Chapter 2 Please Protect Your Dormitory
YES OR YES.
The giggling voice of a child in the night sky posed a multiple-choice question, but did not give a negative option.
The humming sound was haunting and eerie:
"Welcome to the dormitory survival game~ Happy dormitory life begins!"
“Ah, my phone!”
Guo Guo let out a scream, accompanied by the sound of her phone being dropped. She pointed downward tremblingly, only to see the phone screen filled with distorted dialog boxes. The bright red text was exactly the same as the content of the nursery rhyme.
Tang Xinjue took out his cell phone - the same thing.
She reacted immediately, first pulling Guo Guo up from the ground, then picking up the nearest chair and propping up the floor-to-ceiling window leading to the balcony to prevent the eyeball monster from suddenly appearing again.
Then she picked up another chair and walked towards the dormitory door.
"Where are you going?"
Guo Guo had completely collapsed in fear, curled up in front of the table and dared not do anything. He became extremely nervous when he saw Tang Xinjue walking away.
Tang Xinjue said, "Wanqing is still outside."
If the entire dormitory area loses power, the public bathroom will naturally be no exception.
Imagine that you are taking a shower in the bathroom and suddenly the power goes out, and then a scary nursery rhyme is heard outside. The shock to people will definitely be greater than that to those in the dormitory.
As if in line with Tang Xinjue's words, as soon as she finished speaking, the humming outside the dormitory suddenly stopped.
The cheerful children's voice rang out again, but this time it was clearer, as if it was right next to everyone's ears:
"The good students have already started playing games, while the bad students are still playing outside. The educators are already impatient and have opened the test papers—"
"Important reminder: The game is about to begin. All students outside the dormitory please return to the dormitory immediately! Educators don't like bad kids who like to play, and they will punish you~"
"When the game officially begins, students who have not returned to the dormitory will be subject to the most severe punishment..."
The child's voice suddenly stopped, the humming tune disappeared, and the environment returned to silence.
Educator? Test paper? Game?
Tang Xin Jue memorized all the key words he heard. Suddenly, there was a muffled sound, and both of them in the dormitory were startled and looked up. The dormitory door, which was originally half-open, closed by itself!
Tang Xinjue took a few steps forward and reached out to pull, but no matter how hard he pressed the doorknob, the dormitory door didn't budge.
It's like... being locked from the outside.
Guo Guo's horrified voice came over: "Xin Jue, check your phone!"
I saw that the dialog box on the phone screen had disappeared at some point, leaving only a bright black countdown.
Time until game start: 240 minutes.
240 minutes is four hours. Now it is eight o'clock in the evening, so four hours later it will be... midnight.
As his thoughts turned, Tang Xin Jue figured out the information given by the strange child's voice:
They were playing a so-called "dormitory survival game" according to the rules. The game would officially begin in four hours, that is, at midnight. According to the children's voice, it seemed that only people in the dormitory could enter the game.
So what punishment will those who don’t return to the dormitory receive?
Of course, this could just be a big prank, a realistic prank. But if it was real... Tang Xinjue stared at the door quietly.
She remained exceptionally calm despite her roommate's screams and howls. She couldn't open the door, so she tried to knock it with her knees and a chair, but found that the originally flimsy narrow door didn't even tremble.
Although she looked frail, she knew how strong she was. Under normal circumstances, it was impossible for the door frame not to shake at all.
If the child's voice was real, then it meant that the rules of the game did not allow people who were already in the dormitory to leave. I'm afraid the door could only be opened when the people outside came back.
Since the child's voice disappeared, the noisy screams and footsteps in the corridor have never stopped. Tang Xinjue gave up going out and chose to hang on the door and shout to the outside:
"Can you hear me? Wanqing, are you outside?"
After shouting several times in a row, there was indeed a response from outside the door. With the sound of footsteps, the response sound came from far away and got closer. Tang Xinjue recognized that it was the voice of his roommate.
The door was knocked hard a few times, and Zheng Wanqing came back. Her usually vigorous voice was unusually flustered: "Open the door, open the door!"
"We can't open the door ourselves." Tang Xinjue answered truthfully, but before he could continue, the door in front of him creaked.
