Translated by rabbitrisu
Su Zimo tried to find the light switch that should be installed near the door, but he wasn’t successful. Even if it was dark, there should be faint moonlight coming in through the windows like a normal classroom, but this classroom was completely dark. Only pale red light shone through the small window in the door beside them, looking somewhat strange.
As a result, Su Zimo remembered the ghost stories that Du Lei and the others had told before.
The building they were in now was created by Zhang Xiaoqing. It wasn’t impossible for her to have gotten inspiration from the three trainers’ stories and used them in this small world.
“Maybe it just wants us to imagine things.” Du Lei felt that the atmosphere was a bit heavy, so he took out his phone and turned on the flashlight to shine into the darkness in front of them.
Although the glow of the flashlight wasn’t as good as the original light, it relieved some of the discomfort from the red light and allowed Su Zimo and the others to once again see some of the classroom in front of them.
The classroom in the dark looked different from what they had seen through the small glass window on the door before. The tables and chairs were no longer neatly arranged. All the chairs were pulled down from the tabletops. Some were neat and some were crooked. It looked like there were invisible students sitting in them.
But the entire classroom was empty except for Su Zimo and the others. There were no ghosts in sight.
“Look, I just said there was nothing, right?” Du Lei said, relieved. “You good-looking people are just… too heavy minded. Your mothers would be devastated…”
Du Lei said those last few words very lightly. Even if Su Zimo’s physique had only improved a little, he just so happened to hear it.
The face that had been calm and cold from hidden thoughts stiffened, and the left hand holding the black umbrella slowly tightened and then loosened again. A smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, as if he hadn’t heard anything just now.
“Ah!” At that moment, Zhu Zhu, the glasses-wearing girl who was standing in back, suddenly interjected, as if she’d thought of something.
Su Zimo looked at the seemingly empty classroom, and felt that what Zhu Zhu thought of should be the same as what he thought.
“Mr. Du.” Su Zimo thought of something, turned to look at Du Lei who was holding his phone as a flashlight, and asked with a smile on his face, “Do you have a camera with a beauty filter on your phone?”
At that moment, Du Lei was blankly holding his cell phone. Su Zimo, who suddenly turned around, walked into the light by himself. He broke into Du Lei’s field of view with a dazzling smile. Under the flashlight’s halo of light, Du Lei seemed to have seen ‘A-Yu’ for the first time.
Before that, the ‘A-Yu’ in Du Lei’s eyes was someone who looked good, or else Xu Yingying wouldn’t have ignored her own school grass. But from the bottom of his heart, Du Lei refused to carefully observe what ‘A-Yu’ looked like.
But at that moment, the light had somehow become a filter. Du Lei, whose attention was instantly focused on Su Zimo, suddenly realized… ‘A-Yu’ seemed to be better than Xu Yingying?!
Du Lei shook his head quickly and tried to tell himself that he liked fragrant and gentle girls with long beautiful legs.
But… Du Lei looked at A-Yu, who was awaiting his response, and he was a little unsure whether the other party could really not be considered ‘fragrant’ or ‘gentle.’ He even felt that… the long beautiful legs also didn’t seem impossible?
When Su Zimo approached, Du Lei smelled a faint scent that was almost unnoticeable, but attracted and refreshed others. Du Lei had actually smelled the scent before, but thought it was a candle or something sprayed in the apartment before. Later, when he left with Xu Yingying and Zhu Zhu, he didn’t smell the nice scent anymore.
Just then, Du Lei had a strange idea. Wasn’t the scent coming from Su Zimo?
“Pa!”
Perhaps after considering his thoughts too dangerous to think, Du Lei performed an action that no one, including Su Zimo, had expected – he slapped himself!
Both Xu Yingying and Zhu Zhu were a little frightened, and couldn’t help retreating away from Du Lei, worried that he was possessed by a ghost.
“Mr. Du, we have need of a beauty filter.” Su Zimo said with a light smile.
Su Zimo wasn’t concerned about things like appearance, but he also didn’t like it when others judged his appearance without understanding, and think strange things about him.
“No, there’s not.” Du Lei shifted his eyes and phone away, pretending nothing had happened just now.
“So you don’t have a beauty filter on your phone?” Su Zimo deliberately asked again.
“Why would there be something like that on my phone, and not… not the little girls like Xu Yingying!” Due Lei looked back at Su Zimo, then quickly averted his gaze.
“I have one on my phone.” Xu Yingying felt even more cautious about Du Lei, pulling Zhu Zhu to stand against the wall while taking out her phone.
“Mr. Du should be the most powerful here. A veteran like Mr. Du must have great experience dealing with ghosts. I’ll also trouble Mr. Du to take a photo of this room with the beauty filter. I hope there’s really nothing.” Su Zimo politely took the phone from Xu Yingying, and offered it to Du Lei with both hands.
“Mr. Du?” Seeing Du Lei still standing there, Su Zimo asked again.
“Oh. Okay.” Du Lei nonchalantly took the phone and turned on the beauty filter on the camera under Xu Yingying’s guidance.
Su Zimo didn’t know what Du Lei was thinking about before. He only felt that Du Lei was stupid. He didn’t know what medication he took, but now he obediently listened to his words and acted upon them.
