Jian Xie’s eyes involuntarily fell on the card placed aside.
He was so focused on the cake that he ignored the thing that was most likely to reveal the identity of the gift giver.
So Jian Xie reached out and tentatively picked up the card.
It looked like a standard gift from a cake shop, with a fragrant lily printed on the back. Not much personal information could be seen.
Jian Xie turned it over and saw a line of words as if produced by a typewriter on the front of the greeting card.
——Happy birthday, here’s a gift.
The card didn’t reveal any information, because it didn’t include the name of the gift giver and simply said “First Anniversary”.
What kind of first anniversary is this…?
But the gift…
Did it mean the watch?
Jian Xie was slightly stunned.
He suddenly remembered the rumors that those three people had spread about him recently.
Jian Xie was actually not interested in these luxury goods. When one could become the focus of everyone’s attention just by wearing a sweatshirt priced at 9.9 yuan with free shipping on the street, the brand of clothes and accessories was no longer important.
Most people would just keep staring at his face anyway.
Those three people knew that Jian Xie’s family was not well off, and just like a shark smelling blood, they started to spread rumors that he was a dishonest person who would steal money and things.
In short, no matter how disgusting it was, they said it without care whether others believed it or not. They just enjoyed making up stories.
The most recent one was that Jian Xie stole their wrist watch.
Although he ignored their hooting and didn’t take it to heart, he was repeatedly made a subject of sarcastic remarks by his snobbish English teacher during English class, so he wrote a line of words in his notebook as a complaint.
——Why do I need a watch when I have a mobile phone? I don’t need it.
“……” Jian Xie.
He was sure he hadn’t said that to anyone else.
The sentence in his notebook was written in pencil and he erased it with an eraser a few minutes after writing it. He didn’t have a deskmate, so there was no possibility of someone seeing it.
The cake was custom-made and topped with sweet, fresh fruits and cream.
He estimated it to be several hundred at least.
After thinking for a moment, Jian Xie called the shop according to the contact information at the bottom of the card.
Fortunately, the call was connected quickly and he didn’t have to wait long. “Hello, how can I help you?”
Jian Xie reported the order number on the card.
“Who ordered this cake?” He asked directly.
“Hello, please wait a moment. We will check your order record.” After a moment of silence, the voice on the phone sounded again with a hint of confusion, “…Uh, sir, this cake was ordered by phone, and the number used is the one you are using now.”
…………??
Jian Xie thanked the other person, hung up the phone, and looked through his call records to see if there were any calls he didn’t remember.
He hadn’t scrolled down for long before his fingers paused.
…It actually exists.
It was even made at half past ten.
But shouldn’t he be in bed at that point…?
It would be amazing if his phone spent its own money to prepare birthday surprises for its owner.
If he didn’t know that the watch cost at least six figures and the maximum loan was at most tens of thousands, and the balance on his card was only a few thousand, he would have thought he had lost his memory.
Maybe it’s a fake.
With a glimmer of hope, Jian Xie took out the serial number from the bottom of the watch box and checked it on the luxury brand’s official website.
The price that came out made Jian Xie subconsciously count the number of zeros: one, two, three, four, five, six…
Until he couldn’t look anymore. It was a bit terrifying.
He entered the serial number again.
…It’s actually real.
The hand holding the watch is shaking slightly.jpg
“……”
Suddenly, his cell phone buzzed, interrupting the silence in the air.
Jian Xie, who was lost in thought, finally came to his senses.
He glanced at the screen of his mobile phone and found that it was a call from the manager of the store where he was going to work part-time as a delivery man tonight. It was almost eight o’clock and he had actually forgotten the time.
Jian Xie was never late because his salary would be deducted.
Maybe it was because the price of this watch shocked him so much and the way things turned out was so confusing, but he actually forgot he had a part-time job.
Forget it, if I can’t figure it out, I’ll just stop thinking about it for now.
Jian Xie has encountered more and more weird things ever since the car accident anyway. One more addition would have no effect.
In fact, he felt that the way he thought was sometimes quite abnormal.
Commonly known as having a big heart.
For example, if most people knew that a B-level monster existed, they would definitely accept the protection of the Supernatural Management Bureau regardless of whether it would still pose a threat or not, but he would not.
There was also the psychiatrist who spoke like a parrot and behaved strangely from the community distributed assistance for caring purposes after the car accident.