The dormitory door opened by itself.
Zheng Wanqing squeezed in, all steamy, and complained loudly, "This prank is too much. The power went out when I was halfway through taking a shower, and I didn't even have time to get my toiletries back! It was pitch black when I came back. If I hadn't heard Xin Jue's voice just now, I wouldn't have been able to find my dormitory."
Tang Xin Jue: "Do you really think this is a prank?"
Zheng Wanqing was stunned, "What else?"
She had already groped for the phone on her seat and was about to call to complain: "I don't know what the dormitory security guard is doing. Doesn't the school conduct any investigation? How can such an outrageous prank be allowed..."
Zheng Wanqing didn't finish her words because, apart from the eye-catching countdown on her phone, she was unable to make the call.
There is no cell phone signal.
Tang Xinjue reached out to pull the door, but the door in front of him automatically closed again the moment Zheng Wanqing came in, returning to its motionless state.
She sighed, "Can a prank block our cell phone signals?"
After a few seconds of silence, Zheng Wanqing rushed over to turn on her computer, but the laptop, which was clearly fully charged, could not be turned on at all.
Guo Guo said in a trembling voice: "It's useless. I just tried to turn on the desk lamp, but there was no response..."
There was no light in the dormitory, and the pitch-black environment prolonged the anxiety and fear infinitely. The screams outside the dormitory came one after another, but it seemed as if there was a layer of membrane between them and they could not be heard clearly.
Zheng Wanqing stopped talking and could only look at Tang Xinjue for help. She knew that Tang Xinjue must be the calmest and most rational person at this time, and his analysis was the most reliable. But there was no light in the dormitory, and she couldn't find the other person at all.
"..." She stamped her feet in annoyance and said angrily: "You can think whatever you want, but this dorm escape game can't be real!"
After saying that, she groped her way to the balcony and tried to pry open the window: "Don't we share a balcony with the dormitory next door? Go out and ask the neighbors and you'll know."
Guo Guo's voice cracked: "You are just like the cannon fodder in a horror movie. We are on the sixth floor! Tang Xinjue, hurry up and persuade this idiot!"
What if something happened on the balcony... Guo Guo felt horrified. Before he could stand up to stop it, he saw Zheng Wanqing suddenly stop moving.
In the darkness, the girl turned her head with an indiscernible expression and looked at the wall opposite the sink.
"Here... there is a door."
Guo Guo was about to say something nonsense, "You can knock on the door if you want to, but he immediately realized that Zheng Wanqing was definitely not referring to the balcony window."
A gust of wind blew by, and Tang Xinjue strode over here as if he was not hindered by his sight.
Before coming over, just in case, she pulled out a long, hard object from the shopping bag on the ground. Although she didn't know what it was, at least it could help her protect herself at a critical moment.
When he arrived at the balcony, Tang Xinjue immediately understood what Zheng Wanqing meant.
Guo Guo also came over tremblingly, and the three of them stood together, looking at the wall opposite the sink.
There was a literal door on this wall. With the weak light from the phone, I could only make out its outline. There was nothing special about it.
——However, their dormitory does not have an independent bathroom, this wall has always been empty and there has never been any door!
The roommate who firmly believed in atheism was silent, but the roommate who was obsessed with metaphysics was about to cry, "Prank... can you conjure a door?"
The answer is self-evident.
Tang Xin Jue took a deep breath and made the final decision in a deep voice: "Eliminate all impossibilities. No matter how unbelievable the remaining one is, it must be the truth."
"I tend to think the sounds are real, the game is real, and the rules are real."
Moreover, these scenes had vaguely appeared in her dreams. Tang Xinjue did not say the latter part of the sentence. Now the first thing is to calm down and avoid further panic.
She looked at the door that suddenly appeared in front of her. Unlike the balcony window and the dormitory door, this door did not make her feel dangerous at the moment.
So Tang Xinjue pulled the two dumbfounded people behind him and used the rectangular tool in his hand to push open the door in front of him.
Under the light of the phone screen, it can be vaguely seen that this is a bathroom, and there is a shower area with complete facilities on the left. Zheng Wanqing whispered from behind: "My toiletries are on the wall!"
