then your toes are too powerful.
“You guys definitely didn’t send it away. If you did, Liu Lili wouldn’t have died,” he reaffirmed. “Did anyone see Kuai Xian’s face?”
Based on Horror Movie Logic 101, Kuai Xian was indisputably still in this school.
But it shouldn’t be this simple. Otherwise, this movie’s t.i.tle wouldn’t be “University Thriller” but “Kuai Xian”. The director seemed to have more in store.
Maybe Kuai Xian was simply the trigger that started off the wave of supernatural events; maybe it was just one of the many specters.