Ivy League Murder Game

Chapter 2

I'm not averse to smoking anymore; I've finally overcome another psychological barrier, which is great.

Suddenly, a chill ran down my back, and my legs went so weak that I couldn't stand up. I finally exhaled the breath I had been holding in my chest for so long. All I could hear was the sound of my teeth chattering, and I couldn't even hear the taxis whizzing past me.

Finally, I'm scared. That's good.

To put it simply, I mustered up my courage to leave my house and walk down the third floor through the eerie shadows of the trees. As I passed the entrance to the building where the old woman on the first floor had died less than three months ago, my lower body was bathed in a pale white light, while my upper body was in silent darkness. Even the shrine of Master Pei at the main entrance was flickering with eerie light and shadow in the candlelight.

That dream within a dream was so real, so real, that I couldn't treat it as a dream.

Only in brightly lit, bustling places can I find the courage to face it. Even though most of the people walking around me are prostitutes with makeup so thick it's terrifying, and a few are delinquent youths reeking of alcohol.

It's enough to see them eating spicy hot pot with sweat pouring down their faces, laughing and cursing loudly without restraint, and the aroma and heat from the food stalls wafting towards you.

very nice.

I fell asleep at three o'clock in the morning, leaning against the telephone pole opposite the Banghui Hotel.

I didn't dream this time. That's good.

I was woken up by the sunlight.

"Wow, so early..." I opened my eyes halfway and reached for the curtains—of course, I couldn't reach them. I was sitting on the street, leaning against a grime-covered telephone pole, with an advertisement right next to my head that claimed to "cure syphilis and gynecological diseases."

She was draped in a blanket with a small floral print.

I stood there for half a minute.

Countless cars and pedestrians whizzed past me, but no one glanced at this oddly behaving fat man. Why am I sitting in this corner of the city at this moment?

The short-haired female clerk at the convenience store rushed over, bent down slightly, took the blanket off me, and hurried back to the store.

He didn't say a word.

On the way home, I kept wondering whether her slight bend was a greeting to me or just a way to make it easier to take the blanket.

The sun feels so good; it lifts my spirits and dispels all gloom. Master Pei's tiny temple, no bigger than a palm, is already open and bustling with activity, incense smoke curling upwards, and the little statue inside seems to be smiling. My room faces east; there's not a trace of the eerie atmosphere from last night.

Ultimately, I was just being overly sensitive.

“From a probability perspective, the chance of everyone having a nightmare is 1%, so… it’s normal. You just had a nightmare last night.” Yan Xin, who always talks about probability, only said one sentence in the QQ group before burying herself in her financial statements.

“From a psychological perspective, the probability of yin and yang imbalance is 1%, so… it’s normal. You should find a girlfriend.” The thief sitting in front of me turned around and said with a serious face.

Damn it, joking like that with your boss! I'd just kick him from below. This office layout is great, it makes it easy for bosses to discipline their subordinates from behind with their feet.

As a result, this guy used the excuse of being kicked and seriously injured to sneak off to the stairwell to smoke and replenish his blood.

Our office is on the fifth floor of the Yifa Building on Wusi Road; we've rented the entire floor. The decor is odd; the office space is circular, surrounding the elevator lobby, with a straight corridor in the middle and an emergency exit at each end facing a different direction.

If you look down from the air and cut off the fifth floor, it forms a yin-yang symbol, with the two emergency exits representing the two points of the symbol.

If I work in the Yang fish's eye, then Lei happens to work in the Yin fish's eye. So if he wants to come to me, he has to go around halfway around the company—we usually call it "circling the earth."

So after traveling halfway around the world, Ah Lei sat in front of me, facing me, while Feng Zei still hadn't returned.

“I dreamt about it too,” A-Lei said expressionlessly.

I didn't react. In fact, among our close friends, Lei is the one who likes to joke the most. For example, the joke he made to Sister Yan after we came out of Ivy League last time was not funny at all.

“I really dreamt about it. Just like you, but instead of watching others eat, I was the one eating it myself. I was holding a knife and fork, slowly cutting off a baby's arm that was about 80% cooked, cutting it into pieces of bloody meat, forking it into my mouth, and slowly chewing it. Then, my mouth was filled with a tender and smooth feeling, and the meat juice was very fragrant, very fragrant.”