“Where should I take the photo?” Du Lei even turned his head and asked Su Zimo dazedly.
“……” Su Zimo didn’t have time to study strangers’ psychological issues. He could only point to a certain direction in the classroom and say, “Take it over there.”
If this was Zhang Xiaoqing’s classroom, Su Zimo guessed that that was where Zhang Xiaoqing’s seat was located.
“What can it take a picture of?” Du Lei asked stupidly.
“Remember Zhu Zhu’s story?” Su Zimo and Zhu Zhu looked at each other. “What you can’t see doesn’t necessarily not exist. In fact, there are similarities between Zhu Zhu’s and Xu Yingying’s stories.
“This… this is!” When Du Lei pointed the camera at the desks and chairs, the large boy who had strengthened his body who-knows-how-many-times stumbled.
Su Zimo looked over, trying to see what appeared on the screen. As a result, as soon as he approached, Du Lei jumped aside as if he’d been shocked.
Because their surroundings were so dark, Su Zimo couldn’t make out the expression on Du Lei’s face, but thought that the guy not only spoke nonsense, but also hated him from the bottom of his heart. Why else would he back away so fast?
It wasn’t until Su Zimo took another step that Du Lei stood still and motionless. His hand holding the phone was also stiff, as if he was paralyzed.
Only then did Su Zimo see the screen……
There was a large white facial recognition frame!
The number of white frames indicated how many faces the camera captured, and there were dozens of white recognition frames on the screen right then!
The camera captured… dozens of ‘people?!’
“Pa!”
Du Lei’s hand shook and he accidentally pressed on the camera’s screen – and Xu Yingying’s software seemed to start shuttering by simply touching the screen. So, when Du Lei tapped the screen, the flash on Xu Yingying’s phone suddenly went off, illuminating the dim classroom in front of them again.
Su Zimo didn’t see any ghosts at the moment the flash turned on. He thought that the accidental shutter was just a small event, but after the light dimmed again, something unexpected occurred in the classroom–
The originally quiet classroom became noisy!
[Have you heard? Zhang Xiaoqing committed suicide because she was under too much pressure to study.]
[But I heard that Zhang Xiaoqing committed suicide after failing to say goodbye to Lin Zhe? The ones who were playing with Zhang Xiaoqing before took time off because of the incident!]
[Speaking of that, it’s strange. Isn’t Lin Zhe dating Hua Xiaowan? The two also agreed to go to the same university. If Zhang Xiaoqing likes Lin Zhe, why would she play so much with Hua Xiaowan and the others?]
[Why didn’t I know that kind of thing?]
[Oh my god. Since you know that kind of thing, why didn’t you tell Zhang Xiaoqing?]
[Me? I’m not familiar with Zhang Xiaoqing. Is it okay to tell her about that kind of thing?]
[If you told her, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Are you the murderer?]
[Pei! There’s no murderer for a suicide!]
[Speaking of, I’m going to travel with my parents during the weekend.]
[Traveling so soon after entrance exams?]
[Thanks to Zhang Xiaoqing, my parents are afraid that I’ll be under too much psychological pressure, so they decided to take me out to play.]
[That’s great. I’ll talk to my family too…]
[……]
All kinds of voices surrounded Su Zimo and the others, all of them twittering and discussing Zhang Xiaoqing’s affairs. But the tone of those people wasn’t regretful or despairing. Instead, they talked and laughed and teased each other, even wanting to use Zhang Xiaoqing’s incident as an opportunity to travel.
The noise stopped abruptly.
The entire classroom was restored to the silent atmosphere from before, but the sound of the wind whistling outside the windows caused the window panes to shake with a bang, bang!
Abnormal!
Wind noises?
Su Zimo recalled that there was nothing in the pitch black darkness outside the classroom windows.
He subconsciously looked out the windows, only to find that it was no longer a dark space. Instead, he could see the ordinary night through the window. The pale red moon hung in the deep night, and the sky was full of clouds.
“The sky changed!” Xu Yingying and the others also noticed the transformation in the sky.
The changes in the sky outside the windows made the dark classroom a bit brighter than before. Coupled with the flashlight on Du Lei’s phone, the classroom in front of them became more visible.
But at the same time…
In the walkways between the desks and chairs in the classroom, many figures in an unfamiliar school uniform appeared. They suddenly looked up at where the clouds were surging outside the window. Under the pale red moonlight, dozens of faceless expressions were revealed.
The first emotion that appeared in Su Zimo’s brain at that moment wasn’t fear. Instead, he felt that the ghost with the hair draped in front of its head in the room with the ‘corpse’ upstairs may not have a face.
The number of faceless people went from one to three, and now instantly became dozens!
One faceless person was a trivial matter. Three faceless people, Su Zimo could handle with ordinary methods. But dozens? Su Zimo may be the only one in the mood to count, so he roughly counted and found that there were at least thirty faceless ghosts in the classroom, which just so happened to be about the same as the number of students in a class.
“Ghost Umbrella, I may need help.”
Su Zimo was never a brave person, and bringing the black umbrella with him was to ensure his safety during task clearance.
Translator’s Notes:
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