But her toiletries were clearly left in the public bathroom, so how did they appear here?
After a few seconds of reaction, Tang Xinjue realized: This game gave them a private bathroom?
Is there such a good thing?
The three of them closed the door and retreated to the "safe zone" in the middle of the dormitory, standing under Tang Xinjue's bed number four. No one spoke for a while.
Guo and Zheng were so shocked that they were speechless, while Tang Xinjue was frowning in thought.
The situation was so strange and there was so little information available: what exactly was this game? What did it want them to do? They had no idea.
Facing the fear of the unknown, being trapped in a dark dormitory and having to wait passively, it is not a pleasant feeling.
Moreover, there was a bad feeling that always lingered in his heart, and Tang Xinjue always felt that he seemed to have forgotten something.
An unknown amount of time had passed before Guo Guo, who had been frightened to the point of losing his soul, managed to calm down a little. He suddenly slapped his thigh and said, "Oh, right, Zhang You just told me half an hour ago that she had left the subway station and would be at school soon!"
At the same time, Tang Xin Jue also remembered what he had forgotten:
Their dormitory is not full now because the fourth roommate, Zhang You, who was delayed by the flight, has not returned yet!
The other two people obviously thought of the same thing. Guo Zhi shuddered and spoke incoherently: "That voice said that there will be punishment for not returning to the dormitory, right? Then if, if Zhang You is also in the dormitory area, does she have to come back quickly?"
Tang Xinjue looked out the balcony window again, and the deep darkness seemed to be even thicker.
The countdown on the phone had already gone on for thirty minutes without me noticing. The minute hand reached 8:30 and suddenly stopped.
At the same moment, the child's voice sounded again without warning: "Dear classmates, thirty minutes have passed. Let me see which bad students have not returned to the dormitory. Hey, there are so many!"
The tone of the clear voice suddenly changed, becoming hoarse and sharp: "Educators hate disobedient bad children the most. Punishment and danger will come early. The dormitory is the only safe area... Hehehe, but who can guarantee that it is absolutely safe?"
"After all," the childish voice added, "only the students who are still alive can successfully enter the game—"
"Ding, the first rule has been unlocked: Please protect your own dormitory!"
The sound in the air disappeared again, but this time it didn't last long. Even more tragic screams and chaotic footsteps were heard outside the dormitory door:
"Help! Something is chasing me!"
The sixth floor where Tang Xinjue lived belonged to the Department of Finance, and many of the dormitories were filled with classmates and close friends. She quickly distinguished a familiar voice from the noise.
Holding Tang Xinjue's arm tightly, Guo Guo also whispered: "Is the person who just shouted Sun Jia from the next dormitory? She is still outside now, is she..." Being punished?
Tang Xinjue frowned and remained silent. The noise in the corridor soon disappeared. However, for the people in the dormitory, the silence at this moment was even more eerie.
“Bang, bang, bang!”
The sudden knock on the door almost made everyone in the dormitory jump up. Tang Xinjue picked up his roommate who was weak in the knees and asked loudly, "Who is it?"
"It's me."
A familiar female voice sounded outside the door: "I'm Zhang You, I'm back."
It turned out to be my roommate.
The other two breathed a sigh of relief. Zheng Wanqing hurriedly went to open the door, but Tang Xinjue grabbed her wrist.
Zheng Wanqing didn't understand: "There's danger outside, we have to open the door quickly!"
Tang Xin Jue didn't let go and walked to the dormitory door: "Zhang You, wasn't your flight from Chengdu delayed? How come you arrived so early?"
The voice outside the door paused for a second, then replied: "I'm on my way very quickly. Besides, aren't you all worried about me?"
In the darkness, the voice outside the door was soft and gentle, and it was indeed Zhang You's voice.
But Zheng Wanqing and Guo Guo inside the door shuddered at the same time, and Zheng Wanqing withdrew her hand that was about to open the door as if she had been electrocuted.
——Because they knew that Zhang You’s flight was from abroad and had nothing to do with Chengdu. But when Tang Xinjue said this, there was no response from the voice outside the door.
Outside the door...is it really Zhang You?