A Lei finished speaking expressionlessly, word by word, and took a cigarette from the cigarette case that Feng Ze had thrown on the table, then lit it with a snap.

I could clearly see that his hands were trembling, his lips were twitching involuntarily, and he tried to light the cigarette several times but couldn't manage it.

Although the company clearly has a rule against smoking in the office, although my colleagues in the public relations department were staring at us in astonishment, and although the sun was shining brightly in Fuzhou right behind me.

The chill that I was almost used to crept up my spine.

Section 5

"Smack!" Lei and I each got a sharp rap on the head, and I winced in pain, but I didn't dare to fight back.

Without even looking up, just by the strength of his hand, I could absolutely guess who it was. Yan Xin, the head of the finance department, the only person in the entire company who could manipulate the salaries of several grown men like us at will.

She's the kind of girl who's "scolding you is like giving you sunshine, hitting you is like giving you warmth"—a violent type. She's about my age, quite old, but still full of energy.

Yan Xin stood next to A Lei, looking at me with a stern face, and I looked at her.

Normally, if we were just staring at each other like this, it wouldn't take more than five minutes before one of us couldn't help but burst out laughing. It's a little game we enjoy endlessly in our small group. Whoever laughs first loses, and they have to pay half the cost of the weekend's "murder" game—we usually split the bill.

Five minutes. Ten minutes.

Actually, it's not that I don't want to smile, but my stiff muscles just can't produce a smile. If I were to force them to do a test simulating a smile, the answer they gave would definitely scare the girl in front of me to death.

Strangely, Yan Xin didn't laugh either. Not only did she not laugh, but her expression gradually changed from desperately trying to hold back her laughter to a mixture of surprise, confusion, tension, and even some fear.

Ah Lei was still sitting there in a daze.

She dragged me to the stairwell door with a strength that was completely unlike a delicate girl, and a madness that was completely unlike a graceful lady, although her madness was just enough to allow me to steal a few glances at her ample breasts.

It's strange that my brain still has time to think about these crazy, nonsensical things. I thought I had been so scared that my mind had stopped.

"Speak, don't leave out a single word of what you just said. I want to hear the complete version." The crazy woman finally released the iron clamp "clamped" on my wrist, leaned against the stair railing, and crossed her arms—she couldn't peek anymore: "Woof woof, how old are you? How old am I? What haven't we experienced? What's there to be afraid of?"

It's incredible how this sunny woman, with just a few casual words, dispelled the shadows in my heart.

That year, I was 28 years old, and Yan Xin was also 28, about to turn 30. We had lost the naivety of youth and the awkwardness of adolescence. We had experienced life and death, witnessed death happening around us, and even we ourselves had had moments of suicidal thoughts during our most depressed times.

Death isn't so terrible. After all, haven't we been hovering on the edge of death every single day we've lived?

Car accidents, plane crashes, fires, gas leaks, elevator malfunctions... there are so many. Even while shopping, you might get killed by something falling from upstairs, right?

If I'm not even afraid of death, what else is there to be afraid of? My heart suddenly felt lighter, filled with fearless courage.

Yan Xin listened quietly as I finished telling the whole story, including A Lei's similar dream. She just listened intently with her head down, without saying a word. Only after I finished did she gesture for me to wait a moment, then turned and went back into the company.

Among the members of our "Ivy League Murder Club," Yan Xin, myself, and A Lei are all known for their analytical abilities.

Actually, if you analyze this matter separately, it's not that scary.

The coughing in the Ivy League private room was most likely coming from the head chef in the kitchen next door; the dream within a dream was even less surprising. There are many theories about dream interpretation, and I know quite a bit about them. It was probably a hallucination caused by the Lianpeng Ghost Stories I read on Tianya Forum the day before; as for the dream that was the same as A-Lei's, it's really nothing. Usually, people's memories of dreams are very vague after they wake up, so it's not surprising at all that someone else has a similar dream.

Thinking about it this way, I felt much more at ease, but I did find Yan Xin's reaction a little strange. However, I couldn't quite put my finger on what was strange about it.

