The cold, mechanical female voice repeated over the intercom: “The next stop has arrived. Passengers who are getting off, please prepare. The next stop has arrived. Passengers who are getting off, please prepare.”
Yet no one rushed to get off the bus at first. Everyone sat dazed in their seats, as if they had shed a layer of skin, feeling utterly drained.
Only Dong Xiu was in pain. To preserve his last life, he had kept his eyes shut tight, no matter how much the dog bit him. One must admit, his perseverance was admirable, but for him, it felt as if his arm was being slowly sliced into pieces. Despite desperately keeping his eyes closed, he felt as if he had died and come back to life several times. Eventually, the pain became so unbearable that he could not stand. When the announcement came, and the thing that had been biting him disappeared, he took a moment to catch his breath before crawling up, stumbling as he made his way to the back door.
Then, he crashed hard against the still-closed door.
“Why… why isn’t the door open?!” he exclaimed in shock!
“What?!” The others finally reacted. Li Yougen jumped up from his seat as if bitten on the backside and rushed to the front, reaching out to the door.
“Didn’t we arrive at the station?! Why can’t we get off?!” Xiong Jiabao’s voice was tinged with tears, still unable to escape the earlier scenario of “my girlfriend marrying someone who isn’t me,” suffering double the damage.
Xin Meng held onto You Yi with one hand while groping towards the door with the other. You Yi moved in sync with him, staying by his side. “It really isn’t opening. What’s going on?”
No one could answer him. Among the six of them, apart from him and You Yi, the others had suffered extraordinary injuries. He could still faintly hear Qi Xiaokui’s suppressed sobs and Dong Xiu’s heavy breathing. He furrowed his brows and pushed against the door with all his might, but it remained immovable. “This…”
He wanted to ask You Yi what he thought, but he heard You Yi say, “Listen.”
Xin Meng paused, then moved his ears, his heart sinking. He realized that he didn’t know when it had started, but the sounds around them had vanished!
The innocent laughter of the children, the sounds of play, the teacher’s scolding, the driver’s shouts—all had disappeared. Apart from the voices of the six of them, there was no other sound!
When had it all disappeared?
“What on earth is going on?!” Li Yougen’s tearful voice infected everyone, making them feel a tightness in their chests, anxious and panicked. He leaned against the door, banging on it forcefully. “I want to get out! Let me out…”
He desperately wanted to leave this bus, to forget the memories of what had just happened, to forget what he had done.
Yes, as long as he could get out, as long as he could get out, he would forget.
He hadn’t done anything; he had simply done nothing. Besides, he didn’t even know how long he could live. How could he care about others, even his mother who had raised him with difficulty… Even if it was his mother, if she truly loved him, she would definitely want him to live.
Yes, that’s it. It must be like that!
What each person had experienced, only they themselves knew. So the others didn’t know what Li Yougen was thinking, and no one cared. He was usually timid, weak, and prone to emotional breakdowns; such behavior was perfectly normal.
“Maybe there’s still a task we haven’t completed, so the door won’t open,” Xin Meng speculated.
“What task?!” Xiong Jiabao shouted, raising his voice. “The card only said not to look at Medusa and to survive until the end. How could there be other tasks?!”
“This is a horror game!” Xin Meng didn’t want to think that way, but there was no other explanation. “It’s not just a simple escape room… Maybe we haven’t encountered the most terrifying thing yet, so we can’t just pass through.”
“The most terrifying thing?” Dong Xiu trembled in disbelief, “Like that ‘demon’ we just saw?”
“This is just my guess. It’s like entering a dungeon; you have to see the final boss and defeat it to reveal the ‘portal’ to leave,” Xin Meng tried to analyze. “In the last bus, we found that final ‘demon boss.’ Although we didn’t kill it, at least we held on until the time was up… This time, though, I don’t know if there’s a time limit.”
They all kept their eyes closed, unable to see if there were any indicators around, nor were there any prompts.
At some point, the six of them also fell silent. The bus was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop, yet nothing happened. In the stillness, time seemed to have stopped flowing. They were still trapped on the bus, with the two tightly closed doors showing no signs of opening.
“This won’t do; we need to think of a way,” Dong Xiu suddenly said. “From my analysis, there are only two ways to get off the bus now. One is to violently break open the door or window and jump out, but who knows what’s outside? We’ve all kept our eyes closed, so no one knows if it’s just darkness out there, and jumping out could mean death. Moreover, there’s a chance we might not even be able to break the glass, so we can only take the second route, which is… to open our eyes.”
Indeed, given the current situation, they could only take this route. The game’s progress was clearly at a standstill, and they had to do something to trigger the next part of the story. Opening their eyes was almost the only choice, but who would be the one to take that first step?
No one knew what would happen after the story was triggered. Perhaps it would be like when Li Yougen first got on the bus, seeing nothing and dying once. After experiencing several gruesome deaths, everyone was like a startled bird, unwilling to be the first to open their eyes.