Most people would have been curious about the strange attitude of a psychiatrist who avoided them and dared not look them in the eye. Moreover, even after Jian Xie learned that the prescription medicine he had been taking was vitamin candy, he still remained indifferent to this strange development.
But no one would give him a million-dollar watch just to hurt him, right?
That cost was too high.
If the other person had that kind of money, would they still care about an ordinary high schooler like him?
It was outrageous. It was better to dream that there was a beautiful and kind-hearted snail girl living in your home.
Thinking of this, Jian Xie gently put the watch back into the box, then closed the box and carefully placed it in the only locked drawer in his bedroom.
After putting the most valuable things away, Jian Xie checked the room again, thought for a while, and put the cake into the refrigerator.
Then he picked up his phone and walked out the door.
After walking a few steps, Jian Xie’s eyes inadvertently swept across the window. He paused and turned around hesitantly.
There were no curtains drawn on the windows of the room. In the afterglow of the setting sun, warm orange light shone into the room through the windows, lengthening Jian Xie’s shadow.
Was that just his hallucination?
His shadow seemed to disappear.
Jian Xie paused, then narrowed his eyes, turned around and walked out of the room as if nothing had happened.
*
It was the last list.
The sky was completely dark, with only the dim fluorescent yellow light from the street lamps remaining. The figures under the lights were unclear, and only a blurry black shadow could be seen.
Jian Xie parked the store’s delivery electric vehicle on the side of the road, took off his helmet, and took out the tightly packed takeaway food from the box in the back.
He called the customer a few minutes in advance. Although the call was connected quickly, the voice on the other end was unclear and it seemed that the signal was not very good. The woman’s sentence was interrupted by a few fragmented words, and there seemed to be the sound of a cat in the background.
“I’m so hungry… hurry up…”
“I want to eat…”
Jian Xie frowned. “Yes, I’ll deliver it right away.”
For some reason, after hearing his voice, the person on the other end paused strangely for a few seconds, then giggled a few times and abruptly hung up the phone.
Jian Xie walked towards the corridor while making another phone call to a customer.
The other party filled in the floor number; Room 104 on the 20th floor. If the other party didn’t take the elevator down to get it, he would have to go up and knock on the door himself, which was very troublesome.
This time, the customer did not answer the call. Jian Xie called twice, but both times there was only a cold, mechanical female voice from the receiver, telling him in a flat voice that the call could not be connected at the moment.
He was just about to put away his phone and deliver it himself when the call suddenly came back.
Jian Xie answered the phone, and this time, the customer’s voice on the other end finally became clear.
Her voice was strangely soft, in contrast to her previously hoarse voice, and the cat’s cry in the background had completely disappeared.
“Where are you? …Do you want me to come meet you?”
Grumble.
She then seemingly swallowed thickly.
It was very quiet around the phone, making her voice seem particularly loud. It was obvious that the other party was extremely hungry.
He was about to answer, but at that moment, the elevator door where he had pressed the up button slowly opened in front of him. There was no one inside.
Jian Xie paused. “No need.”
“Can you please not hang up the phone? You’re coming up soon anyway…” The woman said softly, “Because I’m really hungry…”
……
Jian Xie frowned. He stood in front of the elevator door and turned to look outside the corridor. The neighborhood was completely dark, as if all the street lights that were originally on had gone out at the same time.
The way back had disappeared.
Oh.
Jian Xie was not stupid. He immediately thought of the black space created by the previous B-level monster. It looked like a place isolated from the real world. He had no doubt that even if he turned around and tried to leave at this moment, he would not be able to walk out of this space directly.
So, Jian Xie turned around and looked at the corridor on the first floor.
“Why don’t you come up? I told you to come up—!” The woman yelled into the suddenly silent phone. Her voice was hoarse and sharp, as if she could no longer pretend to be a normal person. “I’m waiting for you!!!”
Jian Xie paused again, before saying in a nonchalant voice, “Yeah, okay.”
Hearing his answer, the woman’s voice suddenly became soft again, “You need to hurry up.”
Jian Xie didn’t reply, but he didn’t want to hang up the phone and risk angering the monster either, so he just exited the call interface and sent a text message to Cheng Li’s number.
No matter whether the other party could receive it or not, it was the right thing to send one.
Placing the phone back to his ear, Jian Xie walked into the elevator which had strangely remained open, and pressed the button for the 20th floor.
There should have been no signal in the elevator, but the phone call was not disconnected. It was indeed not the real world.