At this moment, Sister Yan had already called out A Lei. He looked very listless, with empty eyes and no energy. He plopped down on the stairs, completely ignoring the dust.

"Let me tell you a story." Although she wears a long skirt every day, which A-Lei teases as a "sack," Yan Xin is actually quite pretty and has excellent speaking skills. She can always attract people's attention as soon as she opens her mouth.

"Before my husband and I got married, I lived alone in a rented apartment in Mawei. It was a very old building, and most of the residents were elderly people. The rent was very cheap, and since my salary was low at the time, I moved in without thinking twice. Later, I heard from people that the apartment was haunted. I've always been very brave since I was a child and I've never been afraid. Anyway, I've never done anything wrong, so I'm not afraid of ghosts knocking on my door in the middle of the night."

"About two weeks later, one afternoon, I came back from outside and walked through the alley in front of the building. I glanced up unintentionally and saw a person sitting in front of a desk, only their upper body was visible. Because it was too far away, I couldn't see clearly. I thought it was Momo, who shared the room with me, at home, and didn't pay much attention."

"I knocked on the door for ages, but there was no response. When I finally opened it, my scalp tingled. The house was eerily quiet; there wasn't a soul in sight. Since it was broad daylight, I wasn't too scared at the time. But when night fell and the lights were off, all I could think about was that figure, and I couldn't fall asleep. I finally drifted off just before dawn, but I kept having this vague feeling that someone on TV was watching me, watching me..."

I smiled and lit a cigarette, slowly inhaling the fragrant smoke and then exhaling it gently through my nostrils. Gazing at the billowing smoke, I felt a sensation similar to focusing my mind and introspecting while practicing internal martial arts.

Hearing this, I understood the purpose of Sister Yan telling this story. Although there was no reaction on A Lei's face, he couldn't help but hug his knees tightly.

Sister Yan smiled calmly: "Not long after, one day at the same time, I came back from outside and deliberately stood in that spot to look again, and I really saw that figure again. Momo was at home at the time, so I called her and asked her to come to my room and stand in that spot so I could observe her."

"Finally, I understand. It turns out there was a New Year's picture pasted on my bedroom door, the kind with a lucky boy, symbolizing abundance year after year. When the door was open, from where I was, I could just see the upper half of the picture through the window; it was dark, like the upper body of a person. When Momo was in my room, she stood in that spot, and the figure was blocked. When she moved aside, the figure reappeared. It's that simple, just a New Year's picture, yet it made me suspicious for two weeks."

Ah Lei wasn't stupid; he was just like me, frightened by his own fear. Limited by his lack of experience compared to me and Sister Yan, he still struggled to see the true nature of life and death. However, he clearly understood the purpose of Sister Yan's story, and his tense expression gradually relaxed.

Seeing him like this, all that's left is one more dose of medicine, so I added a few more words: "Lei, I was just teasing you. As long as you don't connect these things together, it's not a big deal at all. That cough was probably from the chef next door..."

With the combined analysis and reasoning of Sister Yan and me, A Lei finally gave up his idea of "encountering a ghost" and started laughing and joking with us.

This matter should have ended here, but unfortunately, I still feel that Sister Yan's reaction today was a bit strange. This is a habit I developed from playing the murder mystery game; I subconsciously observe a person's behavior.

So when Sister Yan said she was going to make Lei a cup of "fragrant tea," I hesitated at the door for a long time, but couldn't help but rush into the small, separate office of the finance department without knocking.

There was a smoky smell in the air, as if something had just been burned. She stood in front of the water dispenser, holding a disposable cup in her left hand, about to fill it with water. Nothing seemed amiss, except for Sister Yan's displeased expression.

I was startled and immediately apologized with a forced smile. I retreated dejectedly, and as I closed the door, I glanced at her unintentionally: Sister Yan's right hand was hanging down by her side, which was out of my sight from my angle, making her posture look a bit strange.

If she's holding something in her right hand that she doesn't want me to see, what could it be?

This question puzzled me for a long time, but after Ah Lei drank the cup of tea she poured, he calmed down and put the matter out of his mind. He started joking around in our "Ivy League Murder Club" again, and he was even more joking than before.

If it weren't for something unexpected happening later, I probably wouldn't have thought of this question.