“I… I only have one life left…” Li Yougen stammered, curling up against the door, his hand tightly covering his eye mask, shaking his head repeatedly. “I can’t die again!”
“Me too,” Dong Xiu implied. “Since we’re on the same team, when we encounter difficulties, we should cooperate and help each other. That’s the only way to survive. Li Yougen, Xiong Jiabao, and I have all died twice; if we die again, it’s over. Right now, Xiong Jiabao only has two lives left, and Li Yougen and I have only one left.”
Xin Meng remained silent.
Seeing that he didn’t respond, Dong Xiu continued, “There are still four lives and five lives left. Losing one won’t matter; we can still save others. Isn’t that a win-win situation?”
Qi Xiaokui wiped away the tears on her face with the back of her hand, her voice still choked with sobs, yet she coldly mocked, “What win-win situation? Are you kidding? Whose life isn’t precious? Just yours?”
“You!” Dong Xiu was furious, throwing down the gauntlet. “I definitely won’t open my eyes; you all can figure it out yourselves!”
Once again, no one spoke.
After a while, Xiong Jiabao quietly said, “Stalemating like this isn’t a solution.”
Xin Meng pursed his lips, feeling a bit uncomfortable.
The cheerful and simple Xiong Jiabao, who used to love talking about “friends” and “brotherhood,” might never appear again.
As the shadow of death loomed closer, the selfishness in human nature quietly magnified, until it distorted their very faces.
“I…” Xin Meng was about to refuse, but his hand was pinched, and then he heard You Yi say, “I’ll do it.”
Upon hearing this, Xin Meng immediately panicked and tried to stop him, but You Yi said, “We can’t keep stalemating; someone has to take action.”
That’s right; Li Yougen and Dong Xiu would definitely not open their eyes, and Xiong Jiabao wouldn’t either. Xin Meng couldn’t expect Qi Xiaokui, a girl, to take the risk for them. In fact, he knew that this matter would ultimately fall on either him or You Yi. He had wanted to refuse earlier out of anger at what these people said, as if the two of them were meant to die for them.
However, since You Yi had spoken, his anger subsided. Shaking You Yi’s arm, Xin Meng said, “Let me go first.”
Before You Yi could respond, he took the initiative to pull down the eye mask.
After blinking a few times to adjust to the light inside the bus, Xin Meng opened his eyes wide.
The environment and layout inside the bus were exactly the same as the previous one, except that the NPC passengers were gone. However, that didn’t mean the seats were empty; instead, they were crammed full of…
Dolls!
The dolls, made of a wax-like material, had lifelike faces and limbs, but were only half the size of a normal person. They wore gorgeous silk dresses, some resembling ancient court princesses with lace long skirts, others in red qipaos embroidered with gold patterns, and there were also suspender skirts and sailor outfits—all beautiful girl dolls!
Having all girl dolls wasn’t scary; what was terrifying was that their glassy eyes were actually movable, and they were all staring at Xin Meng, their transparent pupils reflecting his figure from various angles. Their facial expressions were stiff and immobile, yet gradually, a sharp, giggling laughter began to fill the air.
“Big brother, look at me! Look at me!”
“Wow! Someone opened their eyes! Look over here, I’m Dou Dou!”
“Dou Dou, go away! You should be looking at me! Big brother, I’m the one who gave you my seat, Hei Zai!”
Hei Zai…
Xin Meng’s gaze slowly moved down to the front row, where there was a princess doll about the size of a five or six-year-old human, turning around with her arms wrapped around the backrest, expressionless, staring at him with her red glassy eyes, emitting an incongruous cheerful laughter from her abdomen. “Big brother, you saw me! You saw me!”
Cold sweat broke out on Xin Meng’s forehead, and his body leaned back until he was pressed tightly against the back of the seat. He watched Hei Zai’s hand, which was smooth and delicate, with a slight fuzz, looking extremely lifelike, except for the five sharp, black nails at the tips that glimmered with a venomous sheen. Remembering how he had just been grabbed by such a pair of eerie hands, he couldn’t help but feel his stomach churn and turned his head away.
He was about to explain the situation to You Yi when You Yi had already taken off his eye mask, and upon seeing the bus full of dolls, he merely raised an eyebrow.
“Interesting.”
Xin Meng: “……Where do you find this interesting?!”
The laughter of the girls filled the entire bus. The earlier extreme silence seemed to be an illusion shared by everyone. Even the others, who had kept their eyes closed, could hear it clearly. Qi Xiaokui hesitated for a moment before also opening her eyes.
Sitting next to her was a doll in a black suspender dress, wearing a strange expression that seemed to be smiling yet not smiling. Its green glassy eyes stared at her without moving. It raised a right hand, which was completely disproportionate to her petite left hand, reaching out to her, speaking in a voice that belonged to Qi Xiaorou, gently saying, “Xiao Kui, it’s me. Don’t you recognize your sister anymore?”
“Ah ah ah—” Qi Xiaokui couldn’t help but scream, panicking and falling off her chair, scrambling backward on the ground. “No, no, you’re not my sister… you… you’re not!”
