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Strange Elevators
Translated by boilpoil
Edited by boilpoil
Two screams erupt from the elevator.
Jiang Shuangmei, who is close to the accessibility button panel, has quickly pushed on the close button and not letting go.
After the brief shock, Fei, biting her lips, shaking, is still doing what she can with Shen YĂźnjĂź right next to her to kick the madmen reaching for them, allowing the elevator door to close successfully.
She now stares blankly at the centre line of the elevator door. She could almost see through it, to the rushing crowd outside──Those people are still rushing towards the metallic door, squeezing it.
Fei’s fingertips are deathly cold and she is clearly distraught, murmuring, “what in the world is going on…”
“The 7th floor is dangerous,” Suits furrows his brows, and says, “however, it looks like these are the only floors we can go to. We will have to check the others out.”
The rest of the Missiontakers are still reeling from the impact of the terrifyingly chaotic scene before.
Teen suddenly asks, “are we really on the 7th floor?”
Suits knits his brows as well. He cannot offer a definitive answer.
“I saw…” Mystic’s voice is floating across the air almost inaudibly, “I just saw, the scenery outside the broken windows… it wasn’t much different, to the 36th floor.”
Jiang Shuangmei, still pushing heavily on the close button without relenting, joins the discussion, with a more methodical approach, “if this is a building with 36 floors, the elevators should travel at around 2 m/s. It was about a dozen seconds only, so at best, we are 10 storeys down.”
Suits gives Jiang Shuangmei an odd look, clearly surprised at her knowledge of elevator intricacies.
Jiang Shuangmei is quiet now, not explaining where she learnt the information, or why she wanted to know about elevators in the first place.
What, is she going to tell the others, that she desperately wanted to know because her older sister became a ghost trapped in an elevator?
The information has been chiselled into her memories, but, even if she returned to the Nightmare, she could not find her older sister anywhere. In a sense, these knowledge has become useless to her…
Except for moments like this.
Suits doesn’t ask, and merely nods approvingly, saying, “that is useful to know. Then we can conclude, unfortunately, that the buttons in the elevators, do not lead to their respective labelled floors.”
In the elevator, the Missiontakers who are still listening to their stand-off with the madmen outside the elevator fall into a contrasting silence. With no outspoken Missiontaker here, none of them express what they feel much.
The comment barrage on the stream is a good representation of their frustration, however.
“how the hell do you even go from here?!”
“this elevator is like a labyrinth”
“if you push down a button in the elevator, but not know which floor it actually is, or what dangers lurk in that floor… question: how do you descend safely?”
“ps. the elevator only goes to some specific, unknown floors”
“what a good question; i choose the stairs”
“with how risky the elevator is, would the stairs really be safe? I’m doubtful”
“uh, but isnt there the painted floor number on every floor in the emergency stairs? they can just go check to confirm which floor each button in the elevator leads to?”
“assuming, of course, you can safely reach the emergency stairs, for example, going through, I don’t know, a crowd of mental patients?”
“and we have no idea what dangers there are on other floors”
“… i choose, death.”
“why do I feel like since the detective dalao is back, everyone has gone too serious… [whisper emoji]”
“kuhum, why are you spouting the truth?! detective dalao, here, here, you can come analyse?”
Xü Beijin is also chuckling seeing the comment barrage, and sits up straight to wait for the dalao’s analysis──He’s also inherently lazy, so with the detective dalao here to take up the mantle, he’ll have it easier for a while.
The detective dalao first, slowly, types a few question marks onto the screen, before typing out fully what he thinks of the Nightmare so far, “First, they should figure out the relationship between the button in the elevator and the actual floor they are transported to, and whether the other elevators worked the same way, and if so, which floors those lead to.
I speculate that the elevators and floors they lead to form an intricate web of connections, which the Missiontakers must navigate.
Currently, it is too early to tell if there is a pattern between buttons and floors transported, so the best way is simply writing the connections down for now.
With how seven doesn’t lead to the 7th floor, and the dangers within, though, this may prove difficult and complicated for the Missiontakers to do. It is possible that there is a method for reliably telling which floor they are on from the elevator, but the Missiontakers merely haven’t discovered that yet.
… Speaking of which, seven isn’t 7, this is reminding me a lot of the Nightmare I saw on the stream before, with the numbering off session.
Anyway, now the Missiontakers have only been on one elevator thus far, so there isn’t much else to say. I’m also worried, in the meantime, what if buttons in other potential elevators could lead to the same floor?
For example, we know in this elevator, seven represents some floor x. If button number y in another elevator also leads to floor x… Then what? Are they really going to have to try every single floor?
Although that also pales to the possibility that the Missiontakers become impatient and just try any button without regard, until they’ve lost track of where they are, how they reached there, or even what dangers each floor has…
Then, they’ll have become victims of the web of connections.
That’s all from me. So Beibei, you said you’ve Acted in this Nightmare before, right? Do you have any non-spoilery clues you can share for this Nightmare? [cute emoji]”
XĂź Beijin looks a tad complicated seeing the last comment from the detective dalao.
He mulls over it for a while, and then asks, “do you want to take a guess, which floor we’re on?”
“!!!”
“oh yeah, where Beibei is, there must be clues!”
“Beibei, are you the bookstore owner again? the first floor again?”
Xü Beijin smiles and explains, “not the first floor, and I’m also not a bookstore owner for once, although the role is somewhat similar.”
“something similar to a bookstore owner?”
“what kind of role could it be in this building? its an office tower right?”
“I can’t work out who Beibei is… but at least, it must be safe where you are right? Is this the safe zone of the Nightmare?”
“woah nice”
“detective dalao is super on point today”
“… Hello? Can we be a bit more serious, ok? Lol”
Xü Beijin can’t help but smile when seeing the viewers tease each other. After a long time spent in the dim, lightless environment, the viewers have been quite the relief for him.
Then he turns to check on the Missiontakers’ situation.