On this weekend night, at three in the morning, something strange happened once again that no one expected.

Ivy League, small private room.

Section 6

There were eleven people in total that night.

The extra person was named Haozi, a high school classmate of Lao Gao and Yan Xin. He had a buzz cut and narrow eyes, and worked for China Unicom. When Lao Gao introduced him, he had only shouted, "Anyone who has a grudge against China Unicom, come on up!" when a whole bunch of people stood up, almost scaring Haozi so much that he ran away with his head in his hands.

It's clear that Haozi is the kind of person who has traveled extensively and is very knowledgeable. He's adept at saying one thing to one person and another to someone else. He seemed to quickly become one of us, but there's always a subtle barrier between us, lacking the unbridled trust we have for each other.

Strangely, in several rounds in a row, the mouse was killed in the first round. Since it was difficult for the people who were killed in the first round to find the murderer among the remaining large number of people, the mouse could only die unjustly. The worst thing was that the referee Yan Xin said, "In the early morning, when Lei got up to go to the toilet, a little mouse was squatting in front of the toilet washing its face. With a snap, it was stepped on and killed by the sleepy Lei."

The atmosphere gradually became more lively.

Mouse was noticeably quieter than when he first arrived, chain-smoking. I glanced at him a few times; he was always deep in thought, silent, his face clouded with worry, clearly preoccupied. But if someone spoke to him, he would reflexively flash a bright smile, becoming a completely different person.

This can be considered a professional skill for sales professionals!

"The assassin wins!" As Yan Xin announced the result, the cunning and treacherous Lao Gao and the wicked A Lei shouted triumphantly, even exchanging cheesy kisses, which made the surrounding netizens both resentful and unable to help but laugh.

Another game begins.

As soon as the referee finished dealing the cards, Mouse hurriedly stood up: "Please, fellow assassins, don't kill me in the first round again! It's been seven rounds in a row, and I haven't survived the first round even once..."

29-year-old Haozi, wearing a floral shirt and smoking a cigarette, looked pitiful and aggrieved, which made everyone in the room burst into laughter.

I couldn't help but laugh too, but when my eyes met Haozi's unintentionally, I suddenly realized that besides the deliberate attempt to be funny, there was also a deep-seated worry and guilt, as if he was afraid of something.

What is he afraid of?

"...I'm sorry...Rat, you're dead again." Two minutes later, Yan Xin announced the result with a strange expression and a bizarre face. Everyone, like her, was struggling to suppress their laughter, waiting to hear Rat's bitter and bewildered "last words."

“There’s a sound over there. This time I’m sure, it’s coughing, coming from that, I think it’s called Wind Thief? Yes, it’s him, and Rain Dog next to him. It must be them making it, I heard it very clearly, right from that spot. The assassin must be those two. Over.”

The temperature in the private room seemed to drop to below zero in an instant. A moment of astonishment froze on everyone's faces, and the atmosphere suddenly became eerie. A cool breeze seemed to sweep across the table where the light didn't reach, and a chill quickly spread from the feet upwards.

"Hahaha, you fell for it! I was just kidding you!" The mouse, who had been trying to sound mysterious, burst into laughter, tears welling up in his eyes. "My sister-in-law told me about what happened to you last week. I was just teasing you, but I didn't expect you to actually be scared. Haha, I'm dying of laughter!"

The mischievous mouse naturally drew angry condemnation from the crowd. Amidst the chaos, I suddenly noticed that Ah Lei, who was usually the most mischievous, was looking serious and deep in thought. I nudged him a few times before he looked up at me, his eyes filled with fear: "I...I think...I really heard...the coughing again...really."

I froze, about to say something to comfort him, when I felt a heavy stomp on my foot. I winced in pain and was about to yell at the clumsy bastard when I saw Yan Xin sitting to my right, her face pale and her voice changed: "Woof... Look at that doll!"

Following her gaze, I saw a lifelike child doll in the corner. It was clearly a rare handicraft, with superb carving skills, transforming a piece of dead wood into something incredibly vivid. At first glance, it appeared to be a wood carving, but upon closer inspection, the doll seemed to come alive; its dark eye sockets seemed to have pupils that followed my gaze, creating an eerie and unsettling effect.