The small elevator with only him inside was dead silent. An increasingly heavy breathing could be heard on the other end of the phone. The other side seemed to be able to feel Jian Xie’s body getting closer and closer to it, and was so excited that they were making a grinding, toothy sound.
“Yes, yes, that’s it…” The voice on the other end of the line chuckled.
Just as the elevator was about to reach the 20th floor, Jian Xie, who had been keeping a cold face, suddenly moved.
He quickly reached out and pressed the nineteenth floor.
The elevator door opened, and he immediately slipped out of the elevator. The elevator door slowly closed behind him, and he rushed to the stairs and ran the stairs to the 20th floor.
Just now when he was on the first floor, Jian Xie deliberately looked at the layout of the residential complex.
The elevator was at one end, and the stairs were at the other end, with a long corridor in between.
There was no way he would walk into a trap and go directly to the 20th floor, but he also wouldn’t be stupid enough to run downstairs when the other party could obviously sense which floor he was on.
While approaching the staircase to the twentieth floor, Jian Xie slowed down his pace, not making a sound like a nimble cat.
Then he looked towards the end of the corridor.
He saw a long and narrow figure standing in front of the elevator door. Its arms and legs were long, thin, twisted and skinny, but its neck was abnormally fat, incredibly long, and curled up like a scarf. It was too long and too high that it squeezed the pitifully small head out of shape as it stuck crookedly to the ceiling.
It held the phone in one hand while its unstoppable saliva dripped onto the elevator door like rain, forming a pool of smelly yellow liquid.
I must have been waiting for him at the elevator door since receiving his first call.
Jian Xie: “…”
Why do these monsters all look so SAN1Another game reference. SAN/Sanity is a player’s statistic in 克苏鲁的呼唤 (Call of Cthulhu). It can be considered as mental strength to some extent. For example, if you see something supernatural or something too horrible that stimulates your mind, your SAN will decrease. (Source: baike.baidu)-destroying?
For some reason, he could feel that this monster was much more powerful than the previous B-level monster, the centipede monster.
Of course, it was also much uglier.
Maybe this is… the uglier, the stronger.
The green light above the elevator door suddenly lit up, and the elevator reached the 20th floor. The monster’s body suddenly moved. The moment the door opened, it could no longer hold back and squeezed in through the narrow gap. Its masticating movements were ugly and impatient.
“……”
However, when the elevator door opened completely, there was no one inside.
“Where, where are you——?!!” The monster went crazy because of the food’s unexpected escape. It tore its own muscle tissues and chewed it in its mouth while screaming at the other end of the phone, “I’m so hungry, so hungry…!”
Jian Xie had quickly hung up the phone as soon as the elevator door opened.
The monster dragged its heavy body around in circles, seemingly unable to find any food. Jian Xie breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back a little.
Suddenly, a huge smelly mouth appeared where he was originally!
If Jian Xie hadn’t suddenly thought of taking a step back, he would have probably been ambushed.
The attack missed, causing the monster’s swollen face to be filled with resentment. Jian Xie soon discovered the reason why he did not hear the other party moving its body—its body was still in the same place, but it had stretched its neck and turned it to the stairs.
Just imagining this scene was horrifying.
……Fuck.
Who else has a more exciting birthday than him?
“You smell so good… so good. I can smell it from across the corridor, no other human is as good as you. I will tear you into pieces, chew you slowly and eat you… so that you and I can become one—”
The monster licked its tongue and looked at him greedily.
Jian Xie: “.”
You want to eat flesh and blood, why are you saying it so strangely.
Obviously, the long-necked monster didn’t intend to give him time to breathe. After saying this, smelly drool flowed out of its mouth, its eyeballs bulge, and its neck suddenly stretched and twirled in an instant—
…….!
………..??
The next moment, when Jian Xie opened his eyes wide, there was nothing in front of him.
It disappeared.
It just disappeared…?
[Blind piece of shit.]
His ears suddenly felt itchy as a low voice sounded. The tone of the auditory hallucination was very contemptuous, as if it had seen some unsightly garbage which made it sneer.
Jian Xie: “…………”
As soon as It opened It’s mouth, there were signs of middle school syndrome.
The author has something to say:
A certain someone: One shot, one kill2Literal translation would be, ‘I get up/appear, I finish/kill in a flash’
Xena comment
Yoow, that monster reminded me of the long-necked teacher in little nightmares >.<
Translator Xena’s other works: ko-fi.com/xenatl/gallery
